How can a retired savior be considered retired if he drops to 40,000?

"To be clear, I am a character that only exists in a fictional simulation." The other Sevatar had the right timing and explained in time before the real Sevatar got angry, but it still sounded vague to the latter. "The basis of my 'existence' (personality) is Conrad Curze's impression of you, and it is Fujimaru Ritsuka who gave me my 'story' (meaning). I think you have already seen it, otherwise I would not be here."

"……I do not understand."

"There's no need to think too clearly. I don't understand these things myself. I just think of myself as a video record with thoughts. If you understand it this way, I don't care - you are me anyway."

There was no difference between saying it and not saying it. In fact, for Sevatar, after sorting out this point, a flood of problems emerged. He couldn't judge whether the information he heard was true or false, but there was only one thing that Sevatar felt was probably believable, that they had the same roots.

It was hard to explain, but he definitely felt it through his sixth sense, or intuition, or some other indefinable sense, just like when a person stands in front of a mirror and spends a little time to recognize that the person reflected in it is his own image.

That's enough to know, Sevatar thought.

"I don't know if I should believe you." He said straight to the point, "If I am you, then why did you appear in front of me only now?"

"It's not 'I appeared in front of you'. A video record cannot have the ability to go wherever it wants." Another Sevatar replied, "It's the intense emotions and desires in your heart that resonated with the same things in my heart, so it pulled me to your side."

Sevatar frowned: "But you even stopped time."

"I didn't stop time. The reason you felt everything around you slowed down to a near standstill was simply because our conversation was happening in your head."

Another Sevatar sneered: "As an excellent creation of the Emperor's biological alchemy, you should be familiar with how fast the Astartes' thinking speed is."

A tiny clue, Sevatar thought. He probably doesn't like the Emperor that much either.

"I don't understand." He asked again, "A video recording shouldn't have self-awareness."

"You'll have to ask Fujimaru Ritsuka for details on what mechanism is here." The Terminator Armor shrugged. It was hard to imagine what the other Sevatar had done in the armor to make the Iron Knight Terminator Armor so obvious that the "shrug" action could be seen. "It's her ability to bring people or things from a past history or a fictional story to life. The lady never hesitates to do this."

"You said you were given a 'story' by Fujimaru Ritsuka."

"To be precise, I played a relatively important supporting role in a story that the lady had to go through, so I had my own story. That story is too long to tell you in detail here, and it is also difficult to simply define it as a 'good story' or a 'bad story'... But in short, after my part was over, I asked the person who was responsible for setting up the theater and forcing the actors to go on stage: That is a story about Nostramo still being alive ten thousand years after the Great Rebellion."

"..." Sevatar was silent for a few seconds, "I don't know what the story is, but at least it sounds good enough for me."

"I thought so," said the man he was talking to, with a gloating smile. "Some grey-haired bastard showed me your story. You've had a pretty miserable life, if I may say so."

Perhaps Sevatar should be angry about this, but he just pulled the corners of his mouth like the man opposite him. That smile that seemed to always be mocking something was exactly the same as the man opposite him: "Who said it wasn't?"

"Well, let's get back to the real world." Sevatar, who was obviously more like an Astartes than Sevatar, who had been farming in Jestal for ten years, said, "This girl is beyond saving. The Unborn has captured her soul. Even if you kill her now, you will only destroy her body. Her soul will still be devoured by those evil creatures of the Warp, and she will suffer eternal torture in the stomachs of those bastards - sometimes they don't really want the soul, but the pain in the soul."

Sevatar didn't really understand the true meaning of these words, these weird things were too far away for him. But even so, he could clearly realize that what happened to Alita was something that couldn't be worse.

"What do you think should be done?" he asked, and received a cruel answer:

"Destroy her soul along with the murderer." The other party said coldly, "We can't save her. For her, death is already doomed. But we can at least give her a clean and peaceful death."

"…I don't know. It's hard for me to decide."

