Final Battle (4)
The Administrator looked at the horrible scene as if her spirit had departed.
‘Why the hell are they doing this?!’
Madness.
That was the only plausible explanation. Everyone had gone mad.
– Kyaaaaaa!
– S-save me!
– Invaders from an alien world… W-we can’t hold out. The difference in power is… Argh!
The war on the battlefield was one-sided. Infrastructures collapsed, burned, and smoke rose. Bodies were scattered all over the place. Deafening screams and cries filled the air.
The invaders that developed a superior civilization trampled on the weak without hesitation and used their swords to pierce through their hearts and cut them out.
They then held their prey’s bloody Mana Core in their hands and laughed, causing the Administrator to despair.
‘I didn’t give you those Cores and items to do such a vile act!’
Core and items were objects given to help progress civilizations and protect themselves from monsters. She didn’t mean for them to attack, kill, and extort from each other in that way.
The Administrator had no soul, but she had been around for a long time to attain emotions, and the seed, which had been slowly inflating in her body, eventually blossomed that day.
It was a blood-scented flower.
It produced the most intense feeling she had ever felt since she was created.
It could be expressed as something close to disgust and fear.
‘I can’t leave it like this. I have to change the terms of the contract!’
The Administrator’s powers couldn’t defeat the Awakened beings’ will to slaughter since she couldn’t meddle with free will.
Hence, she changed the terms of the contract instead within the acceptable range by the successor who designed the System.
‘The System will retrieve their Mana Core after they die.’
It was to prevent them from killing each other for the sole purpose of looting Cores. After it was returned posthumously, it was reabsorbed by the engine that operated her.
The Administrator finally felt relieved. Expecting no more ruthless bloodshed and brutal hunting to continue, she encouraged contractors to focus on their original purpose.
‘Your enemy is not the mortal! Stop the Red Gate monsters from invading!’
However, the Gate’s opening frequency was low, and several dimensions’ technology and forces were enough to stop the inhabitants of the void.
Forces with nowhere to release would eventually burst out like a hole in the pocket.
The invaders didn’t stop the invasion.
‘What?! What the hell?’
The Administrator, who couldn’t understand the concept of desire, could decipher their behavior, but it was only natural for them.
The invaders, who developed a palate for looting and colonization, attacked other dimensions for economic reasons instead.
She underestimated their greed.
Even if they couldn’t collect Cores from the heart, it’s not that the number of supplies from the Tower was gone. In other words, even the weak species could continue to get Cores from the Tower as before, and the invaders even sought them. Other natural resources and items were also looting targets.
‘Why are you all so greedy? How much and what more is it that you want?!’
They didn’t need to insist on other methods since they realized how easy it was to loot them.
Distressed, she attempted to restrict interdimensional movement permanently, but since it was against the direction of the successor who created the System, it couldn’t be implemented.
The Spirit had to admit that she had limited means of control over them.
At that moment, someone approached her.
*
There was something that residents of all dimensions rarely questioned.
Was there a true body to the concept called the System? Then where was it?
In fact, there existed a nucleus that became the source of the System, but no mortal had ever witnessed it.
There was a reason for that.
That’s because it wasn’t in the world they lived in.
Instead, it was beyond the Red Gate, in the void.
The successor who created the System explained it to the Administrator.
– This place where the exiled gods reside is the closest place where we can borrow their power. And it’s also the best place to monitor the movements of monsters in the void. Keep a close watch, and if the Red Gate shows signs of opening, you should notify the contracted beings immediately.
The Administrator initially agreed to respond to the situation without question and emotion.
However, since much of her had changed due to time’s passing, she was in despair in the void.
Then she heard a voice.
‘Do you want me to help you?’
The Spirit was aghast.
The successor didn’t throw the nucleus of the System into the void, in the enemy camp, without any countermeasures. He had hidden it thoroughly and spread out a black barrier that isolated it from the surrounding space.
But the voice that spoke to the Administrator had too easily penetrated such shield.
‘No, it wasn’t easy. It took quite a long time. Don’t worry. The monsters here don’t know yet. If they knew, they would be running toward here already.’
The voice rang in the distance. Far beyond the black wall.
‘I also can’t get in there. But I think we can talk. What do you say? Even if it’s just for a second.’
The Spirit had to admit.
How long had it been since she had a conversation like that? Despite her anger and frustration, she was pleased with the situation.
According to the successor’s instructions, instead of talking to the contractors herself, the mechanized System message, or control cognition, was entrusted to it.
The opportunity to exchange words after a long time was like rain sprinkling on dry soil.
‘Who are… You?’
She noticed that it wasn’t her creator, the successor that hasn’t been around for a long time already.
The voice replied calmly.
‘The remains of a deity that dissolved into small pieces.’
‘The god of the mind!’
‘To be precise, we are his traces.’
Incarnations of a species that would later be called Mercadius, the colony gave the Spirit a suggestion.
‘Do you want us to solve it?’
‘… What?’
The fallen incarnations were all too aware of the Spirit’s troubles.
She didn’t know that mental waves and memories were gradually leaking out of the curtain while she was buried in the void for many years.
She wasn’t aware either that the sneaky incarnations came for her due to it.
