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ArabicChat Group Crossover: My System Simulates Infinite Anime Worlds — Chapter 39
Chapter 39: The Black-Hearted Noah
You became hyper-vigilant, temporarily halting your training to remain on high alert. The frequency with which these lesser Space Beasts were appearing was far too high, a constant, nagging drumbeat that hinted at something more. You couldn’t shake the feeling that the mastermind behind it all was orchestrating a grand, terrible finale.
One morning, just as you were stirring from a light sleep, a sharp knock echoed from the hotel room door.
A flicker of suspicion ran through you. Who would be visiting at this hour?
Then, a muffled voice called from the hallway, “Please open the door. We’re here to check the water meter.”
The corners of your mouth twitched into a wry, humorless line. ‘Check the water meter? What kind of shoddy excuse is that? This is a hotel.’
Without a word, you slipped out of bed and moved to the window. With the practiced silence of a ghost, you began your descent, using the building’s external air conditioning units as handholds and footholds.
After dropping into the alley below, you cautiously made your way to the street. A single glance confirmed your suspicions. The distinct vehicles of the Night Raiders were parked alongside cars belonging to the Memory Police.
It was clear you couldn’t stay here any longer.
Your first stop was an outdoor supply store. You purchased a high-quality tent and other essential survival gear before melting back into the city’s shadows. A part of you couldn’t help but grumble at the cost; the equipment was damnably expensive. You had deliberately avoided the cheaper options, adhering to a hard-learned lesson.
That old saying was true: cheap goods are never good, and good goods are never cheap, especially when buying from a physical store. Still, you reassured yourself, the money you’d… acquired… from redistributing the wealth of the corrupt had yet to run out.
You found a new refuge in the skeletal remains of some abandoned buildings on the city’s outskirts, setting up a spartan camp.
It didn’t even take them two full days to find you.
The Night Raiders and the Memory Police descended on your location, a small army armed with rifles loaded with tranquilizer darts. They opened fire without warning.
Seeing the tranquilizer guns, you knew their intentions. They weren’t here to kill you; they wanted to capture you, study you, dissect you like a lab rat. Why show any courtesy to people like that? You decided not to hold back.
You casually bent down, scooping up a handful of loose stones from the debris-strewn ground. With a flick of your wrist, the first pebble shot forward, instantly breaking the sound barrier. It wasn’t a throw; it was a launch.
A wet, sickening thump echoed across the clearing. In front of the horrified Memory Police officers, one of their comrades screamed as his entire thigh simply vanished, replaced by a geyser of red.
You were, after all, fully recovered. During your time on the run, your physical strength had ascended to an entirely new level.
This particular capture operation was an unmitigated failure for them.
A wave of bitter regret washed over you, a feeling so mundane it was almost comical. ‘All that money for the high-end camping gear,’you thought, a grimace on your face.’If I’d known they’d find me this fast, I would have just bought the cheap stuff.’
The days that followed blurred into a grueling routine. You were constantly on the move, evading the relentless pursuit of the Night Raiders and the Memory Police, while simultaneously using the Stone Fluegel to rush to the scenes of Space Beast attacks.
Sometimes, the two duties would overlap. While you were in the middle of dispatching a monster, you’d find yourself dodging missile barrages and energy beams from the Night Raiders’ aircraft.
To make matters worse, the one leading their pursuit was that same reckless woman you had encountered before. You had a feeling she was planning something big, but you never expected her to be reinstated so quickly. You showed her no special treatment, blowing her fighter out of the sky on multiple occasions. It was a pity she seemed to have an almost supernatural luck, escaping death each time as if some unseen force were actively protecting her.
Your life became a frantic, three-way dance between the Memory Police, the Night Raiders, and the Space Beasts.
During this period, you were struck by several tranquilizer darts. They were useless. The projectiles simply flattened or ricocheted off your skin, not even leaving a bruise. If not for the gratifying, tangible sense of your own body growing stronger with each passing day, you might have been tempted to truly fall into darkness.
You mused that if you ever did embrace the darkness, this world would finally meet its harshest father.
Some time later, while you were resting in a desolate patch of wilderness, the familiar rustle of movement surrounded you again.
Instantly alert, you scaled a nearby tree, using its branches as a vantage point. Below, you saw them: the Night Raiders and a large contingent of Memory Police, all holding tranquilizer rifles, forming a tight cordon around your position.
The crazy woman pushed her way to the front of the line. Her eyes locked onto your form in the tree, and without hesitation, she raised her rifle and pulled the trigger.
You tilted your head, the dart whistling past your ear, and slid gracefully down the trunk.
‘She’s certainly persistent,’ you thought. But this time, your luck had run out. A second dart, its tip glowing with a strange metallic sheen, struck you squarely in the side. It pierced your skin.
A wave of deep dizziness washed over you, and the world tilted on its axis. You collapsed to the ground, a single thought echoing in your fading consciousness. ‘Careless… I didn’t dodge…’
When you next awoke, it was to the cold, heavy bite of chains. You were in a laboratory, your body bound tightly. Your Blast Shot and the Evoltruster were displayed in a transparent case just out of reach. A deep weakness, a deep-seated powerlessness, saturated your very bones.
