Chapter 106: Dread
"Little girl, you can’t continue in this form for too long." Nexus’s voice suddenly became completely serious.
Ayla’s bright, melodic laughing instantly paused as her easygoing self turned completely on guard.
Her primitive monster instincts flared with a sudden, intense alarm, and her expression contracted within the pocket of nothingness.
How did Nexus know that she could change forms?
Ayla had never spoken about her true nature to any living thing except Kenji.
She had spent her entire existence carefully hiding her identity, wrapping herself in a perfect silver-haired human slate to ensure that the dangerous factions of the Crusade would never discover what she truly was.
Yet now, within a single fraction of a second, she suddenly found herself completely revealed before the eye of the system.
"Fret not, baby girl. There is absolutely nothing in this Crusade and on Earth that I don’t have a perfect idea of. Your little fling might have thought so highly of himself, he seriously thought I will not find out the little secret of you." Nexus let out a loud, highly amused laugh that echoed from every single direction at once.
"What kind of secret?" Ayla responded, keeping her voice entirely flat.
She actively acted as if she didn’t understand what the all-knowing system meant by that statement.
In fact she was deeply curious about what kind of secrets Nexus actually knew and what she didn’t.
What if this system was just bluffing to trick her? What if Nexus was trying to make Ayla reveal her own secrets out of sheer panic?
She might be a monster, but Ayla was definitely not dumb.
"Debatable..." Nexus whispered softly.
"Huh?" Ayla made a small sound. She might have had a thoroughly perplexed look on her face if she were currently standing in her standard human form.
But in the absolute emptiness of her Rare-A+ Voidling form, there were no physical features or facial muscles to display any signs of emotion.
She was just a localized black hole in reality, entirely unreadable.
"I was just debating within myself about what kind of private secrets I should reveal to you so you finally believe me," Nexus let out a cheerful chuckle, her tone dripping with a deeply annoying playfulness.
"Should I mention how much you secretly enjoyed being completely dominated by that human meathead who seriously believes himself to be so smart? Or should I mention how much you love to suck off—"
Nexus abruptly cut herself off, making a soft clicking sound like one made with their tongue. "Well, I shouldn’t complete that specific sentence, lest you find me a total pervert..."
As Nexus continued speaking, casually revealing one private memory after another regarding Ayla and Kenji’s wild nights, a wave of anger slowly started to burn inside Ayla.
Her Voidling form began to tremble with absolute fury.
"...Oh, and let’s not forget about that ridiculous doggy posi—"
"Shut up!" Ayla shouted, her voice exploding with such raw force that the surrounding space around the corridor violently cracked into nothingness.
The grey dust on the floorboards was instantly blasted away by the pressure. "You dare to eavesdrop with your eyes at naked Kenji?"
Ayla’s golden eyes flared with a murderous intensity. She decided right then and there that one day, when her strength grew large enough, she would literally hunt down and eat the Nexus system whole.
There was a pinpoint, absolute silence for a few long moments inside the dusty hallway before a laugh so incredibly high and vast that it seemed to be everywhere at once sounded through the empty air.
"Hahah!" Nexus’s voice cracked slightly from the sheer amount of amusement she was holding back. "Among every single thing I just said, you are actually angry because of this?"
"Yes," Ayla stated as a matter of fact, her voice completely blunt.
"But why?" Nexus teased, her voice drifting like a gentle breeze around the spatial tears.
"Because he is mine," Ayla said simply, her tone carrying an absolute, possessive certainty that required zero logical explanation.
To her logic, everything she marked belonged to her territory, and no one else had the right to look at her belongings.
"Well, you can’t really blame me for that, little girl," Nexus explained, her melodic cadence returning to a smooth rhythm.
"I really don’t possess any personal desire to peek at your... what did you humans call it... ’kink play’. But you have to understand my position.
I am everywhere across this world, and every single thing will automatically go through my processing core."
"How can I stop you from doing so?" Ayla asked seriously, her focus returning as she searched for a solution to block the system’s eyes.
