Mushi:Vol6 Ragnarok 05

Ragnarok 05: Production-oriented Loner

She was born amidst an ocean of blood. In an endless, desolate plain.

A shadow suddenly twitched in a battlefield littered with corpses.

“Eternal Cycle… Initiation, normal.”

The girl wore a sharp, clown-like hat. She wore a frock similar to a Christian priest. Her hair was golden like the sunlight, and her eyes were those of a Mushi. As for her name – she didn’t have a name yet.

“The sixth reboot, start.”

Her body had become a void.

Her heart gradually became empty.

She couldn’t analyze her memories, personality, or individuality. She was alone.

“Why?”

She felt a wetness was silently dripping down her cheeks. The nameless girl shook her head.

“Is this… crying?”

She was the ravished Queen of Insects.

The memories of this sixth life would immediately disappear and decay, as if they were foams upon the ocean waves.

She was born on a street of death.

Nameless corpses were being continuously thrown on the ground.

Did they die because of disease or hunger? Why were people getting killed? She could not understand any of it.

“Eternal Cycle… Initiation, normal.”

The girl wore a sharp, clown-like hat. She wore a frock similar to a Christian priest. Her hair was golden like the sunlight, and her eyes were those of a Mushi. As for her name – she didn’t have a name yet.

“The seventeenth reboot, start.”

She began at a silent, empty place, and started to march forward without a destination.

The ‘selves’ that she had lived as had all pitifully died, like the bones scattered upon this path.

But why did she not die?

Why would she return to life even after she had died?

Why was it her fate to bear this tale of continuous re-initiation, this endless anguish of hell?

She began to think about her life.

She started to think about her duty and her personality traits.

This accidental thought was recorded in the depths of her soul as a very very precious treasure.

She was born in a country of hatred.

Everyone had red, bloodshot eyes.

People were being reduced to animals amongst poverty, warfare, and all the other problems they had no power over.

“Eternal Cycle. Ini… tiation, normal.”

People crowded together as they ran, pushing and shoving the other frenzied bodies around them. Powerless, she was shoved around in the crowd. These people paid no attention to her. They swore profanely as they kept running, as if they were a pack of buffaloes driven to madness with rage.

This was a country where a revolution or some other movement was happening. She had no idea whether it was the Jacobin Club or another political party that held power. She only felt the abnormal heat and the stench of blood filling the air around her. For someone who hadn’t fully grasped the idea of emotions, it was particularly terrifying.

“The forty-second reboot, start.”

Lying face-up in the mud, she muttered out of pure instinct.

“Are you alright?”

There was a soft and very gentle sound.

She had kept reincarnating, and therefore had hardly spoken to anyone. She was confused and looked at that person with reservation.

It was a man. He was startlingly tall and had shoulder length black hair. He was dressed as a priest, but he had the eyes of wolves.

“Seriously. What a great commotion. They even pushed a fellow member of the clergy into the mud. A country like this won’t last. You too. Are you just going to allow others to push you over, step on you, or even kill you? Come on… hurry up and escape before these rioters notice us. These agitated people were fighting everyone else. If they found us, they’ll definitely beat us into an unrecognizable pulp.”

He took her hand and quickly leapt forward as he said those terrifying words. Perhaps he had mistaken the girl as a member of a religious order due to her dress – then, was he a priest himself? He was very friendly and easy-going. Comparing to the others, he seemed completely out of this world.

The man in front of her had the eyes of wolves. Though he had seen his share of the world, he still appeared unspoiled by it.

“… who are you?”

She had no interest in the man, but she uttered this question at him.

Who was this person?

What was he?

“I’m your friend.”

He laughed softly as he replied, as if she was a little fool.

“I am the devil, little lady who calls herself the Beast of the End.”

He called himself Zekiguchi Nashinori.

It was originally a name he borrowed from someone living in a distant, Oriental country. It seemed even he himself had forgotten his own name. As a long-lived immortal, he had wandered all over the world. The nameless girl embarked on a journey with him, a journey that was no longer lonely.

He taught her many things.

He taught her knowledge of places all over the world. He taught her the daily lives of people living there and their various traditions and cultures.

She was as pure as the air itself. Up until now, she had seen nothing, heard of nothing, and recorded nothing. She was feeling the world that Zekiguchi Nashinori narrated to her directly.

