Chapter 107: End of the Void
"You are Nexus!" Ayla exclaimed, her jaw dropping as she stared up at the massive creature.
"Mm... yeah," the dragon replied, tilting its massive head.
"No... this dragon... why do I feel like I have seen it somewhere before?" Ayla fell into deep thought, her catalog of memories working at rapid speed until a specific detail finally clicked.
"The Emotion Weaver!"
"Well... technically, yeah," the dragon spoke, its deep voice vibrating through the white floorboards.
"I am just inhabiting this physical body as an administrative avatar right now. Actually, my true self doesn’t possess any physical forms."
"Then you are the Emotion Weaver!" Ayla instantly turned into her primary fighting stance, her slender hands hardening as she prepared to draw her traits.
If that was the true case, then every single word this entity had spoken earlier was nothing but a lie.
Ayla had absolutely not forgotten how that stupid monster weaver had tried to systematically manipulate her emotions every single time they met, both down in the training dungeons and during the final crisis of the Spire Event.
"What a thoroughly paranoid little girl," the dragon spoke, letting out a heavy snort that sent a wave of warm air over her fur coat.
"This giant vessel was once a physical body worn by the Emotion Weaver before Iit fell. Not anymore. I have taken your consciousness into this secure space for an entirely different thing."
The golden dragon slowly opened its massive jaws. A large, dark golden colored orb emerged smoothly from its mouth, floating gently down into the space between them.
This core was multiple times larger than her human form, radiating a dense, suffocating pressure that made the air hum.
The very moment the golden orb appeared, the primitive hunger inside Ayla’s core intensified to an unprecedented degree.
Her mouth instantly began to water, and her stomach let out a loud, empty growl.
"What’s this?" she asked, gulping down her saliva as she completely forgot about all the fierce anger and suspicion she had felt a few seconds ago.
Nexus, operating from within the giant golden dragon, let out a quiet snicker as she watched how the expression of the little silver-haired girl instantly changed from intense hostility to a friendly, tail-wagging curiosity.
’Sure enough, your baby is exactly like you,’ Nexus thought with a trace of deep nostalgia. ’
Easily bribed by a piece of high-tier food...’
"It’s a Silver-ranked Apocalypse core," the dragon explained, its tail lightly thumping against the throne.
"Swallow it entirely, and you can officially advance to the Silver Rank without running through any dungeons."
Ayla’s golden eyes widened to the size of saucers.
"You... you are giving this to me for free?"
The expression on the girl’s face was super cute, her eyes flaring in absolute surprise while her mouth remained agape in disbelief.
Nexus looked down at her, thinking to herself that it would be an absolute loss of an opportunity not to tease this little creature one more time.
"Not for free, of course," the golden dragon smiled, its massive eyes crinkling. "If you want to eat this core, you have to marry me."
Ayla blinked several times in rapid succession, her mind calculating the value of the trade. The price was incredibly hefty for a single Silver core.
Even if Nexus didn’t give her this food, she was absolutely confident she could find plenty of high-tier targets to hunt down on her own across the Crusade fronts.
"...I can easily give you the future cores of Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Crown, and even Ace rankers if you agree," Nexus added smoothly, throwing more bait into the air.
Ayla remained quiet for a few seconds, her pupils shifting as she formulated a counter-offer based on human logic.
"Can you marry Kenji too?" Ayla asked bluntly.
"Eh?" The giant dragon’s golden scales momentarily stiffened.
"If you can marry him too, then I can marry you," Ayla said, wobbling her head from side to side in a very pleased, satisfied manner.
Nexus was everywhere and inside everything anyway, just like she had admitted earlier.
Even if Ayla didn’t officially marry the system, this annoying thing was already operating like a constant third wheel between her and Kenji during their private moments.
Also, Nexus didn’t actually possess a physical human body.
So even if she married the system, there wasn’t going to be any real physical difference in her daily life.
But if she alone married Nexus, Kenji would definitely become incredibly angry and jealous when he found out.
Considering all of these strategic parameters, Ayla felt that her choice was absolutely perfect.
"..."
This time, it was the all-knowing Nexus’s turn to stare down completely dumbfounded.
Since she Nexus currently occupying the gigantic, magnificent form of the ancient golden dragon, it was an incredibly funny sight to see such a majestic, cosmic creature wearing an entirely blank, speechlessly confused expression while looking down at the tiny, silver-haired girl.
"Ahem." Ayla cleared her throat softly, feeling a little bit weirded out by the intense, giant gaze of the golden dragon staring down at her.