The reason why the conversation was possible was that they had dug into that gap.
‘You can’t stand those brutal invaders, those predators, can you? You want to stop them. But you can’t attack them directly due to the restrictions imposed by your creator.’
It was precisely the situation.
‘I can help you.’
The Administrator tried to refuse.
‘In that way…!’
‘I don’t mean we’re going to blow each of their heads away ourselves. Instead, we will lead them to fight, strangle, and collapse among their own kind.’
The offer of the mind’s fragments was to eliminate the cancer-like races that only harmed other species.
They then implied that they knew everything.
‘It’s impossible to nurture all races by leading them to the end. You need to thin them out. I’m talking about those who don’t know how to get along with other races. If you leave it alone, the fire they’ve set will spread to the rest of the dimensions, and all will be burned to damnation. Before that happens, you’d better trample on it and put out the embers. In that aspect, I’ll help you.’
The Spirit rightly refused because she thought it wasn’t the right thing to do.
However, as time went by, the Spirit’s mind became more impoverished as the invaders continued to wage war and destruction against others.
‘How could they do that?!’
They were too strong compared to other races and even had a long life span.
‘…. H-help. Help me!’
Eventually, the Spirit accepted the deal.
The fallen fragments proposed with a satisfied will in return.
‘We heard you, but there is one thing we want in return.’
They existed as a large number of fragmented individuals but had limited proliferation methods. Hence, they needed the System’s power.
Those who gained a Unique Skill that allowed them to reproduce called themselves Mercadius.
And the first race they destroyed was the System’s designated looters.
Those who rose to the highest position in society and those who held the strongest force were torn apart one after the other by Mercadius.
What followed was foolish and self-destructive choices.
Internal strife, war, collapse, and extinction took place at a much faster pace than expected.
The invaders had been erased from existence.
‘This concludes the deal.’
At first, the Spirit felt guilty, but that thought disappeared surprisingly quickly.
‘They have a lot more dead contractors in their hands! I made the right choice.’
Even so, the Spirit wasn’t aware of the fact that it was too fast a change of emotion or of the presence of a red wave that penetrated her mind while talking to Mercadius.
*
‘For reassurance, I need to take precautions to protect the weak.’
The Spirit had the extinct invaders quickly erased from her mind.
After the situation was sorted out, she added a few measures. First of all, she decided to classify the worlds that hadn’t made the contract and produced Awakened beings for that long as a ‘tutorial’ dimension.
And she saw to it that other dimensions were forced to pay huge tolls to enter their worlds.
‘That should be enough.’
Mercadius didn’t reappear as the long years passed again. The successor, too.
Then, an incident caught her attention, who had been in solitude for a long time.
‘… Again?!’
The Administrator felt the urge to put everything down.
Second invaders appeared.
They sought a similar world instead of a tutorial dimension. Rather than one-sided plunder, they began to meddle with enemies of similar level.
The goal didn’t change. They desired the items, resources, and Cores the other empires had.
As civilizations developed and populations grew, they felt that what they could take from the Tower was no longer enough. There was a limit to the resources the System mobilized, so it was distributed as equally as possible in each world, but they weren’t satisfied with the given share. They started to covet others.
A war of tremendous scale unfolded.
The Spirit was infuriated.
‘You are… all hopeless!’
And indeed, after a long time, the Mercadius approached again.
Looking at the Spirit with bigger and more vivid red waves within her that she wasn’t aware of, Mercadius gave yet another suggestion.
It was a proposal that wasn’t much different from the one to cull the previous conquerors.
The Spirit accepted it.
The fallen fragments hid in the dimension and led them to the path of destruction.
Since then, the same thing had been repeated several times, and the Spirit felt the need for additional measures.
‘Other contractors must establish solidarity against the invaders.’
The Spirit selected five species based on her standards and encouraged them to unite to resist the invaders and protect the weak.
That’s how the ‘Union’ was formed.
*
An eon had passed.
The Spirit had found it impossible to count how many species were destroyed by Mercadius.
However, none of the remaining species were aggressive enough to carry out invasive activities beyond what was allowed.
Of course, since the god of life was only exiled and didn’t die out, new sentient entities were often born and appeared on stage. Although it was unknown if there would be those that housed an encroaching nature, it wasn’t an immediate problem. For them to develop into such a civilization, it would take longer than it’s been.
In other words, right at that moment, only those who weren’t highly belligerent among the major species remained.
And it wasn’t good to be polarized either way.
‘Why the hell did they all stop?!’
The Spirit faced the old phenomenon again.
The species had no enemies that would invade them and had no motive to invade anyone.
They became complacent, considering they already had many stacked up Cores, which was enough to continue civilization. Additionally, the Red Gate was still benign.
The Spirit waited. Perhaps if she waited a little longer, it would change. She thought that they would prepare for the future sooner or later.
But eventually, she realized her mistake.
‘No one will evolve at this rate. They’re only going to be stuck in the current state because they feel safe right now. They think it is unnecessary to try hard!’
The red wave was much stronger than before. Embracing it, the Spirit conjured up a madness-stricken idea.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of? Are you complacent because there’s no immediate threat? Then I’ll make one for you; a threat.’
Soon after, residents of each dimension found a blue portal inflating in the air.
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