Chapter 42: Talk no Jutsu
When the dust from the explosion finally settled, it revealed a scene of utter devastation. The entire room was charred pitch-black, a chaotic mess of splintered furniture and scorched walls. The air hung thick with the acrid stench of burnt materials and ozone.
Rovel had managed to dive behind the heavy desk just in time, but the blast had still torn through his health, carving away a staggering eighty percent of it in a single, violent instant. Worse than the dwindling health bar was the searing reality of the pain. A thousand needles of fire seemed to lance across his exposed skin, a constant, agonizing drain on his stamina.
"Damn it... why can't I adjust the pain settings..." Rovel gritted out, his voice a low hiss.
He remembered the character creation screen, where pain sensitivity could be toggled anywhere from a gentle ten percent to the full, unfiltered one hundred. But because his own creation process had been so abruptly interrupted, the system had apparently locked his at the maximum setting. The extensive burns covering his body were a brutal proof of that fact, forcing a pained grimace onto his face.
Before he could even attempt to stand, one of Project Bunny's massive mechanical arms shot out, its metal claws clamping around his torso and hoisting him into the air as if he weighed nothing. Rovel struggled, muscles straining against the cold steel, but it was useless. The machine's strength was terrifying, an unyielding vise he had no hope of breaking.
"The Bronya has won," a flat, monotone voice declared. "From now on, you will stay here obediently. The Bronya will not kill you, nor will she torture you. I hope you do not make things difficult for the Bronya."
Bronya Zaychik regarded him with an expressionless gaze, her silver-gray hair framing a face devoid of emotion. She efficiently bound his hands, then produced a small canister. A hiss of aerosol filled the air as she applied a healing spray to his burns.
An intense, numbing cold washed over him, instantly extinguishing the fiery agony. The stinging vanished as if it had never been, and he could feel his health rapidly regenerating.
"Is that so?" Rovel asked, his tone surprisingly casual for a man who had just been blown up and captured. "Then how long, exactly, do you plan on keeping me trapped here?"
"Approximately three months," Bronya answered without hesitation. Then, as if sensing he might consider a more drastic escape, she added a crucial detail. "This place has been modified into a special prison, designed specifically for Descenders. Even death will not allow you to escape this room."
"..." Rovel fell silent.
Bronya tilted her head slightly, her large, vacant eyes fixed on him. "..."
The two stared at each other, the only sound in the ruined room the faint hum of Project Bunny's internal mechanisms. After a long moment, Rovel let his body go limp, slumping against the wall as if resigning himself to his fate. He shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position.
"By the way," he said, breaking the silence. "For an assassin, aren't you a little too kind?"
"...The Bronya is not kind," she replied, shaking her head. The compliment, if it was one, slid off her without leaving a mark.
"Really?" Rovel raised an eyebrow, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "You just told me this is a special prison where I'll just respawn if I die. If that's the case, you could have killed me directly and saved yourself the trouble. Yet you chose not to, and you even healed my wounds. What does that tell me?"
"...The Bronya once promised someone that she would never hurt anyone again." Bronya didn't try to hide it, stating the fact with the simple finality of a law of physics.
"That seems like a difficult promise to keep," Rovel couldn't help but retort. "You almost killed me just a minute ago, didn't you?"
'Does she have a different definition of 'hurting'someone?' he wondered.'Like, as long as they don't die, it doesn't count?'
"Rest assured," Bronya stated, her voice still a perfect monotone. "According to the Bronya's calculations, the explosion would, at most, render you incapable of combat. If you had simply stayed still and allowed the anesthetic needle to hit you from the start, none of this would have been necessary."
"So it's my fault, then?" Rovel's mouth twitched.
Bronya gave a single, slow nod in agreement. She had never intended to harm him, only to imprison him. If he hadn't resisted, she would have simply tied him up. In her detached logic, that wouldn't have counted as hurting him at all.
"You say you won't hurt others," Rovel pressed on, his voice taking on a sharper edge. "Yet you help your 'Mother' Cocolia with this kind of work. Doesn't that directly violate your principles?"
"How do you know..." For the first time, a crack appeared in her stoic facade. A sliver of genuine surprise surfaced in her eyes. Rovel knew about her and Cocolia?
"That's not important," Rovel said, waving a dismissive hand. "Honestly, I've always been curious about Cocolia's logic."
He leaned his head back against the wall, his gaze distant. "She talks constantly about protecting the children of her orphanage, about sacrificing everything for them. And yet, in the end, she still used all of you as lab rats for her experiments."
This was something that had always infuriated Rovel whenever he thought about it. In the Azure Waters manga, even after seven children had already died during the brutal X-10 Experiment, Cocolia had still forced Bronya and Sin Mal to undergo it. The experiment had shattered Bronya's legs and led to Seele tearing out Sin Mal's teeth in a desperate rage. In the end, Seele had taken their place, a sacrifice to save them.
And what had Cocolia done? When Seele had already met the experimental expectations, Cocolia had deliberately increased the dosage, a cruel and pointless act that cast the girl into the endless void of the Sea of Quanta.
'If that isn't pure, clinical insanity, I don't know what is,' Rovel thought with a surge of cold anger.
"Why do you know so much?" Bronya's voice was sharp, and the cannon on Project Bunny swiveled to point directly at his head.
"I told you, it's not important," Rovel replied, completely unfazed by the weapon aimed at his face. "When you do things, you have to be prepared for them to be discovered. And it's precisely because I know these things that I sympathize with you. With all the children of that orphanage. And with... Seele Vollerei."
The moment that name left his lips, Bronya's entire body went rigid. A violent tremor ran through her, and she stumbled backward, shaking her head as if to deny the sound. Tears welled up, spilling from the corners of her eyes and tracing clean paths through the soot on her cheeks. Project Bunny's arm moved swiftly to support her, its cold metal frame the only thing keeping her from collapsing to the floor.
"Did... did Seele tell you?" Bronya's own lips trembled, her voice fractured and unrecognizable.
"No. I've never met Seele," Rovel said gently. "But I can tell you this: Seele is still alive. Right now, she's in the deepest part of the Sea of Quanta."
He paused, letting the words sink in. "And she's okay. Someone has been protecting her this entire time."
"Who?" The question was a desperate, subconscious whisper.
"Her Stigmata consciousness," Rovel explained, deciding to give her the whole truth. "Or, as you might think of her, the 'other' Seele."
Bronya clutched her head, her small frame shaking as she tried to process the torrent of information, a revelation that threatened to shatter the world she had built over years of grief and resignation.
"Why... why should I believe you?" she finally managed to ask, her logical mind struggling to regain control.
"Did I ever ask you to believe me?" Rovel countered softly. "You're not going to let me go, so what would be the point in wasting my breath trying to convince you? From the start, our entire conversation has been you asking the questions and me giving the answers."
He met her tear-filled gaze. "You can choose to believe I'm lying. But think about it. If I truly wanted to gain your trust, wouldn't it have been far easier to just say yes? To claim that Seele herself told me everything?"
His words struck home, leaving Bronya utterly speechless. After so many years of silence, of believing Seele was lost forever, hearing this news felt unreal, like a fragile dream she was afraid to touch. She had no way to verify if he was telling the truth, but she couldn't dismiss it either. Everything he had said so far—about her relationship with Cocolia, about the human experiments, about Seele's fate in the Sea of Quanta—was terrifyingly, impossibly accurate.
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