Chapter 34 - The Ex System
* Julius Dreisig & Zeus X Crona - Invisible *
***
"FAKE! PLEASE GIVE ME MY FAKE LIFE BACK!" Raven yelled, before anyone else could comment again.
"..."
"Err... you could reuse the runestone?" questioned Camilla before a long pause.
"Eh? I can?"
"Pretty sure I said it wasn't a one time use thingy, no?"
"Uh... maybe?"
"By the way, what happened to your robotic voice and cold personality?" she said as her smile twitched. What she remembered of the girl that saved her life was shattered into pieces long ago by the girl's current attitude.
'Not that I like to be treated roughly...' she thought to herself as blood rushed to her cheeks.
"Robotic... what?" Raven asked making sure she heard the question right. After all, she was by no means a robot, nor did she even remember interacting with this S ranker before. 'How come an S ranker is treating me, a D ranker, and the others so kindly?' she thought to herself.
Telling the rest of the group what she remembers of the past events, they all frowned. Each for their own reasons of course.
"Wait, you don't remember Camilla at all?" Maria frowned as Raven shook her head.
Noticing the glares on her, she raised her hands in surrender with a surprises look on her face. "I f*cking swear I'm not a monster, neither am I trying to harm you in any way! Heck, ask the damn drone!"
"... for all we know, you could be the one that brought the drones. And who knows, maybe you're after Raven's runestone? You did say it's indeed a legendary tier item."
"Maria..." to say that Camilla was offended, would be a statement. She felt worse than being betrayed.
Noticing that, Raven stood up while raising a hand to prevent Maya from stopping her.
Looking at the clothes on the ground, she chose Maria's jacket as it was enough to cover her upper body and down just a little bit under her thighs. Unfortunately, her soccer uniform was too big for her now, even though she as Draven didn't have a big build.
Although she was moving slowly, it still hurt as the others could tell by her pained groan. "Ouch.. ouch.. ouchouchouch DAMN IT OUCH!"
Even though she screamed the last part, coming out for her tiny body and with that melodic voice of hers, it made the others chuckle, helping in breaking the tension in the air.
"Oh glad you're having the fun of your lives!" she said as they continued to chuckle. Even though they felt bad for it, none stopped.
Putting a hand over her jacket to make it a tighter fit, and another above Maria's head, she patted her weakly as her face twitched in pain. "Maria, I'm the cold sadistic assassin, please don't let my bad habits rub off onto you." she said with a smile.
"..."
""HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"" everyone burst out laughing hard.
*sigh* Joey, who was sitting by the entrance of the cave, could hear their laughs and only sigh in disappointment as he was thrown outside to be a guard dog.
"..." Raven didn't understand why they laughed as she was serious. She was going to let the others that it couldn't have been Camilla who made the drones as Raven could 'feel' that they were an extension of her body, in a way.
Looking down over her tiny body and her small hand that extended over the huge Maria, in comparison to her, she understood what was happening. 'The scene must be really funny, from their perspective that is. I'm really starting to feel bad for myself here.' she thought as she shrugged away their laughter.
Waiting for them to stop laughing and wipe the tears out of their eyes, she spoke again.
"Ok, so-"
""HAHAHAHA!!""
"..." *sigh* Raven sighed as she tried to ignore them for now and try to check the changes in her body.
'No, not those changes!' she thought as her face turned beet red. To say she wasn't curious about her 'new' added parts was a big fat lie, as she was a boy before, but that only made matters way worse. 'Not now at least, damn it hormones please f*ck off!' she thought feeling dizzy from the blood rushing to her brain.
Shaking her head, she closed her eyes as she sat down on the cold floor. Of course, she made sure that the jacket covered Draven's boxers as they were rather embarrassing all of a sudden.
Slowly breathing in and out to calm herself a little bit, she realised that now her Energy Perception and Energy Control are slightly better than before.
However, the change in her energy colour surprised her for a second, before remembering that she's basically transformed into a different body. Unlike before, her aura was now majestic gold, rather than dark red.
Smiling to herself, she opened her eyes and wished for the azure ring to appear.
Seeing that the girl's golden ireses were surrounded by glowing azure rings made the girl's choke on their laughter as they stopped to inspect what she's doing.
Raven on the other hand, had the veins around her eyes pop from the tension of the mana gathered in there, as she wasn't nearly as strong as she was in the trial.