She was born amidst an ocean of blood.

She was born on a street of death.

She was born in a country of hatred.

Her life had repeated dozens of times like this. However, what had she experienced? Was she wandering aimlessly like a simple wraith? Somehow, that felt rather lonely.

She decided to continue to study.

Her goal was to accumulate memories.

She will continue to seek all knowledge and pass them on to others.

That must be her ‘duty’.

Zekiguchi Nashinori had taught her many things concerning the Greater Fragments. She was called God Mushi Emperor, and her original ‘duty’was the Beast of the End.

The manifestation of the End that will one day destroy the world.

However, to spend the maddening, endless life that repeated itself over and over before the End arrived, she volunteered to assist the other Greater Fragments. She regarded collecting and providing intel as her duty. If this made her useful, then she was needed by others. To be needed by others was an incomparable joy to her.

She perfected a specific ability to better gather intel and cope with her eternal cycle. She split her body into 666 parts using endless manipulation and scattered them all over the world.

These split selves collected experiences on their own, creating bodies and personalities and forms completely different from herself. She mastered a wonderous skill. She could copy someone else’s body by consuming their brain. No matter who her split selves attacked, they were able to take on the victim’s form and keep living as that person.

Rather than copies, it was more appropriate to say all her split selves became a part of her ultimate self. Though she would eventually become the only one left, her separated selves would eventually become existences completely different to her and meet her again. She felt happy even just thinking about that. They would chat with her endlessly. They would talk all night until the sky turned bright. Then, she would surely live happily ever after.

She would become the source of all separations, the Queen of Insects.

She became the root and originator of all her ‘children’, her Mushi, the progenitor Queen of Insects.

The nameless girl might have felt a bit lonely.

She wanted someone to remember her, even if they were her own copies. Even if her existence was as invisible as the air, she wanted to have at least a tiny bit of purpose. She wanted to meet someone, to have someone call her name, to have someone prove that she indeed existed. That was the only thing she wanted. That was all because she was lonely.

She couldn’t forget.

She always remembered…

Someone. Someone.

She existed here. She was living here -

The name ‘Broken Hair’ was given to her by the man with wolf-like eyes.

Zekiguchi had suddenly disappeared at the end of the journey. However, that name – and his reasons behind giving her that name – were left within her memories.

Things unknown to her were gradually growing.

Things unknown to her were gradually moving.

Things unknown to her were gradually crumbling.

That was who she was as Broken Hair.

…

Someone annoying was here. Nagumo Ame couldn’t help but frown.

She spent entire days during the university holidays playing with friends from high school till they separated after lunch. The other girls would go to part-time jobs or do other things. Ame-chan didn’t have any of these in her schedule, so she suddenly became very bored.

That was when Ame-chan usually went to the café she liked.

Ame-chan was not very good at dealing with other people. When she was in high school, there was a café on the road to school that she visited almost every day. When she felt weaker and weaker as she walked on the road to school, she might go past that shop. After school, when she felt exhausted but didn’t want to go home, she would also push open the door of that shop. Even during an off day, she would go there for no reason… the decor in the shop was not very fashionable, but Ame-wan was a regular among regulars there.

The owner of the shop was named Minazuki Natsuko, a woman that had an incredible aura around her. Even Ame-chan, who was not very good with other people, could easily talk with her. She had never said anything that might be distasteful, and always listened to Ame-chan’s awkward conversations with a smile on her face. That was the kind of person she was. Ame-chan liked Natsuko even though there was a large age gap between them and they were not similar people. However, if it weren’t for Natsuko, Ame-chan would definitely have become depressed due to some setbacks she encountered somewhere along her life.

Even though she was a university student now, Ame-chan still had the same personality as before. Normal people might be close to their childhood friends, but Ame-chan had been visiting this café without a break. This was the place that made her more secure than anywhere else on earth.

But even so, there were exceptions to this security.

“Ah, isn’t this Ame-chan?”

Sitting at the bar opposite Natsuko in the dimly lit café called Indian Bar was a girl talking casually at Ame.

She had incredibly dark long hair. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence and her eyebrows were on the thick side.

“We meet all the time, but we don’t seem to be good friends. I’m just a bit lonely.”