"You have actually made a decision." The attitude of the other Sevatar was as cruel as if he was carefully dissecting "himself" into parts with dissecting tools. From this point of view alone, he is worthy of being the Lord of the Night. "Before you and I met, you had already made a decision, even if it was not very mature. I know, because that's why I came here:

"You have already determined that you are powerless, and you seek relief for her in despair. Then you are angry, you are hateful, you are eager for revenge, and you swear that you will find the culprit of all this even if you have to dig three feet into the ground-"

"That's not the case," Sevatar objected. "I do want to do this, but it's because I will judge, I will punish, I will enforce justice—"

"'Justice.'" His reflection laughed. "Did you learn that from your genetic father? I don't think he actually taught you anything, at least not as much as the lady told us. Time is limited, so I won't argue with you on this issue. So let me take a step back and think about it: are their essential conflicts?"

Sevatar was stunned for a moment, so he let the imaginary mirror continue his words: "Aren't you now judging out of anger, punishing out of hatred, and wanting to exercise the name of justice because of the desire for revenge?"

These words forced him to think for a moment, but only for a moment. After that moment, Sevatar realized the root of the whole thing:

"It's pointless to argue about the motivations of behavior." His consequentialist side worked coldly. "At present, it seems that what we want to achieve is the same."

"Indeed. It's refreshing to talk to yourself." The other Sevatar smiled with satisfaction, "The next step is a choice that only you can decide: whether you want to take over my power."

Sevatar frowned dangerously: "What do you mean?"

"I am a fictional video record, which means that I am essentially data intelligence. And you and I are almost from the same source, so the data is naturally compatible." The other person narrated calmly, "I do not exist in the material universe, but you do. My nature is similar to that of the 'unborn', which means that if you take over my 'record' in its entirety, you will naturally be able to use some of the power of the subspace like those hybrids who came to the material universe."

"As for the 'power of the warp', you should know that we have psychic powers."

"Of course I'm not referring to psychic power, but this armor." Another Sevatar said in a relaxed tone, "'Iron Cavalry Terminator Armor Ortnaus Modification', a fictional equipment in a fictional story. Driving it requires not only skills, but also a little willpower. I believe you have all of these, and it is at least much safer and more efficient than your crude use of psychic power."

The word Ortenaus sounded vaguely familiar, and he must have heard it somewhere in the past few days. However, the current situation did not allow him to think about it.

He knew that this decision was a gamble, but driven by the emotions at the moment, Sevatar was willing to take a gamble.

"I don't understand, but I do." He said to his reflection, "Anyway, we want to achieve the same goal."

"It's great that you think so. It really saves me a lot of trouble."

The left hand of the Iron Knight Terminator armor stretched out to Sevatar. The latter certainly understood the hint, but still couldn't help asking: "Are there any precautions or something like that?"

The suit of armor shrugged again. "I trust you are not asking for the instruction manual."

"Of course not, but I'd be glad to receive it if you could."

The other Sevatar laughed a few times.

"'Anger is justified. It is proof that you are still human.'" He looked directly into the dark eyes of his real self and repeated it like he was reciting, "You don't have to suppress your anger too much, but you must always remember that you are still human. You should restrain your behavior according to human standards."

Then he stepped forward and grabbed Sevatar's hand: "Cheer up, don't let yourself be overwhelmed."

what?

In the next moment before he could react, the figure of the Iron Knight Terminator melted into a dark blue mist, and climbed up Sevatar's body along their clasped hands. At the same time, another life immediately poured into his mind without warning. A huge amount of records and information impacted his mind. The extremely compressed information could not be interpreted in an instant, and it simply made him feel painful. Sevatar gritted his teeth and tried to support himself, but his consciousness was inevitably dragged into the quagmire of pain.

Data and intelligence flooded his mind. He began to realize that knowledge and memories existed, just like the books he had read and memorized before.

It seemed like only a moment had passed, and it seemed like ten thousand years had passed. When Sevatar opened his eyes again, he was no longer the worker who had been working day after day on Jestal for ten years, but had become the captain of the Night Lords wearing Terminator armor again.