"Can I eat it now?" she asked, pointing her finger directly at the massive golden core floating between them.
Ayla didn’t want to waste any more time arguing about marriage and relationships since Kenji would still be waiting for her down in the subterranean dungeon cells.
The initial excitement of her massive feast had finally started to settle down, and she felt a little bit guilty for completely forgetting about the urgent mission he had assigned her to execute.
He had told her to find physical proof of the infection and alert the authorities, but she had gotten entirely distracted by eating the Void King and upgrading her traits instead.
She wanted to return to his side as quickly as possible. Ayla secretly decided to make immediate amends with him the moment she got back down there by giving him a really good blow to his cheek with a kiss, or maybe just cooking him some delicious beast meat to soothe his predictable human anger.
But she didn’t know how to cook, nor she didn’t know if Kenji would like raw brain.
The golden dragon let out a heavy sigh, its massive reptilian nostrils venting another wave of warm air across the white expanse.
It raised a giant, golden-scaled claw and gently pushed the massive golden core closer to her small form.
"Hurry up and devour it..." Nexus’s voice sounded completely helpless this time. The all-knowing system administrator looked thoroughly defeated by the little slime monster’s blunt, unbothered logic.
She realized that teasing Ayla any further was completely useless because the girl’s primitive brain stems would always prioritize food and her possessive attachment to Kenji over any grand proposal.
Ayla didn’t hesitate for a single microsecond. She lunged forward, her human mouth expanding past its natural anatomical limits via her mimic traits as she sank her teeth directly into the massive, dark golden orb.
An explosion of pure, concentrated Silver-ranked Apocalypse energy flooded her core channels all at once, starting the rapid evolution of her baseline parameters.
Meanwhile, back within the primary high-security command room, the scenario had reached a violent turning point.
The Marshal was still standing completely frozen before the giant holographic tactical map, but his tall, decorated military frame was shaking like a leaf in a heavy storm.
The perfect, thoughtless continuity that had moved his limbs with mechanical precision for the past day was rapidly fracturing into millions of broken pieces.
Deep inside his spiritual pathways, the parasitic Voidling was showing intense signs of struggling.
It was screaming in a silent, hollow panic because the central network had collapsed after the Void King’s sudden retreat from the Crusade plane.
The pocket of emptiness inside the Marshal’s chest was shrinking by the second, losing its grip on the old man’s neural pathways.
With the parasite weakening so drastically, the original human soul of the Marshal seized the opportunity to launch a fierce counter-offensive.
The hardened, stubborn spirit of the Diamond-ranked Crusader, who had defended humanity for decades, violently surged forward to reclaim his territory.
"Get... out..." a rough, muffled human voice vibrated from his vocal cords, gasping for air.
His physical muscles spasmed violently, and his old fingers clawed into the edge of the metal desk so hard that the alloy plates began to bend and crack under his grip.
His jaw twisted into painful, unnatural angles as his true consciousness fought its way back to the surface of his brain, systematically crushing the remaining resistance of the foreign parasite.
With a final, explosive heave of his chest, the internal war came to an absolute halt.
The Marshal took a massive, ragged gulp of the stagnant air, his eyes violently snapping open.
The flat, mechanical blankness that had blinded his features for a month completely vanished, replaced instantly by the sharp, disciplined focus of a veteran human general.
He had successfully taken full, absolute control over his own physical body once again.
He raised his right hand, slowly flexing his calloused fingers to verify his manual control over his muscles.
He breathed heavily, looking around the empty briefing room in confusion as his independent thoughts flooded back into his mind.
However, as his old fingers uncurled in the dim red alarm lights, something deeply unsettling happened beneath the surface of his skin.
If Ayla had been standing right next to him, she would have instantly found a very faint, microscopic trace of the Void still lingering deep within the marrow of his bones.
The parasite was gone, but the fundamental contract he had signed before his captivity had left a permanent scar on his soul container.
A tiny, dormant seed of non-existence remained securely hidden inside his core, perfectly masked by his heavy Diamond-ranked human mana.
It was so incredibly subtle, so completely deeply buried within his body, that even the all-knowing awareness of Nexus didn’t manage to see it when she glanced over.
The Marshal closed his fist, entirely unaware of the hidden corruption sleeping inside his own hand.
He only felt the heavy weight of his independent human consciousness returning to the material world.
"The fortress..." the Marshal muttered, his voice rough and commanding as he stared at the flashing tactical monitors. "What has happened to my division?"
