Aurora Over a Dead World

Chapter 17: The Results

"W-What the hell?!" Tanya says, snapping back to focus. It catches me off guard — I didn’t expect Tanya would be the first to recover from the shock of watching a teammate die.

"You should get back in formation, now," I tell them while Nemesis tries to speak, but seems confused when she realizes she can’t. I disabled her voice. I don’t want to see that abomination talking.

’The AI actually tried to speak... it’s almost like it’s real... what a terrifying simulation.’ From up here I can smell Rouge’s blood. Truly an incredible simulation.

"H-How the hell did I lose?!" Rouge asks me, her tail and ears drooping like she’s as disappointed as she is scared.

"You were clever, but you were too slow. Plenty of monsters are faster than our eyes can track... STUDENTS! If you want to survive, you need to learn to read the vectors around you. Whenever fear monsters move, the vectors give their movement away!" I say for all of them to hear.

I myself used to be far slower than Nemesis, but I could still follow her with my eyes — not because I was fast enough, but because I could predict exactly how she was moving within a 0.1-second delay.

So it’s not perfect. I still didn’t truly see her — I only saw the path she had taken and had to deduce where she would come from or pass through. These days I could track her for real, but only this current version of Nemesis, not the real Nemesis fighting seriously, since I don’t know how fast she truly is.

"Everyone, stick close so we can defend each other!" Charlotte takes the lead, calling everyone together. They all cluster, backs to one another to defend from every side.

’With Charlotte’s spatial powers, having her defend everyone within range is a smart idea... but... it’s going to fail.’

Except for Tanya, who attacks Nemesis with an immense heatwave. Hundreds of meters of ruins are heated until the materials melt together into a hot, reddish-yellow mass.

"N-No way?!" Tanya says in disbelief. Nemesis wasn’t even scratched by it. Her body, extremely resistant to vector changes, withstood it without a problem. Then Nemesis flashes a malicious grin.

I watch her movement. Whenever Nemesis is about to move, she crouches slightly and leans forward. She uses that to launch herself forward with her powerful legs.

But instead of just running, she uses the uneven terrain to grip the ground with her claws and shove herself forward, "leaping" with extreme speed wherever she wants to go.

Yet despite the absurd force she puts into those movements, she makes no sound and causes no damage — an incredible control of her own strength.

"Guys—" Eirwen starts releasing cold and tries to say something, but before any of them realize it, Nemesis attacks, slamming her leg into Eirwen’s chest and shoving her out of the formation.

"Gaaaahhh!!!" Eirwen screams in pain as Nemesis’s foot claws sink into her flesh. Eirwen tries to attack, but Nemesis violently presses her leg down. I hear the wet, sickening crunch of Eirwen’s chest, thorax, lungs, and bones bursting.

A puddle of meat and blood forms on the ground as Eirwen, with desperate tears, "dies" — a violent death that turned her upper torso into a crushed mass of flesh.

’...’ Seeing this disgusts me, because I once saw Nemesis do this to a poor soldier. The feeling it causes is horrible, because it’s not an instant death.

I glance to the side and see Eirwen appear up here, but before I can register it, I hear only a scream and the nauseating sound of tearing flesh. I look down fast and see that Nemesis split Ashlyn in two — she bit her head, pulled her legs with her own leg, and tore through her waist with her hand. A horrific death.

Ashlyn appears here, dropping to the ground in fear, while Eirwen is still crying even though it was only a simulated death.

"Dammit, don’t ignore me, you bitch!!" Tanya gets enraged, not realizing she’s become Nemesis’s final target. Tanya starts firing extremely precise, thin beams of pure radiation. The visible-light spectrum in the area shifts completely as I hear a strange hissing in the air.

Radiation levels across the entire city start climbing to critical levels — enough to render the city uninhabitable, according to what the display says.

"Stupid Tanya," I mutter, seeing she’s just poisoned her remaining allies. And worse, Edith was preparing a slowing venom that would have been of some help, since even though Nemesis is highly resistant to vector-based powers, her resistance to normal physical things isn’t as high.

So 5,000-degree heat generated by vectors wouldn’t hurt her, but natural 5,000-degree heat could. Since Edith doesn’t generate venom out of thin air but actually produces it, it would have helped.

But she, unable to handle the radiation, dies quickly and appears here on the platform with a look of hatred aimed at Tanya. I can only get angry at such stupidity — using radiation near allies. But Charlotte remarkably endures, warping the space around herself to block the radiation.

Unfortunately, Charlotte isn’t fast enough. Before she can do much, Nemesis appears behind her, grabbing her head. Charlotte, with enviable control, still attacks Nemesis, but it’s useless. Even the warping space only left a faint scratch on the technological armor shielding Nemesis’s belly.

Then Nemesis starts running, grinding Charlotte’s face into the molten rubble. She runs so fast and presses her down so brutally that her body is sanded away. And when she dies, Nemesis tosses the body on top of Tanya.

Tanya is showered in blood and organs mixed with the hot sludge of the things she melted. The act paralyzes Tanya in place, as if something incomprehensible has happened to her, as if violence were something utterly alien to her.

"Don’t get distracted down there, you idiot!!" I shout at her. She recovers, leaping and narrowly dodging a claw strike from Nemesis. Unfortunately, most of my students didn’t even have time to use their powers. The formation was garbage, the teamwork was trash, and their ability to act under pressure left a lot to be desired.

"G-Go to hell!!" Tanya starts releasing so much thermal energy that the entire city begins heating up, and she triggers a nuclear fission, exploiting the heat that drew Nemesis’s attention. The atomic detonation occurs, expanding and destroying everything in a chain reaction.

Of course, since it’s a simulation, there are rules. And on this platform, Nemesis can’t see us and nothing affects us, so we get to see all the brilliance, light, and destruction Tanya causes — truly a walking bomb.

Tanya, surprisingly, does something that catches me off guard. She absorbs all the lingering heat from the environment and even the energy from the detonation, using it like a battery to amplify her overall attributes and to render herself unaffected by either heat or radiation.

The scenery left behind was a devastated wasteland covered in radiation and molten matter — true chaos. Thankfully, since it’s only a simulation, things aren’t that bad because I set some rules to stop her from turning the ruins into a giant crater.

"See, your woman’s broken!! I won—" Before Tanya can mock me that she’s won, Nemesis grabs her by the throat, crushing her trachea. Tanya tries something, but Nemesis tears off her limbs one by one and then smashes her head with her leg.

’Nemesis didn’t even use her powers — it was just physical attacks...’ I expected this. It was obvious these inexperienced students wouldn’t withstand the real experience of fighting something stronger than them.

But this is good for these girls. It shows them they’re still far too weak to survive. It shows them that all the praise and all the talk about them being the strongest didn’t prepare them for the horrors of war.

"Well, now that we’re done—" I feel a hand suddenly shove me. I fall from the platform, catching sight of Charlotte. She has a look of shock on her face, like it was an accident.

’Dammit!! I slipped up!! I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away by the weakness I saw them show in that fight!! That bitch...’ I swallow hard, falling out, and immediately feel Nemesis’s gaze on me. I spin in the air, shielding myself from the radiation by pulling the sky around me like a veil. I guess it’s a good thing I fight and show them the difference between experience and raw power — even though I didn’t want this.

’You’re going to pay for this, damn Charlotte.’