“… Why are you here?”

Ame-chan mumbled. She stomped without meaning to and walked up to the girl to sit next to her. The shop’s owner, Minazuki Natsuko, was talking softly, but she nodded and greeted Ame with the same voice as always.

“Welcome.”

She then quickly poured a latte, while Ame-chan looked sideways at the person next to her as if they were nemesis over a few lifetimes.

Her name was Katou Katsumi, Ame-chan’s classmate in high school. She was also a regular customer of Indian Bar and they met all the time. However, she was never as repulsed by interacting with other people as Ame-chan was, and she never treated this place as a place to escape human relationships. She only felt it was easier to calm down in this shop, and she came regularly because she liked the décor and atmosphere here. She had never paid particular attention to Ame-chan’s existence and only looked at her a few times because they were of similar ages.

“Why… would you come here?”

Katsumi pointed at the concentrated coffee in her hands and retained a soft smile on her face.

“I should ask you that question. It’s a weekend, but you’ve been here since morning. Are you having lots of free time on your hands?”

“I don’t want you to le-le-lecture me! You are the one who seems to be coming here all the time these days.”

Ame waved her hand and began to play with her hair with annoyance. This person seemed to come here even more frequently than me. Was she this kind of a person? Ame-chan snorted. She didn’t like Katsumi at all. Even so, the café wasn’t the only place they could meet. They might have become acquaintances over time and start to talk normally. However, it still feels annoying.

Katsumi gazed at her with a happy smile.

“Why is Ame-chan so aloof? I’m a bit lonely too, and I rather like Ame-chan. I want to be friends with you.”

“Huh? You’ve gotta be joking. I don’t want that.”

“But I feel we shouldn’t be upset when we meet in a café. Why don’t we form a group of three with Natsuko at the center? I want to meet at a place better than this café…”

Ame-chan thought “you shouldn’t get rid of the ‘san’ honorific when addressing Natsuko-san”! Her coffee was gradually going cold. Is this supposed to be fun? Katsumi started to laugh. She’s so annoying. I really want to kill her.

Ame-chan looked sideways at Katsumi with a challenging gaze, then smiled for the first time today.

“Then… what? Should we do that again? I won’t lose.”

“Mmm, I’ll accept it. If I get defeated again… well, I’m getting used to it, so I won’t lose to Ame-chan… probably. In that case, the person who ate the most of that thing would be the winner.”

This conversation was hard to understand. In this quiet atmosphere, Katsumi gave a declaration of war.

“If I win, then you need to be my friend, Ame-chan.”

“Hmph.”

Natsuko smiled as she listened to the conversation from the side. Ame-chan and Katsumi then simultaneously called out:

“A chocolate sundae please!”

…

Mmm, their stupid but endearing battle had nothing to do with the main plot of this story.

No matter who won there, the world would not change.

The root of all the problems here wasn’t the minor competition taking place between the two girls sitting at the bar – it was between the inhuman beings sitting in a private room and planning out how to destroy the world.

“Woah… it’s so sweet, so sweet. I had gathered so much experience and my tongue should have tasted countless substances – but I want to say this is the first time I had tasted something so thick and sweet. It’s so, so, sooooo disgusting… Ahhh, I can’t take this anymore… Urk, I’m done. I’m done.”

“… the Beast of the End shouldn’t lose to chocolate sundae.”

“Hehe! Hehehe! So useless! And you call yourself the companion of the Demonic God of Greed?”

What a strange group of three.

No. even though there were three voices, there were only two people sitting here. The two of them were continuously devouring the famous dessert of this café, the extra-large chocolate sundae. No one could tell if it was delicious or disgusting. One of the two was a girl who wore a sharp hat and a frock and kept writhing in her seat. Another was a woman with a mask who wore purple all over and seemed a bit unresponsive. The last voice came from the golden spear leaning next to the first girl. Fortunately, only the shop owner noted these two competitive people, and she did not respond to this small ruckus.

The girl’s lips were already painted brown from the chocolate. She clutched her spoon tightly and glared at the spear next to her with a terrifying gaze. There were almost no emotions in her eyes, but it was definitely a gaze full of hatred.