Time has started to flow again, and the noisy noises have started to stimulate his nerves again, but he no longer feels like he might go crazy just by being fed with such blasphemous knowledge. Alita is still by his side, but his perspective has changed slightly because of the power armor. The girl is still in pain, despair, and fear. Her whole body and mind are occupied by these negative emotions, and she can't even realize that the "Jacob" in front of her has become a completely unfamiliar behemoth.

Sevatar looked at the girl's face, which was distorted by torture, for the last time and said to her, "I'm sorry."

He hoped that these words could be a little comforting, but when his voice passed through the audio processing device on the power armor and reached the ears of others, it had turned into a rough and strange rebuke.

Sevatar, Sevatar, you can't even do such a small thing.

He teased himself with a wry smile, and then, the knowledge passed on by his other self made him instinctively know what to do next: the runes lit up according to his will, and the Ortnaus modification attached to them was activated. After a moment of intense pain as if the nerves were connected for the first time, the psychic energy naturally formed a circuit between him and the armor.

Red flames lit up from his palms and rushed towards Alita. Sevatar himself could not feel the heat of the flames, but in fact, it might have been unreasonably high. In just a moment, the girl's body, which was being gradually taken away by the invisible monster, turned into ashes without a sound, and only the murderer's screams of pain and fear were faintly left in the place.

I'm so sorry. Sevatar ignored the pleas for mercy that even penetrated the curtain, and just looked at the small handful of ashes. This is all I can give you: a clean and peaceful death.

A piece of colorful candy wrapper slowly fell from where Alita was originally. For some reason, the colorful plastic product was not melted by the high temperature. Sevita saw it, but he had no time to think about it, or even to feel sad. He knew that what he really needed to face in this armor was just beginning.

A woman's impatient voice sounded in his ears: "Why? Although they look the same, they are actually different people, right? Remember, the Ortnaus armor connects our spiritual bases together. No matter how subtle the changes are, we can feel them."

The time signal of midnight had not yet ended. A beam of light like a fire meteor fell from the horizon. A female figure wearing black classical armor and holding a battle flag emerged from the void, standing beside him in a shadowy manner, and reached out to grab the flying candy wrapper.

Sevatar instinctively knew that this was a shadow that only people wearing Ortnaus armor could see, and instinctively recognized her identity:

"Avenger", Jeanne Alter.

The most manageable woman in the whole city makes her appearance!

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 27: Provide psychological counseling to the original body with problems

"That's a really bad way to greet someone - I thought we had something in common and would get along better. Really."

The frivolous man whose hair and robes were white but gave people a colorful impression said so.

There were several deep claw marks left on the wall behind him by Conrad Coates. I wonder what Fujimaru Ritsuka will say when he comes back and sees this.

Undoubtedly, this was the stress response of Koz, who was troubled by the prophetic vision and realized that the scene he saw was changed by external forces, but attacking a shadow that did not exist here would obviously not have any results.

The candidate for the Grand Prix, the Flower Magician, Merlin, still stood there with that light smile on his face.

The fierce attacks that Curze launched in an instant all hit the shadow created by the illusion, and passed through it without any hindrance and fell on the wall. As for Merlin himself, who was not here at all, even his hair was not messed up.

"Although this is the first time I'm officially talking to you, we've already met in the Trial of Illusion!" Merlin complained calmly, "I'm completely on the side of Chaldea, you should know that!"

"Shut up, alien," Curze scolded through gritted teeth, "You've crossed the line."

He confirmed this figure, this face. Merlin, the legendary magician, a hybrid of human and nightmare, possessed a clairvoyance that could observe the "present", and temporarily supported Chaldea, which was carrying out the continuation of human existence, out of his own needs and preferences.

He knew this information in the illusion, but that was all. Something engraved in his genes made it impossible for him to have a good impression of Merlin, a creature that feeds on human emotions, let alone improve his understanding and establish a connection.

In fact, barely coexisting peacefully with them is the biggest concession Koz can make.

