Unlimited Fafnir:Volume 9 Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Reversed Athena

Part 1

While others were feeling a strong quake, Ariella Lu was alone in the room, looking at the screen of her portable terminal.

The rest of the girls were gathered in the living room. From behind the door, she could hear their panicking voices.

However, Ariella did not move. Looking at the terminal's screen, she sighed slightly.

With no reception here, the terminal could not perform its duties as a communications device. She could only use it to read data that had been stored beforehand.

In front of Ariella's eyes was a call history of repeated incoming calls starting from a week ago. Since the caller's identity was masked, the number was unknown and all that was recorded were the times of the calls.

Like the earlier quake, these calls were warning signs of the imminent end to everything.

Presently, the end moment was arriving.

She knew this. She already knew this.

"I was so happy."

Ariella murmured softly in apparent resignation.

To her, everyday life was something that must come to an end.

What she had lost in the beginning was an everyday life surrounded by warm family despite a lack of material wealth.

Losing their lives in a civil war, her family's souls had been gluttonously devoured by Hraesvelgr.

Without anywhere to go, Ariella had been taken in by the church she used to go to. However, instead of attending mass, she would always stare off into the sky from the bell tower.

Knowing that her parents had not been "summoned to heaven," she found prayer to be meaningless.

—What should I do for everyone?

Staring at the sky where Hraesvelgr had flown away, Ariella had asked herself countless times.

What occupied her heart was anger towards the unreasonable and hatred for Hraesvelgr.

However, it was impossible to seek revenge against a dragon unless war ended.

Even so, Ariella's ill-defined enmity did not disappear. Soon, she joined an organization of dragon-haters.

What should she do? ...She did not know, but she definitely wanted companions.

People who shared the same feelings as her.

That wish for companions was soon fulfilled.

However, the organization did not have the power to fight dragons. All it did was come into conflict with dragon-worshipng cults and oppose mafias that secretly exploited Ds. They also spread word about the dangers of the Ds who were campaigning for the restoration of their human rights—In other words, what the organization fought were humans.

But inside an organization whose solidarity was rock solid, founded upon similar pasts and ideology between members, Ariella did not feel lonely there.

There were many boys and girls her age or younger. Ariella felt she had found her new family there. Furthermore, it was during training when Ariella became aware of her previously undiscovered talents.

—I'm suited to fighting. Too suited.

Realizing this aspect of hers, she trained and controlled it. She now had a role to play within the organization.

It felt unimaginably fulfilling to have something that needed to be done and was within one's own power. She was also glad that playing an active role would lead the younger children to treat her as a hero.

But these days suddenly came to an end.

The power to generate dark matter, regarded with enmity by the organization, had awakened in Ariella herself.

A cursed destiny. She hated her own body and power.

Children, formerly close to her, would throw rocks at her. She understood that her everyday life at the organization was ruined.

When the organization began to discuss her execution, she accepted everything in resignation.

But in the end, the cash-strapped organization sold Ariella off through underground channels. Money had won out over emotions and righteous cause.

She had been sold to a research lab in Japan. Told that it was a man who engaged in illegal research with Ds, Ariella prepared herself to be dissected to pieces.

But contrary to what Ariella expected, this researcher—Miyazawa Kenya—treated Ariella courteously. Beyond examining her, he only asked her to take care of his daughter Ren.

"Ren was like an unfriendly cat back then..."

Thinking back to those times, Ariella immersed herself in nostalgia.

She did not respond no matter how Ariella tried to strike up conversation, putting Ariella at an impasse. But then she spontaneously started calling Ariella "Onee-chan" and admiring her.

The days from then on had been very happy, never want for lack of money for the first time in her life.

However, this life did not last long. Due to Ren becoming a D too, the distorted family life ended.

No—It was Ariella herself who had ended it herself.

To prevent Ren from becoming the subject of experiments, she sought the police for protection and blew the whistle on Miyazawa Kenya.

Then the next part of her everyday life had lasted until now.

Days spent with fellow Ds at Midgard.

"I was so happy..."

Saying the same words again as the beginning, Ariella stood up.

Noticing the earlier shaking, Ren and him were going to return.

There should have been enough time for talking—Ren would have conveyed her feelings to him sufficiently.

This was the only things she was honestly worried about.

To spend her remaining time with her "younger sister," Ariella slowly walked to the living room.

Part 3

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