“… I don’t want to be compared with someone who can eat fire, lightning, or even buildings. I am probably physically the weakest out of the Greater Fragments. Also, since I lack life experience, I even lost the sense of taste. I am only a weak and slender little girl. I really can’t bear this freezing chocolate sundae anymore.”

“Even those two mortal girls over there are eating the sundae in large spoonful…”

The magician Moon Rainbow, dressed all in purple, mumbled. She put her mask on the table and drank a mouthful of coffee and held it in her mouth. She looked very out of it.

“What’s the problem here? If that spear always whined like that, it’d definitely be considered abnormal. Does it have any special abilities? Or is it the medium and tool to channel the power of God Mushi Emperor?”

The Greater Fragments usually used tools to regulate how fast they spent the power of their Fragments. Like the water taps on piping, they used these tools to freely manage and halt their powers. There were a few Greater Fragments like this. Saibara Mina, Sterlization Disinfection, had spray cans. Saibara Mitsuki, Unpleasant Counter-Current, had gloves. Nikuyama Kajiri, Single Room, had a crucifix-shaped dagger. Sakaki Joker, Tearsong, had bells at the ends of her hair. Those all conducted such functions.

“No…”

The girl instantly creased here face together. She gulped down some water to slightly diluted the sweetness in her mouth. Then, Broken Hair, the girl wearing the pointy hat, said evenly:

“Like you, my power is also practically overflowing. There was no need for a specific tool to restrain myself. Compared to the others, my abilities consume very little of my Fragment’s power… you are the same, no?”

“It could be said my abilities do not consume the power of the Fragment at all.”

Japanese coffee seemed to be rather delicious. Moon held it in her mouth and didn’t want to swallow, and she answered with a mumble.

“The Weakest’s powers are modification and alteration of the flesh. Apart from changing my own body, I can also change other people’s body. I change a body using the Fragment or soul residing within it as the medium, affecting the body from the inside… do you understand? As the power of the Fragment is constrained within the body, this action barely consume my own Fragment at all.”

The abilities of the Fragments don’t act like electronics, where they need to consume a certain amount of energy to conduct the required function. It was something much vaguer. Even so, there were some rules surrounding it.

“Of course, when I am changing my own or my opponent’s body, some power will certainly be consumed. However, compared with the huge amount of power that Disinfection Sterilization or Tearsong can let out in one burst, it is almost nothing.”

“I see. That would be overlap… however, we mustn’t let our guard down. The Fragments are our lifelines. There are far fewer of us compared to our enemies, therefore we must reduce energy consumption as much as we can.”

Broken Hair, who was almost crying from the sweetness, finally calmed down after pouring the coffee in her cup down her throat. Moon started to think about unrelated stuff, like how this shop must have prepared a lot of drinks if eating the chocolate sundae required drinking so much liquid.

She took out a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and pulled the ash tray on the table closer to her.

“The topic went off tangent quite a bit. So, what exactly is the purpose of that spear? If it’s not a tool to channel your ability –”

“Mmm…”

As if she really liked the bitter taste, Broken Hair sipped her coffee indulgently and tilted her head.

“I am not quite sure on that, either.”

Moon’s shoulders sagged. She was genuinely surprised and mumbled:

“… You don’t know what it is, and yet you are strolling around with it?”

“I don’t understand what you mean. This thing is like a monster. It is also very intelligent and won’t disappear into the air like other monsters…”

Broken Hair narrowed her eyes and said in a low voice that was only half joking.

“Mmm. It is rather easy to use it as a tool. That’s why I’ve brought it with me all this time.”

“That makes me sound very pitiful…”

“Men are just tools! Address me as queen! I am the Queen of Mushi!”

“So annoying… right, I don’t know your role yet…”

Moon smoked non-stop as she assessed the spear that was emitting an animalistic stench. No matter how she looked at it, she felt spite and unease swell up within her. It was a bizarre spear that made her chest tighten up just from looking at it.

“Gaga?”

The spear also realized someone was looking at it. It reacted quickly and yelled loudly:

“Gaga! Gagaga! What? What, The Weakest!? What do you want from me? You want to know things about me? Gaga! Gagaga! It’s better if you don’t know! Everyone who gets involved with me will have bad luck, especially you Greater Fragments!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you… you seem to understand this Fragment business a lot?”