"I know that what I did was a bit excessive, but the problem is that Ritsuka has basically exhausted all the moderate means such as persuasion and demonstration. Judging from the results, it doesn't work at all, right?" Merlin's tone was unapologetic, "So I thought, if I can't change your habit of blindly believing in prophecies, then I can just change the prophecy you blindly believe in!"

"False prophecies are meaningless. You are just trying to manipulate my behavior through them." There was a clear threat in Coze's voice.

"I don't deny my purpose, but I must question the first half of the sentence." Merlin, who completely ignored the other party's threat, calmly retorted:

"The prophecy itself is neither true nor false. After all, you can't prove whether something that hasn't happened yet is true or not. A prophecy is just a prophecy. Its meaning depends on the choices made by the people involved in it. And you always choose the bad side. This is too unbearable!"

Coz rolled his eyes in annoyance: "You all say the same thing."

Fujimaru Ritsuka had said similar things to him dozens of times. He could totally guess what further arguments would come next: things like "even if the result is predetermined, the process has its own meaning", "changing the process may affect the result that has not yet arrived" and so on.

"I know what you want to say. I've tried it." Curze's expression was filled with a sense of boredom and fatigue. "I don't know what results this kind of behavior would have achieved in your original universe, but in my eyes, things only got worse."

When selecting the eighteen Night Lords from the Chaos Warband, if Curze had judged according to the omens he saw, he would have killed them directly there, but Ritsuka Fujimaru stopped him at that time, so he acquiesced to this change; when he found Sevatar on Jestal, he should have taken one of his most admired offspring on board the ship and left, but Ritsuka Fujimaru thought he should respect the other party's choice more, so he tried it.

The process may have changed, but the result is no different, or even worse - the eighteen people chosen will still be executed by him, and this time their souls may also be devoured by Chaos; and Sevatar's original fate of dying in battle has been pushed to a more inglorious situation.

This only confirmed one thing for Coze: struggling in the prophecy was never meaningful. Even trying to gain meaning from it was meaningless. The malice and cruelty of the universe itself was beyond human imagination, as if there was always an invisible hand controlling the wheel of fate, so that things could only evolve in a bad direction.

"I admit that the operating rules of the two universes are somewhat different. The subspace on your side is indeed very hostile to intelligent creatures... However, things have obviously not progressed to the point of no return. Are you sure you want to give up like this?"

Merlin's inexplicably irritating voice still echoed in the corridors of the Storm's Edge, causing Conrad Curze to growl in annoyance: "You mindless monster! What do you know?!"

However, while scolding him like this, he also knew that these words were not just for Merlin to hear.

The Midnight Haunter is nothing more than a monster that is incompatible with humans.

From this point of view, Merlin's words at the beginning, "You and I have something in common," are not wrong. After all, they are both, in a sense, outside of human society, the only difference is that one is a relatively pure observer, and the other is a judge who spreads fear.

Of course, this statement is not correct. It’s just that the heartless nightmare demon cannot fully understand the most essential difference between the two of them. Conrad Curze, who sees this clearly, simply holds on to his strong disgust for the other party and does not intend to explain it.

The fundamental conflict is that as an alien pretending to be human, a hybrid of human and nightmare, Merlin has only a half-baked self. He understands but cannot have emotions, and cannot distinguish between good and evil; however, Conrad Curze, as the original body, is a planned life created with a clear purpose. When he was in the incubator, he was already pre-programmed with emotions that were too distinct compared to ordinary humans, and gradually developed a strong and extreme view of good and evil in the future.

If their acquaintance had not been premised on the existence of Chaldea or Fujimaru Ritsuka, then the best relationship they could have maintained after that would have been a feud until death.

"Although I don't understand, I can at least see it clearly." A foreign object without emotions would naturally not be angry about such an accusation. Merlin's voice was still steady and brisk, which was really annoying in this situation. "Your gene children love you very much. Let's not talk about where this love comes from, but don't you want to work harder for their love?"

——This was a very nightmare-like statement, provocative without even realizing it, and it immediately made Conrad Koz furious.

