Chapter 152 Core of Dreams

“Haa… I lost my temper a little. Humans can be so annoying,” Nêmesis murmurs, running her hands over her eyes.

‘Regeneration isn’t my strong suit… or rather, this is more like molecular restructuring… which is costly, and my new eyes are burning, even more fragile than the previous ones… tsk…’ Nêmesis touches her new jaw, feeling how much more fragile the connections between the bones and nerves are.

“Even so, you showed an interesting ability.” Nêmesis looks at Nadir, who gets up off the ground with a ragged gasp, fighting through the pain and his wounds to keep fighting.

“I think Zenith is an anchor for you, though the reverse is true as well. Since you’re split in two, your power seems to have been divided pretty evenly, too. If you’d had all that power from the start, I’d have been forced to take you seriously.”

“It shows the potential of the monster you two could have become. Humanity has always feared what exists above the heavens. It’s a very ancient fear, which explains the strength of both your powers, since they were shaped by it.” She’s quite talkative and provocative as she waits for Nadir to recover.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? This girl is dying. I still see some use for you two. I can save her life, show you a new path, truths about reality that humanity has yet to see.” She amplifies Nadir’s fears as he looks at Zenith, who’s dying.

“And how would you save her?!” Nadir finally asks, the fear of losing Zenith invading his heart like a disease that spreads and quickly permeates his mind.

“I have many ways. It’s part of one of my powers. You humans don’t even know half of what I’m truly capable of. Of course, you’ll no longer be able to help humanity… yes.”

“You’ll abandon humanity completely. You’ll become traitors. Is that what you want?” The fact that Nêmesis is asking this question is almost contradictory, given the kind of offer she’s making.

“…” Nadir, with no other weapon in hand, bites his lip. Every second feels like an eternity. If it were Zenith, her refusal would be immediate, not because she doesn’t love Nadir, but because Zenith has a very rebellious mindset and hates monsters. Despite her generally unpleasant attitude, deep down, she’s an incredibly kind person.

Which is the opposite of Nadir. Outwardly, Nadir is much kinder, more accommodating, and more careful with his words, but deep down, he’s far more selfish and doesn’t care about other people as much as he cares about Zenith. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s always tried his hardest to save lives.

But he can’t place the same value on other people’s lives that Zenith does, because Zenith is all that matters to him. Living on the streets and being taken care of by Zenith made him more pragmatic.

No one besides Zenith ever helped him, so he never saw any real reason to want to help others. He only started helping because it was what Zenith wanted. Without Zenith’s influence, Nadir could be a very cold, even cruel person.

“I don’t care, as long as you can cure her!!” Nadir can tell how terrifying the fear amplification is. Normally, he wouldn’t accept, but fear speaks louder than reason.

“Cure her… it’s funny you put it that way. There is no ‘cure’ for this kind of wound. I’m not some benevolent deity. There’s a difference between saving her and curing her. I can save her, but it’ll come at a great cost to her current existence.”

“Will you accept?”

“…Fine!! Just hurry up!!” Nadir grows more nervous with every passing second, not knowing how much longer Zenith will last. Nêmesis gives him a huge smile, using one of her powers that humanity knows nothing about.

“That’s wonderful. I just need you to wait about 30 seconds…” A purple sphere appears in Nêmesis’s hand and begins to grow.

‘I’m really listening to this freak…’ Nadir puts a hand to his chest, smearing blood across his clothes as he feels how violently his heart is racing.

Light spreads through the area, tinting everything dark, but in an instant, Nêmesis freezes as she feels someone grab her around the waist.

“…!!??” She looks back and sees Zenith. Everything seems to stop, her mind racing at a level of perception that’s humanly impossible. Her mind arrives at an answer: Zenith can still move because her prosthetics barely depend on her body functioning at all.

“Ah—” Nêmesis sees the bomb she took from Zenith’s clothes now in Zenith’s hands. Her eyes widen as the bomb’s pin shoots out, the bomb having been activated without making a sound.

It detonates immediately, generating an extremely concentrated energy pulse. The metallic and mechanical parts of Nêmesis’s body are severely affected by the energy discharge, which is non-vectorial.

“ZENITH!!” Nadir screams as the power in Nêmesis’s hand expands into a sphere, covering the entire area. Then the sphere shrinks, and the three of them disappear along with a huge chunk of the surrounding area, several hundred meters across, leaving behind a perfectly symmetrical, circular crater.

…

…

…

“…Z-Zenith?!” Nadir looks at Zenith, who is perfectly fine right in front of him and seems much younger. She’s missing her prosthetics and looks at Nadir in confusion.

