Aurora Over a Dead World

Chapter 22: Answers to a Problem

"...Well, students, I hope you all had a wonderful rest!! Because I sure did!!" I say to them, having analyzed everything I could from that battle. Rouge has already returned to her normal self, though I can see a newfound determination in her eyes.

Tanya is sulking, having gone back to her usual arrogance, but Ashlyn and Eirwen are clearly not doing so well. Eirwen has small tremors from time to time, as if she’s remembering what it feels like to die.

And Ashlyn is even more isolated than usual. Meanwhile, Charlotte is also fine, and Edith seems irritated with me, though even more irritated with Tanya. Every glance Edith throws at Tanya is dripping with hatred.

"I think today we can talk about each of your failures here, since you all saw how easy it was for every single one of you to die—"

"PROFESSOR!! THAT’S NOT FAIR!" Tanya stands up, shouting at me and cutting me off. Everyone looks at her before looking back at me.

"What isn’t fair?"

"You put us up against the strongest monster!! Obviously we were going to lose!! It was just a different situation!! If you had just put us against a strong monster, we would have won!"

"...Haa... Tanya, are you really this stupid, or are you trying hard to look stupid?" When I say this, she makes a deeply offended face.

"Nemesis is indeed the strongest monster, and her resistance to vector attacks makes her an absolute nightmare to face, but she’s not the only monster that would wipe you all out in combat."

"Not to mention, that Nemesis in the simulator was weakened... but since I knew you’d talk shit, I brought a file on a monster that would kill all of you." I toss six copies of a file with data on a monster. I wrote the file myself in a didactic format.

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Name: Nightmare

Registered Name: Mimic

Category: Demon

General Classification: Rank 9

Power: Metamorphic Mimicry (Description: Allows the monster possessing it to copy any appearance of anything—object, person, or monster—being able to even partially utilize characteristics of the form. It works through a grotesque metamorphosis of the body and even allows the monster to use the powers of the Kaira it is mimicking, though these are distorted and unstable versions, loaded with a "signature" such as teeth, flesh, and eyes covering the copied attacks.)

Extra: (Considered a living Calamity that has been named [Nightmare]. It has the appearance of a young, fragile girl dressed in a golden Victorian-style outfit with large black details. It has long blonde hair and red eyes. On the edges of its "dress," teeth can be seen, and on the inside, eyes can be seen everywhere.

It mimics the appearance of a young girl of 160 centimeters to trick its victims into getting too close. It is a sadistic predator, and although it has been confronted by many Kaira during its appearances, it has always managed to escape, causing extreme devastation.)

(It has an extreme fixation on Commander Nadir. After a confrontation when Nadir was 25 years old, he almost killed it on his own. This caused it to develop a terrible obsession with hunting him down, making him its number one target. Although what it feels is not precisely known, it is deduced to be a mixture of carnal desire, unbridled lust, and a subsequent urge to destroy him because of the past.)

More Precise Data: Its copy is imperfect! Imagine Eirwen, for example. Her power is based on cold, ice, snow, etc.!! That Mimicked power wouldn’t be "that." It would be like covering the entire area in cold, pale, soft flesh, while teeth and eyes are everywhere and blood "drips" like snow. None of Nightmare’s copies are good copies. They are all flesh-based distortions. It’s like someone with modeling clay copying the shapes of attacks they’re seeing.

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"This is our terrible enemy, ’Mimic’—a monster I’ve personally encountered, Astrid has personally encountered, and 356 other Kaira have also personally encountered." I, especially, harbor a deep hatred for this bitch who stalks Nadir.

"This godforsaken plague follows us everywhere. Since she’s always nearby, our intelligence network deduced that Nightmare never truly leaves the island. She always hides among normal civilians and wanders around until her disguise is broken, or she decides to kill someone... or she sees Nadir. If she sees Nadir, she goes insane and kills everything nearby just to get attention." They all read the file.

"Now, seriously, can you stop interrupting me? You’re not the center of the world, you know. Nemesis and Nightmare are formidable monsters, but there are thousands of other monsters just as strong that can easily kill Kaira." Eirwen trembles, looking at the file, and then looks at me.

"P-Professor, why am I the example?"

"...Because you’re one of the few here who would generate the most grotesque visual in the scenario. Nightmare’s trademark is creating lots of macabre things... after all, she belongs to the [Demon] category."

"Those are the ones who enjoy hunting and torturing people for no real reason, and it’s exactly because of this type of monster that I let you die in that simulator."

"That thing right there isn’t even close to being strong enough for the threat level it’s been assigned, but it is. Why? Because neither you nor many Kaira have realized something basic." I begin to teach them. Even Tanya is quiet now, having seen that Nemesis isn’t the greatest danger.

