Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)

731. The Other Outcome

“Paradise? This world has it too?” The Taleor gentle voice spoke with scorn. It was barely above a whisper. “I see. I think this one has a problem with their head. Let me do the deed.”

“I need him alive for the next hour unfortunately.” Frost said, surprised that this one could also speak. “So you’re another me.”

“Am I, or am I just an offshoot tale of your collective psyche? Just one ray of light branching out from the rest?” Her words were laced with hatred and tiredness, but in a way, Frost could tell that she did not mean to speak this way.

It was simply her way of expressing herself. Much like the Corrupted and Sinder, it was clear that she was not to be taken at face value.

Finally, rather than the Red Baron answering Frost – the Taleor answered with what she knew.

“The Doctor was just another caretaker of us. Like mother Lailah. But because I said his name next to Lailah’s means how much he meant to us. The other white-haired one, and the black-haired ladies were close… but nothing like him. There were many who experimented on us in that facility, but he was the one who showed us that humans were capable of empathy. His name, his title, his role – I don’t remember it. But I know what he looked like, and I know what he did for us.”

The gaps in knowledge were still gaping, but they at least had some semblance of a timeline now.

“He was likely an Apostle of Michaela then. Which one, however, is not known.” Nav said.

But we at least gained something unexpectedly huge here. The last thing I was expecting was for an Alter Frost to start answering us. This is good. That means future Alter Frost’s might be a key to things not even the Impuritas know of.

“Precisely.”

Frost returned her gaze to the Red Baron. She placed a hand on top of his head and dragged him by the hair. They were going up, but there were no staircases in sight. The only way up was to use the Red Baron as a canon ball again; a thought that caused him to shudder.

“Isn’t it futile?” He asked beneath his breath, trying to clasp Frost’s wrist. He could never dream of breaking away.

“In what way?” Frost asked. “Me digging through your memories? Saving this Empire? Killing you here and now? What makes it so futile to you? Don’t tell me that you’re going to start begging for your life like the rest of them.”

Suddenly, his pained, quivering lips curved into a smile.

“A hundred… no, a thousand – two thousand years from now, do you think what you’ve accomplished for this world will be remembered? It’ll be erased clean from history. Your story will not even exist as a blip. If you’re lucky, people may see you as but one deity of hundreds. Nothing lasts forever. This life that I have… is the only one I’ll ever get.”

“So are the ones you torment. If you truly believe in that, then why do you take theirs?”

Frost’s voice became increasingly dominant. At some point, the Red Baron could no longer hear his own thoughts. Frost’s words entered his mind as she imposed her will upon him.

“Because this is mine. It was my right all along, as a sovereign. Our right…”

“Thousands of years from now is how you rationalize this? For someone with a nihilistic outlook, you’re still clinging onto what you have now.”

“It’s absurdist, not nihilistic in the greatest sense. We have reasons to exist in own right. But the weak cannot decide this. How can we progress as a species when we are constantly being held back? Only we – the strong – can make those choice?”

“It doesn’t make sense. You say that people have their reason to exist, but they also are not allowed to. Fallacy after fallacy, and you still can’t see anything past the surface level. If that’s all that you believe in, then I can do the same thing to you. I know what you are, and who you are from this alone.”

“In that sense, I am allowed to revoke your right to exist.”

“Hah… Hahaha... isn’t that how this must be?” He rationalized. “When you think of people as more than just ‘people’ then there are things we cannot do each other. People lose meaning when they are beneath you. That is how things are. That is how we all began… But strength, titles, namesakes…”

Frost wanted to bring him close to Corruption. To make him vulnerable so that she could openly pry into his past. In this dark world of nothingness but the ringing of ghostly bells, the Red Baron began to twitch his head.

“… That ticking…? Like in G-Z7…”

“ELYSIA!?” Frost was instantly pushed away by an invisible force. Once Elysia had gripped into the heart of a victim, then it was impossible to interfere.

Frost prepared for an inevitable battle against a Corrupted Color. But she did not stop imposing her will upon him in hopes of regaining control.

“What is it that you’re after? Glory? Fame? If they’re all insignificant to you, then what is the purpose of it?”

//////// < WARNING > ////////

< THE RED BARON’S CORRUPTION EVEN HAS BEGUN >

“No. That voice is different. I am… the Red Baron.” It was unclear who he was replying to.

His form began to shift and mold into the shape of his inner self. His armor bulged greatly with an incredible thickness. The dents hollowed out, revealing the interior of his being. Organs swelled. They seemed to want to escape. But the longer he remained suspended in his Corruption Event, the more unstable they became.

< “What is it that I’m after? What is that I lack? Titles and namesakes… the clothing we wear is what matters the most. It is our status. A king wears a crown, doesn’t he? His concubines must be the most beautiful. The peasants must be diseased…” >

His Corruption was unstoppable.

However, something else happened the darkness was illuminated by a red glow that permeated from his armor. The light banished the darkness of the tower, revealing papers and talismans across the vast walls, like this place was sealed to never be seen by human eyes.

< “… Therefore, I am not a king myself. I am a soverign. A baron in name and name only. As I always have believed in. That voice of yours… that ticking, will not guide me astray. But this sound of birds… it takes me to a place higher!” >

His internal body disappeared.

The armor thinned until it became skeletal-like. The front part was cut out, leaving him as nothing but a floating, hollow crimson set of red armor. His limbs were straighter than a blade, and atop his head was a crown made from flames and gold.

His featureless body was nothing like his proud, muscular self. He was, in the truest sense, a living set of clothing – a suit of armor with no depth, no history, no past.

Only glory and everlasting pride.

//////// < WARNING > ////////

< THE RED BARON HAS MANIFESTED A CORRUTPED PERSONA >

< This is not a regular Corrupted Persona! It has the same qualities as a Corrupted! Lailah is telling me that this… is the result of an Ego completely overwhelming oneself! >

“That thing… is not a Corrupted?” Frost could not believe her eyes.

She thought that reinforcing the Ego was a good thing. It had made Deiman better.

But this was just as worse as a regular Corruption born from one’s Shadow.

< To summarize, his Ego has devoured everything. You have inadvertently reinforced it. He is a Corrupted. But not in the same way that Elysia creates them >

“I am what I am now!”

He spoke coherently.

“Do you even know the weight of a sovereign’s burden, Amalgam? Our right to be what we wish? Hundreds will die namelessly, but we can be forever remembered through our actions. Violence and atrocities… are far more memorable than your false kindness!”

Not only did he speak coherently, but he also seemed to possess a consciousness.

Indeed, the Red Baron was a conscious Corrupted.