Fujimaru Ritsuka had also mentioned a similar topic, but she had only mentioned it briefly and asked for very little. She knew what Coze had experienced in the past, that the concept of "love" hardly existed in Nostramo society, that Conrad Coze had no way of knowing or learning this feeling when he was forming his own worldview, and that when he was able to come into contact with the concept of "love", he could no longer believe in the existence of this feeling.

Konrad Curze is the Primarch, and the Primarch's learning ability is unimaginable to ordinary people. Therefore, after he got the sample, he quickly understood love and knew how to use love. He regarded love as a weakness in human nature, and even knew how to use the love of his offspring to manipulate them - but he didn't know how to respond to love, and he didn't even want to admit that he needed love and deserved to be loved.

Even after his death, he refused to accept the Emperor's forgiveness, deliberately provoked conflicts with those close to him in his second life, often ignored the kindness naturally exuded by Fujimaru Ritsuka, and always made some minor or serious provocations against him. This factor may have been mixed in with his motives to a certain extent. It may not be much, but it must exist.

Fujimaru Ritsuka understood this, so she did not ask Curze to accept these emotions that were too heavy and difficult for him to handle, nor did she ask him to respond to his offspring. She only hoped that he could give some basic respect, while Merlin's words were obviously the exact opposite.

In Conrad Coates's opinion, Merlin was almost forcing him to do something he didn't want to do with something he didn't need at all. This sounded ridiculous, but it did make him feel offended, and even because it sounded ridiculous, the degree of offense was doubled.

But considering that the "Merlin" in front of him was just an illusion, Koz really couldn't launch a truly effective attack on him, so he had to swallow his anger in the end.

"That's stupid." Finally, Curze said in a voice that reminded the listener of cold venom flowing slowly into his veins, "I won't go to so much trouble to add some weaknesses to myself."

Merlin was confused and quiet for a few seconds before he barely caught up with Curz's train of thought.

"...You think love is a weakness? Regardless of whether you are the one who gives or the one who receives?" The dream demon's voice, which had always been calm, finally became a little surprised. "Objectively speaking, love can indeed make people dizzy or become lazy, but if you talk about weaknesses...well..."

"Love makes people weak," Coates said calmly, as if explaining calmly that one plus one equals two, "and I am not allowed to be weak."

"That's not the case. I've seen many forms of love. It's a one-sided idea to think that love makes people weak." Merlin retorted, "Love may make people indulge in it, or it may make people look back and forth, or it may make people suffer, despair, and drive people crazy; but love can also be transformed into the strongest armor and sword, a glimmer of light that cuts through the darkness, and the driving force for creating miracles; love can destroy a race, and it can also create a universe."

He stared at Coze's pure black eyes with his gem-like bright and inorganic eyes, and asked bewitchingly: "Even if you don't want love, don't you want to try to use love? Don't you want to try to see if your offspring's love for you can help them escape from the quagmire of chaos? Can the false love stipulated by the base contract also break the shackles of prophecy?"

Merlin did not say these words as the "guide" he usually plays. At this moment, he was just a nightmare, standing from the perspective of an observer who simply wanted to "make things more interesting", and reached out to try to guide the direction of the story:

"You have a little time to make a decision before the clock strikes midnight."

He issued an ultimatum.

Conrad Kurtz was speechless for a long time. The nature forged in his previous life told him to give up and stop wasting energy on such useless work. But the few miracles he saw in his second life ignited a tiny glimmer of hope in him.

He admitted that he was a little moved.

-

"You said 'you don't understand'." Lan Malok asked as he led Fujimaru Ritsuka to the launch area of ​​the airdrop bay, "Are there any uncertainties in the events happening on this planet?"

"The main instigator of the disaster." Ritsuka replied in a low voice, "Although it is basically certain that the Tzeentch demon must have been behind the arrangement of this large-scale ritual 110 Terran years ago, I really can't judge its level."

“Are there any distractions?”

"Not really." Ritsuka sighed, "It's probably like, 'When your enemy is just the right amount of stupid, you can't really tell whether he's just acting or really that stupid.'"