Free Web NovelThe silence after the fight was thick.
Matt breathed slowly and so did Noxx, a few meters away from him, sitting on the stone floor with her legs folded to one side. Her arms crossed over her chest, one hand gripping the opposite shoulder, her white hair falling forward to cover what her arms couldn't reach.
Noxx was covering herself as best she could, but Matt wasn't.
Matt remained standing with the bow-lance in one hand and the other hanging at his side, making no particular effort to cover himself — he'd been through too much in this place to waste energy on that.
Modesty had dropped very low on the list of priorities.
Noxx glanced at him sideways, embarrassed.
"Matt…"
"What?"
"Could you…?"
Matt looked at her, confused.
Noxx looked away.
"Never mind…"
Matt didn't fully understand, but he didn't ask either. He turned toward the rest of the room, examining the boss's remains scattered across the floor.
Metal pieces. Skull fragments. Mechanical fingers that no longer moved. The arms that had come out of the walls hung limp — some still lodged in the stone, others broken on the floor.
The bow-lance glowed in his hand with a soft golden hue. The red cracks integrated into its silver body pulsed as if the weapon were breathing. fгeewebnovёl.com
"Master, are you alright? Your breathing is irregular. Do you need assistance? I can try to channel mana toward—"
"Shut up."
"Yes, Master."
Noxx looked up carefully.
"Matt."
"What?"
"The door."
Matt looked at her, then followed the direction of her eyes. The door through which they'd entered this section — the one connecting to the previous rooms — was closed.
Matt stared at it for a few seconds without saying anything. Then he let out a slow breath through his mouth.
"What do we do?"
Matt didn't answer right away. He looked at the floor around him.
Dark stone, mechanical debris, dust. No other visible exit. No side doors. No holes in the walls. Just the enormous room, the distant ceiling, and the silence.
Matt walked a few steps to the side, slowly, dragging his feet slightly. Then he stopped and sat down. Then he let go of the bow-lance.
The weapon fell toward the floor, but never reached it.
Halfway down, the golden light pulsed hard.
Vmmm!
The bow-lance stopped in midair for an instant. Then the light expanded, shifted shape, stretched upward and outward.
Noxx raised her head.
The light took human form. Arms, legs, head, hair…
When the glow faded, a girl was standing where the weapon had been.
She was a little shorter than Matt. Her hair was long and blonde, straight, falling to the middle of her back. Her skin was pale, almost white, and she wasn't wearing anything.
Nothing at all.
The girl opened her eyes and looked at Matt. Then she looked at the floor beneath her feet. She looked at her own hands, opening and closing her fingers.
Her right foot stepped wrong.
No.
It didn't step wrong.
She simply didn't know how to step.
The ankle folded to one side. The knee followed. Her balance disappeared entirely and the girl fell forward with her arms outstretched. She barely managed to cover her face with her palms.
THWAP!
The sound was pathetic.
Her entire body hit the stone floor. The blonde hair fanned out around her head like a golden puddle.
Noxx, still sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, blinked in confusion.
The girl lifted her face from the floor. Her nose was red and her eyes were wet. The rest of her body was still completely exposed and bare against the floor, and apparently she hadn't noticed. Or if she had, she didn't care.
"Master! Why are you so cruel?" she asked as tears welled up in her eyes.
Matt looked at her from where he sat.
"What did I do?"
"You dropped me without warning! I wanted to introduce myself properly, but you let me go like I was trash!"
"You're very loud."
The girl opened her mouth to protest.
Matt continued before she could speak.
"And you're the reason I'm this exhausted."
The girl closed her mouth and wiped her tears.
Matt looked at her through narrowed eyes.
"You took way too long to wake up. If you'd done it sooner, we wouldn't have had to go through three hundred rooms with no rest, or fight that cursed skeleton twice."
The girl looked down and something shifted in her expression. It was fast. So fast that Matt wasn't sure he'd seen it. A shadow that crossed her face and was gone before the smile came back.
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"That… wasn't my fault…" she said, looking away.
"Then whose was it?"
"It's just…"
The girl played with a strand of her blonde hair, staring somewhere else.
"I wanted to wake up. I really did. But there was something… I don't know how to explain it, but it wouldn't let me out."