At that moment, a man who looked like a walking personification of a scumbag stuffed into a lab coat appeared before you. He launched into a long, self-important speech about human evolution and the greater good. You tuned him out and responded by spitting directly in his face.
“Don’t you ever let me get out of these chains,” you snarled, your voice a low growl. “Because the very first thing I’ll do is beat you to death.”
The man’s face contorted in fury. Then, a wicked, cruel smile spread across his lips. He turned and gestured to a machine. “Give him a full-power blast of Photon Rejuvenation.”
You passed out from the searing, white-hot agony.
When you woke again, it was to the sight of a needle being injected into your arm. Sedatives. Muscle relaxants. You were utterly limp, a puppet with its strings cut, sustained only by a daily nutrient drip.
For the next month, life became a monotonous hell. Aside from routine check-ups and blood draws, you received an average of three “treatments” with the Photon Rejuvenation device daily: one in the morning, one at noon, and one in the evening. Sometimes, they’d even throw in a midnight session for good measure.
Your astonishingly powerful recovery ability, however, began to inspire a different kind of reaction in your captors: fear.
This fear was compounded when they analyzed your genetic sequence. You were human. According to every test they ran, you were a one-hundred-percent pure human, exactly the same as them.
At the same time, this discovery sent them into fits of ecstatic glee. If they could just crack the secrets hidden in your DNA, they could elevate all of humanity. Every human could become a superhuman.
Your desire to tear them all limb from limb grew with each passing day.
One night, the guards outside your cell were taken down in silence. Two figures appeared in the doorway. One was a stranger; the other, you knew.
It was the young man you had saved before, Komon Kazuki. He had tried to help you escape once already, a failed attempt that had landed you right back in this solitary confinement.
As the stranger worked on the locks of your chains, he introduced himself. He was Gourogi Shinya, the man who was once Dark Mephisto. After taking a direct hit from an Over Ray Schtrom, he had been critically injured. The mastermind had severed his connection, reclaiming the power to transform into the dark giant.
Hearing this, you were genuinely surprised. You had fought him so fiercely, had even intended to dismantle his arms and legs, yet here he was, saving you. Life, you reflected, was truly an unpredictable and chaotic mess.
The moment the restraints fell away, you moved. Your hand chopped down on the back of Komon’s neck, knocking him out cold. You carried him outside and found a safe, secluded corner to leave him.
The fact that he had the heart to try, and had actually acted on it twice, showed more courage than most ordinary people possessed. Besides, you reasoned, he wasn’t severely punished for his first attempt, and he was here again for a second. That meant he was still useful to them. If your guess was correct, he was also a Dunamist, a potential successor to Nexus. Even if he was caught again, they wouldn’t punish him too severely—at most, he’d get a stint in solitary.
You retrieved your Blast Shot and the Evoltruster. Following Gourogi Shinya, you handled the complex facility, eventually emerging outside near a large dam.
You fired the Blast Shot, summoning the Stone Fluegel. Before climbing aboard, you took one last, long look at the dam, committing every detail of the terrain to memory.
Once you were in a safe location, you had the Stone Fluegel set you down.
The moment your feet touched the ground, your legs buckled. The effects of the sedatives and muscle relaxants still coursed through your system, and you nearly collapsed to your knees.
You looked down at the Evoltruster in your hand. It was pulsing again, emitting a soft light and a sound like a steady heartbeat.
A helpless, weary sigh escaped your lips. You spoke to the device, your voice rough with exhaustion and bitterness. “I suppose you saw all that. Tell me, are humans like this… are they still worth saving?”
The Evoltruster offered no reply. Instead, an image flooded your mind: the day you first obtained it. The giant of light, Nexus, stood before you, bathed in radiance, looking at you in silence, seemingly trying to convey something you couldn’t grasp.
A cold, indifferent smile touched your lips. “I know what you want to say,” you murmured to the vision. “You want to say there’s still so much beauty in this world.”
“Yes, I know that. When I first came to this world, I experienced that beauty firsthand. In my fragmented memories, I hold both the splendor of this world and its deep imperfections.”
You shook your head. “Don’t you have other Dunamists? Go find someone else. I’ve had enough of the people here. If I had a choice…”
“…I’d want to go to the world of Ultraman Tiga. The GUTS team there is reliable. At the very least, they don’t have idiotic teammates who betray you. And even when they do have their moments, they make up for it in the end by turning themselves into light and firing it from a cannon.”
Nexus remained silent, its luminous form just watching you.
The vision faded, and you were back in the cold reality of the wilderness. The Evoltruster hadn’t vanished. It remained in your hand, its heartbeat-like thrumming continuing unabated.
You raised an eyebrow. Then, with a sudden, decisive motion, you took the Evoltruster and threw it violently onto the ground. You pointed a trembling finger at the dark, starless sky and screamed, your voice raw with fury and betrayal.
“You damn dog, Noah! You’re so black-hearted! Just as black-hearted as that damn Ring of O-50! It’s all the same, isn’t it?! Just twisting the light, using it up, and exhausting one generation after another!”