Nemesis, who almost never appears, is hardly a direct threat to these six for now. The real threat is the powerful monsters that are out there, sometimes closer than we’d like.

"Nightmare can be anywhere, be anyone, but she isn’t considered a Yet0 to Yet9 because her appearance always carries extra teeth and eyes that give away who she is when you analyze her more closely."

"But what matters in all this is the basic thing that everyone ended up forgetting because they have powers." I pull a simple vector pistol from my clothes.

"This weapon here is capable of firing a spherical structure charged with electricity vectors. The sphere shot by this gun travels at the speed of sound and is useful against monsters." I say to them, placing another weapon on the table—a rustic pistol, a weapon from the past.

"This one here is a common pistol. No vectors, just the old technology from before vectors existed." I say to them, picking up the first weapon.

"Could this vector pistol kill you?" I ask them and am met with silence, but at least they’re paying attention.

"The most accurate answer is ’no.’ If this gun fired, you would feel the vectors shifting. You could dodge, reinforce your bodies against vector variations and withstand the shot, or simply block it as if it were nothing."

"Now... what about this common pistol?"

"Obviously not!!" Tanya speaks in an overly loud tone and with a confidence that irritates me.

"You’re wrong, Tanya. This common pistol could kill you. So much so that criminal organizations use these common pistols."

"What!!? You’ve gotta be shitting me, right?! You think this old piece of metal junk could kill us?" This time, it’s Rouge who complains, standing up from her chair with her wolf ears standing straight and her tail thrashing aggressively. I think something in my words hit a sore spot for her. Even Tanya is shocked by Rouge’s tone.

"I don’t think. I know it would kill you, and you know why? Because you wouldn’t detect it coming at you. You’d only notice when the bullet entered your body. If someone comes up behind you and points this at your head, a single shot would end your life."

"Do you know why? Because every single one of you here is human. Never, ever forget that. With vectors, we can have super resistant bodies against other vector attacks, since by manipulating vectors we suffer less influence from them."

"We can break the laws of physics, we can withstand falls from absurd heights, and stop projectiles easily..."

"But you can’t do that all the time, every moment, and worse, in the end we are fragile. Many die not because they are weak, but because they believe they are untouchable."

"And the reality is that a simple kitchen knife can kill you." I look at Tanya, who shudders, probably remembering the knife I threw at her after she attacked me.

"Nemesis didn’t kill you easily because you were weak, but because, besides not knowing how to fight as a team, you didn’t know how to minimize damage." I point the pistol at Ashlyn and fire. Everyone stands up, but before the bullet even leaves my reach, I grab it with my hand, stopping it.

"...Ashlyn froze. At that moment, the bullet would have killed her, because she didn’t have time to react to a simple shot... a shot that people like Astrid would have stopped without even looking."

"I want you to understand that our defense is poor. Unless you have a reinforcement power, which no one here has, our defense can’t withstand almost anything."

"The reality of the Kaira who reached the top is simple. They learned that you can minimize the damage from almost anything. Do you know why? Because physics is simple. A shot needs impact, kinetic energy, contact area, and speed to cause damage."

"If you remove kinetic energy or impact, the attack becomes useless, and you don’t need to have vector powers involving that. In fact, it’s simple."

"Physics needs stable states to function. Simply messing that up at the contact area already drastically reduces what something can do. Eirwen, for example, could simply stop this shot in the air by decelerating the atoms around it."

"And all of you here can do similar things with your powers... and that’s what you have to train for now. You need to make this defense something automatic."

"You have to be able to react to things you can’t see, feel, or perceive..."

"Professor, how could we react to that? Could you give a better example?" Edith asks in a genuinely curious tone, which makes me smile.

"Good question. The answer varies and depends on what your mind is capable of doing. I myself usually react to changes in space, but that’s because of my power. If a shot comes at me, it displaces space, and I feel it."

"But if it’s an attack I can’t sense, I block it when it touches me. In the infinitesimal time between it touching me and it hitting me, I defend against it. To do that, you have to be able to manipulate vectors almost instantaneously. All of you here are too slow."

"However, fortunately, our brains are fast. You don’t need to see, feel, or hear something for your brain to have already calculated it. You just need to automate your brain to defend automatically, just like muscle reflexes."

"Of course, it’s not an absolute defense, but it’s enough so you don’t die on the first attack. If Eirwen had done that in the fight, she wouldn’t have had her thorax crushed by Nemesis’s leg!" I cite Eirwen a lot to make her the center of this, because she needs to improve more than the others in this regard.

"Now, I’m going to list concrete examples on the board and help you do this. It’s not that complicated once you get the hang of it." Something about teaching the basics that so many ignore leaves me a little satisfied.