Matt watched her carefully.
"Something was blocking you?"
The girl, still on the floor, tried to get up. She pressed her hands against the stone and pushed. Her arms trembled. She managed to get to her knees, but when she tried to stand, the ankle gave out again.
"Ah!"
She almost fell again, but grabbed at the air with her hands — as if that would help — and somehow managed to stay on her knees.
Then she sat back down on the floor, crossing her legs clumsily. Without the slightest concern for what she was showing Matt.
Noxx looked away immediately, her cheeks a little redder than usual.
Matt didn't.
Matt simply looked at her face and stopped at the girl's eyes — and noticed that the right one was red and the left one was blue.
Matt blinked, surprised.
That was new.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
The girl tilted her head, noticing how Matt was looking at her.
"Master? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Your eyes."
"My eyes?"
The girl touched her face with both hands, worried.
"What's wrong with my eyes? Are they bad? Is something wrong?"
Her voice climbed in pitch. The concern was genuine and completely disproportionate.
"Are they broken? Do they not work right? Is it from the fall? Master, this is your fault for dropping me without—!"
"They're not wrong."
The girl went quiet.
"Just curious."
"Curious?" she asked, confused.
"Your right eye is red and your left one is blue." freeweɓnovel.cøm
The girl touched her face again.
"Really? I can't see them to check… Is that strange?"
"Yes. It's strange."
"Strange bad or strange good?"
The question was so ridiculous that Matt almost laughed.
"Just strange."
The girl frowned.
"Master, that answer is completely useless to me…"
Matt ignored the complaint and continued.
"I came into this cave before."
The girl's eyes went wide.
"Before?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"A while ago."
"How long ago?"
"Long."
"But how long is long? Months? Years? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Before the existence of—?"
"You ask too many questions."
The girl closed her mouth.
Matt continued.
"When my old ego weapon awakened back then, it didn't have eyes like that."
"Like what?"
"Two different colors."
The girl touched her face again, this time more carefully, as if she expected to feel something different on each side.
"So you'd already awakened an ego weapon before…?"
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Here."
"In this cave?"
"Yes."
"This same one?"
"This same one."
"But going back to the point… what was it that stopped me from waking up sooner?"
The girl went quiet. Matt was about to press further, but something interrupted him.
He felt it before he saw it.
The chain.
Noxx felt it too.
A familiar pressure in the center of the chest. An invisible pull connecting two separate consciousnesses and dragging them back toward a single point.
Time was up.
Noxx looked up at Matt.
"It's coming."
"I know."
The bow-lance girl looked from one to the other, not understanding.
"What's coming? Another enemy? Where? I don't feel anything."
Red light covered Matt and Noxx's bodies.
Vmmm!
The fusion arrived.
The pain was brief this time. Intense, but brief. Like a sharp blow to the base of the skull that spread through the entire body for half a second and then vanished.
The two bodies pulled toward each other in the air.
CLANK!
They joined.
Noxx was absorbed back inward and the body became one again.
Matt ended up standing from the momentum of the fusion. Noxx's body, which had been sitting, was pulled toward Matt's, and when they merged, the upright position won out. Matt stumbled slightly, but kept his balance.
The guns, however, weren't so lucky.
When the second body disappeared, the two weapons that had been on the floor near Noxx were no longer being held by anyone, so they fell sideways against the stone.
Matt crouched and picked them up. He examined them for a moment. Both were still vibrating.
The blonde girl, still sitting naked on the floor, watched him with wide eyes.
"That was amazing!"
Matt didn't respond.
"Master! There were two of you and now there's one! How does it work? Is it blood magic? Or is it a soul technique…? Or did you invent it yourself? Can it be done more than once? Does it hurt? It looked like it hurt. Does it hurt a lot or a little?"
"You have an absolutely terrible attention span."
Matt sighed and sat back down on the floor.
The girl blinked in confusion.
"What's an attention span?"
"Doesn't matter."
"But if you tell me, I could—"
"Shut up, that's an order."
Matt looked at her directly.
The girl held his gaze.
Matt set the guns in front of him and began examining them with his hands, searching for cracks.
The girl watched him and her expression changed. Her curious face vanished and was replaced by irritation.