As a result, she could only sustain the Azure rings for a few seconds.
'Well, that's a f*cking ripoff!' she screamed in her mind. 'test number one... half a*sed success I guess.'
'ok, on to number two,' she thought as she opened her palms. The familiar metallic silver goo surged out.
Forming an almost liquid ball of nanobots, she realised that it's not as demanding as the azure ring. 'but then again I haven't built anything with it yet so I can't be so sure...'
'Alright let's try a dagger first,' and with that she imagined the formation of the same dagger she built in her trial.
Power of will wasn't enough as she had to fuel it with her own energy, and to be fair, the nanobots were greedy. She formed the dagger after a minute nonetheless.
After a quick inspection, she retracted her energy and the nanobots crumbled back to it's semi liquid form.
'Hm, so I have to keep fueling them nonstop? Useless...' she thought to herself, even though the girls' expression was that of surprise as they didn't image someone to be able to build anything, let alone a weapon, purely out of their own energy. Camilla wasn't impressed though, she's seen the girl do many 'wonders' after all, and this wasn't that special.
"Yo, can I check the gun for a sec, please?" Raven asked.
"Ah sure, here." said Maria as she passed the gun to her.
Looking at the gun in her hands she couldn't help but widen her eyes in surprise. 'Heck, I made this while I was unconscious? Wait a second, the f*cking drones! How did I make them?'
Camilla noticed Raven's gaze at the gun, then at the drone, and realised what she was thinking.
"The bracelets too," she said to Raven who immediately looked at her wrist.
'Well, I should probably get some sleep, I might wake up and find out that I've built a freaking spaceship...' she thought to herself as she inspected the bracelet.
All of a sudden, her expression got serious as she thought about how to proceed from there.
Pulsing energy through her eyes and activating her azure rings, she could instantly see every small detail of the bracelet.
"Oh..." was all she muttered as a toothy grin crept up her face. The girls couldn't help but tilt their heads and wonder what made little kid in front of them that happy.
However, before she could try to imitate what she saw, she had a rather strange feeling. 'Why do I feel like the nanobots are alive and... trying to talk to me?'
Activating her azure rings and pulsing and concentrating her majestic golden energy into them, she could already feel the tension as her veins popped even harder, making the others twitch at the sight.
Her bad state didn't make things easier either since she was basically borrowing what she could from the world energy, with hers being almost depleted. Soon, her body would reach its limits.
Maya wanted to interfere and stop her but Maria's extended hand stopped her as she shook her head.
'I can only do this for a little less than 10 seconds, I think...' Raven though to herself.
Producing a single silver nanobot that wasn't by any means visible to anyone or anything but her glowing eyes, she opened her mouth in surprise before quickly closing it.
What she saw wasn't what she expected. The nanobots didn't have the normal appearance of a spider, like they should usually have. But rather, they had a body similar to hers, from what she could tell anyway since even her rings weren't microscopes.
'The reason I thought they were alive is because they kept nagging on me to feed them my energy, that's why I thought they were greedy. But... what if I feed this one only?' thinking that, she let her energy surge through her nanoRaven, literally.
All of a sudden, the nanoRaven could be seen trying to get bigger... that is until it disappeared in a golden nano explosion. 'Huh? Where did I go wrong?'
Even though that was a failure, the feeling she had before was growing by the second. 'They want to interact with me!' she thought in surprise.
All the while, the girls were staring at her like she's gone mad. Yet, none interrupted.
Experimenting some more, and some on top of that even, had proven useless. 'I can't do sh*t like this...' she thought to herself while massaging her eyes as they felt like they were on fire. Constant activating and deactivation of the azure rings, especially in her condition, had proven rather challenging.
As she was about to give up, one nanoRaven disconnected from her bracelet and jumped up midair.
Staring at her nano figure, Raven could see that unlike the others, this had void black glowing eyes, much like what she'd imagine a demon to have, yet she sensed a bit of familiarity.
Trying to pulse a small amount of mana through her, she saw her turn all black before disappearing. 'Well, f*ck!' she thought. 'I guess I'll have to try this some other time as I seriously need a f*cking nap! Maybe even take a sho-'
Cutting her train of thought, a robotic voice beamed in her head,
[Gathering mana...]
"Eh..?" Muttered Raven with a confused expression over her face.
[Activation of the Ex System: in progress.]