"YOU can’t..." Nexus replied with an absolute, sharp arrogance.
Ayla didn’t say anything back through the mind link. She simply clenched her invisible fists within the emptiness. ’
Just you wait,’ she swore internally, her monster brain adding Nexus to the very top of her ultimate dinner list.
"Girl, what I actually meant to say before you interrupted me was that I know absolutely everything about you," Nexus’s voice turned grounded, losing its playful edge.
"I know about your unique ability to copy traits from the creatures you devour. I know about your ability to flawlessly shapeshift into the perfect form of any creature whose biomass you have consumed, and I know exactly what kind of monster you are underneath that human dress. In fact, I know far more about your origin than you do yourself..."
If Ayla had physical lungs inside her Voidling form right now, she would be breathing harder and faster from the sheer weight of that statement.
"Afraid not, child. I am no enemy of yours," Nexus said softly, her tone shifting into something remarkably warm. "Actually, I have been waiting for your arrival this whole time..."
"Waiting for me? Why?" Ayla asked in a low, cautious voice, her vigilance remaining locked at one hundred percent.
"Because of an ancient promise," Nexus’s voice turned deeply melancholic, carrying a heavy, sorrowful resonance that made the spatial dimensions around the fort grow still.
"Don’t ask me what that promise is, because I cannot reveal the yet. But trust me, little girl. In this chaotic world, you can trust me more than anyone else... even more than your little human fling down in the cells."
"I don’t think I will ever like you more than Kenji," Ayla stated immediately, without a single microsecond of hesitation.
To her, Kenji was her anchor across the timeline, and a machine voice could never replace his warmth.
"Girl... relationships are nothing more than complex patterns of threads," Nexus murmured, it’s voice sounding incredibly old.
"If any of these delicate threads happen to break, they might never be stitched back together. But the master shape of the pattern will always change.
The pattern of reality will continue moving forward without that broken thread... What I am trying to say is... what you currently think you are completely unable to live without might not be as precious to your existence as you think it is."
A slow, growing sense of deep dread crept into Ayla’s whole being as the system’s words echoed inside her head.
For the very first time in her life, the primitive monster became completely, utterly helpless.
She didn’t know how to counter this specific psychological attack. She wanted to loudly shout, to curse, and to physically hit the Nexus with her steel claws.
But she couldn’t.
There was no physical body to strike. She absolutely hated to admit how deeply Nexus’s vague words were affecting her mental stability, planting a tiny seed of fear regarding Kenji in future.
The internal control over her Rare-A+ Voidling form suddenly thinned to the point of breaking.
She wanted to unleash her whole rage, activate her Celestial Form, and destroy every single wall around this human barracks.
"Okay, now onto the serious matters," Nexus sounded again.
The moment her voice registered, a strange, cooling wave of code washed over Ayla’s core. She found her raging thoughts completely calming down against her will.
Not only that, but her dense Voidling form involuntarily deactivated, forcing her to shift back into her human appearance.
A soft, glowing breeze passed through her naked, pale body, and a luxurious, dark fur coat materialized out of the air, draping itself perfectly over her shoulders to cover her chest.
Ayla’s golden pupils contracted as she found the physical hallway around her tilting violently without her moving a single muscle.
The metallic walls and grey dust vanished instantly, replaced by a vast, endless world of absolute white that stretched across the horizon.
In the center of this infinite white expanse, a huge, majestic throne was placed.
Four massive, heavy black chains extended from the corners of the seat, drilling deep into the ground to pull the throne down with immense force.
And sitting directly on top of this throne was a form that completely defied every single piece of logic inside Ayla’s brain.
It was a huge, ancient dragon. Its magnificent body was covered in solid golden scales that shimmered with an unimaginable, blinding light, and its physical size was so vast that Ayla felt like a tiny ant standing at its base.
On its massive head, a grand crown constructed out of seven distinct colors rested quietly.
The golden dragon slowly lowered its giant, reptilian gaze down toward her and spoke in the exact same familiar, melodic voice.
"Hello, little girl..."