"Why do you still have those defective pieces of junk?"
Matt looked up.
"What did you say?"
"Those things." The girl pointed at the guns with one finger. "Why are you keeping them? I'm here now. I'm better than both of them put together. You can get rid of—"
"Don't call them that."
Matt's tone was flat and the girl closed her mouth.
Matt looked back down at the guns. The cracks in the light one were thin but deep. The heavy one had its barrel slightly warped. Both vibrated in his hands with a constant tremor.
"I made them for Noxx."
The girl tilted her head.
"Noxx?"
"Yes."
"Who's Noxx?"
Matt didn't look up. He kept running his fingers along the cracks in the light gun.
'This weapon won't answer a single one of my questions, but she never stops asking her own…' Matt thought, annoyed.
"Noxx is a girl who lives inside my head."
"Inside your head?"
"Yes."
"Like me when I was inside the bow-lance?"
"Not exactly."
"Then how?"
"It's different."
"Different how?"
"Different."
"Master, that's not an answer."
Matt pressed his lips together.
"Noxx and I can split into two bodies. What you just saw. But it only lasts ten minutes."
The girl's eyes opened with interest.
"Ten minutes? Why ten?"
"Because the technique is incomplete."
"Only ten minutes for now?"
"Yes."
"Why for now?"
Matt looked up.
"Wait."
"What?"
"I've answered a lot of your questions already."
The girl went quiet.
Matt looked at her directly.
"Your turn."
"My turn?"
"To answer mine."
The girl looked away.
"Master, it's just that I like listening to your voice…"
Matt blinked.
"What?"
"Your voice. It's very sweet. I like when you talk. I could listen to it for the rest of my life. The point is I'd rather you talk more and I just listen."
Matt stared at her.
The girl smiled.
Matt didn't smile.
The girl's smile dimmed slightly.
Matt turned his attention back to the guns. Both were still vibrating. The tremor was constant, rhythmic. Almost like they were trying to do something and couldn't quite manage it.
The girl looked at the guns. Her smile disappeared entirely and her brow furrowed.
"Be quiet."
Matt raised his head.
The girl was still looking at the guns.
"Be quiet. I'm talking to Master."
The guns vibrated harder.
"I said be quiet!"
Matt watched her.
The girl had spoken directly to the guns.
Not to the air.
To the guns.
Matt narrowed his eyes.
"You understand them?"
The girl tensed.
Her entire expression changed at once. The irritation evaporated and was replaced by something Matt recognized immediately.
Pure nervousness.
The girl looked away to one side.
"Understand? Understand what? Who? I don't understand the question, Master…"
"The guns. Do you understand what they're saying?"
The girl laughed.
It was a short, forced, completely fake laugh.
"What a funny question. Understanding those incomplete things. Ha. That would be ridiculous. Weapons don't talk. Well, I talk, but I'm special, as we established earlier. Those things are just… things. Things that could be thrown out right now!"
"You're deflecting again."
"I'm not deflecting!"
"Yes you are."
"That's an unfair analysis of my behavior, Master."
Matt looked at her steadily.
The girl started looking everywhere except at Matt.
"This place is actually quite comfortable for a nice restorative nap, isn't it?"
She spread her arms, gesturing vaguely at the room full of mechanical debris and dust.
"Look how… how spacious. And the temperature. So pleasant. We could rest for a bit. You look tired, Master. You should sleep. I can keep watch. I don't need to sleep. I think. Actually I don't know if I need to sleep. Do ego weapons sleep? That's an interesting question we could explore another time, preferably when you're not looking at me with that face that—"
Matt moved.
The girl had no time to react.
Matt dropped the guns on the floor and leaned forward, planting one hand on the stone beside her head and the other on the other side.
The girl was trapped between his arms, her back against the cold floor and Matt's face directly above hers.
The girl's eyes flew open to their widest. Her red eye and her blue eye both shone with surprise.
"M-Master?"
Her voice trembled.
"What… what are you doing?"
Matt looked down at her with an annoyed expression.
"If you don't start answering my questions…"
The girl swallowed.
Matt brought his face a little closer.
"I'm going to break the soul bond with you. Right now."