When they were discussing things in the café before, Broken Hair had mostly been the one to speak while occasionally asking for the spear’s opinion. The spear didn’t seem to be familiar with Broken Hair and couldn’t grasp the situation very accurately. However, he knew many important facts about this world. There didn’t seem to be anything he didn’t know… therefore Broken Hair often acted according to his advice. That was how their relationship looked like.

What did this spear know?

Why was Broken Hair listening to him?

“The name of this spear is the demon god of greed, Fenrir.”

Just as Moon started to speculate, Broken Hair interrupted her and started to explain:

“This is a spear that cannot physically move on its own… however, for some reason, anyone who touches this thing’s blade edge will have their existence carved out.”

“Carved out?”

Moon thought over these words and couldn’t understand it. However, Broken Hair didn’t seem to want to continue explaining. She casually diverted the topic.

“Mmm, I feel this spear has a great significance in our plan. That was why I already brought him with me. It’s not a weapon that just enhances my ability to fight. Besides, it knows about the previous world.”

“Previous world?”

This was such a bizarre term. Previous world, destiny, God… all these made no sense. Moon gradually felt like she didn’t want to listen anymore, but Broken Hair was very serious.

“The world was once destroyed.”

It was hard to believe this was the same person as the one going mad from the chocolate sundae just a few minutes ago. Her very solemn expression was fitting as one of the seven Greater Fragments.

“It was originally my responsibility to completely destroy the world. I am the lifespan of the entire world, because I am the Beast of the End. However, God committed suicide by ingesting poison. God didn’t wait for me to perform my role and decided to destroy the world Herself – I will not allow that to happen.”

This was the first time that Broken Hair clearly showed her emotions.

There was no spite, not even hatred, but seemingly only simple unwillingness…

“I endured my life day after day because it was the duty that I am destined to bear. I kept reincarnating, kept reincarnating kept reincarnating kept reincarnating in this maddening eternity! And yet, God forgot all the pains I had to suffer through and destroyed the world on Her own as a whim! I will never allow a God like that to exit! If the poison killed Her, then for what purpose had I existed for so long?! For what purpose…”

Broken Hair cursed in a low voice as flames burned in her dark red eyes.

She looked like a beast.

“I don’t need such a weak, stupid, pitiful God! I don’t need a God who completely forgot about me and ravaged my existence! Instead of bearing that pain and destroying a similar world in a distant future… I’ll rather completely deny this God right here!”

Broken Hair stood up in her excitement. Unable to control herself, her cape flattered in her rage. She grasped the spear tightly. The Beast of the End began to roar.

“God! You despised your own existence and looked down upon all the lives in this world when you ingested your poison! You have sinned gravely! You have no more right to be God! I… I will judge you! And I will complete the duty of God Mushi Emperor, and destroy this world!”

Her eyebrows furrowed sternly… then she put her hand into her robe and felt around anxiously.

“Hmm? Contact from my split bodies… Hi. Yes. I’m doing well… Yes, hello?”

“A cellphone?!”

Yes, a cellphone. The six hundred and sixty-six people that the Greater Fragment God Mushi Emperor had separated into were all Broken Hair’s split bodies. They had no power of telepathy between them, so it made sense for them to communicate in this way. However, Moon was still not impressed and felt it was tasteless for a Greater Fragment to communicate with cellphones.

After chatting for a bit, Broken Hair put her phone back into her pockets and said while looking at Moon:

“I’m sorry, there is no time to gradually explain… We need to assault the World Institute and forcibly take God before our enemies finished collecting their forces. We will need to rely on your power… The Weakest, the Devil, kill all my enemies before me! There is no need for consideration or hesitation. This is our duty! God, if you wish to stop the Devil and the Beast of the End, then come and try stopping us!”

Broken Hair turned around with a flourish, then reached into her coat. Then, a look of confusion surfaced on her face. After a brief silence, she looked at Moon with an expression close to crying.

“Um… Err, I’m very sorry. I just gave you my entire fortune – I don’t have any more money. Could you please pay for the drinks I ordered? Um … I’m so sorry about this.”

“…”

Is she going to be okay?

Return to Ragnarok 04: 29 year old bachelorette, bored every day

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Forward to Ragnarok 06: Final God Mode: 3000 Worlds