“What are you doing over there, silly? School’s about to start!! You’re all dirty, hahaha! Did you try to jump the wall and fall into the sand? I’m not waiting for you again.” Zenith laughs when she sees Nadir covered in sand, then runs into the school, laughing at him. Her laughter is so innocent that Nadir can only stare, barely believing what he’s hearing.

“?” Nadir is confused until he notices that he, too, looks much younger and is wearing strange clothes, though they’re covered in sand.

“W-What?”

“Tsk, looks like your little girlfriend isn’t just crazy, she’s suicidal too. That would’ve fried her body…” Nadir quickly turns to find a girl sitting on a tree branch, talking to him.

“N-Nêmesis!” He reacts by pointing his hand at her, then realizes he has no weapons. He also quickly notices that Nêmesis looks completely human, with no monstrous or metallic features, and that she’s very short, shorter than Nadir.

If not for her face, long black hair, and purple eyes, Nadir would never have recognized her.

“Explain yourself!!” he says, his voice trembling with nerves and anger.

“This is one of my powers. We’re in what I like to call the Dream Core. This is where monsters are born. This place is made up of humanity’s fears and hopes.”

“When a monster is born here, it’s like a little shadow that soon gets thrown into the human world. I can’t say whether this is another dimension or something like that. All I know is that this is the place humans ended up touching when they discovered vector energy more than 100 years ago.”

“Now, as for this place’s appearance… monsters represent fear, and buildings represent dreams and hopes. This place is a school… your dream, your hopes… this place simply assimilated your dreams. I have nothing to do with the place’s appearance or rules.”

“Everyone here except Zenith is fake. I planned to send only you two to this place, until I got blown up. That made my powers unstable. It seems I ended up here too because your suicidal little girlfriend blew herself up along with me, but I can easily leave here in about 10 years.”

“You—”

“Don’t complain. I granted your wish. That girl is alive, even though she has no memories, because that’s what you wished for. You wanted a happier Zenith, a better world, you wanted her not to have suffered.”

“THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANTED!” he screams at her at the top of his lungs, but it doesn’t intimidate her.

“I don’t care, human. You have no power here, because your dreams and hopes don’t involve powers. You can’t do anything. Just enjoy it. It’s your wish, isn’t it?”

“Here, you can give your little girlfriend a perfect life.” When Nêmesis says this indifferently, Nadir falls silent in thought.

“What was the cost?”

“Your physical existence. If either you or Zenith leaves this place, one of you will return to your original form. Your human bodies are gone. They’ve disappeared. In this place made of fear and hope, nothing real exists.” Nadir swallows hard, realizing how insane this all is.

“At first, I was going to send only Zenith to this place, which would’ve caused you to die in the real world. But because of her, you came too.”

“I don’t plan on staying in your dreams, so I’ll leave as soon as I can. Enjoy your stay here. By the way, killing yourself won’t work. You’ll come back, and you won’t age either. Zenith will realize it eventually.”

“You really are a vile son of a bitch!!” Nadir is overcome with pain, feeling that something important has been taken from him. The Zenith he knew has practically been erased, because without her memories, can he even still say she’s the same girl?

“I’m a monster. Maybe that’s my role in existence: to bring misery to everything that exists. In any case, your little girlfriend was a great hero. She protected humanity for ten whole years… long enough for her female students to grow up and become my enemies… just when I was finally about to exterminate humanity.” Nêmesis jumps down from the tree, landing on the ground.

“Urgh…” The fall twists her ankle, making her flash a sarcastic smile.

“Your dream is pathetic. A peaceful, beautiful world without powers… what a joke…” She gets up and heads toward the school gate.

“Enjoy your school life.” Seeing Nêmesis get hurt like an ordinary human ignites hatred in Nadir’s heart. He advances toward her, his hands ready to grab her by the throat and squeeze.

“Nadir!! I was joking! You weren’t supposed to take so long!!” Zenith comes running up, making Nadir stop halfway.

“Z-Zenith…”

“Come on! You’re all dirty. Ugh, we’re going to be late because of you. Come on, I’ll take you to the locker room, you big baby, getting yourself dirty like an elementary school brat.” Nadir bites his lip, seeing how Zenith retains her personality, but without the insults, that authoritative tone, or her usual sarcasm.

“…” He looks back to see Nêmesis leaving the school as if she had nothing to do with any of this. The bitter feeling Nadir experiences is indescribable, an overwhelming sense of failure.

He not only failed to protect Zenith, but even in the end, Zenith was the one who protected humanity, protected everything there was to protect.