Chapter 521: Turned Into Gacha?! - 521
When awareness slowly drifted back, the first thing Tatsumaki saw was an unfamiliar ceiling.
The final images from her memory surged forth like a tidal wave. The looming threat and her own lingering wariness instantly drove her to rally her powers for defense.
This place was highly likely a trap laid specifically for an esper like her! She had to break free, and fast!
With that thought, Tatsumaki intended to crush and warp everything around her.
Yet, in the very next heartbeat, she realized something was terribly wrong with her psychic abilities. Forget unleashing any destructive force—she couldn’t even manage to make herself float.
She couldn’t use her powers at all...!
This realization made her all the more certain that she had fallen into a trap, while simultaneously sending a shiver of pure dread down her spine. If she couldn’t use her powers, she was stripped of almost all her combat capability.
Tatsumaki didn’t dare move an inch. She worried that if Herta noticed she was awake, she might do something even more horrific to her.
At the same time, her mind drifted to the girl she had spent the last few days with.
With that girl’s naive sense of justice, surely she would have done something after Tatsumaki met with disaster, right? But right now, there wasn’t a sound.
Either she had also been restrained by Herta, or... she was a part of this trap all along.
Tatsumaki desperately hoped the truth wasn’t the latter.
But that brought up an immediate problem... how was she supposed to escape? Without her powers, was she just a lamb to the slaughter?
She felt a wave of fear and helplessness she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. However, this fragile emotional state didn’t last long.
Because she caught the sound of a familiar voice.
"Auntie Herta, how is Tatsumaki doing right now? If she keeps lying on the floor like that... won’t she get cold?"
It was that robot-head? Were they actually in cahoots after all?
"Maybe she just really likes my laboratory floor. It doesn’t look like she’s in any hurry to leave."
A slightly arrogant tone drifted over from the other side. The voice didn’t sound quite as icy as before, but the meaning behind the words made Tatsumaki’s skin crawl. Herta knew she was awake.
Since she couldn’t play dead anymore, there was no point in pretending.
Propping herself up with her arms, Tatsumaki glared at Alice with absolute vigilance, a trace of disappointment coloring her face that she didn’t even notice herself.
She had expected the machine across from her to be completely indifferent, but when her eyes met Alice’s, she was surprised to find nothing but genuine worry etched across the girl’s face.
"Tatsumaki?" Alice took a few quick steps over to her side, reaching out to help her up.
That worry didn’t seem fake... Could it be that she didn’t understand Herta had just attacked her? Was it a difference in perception between robots and humans? Or had Herta said something to trick this metal blockhead?
Tatsumaki subconsciously brushed her suspicions aside, then turned her furious gaze toward Herta. "What did you do to me?!"
Sitting in a wheeled office chair, Herta merely curled the corner of her lips. Her unhidden pride gave her a distinctly overbearing air.
"Arrogance is born from a gap in perception and information. And arrogance keeps a person from seeing exactly where they stand."
She spoke as casually as if she were deciding what to have for lunch, yet the weight of her words made the pressure on Tatsumaki skyrocket. "I simply altered reality and made your powers cease to exist."
Altered reality? What kind of a joke was that?
"It’s a machine, isn’t it?!" Tatsumaki instantly rejected the idea that this was humanly possible. "There’s some kind of device inside this [Ark] that invalidates psychic abilities!"
"It’s good to be skeptical. That’s a vital trait when pursuing the truth. But unfortunately, wrong answer." The witch extended a hand, purple flames churning in her palm. Immediately after, Tatsumaki felt her perspective rapidly rising.
What was happening?
She looked down in utter bewilderment, only to see a sight she had never witnessed before.
She couldn’t see her own toes? What was blocking her view?
Realizing what was changing with her body, Tatsumaki stared at herself in sheer disbelief.
It really changed! Her body had grown up?!
However, before her shock could even fully register, her vision dropped once more. The sudden fullness blocking her view vanished without a trace within two seconds.
Her body... had changed back...
"Is it an illusion-generating device this time?"
A mocking voice drifted from ahead. Tatsumaki was forced to refocus her mind, staring warily at the witch before her.
"What... what is going on? Who on earth are you? Is altering reality actually real?"
"My time is incredibly precious. I have no need to talk in circles or lie to you. If it weren’t for your connection to Alice, the possibility of you even seeing me wouldn’t exist."
Herta’s smirk faded, leaving her stunningly beautiful face coated in a layer of frost.
Tatsumaki could feel her psychic powers rapidly returning. She didn’t know if the woman was doing this on purpose or if it was an oversight, but just to be safe, she wasn’t in a hurry to use them.
Though she desperately wanted to demand answers about Fubuki and the Sephira Crystals, speaking up about that right now was clearly unwise.
An esper couldn’t possibly be an idiot. No matter how spoiled or willful Tatsumaki usually was, she knew how to read the room. Besides, this submission was undoubtedly the exact effect Herta wanted to achieve right now.
And Herta’s next words made Tatsumaki realize just how smart her choice to endure really was.
"As I said, what I just did wasn’t a punishment. It was simply a quick method to make you realize the gap between us." This basically meant that a certain phase was over, which was why her powers had been restored.
Tatsumaki had heard this tone and these kinds of words too many times before—in fact, she often used them herself.
Next, the woman would probably bring up the "real punishment."
Tatsumaki possessed a healthy amount of self-awareness regarding her own personality.
She even knew exactly how she looked in the eyes of others. She naturally remembered what had happened back in the Hero Association’s training room.
Her impulsiveness frequently led to extreme consequences.
Even if Tatsumaki was loath to admit it, she felt a subconscious pang of remorse for hurting Alice, a guilt that had only grown over the past few days of keeping her company.
Even classifying the girl as a mere machine to lessen her own guilt was nothing more than an awkward, self-deluding lie.
What was this now?
Tatsumaki could only see the reflection of herself and Fubuki in these two, except this time, the one coming to stir up trouble was Herta, and she was the one on the receiving end.
Yet, Tatsumaki didn’t feel much resistance to this. In fact, she felt a faint sense of relief.
This way, she and Alice were even.
"So, from now on, every time you use your psychic powers, you will do one thing... Be grateful. This is the compromise Alice fought for."
Like a final judgment, Herta’s words fell. But the meaning behind them threw Tatsumaki back into confusion, sending a cold shiver down her spine.
Forcing her to do something every time she used her powers? This practically meant the woman could take her life whenever she pleased.
Now, Tatsumaki had no choice but to believe that even if she left this [Ark], the woman still held her in the palm of her hand.
"Do what exactly?" Tatsumaki demanded. Even though Alice had apparently begged for mercy on her behalf and lessened the severity of the retaliation, this concerned her deeply. She had to know.
"Why don’t you try it and find out?" Instead of giving an answer, Herta smiled again, gesturing for her to give it a go.
Seeing this, Tatsumaki didn’t hesitate. She immediately called upon her psychic powers to make herself float.
The very next second, she bellowed uncontrollably at the top of her lungs:
"Madam Herta is a peerless gem! Madam Herta is an unrivaled genius! Madam Herta is an inimitable beauty!"
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T/N: If you want advance Chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL
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