Volume 8 - CH 134.1

Helper

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

Xü Beijin is in shock.

He’s just heard an unimaginable story from NE’s description.

He even hears NE repeating a phrase repeatedly by his ears, making him feel dizzy, and then, making a violent wrath fill his chest.

He closes his eyes for a moment, and suddenly says, “shut up…”

NE does so, and comments, “you’re being impolite,” then it seems to wonder curiously, “is this what it means to be human?”

Xü Beijin says coldly, “you’re just an AI, NE. It’s none of your business.”

Strange symbols flash through NE’s eyes, seemingly analysing what Xü Beijin means, perhaps.

Not that Xü Beijin is interested, as he’s simply irritated.

Regarding Lin Qin’s identity.

And, the Fy’ecas.

When the phrase pops into his ears, he’d swear it feels like he’s dreaming.

He… He thought he’d forgotten entirely, despite the many times the phrase has threatened to exit his mouth angrily, hatefully, coldly, but he would always come to swallow it back in by habit.

He thought he would never come to speak of the species’ name anymore.

All these years he has come to know very well his own powerlessness. Being used to apathy when the terms come up, as if he doesn’t know, as if he wasn’t familiar.

Of course, he knew they would be brought up eventually in conversation with NE, but he wasn’t expecting it to be through this way──Through Lin Qin.

The Fy’ecas are the ones who trapped humans in the Tower. They are the one behind NE, as the Missiontakers and Actors liked to suspect.

The Fy’ecas, are the perpetrators that caused the Apocalypse for humans, and for Earth.

Not that the Fy’ecas were targeting humans by any chance──It’s true.

Humans are just too weak. They couldn’t afford to shrug off a stray shot from the specialised neuro-paralysis weapon fired by the Fy’ecas in the process of war with another interstellar species.

It was a while before the Fy’ecas discovered that the shot was ineffective on their enemies, who didn’t show casualties that they were expecting.

The neuro-paralysis weapon took some time to manifest its devastating consequences fully, so it was an Earth year before the Fy’ecas finally figured everything out, during which human civilisation is already on the brink of collapse because of their callousness.

But the Fy’ecas aren’t going to right their wrongs, or even to save what lives remained.

Instead, realising that they were some unknown, sentient lifeform, the simplest way out of trouble is to snuff them out entirely.

So, the Raining Hellfire.

There were still lucky human survivors, because the many operations by the high profile Fy’ecas has already raised some eyebrows among other interstellar species.

Yet, the weak, ‘primitive’ human civilisation has never so much as managed to uncover the grand mysteries of the Universe, and they’re certainly not a signatory of the ‘Universal Accords.’

In fact, so far beneath their attention was humanity that the Fy’ecas wouldn’t even have to stand trial for their treatment of humanity according to the ‘Universal Accords.’

Though conversely, by its terms, this tiny blue marble and its native humans, as they were first discovered by the Fy’ecas, have become their property;

This insignificant species, about as valuable to them as ants are to humans, have become the Fy’ecas’ subordinate species.

Naturally, there wouldn’t even be an emissary to explain to humans that, they were the unfortunate victims of a mishap, but luckily──Or pitifully──They are now a subservient subordinate of the Fy’ecas.

Because the Fy’ecas are one of the strongest species on the galactic stage, with a characteristic to their lifeforms that renders them practically nigh invulnerable.

So they don’t mean to really integrate these spoils of war named humans; they exist too differently.

For the warmongering, powerful Fy’ecas, the squishy meatballs that are humans are too laughably weak to be worth their time.

So they just sent officers ahead to inform them of their eventual fate on Earth.

And after a month, the Fy’ecas sent a bulky starship to come take the subordinate species away.

Because not even the Fy’ecas would be interested in running afoul of the ‘Universal Accords,’ they can’t simply kill all the humans and commit genocide anymore.

What awaited them, though, wasn’t a warm reception, but apparently, a discombobulating ‘maze.’

Oddly enough, humans also have a traitor among them, who told them about some defect in this maze.

Not that it would have mattered at all, except in the form of showing humans just exactly how powerless they are in the face of them.

Then the Fy’ecas took every surviving human with them, which wasn’t even a big number anymore.

When they left, the humans can only watch their charred mother planet without a speck of green on it anymore, Earth, that once-blue marble, fade into the distance. They’re saying goodbye, perhaps, forever.

What happened up to this point, is something the Missiontakers have already more or less figured out.

They know about the Apocalypse, about the ‘aliens,’ about the traitor. But they don’t know what followed next.

Why the Tower is here, for example.

Which was just a simple story, really.

The warmongering Fy’ecas run all their spoils of war through gauntlets to screen them. To them, they don’t need any subordinate species that can’t help win wars, so they must win the selection gauntlets to prove their own worth──A worth for war.

Only creatures that made it through the gauntlets can be deemed ‘warriors’ and allowed to continue living.

The weak constitution of humans made it blatantly obvious that this weak species might only ever be useful in a gauntlet of wisdom and strategizing.

So they decided to implement some random design document they happened upon through their omniscient senses when they went to Earth before.

They assigned a game Server, NE, to the task.

Then, the surviving humans were wiped of their memories of the Apocalypse, of the Fy’ecas… and then shipped into nutrient pods, and found themselves in the Tower.

After that…

NE explains, “in the early days, some humans performed well, so the Fy’ecas drafted them and put them into the battlefield between the Fy’ecas and Maertons, for them to prove that they’ve become useful Warriors.

I hear they did, but unfortunately, their bodies really were too weak against the harshness of the elements in the universe. They all died very soon, and possibly seeing wasted potential in this, the Fy’ecas made an attempt.

They had the brain mapping of one of the dead warriors recast into the game, while dramatically altering his physical stats in-game.

He was strengthened greatly, while having his human thought patterns maintained as pristinely as possible.

As an experiment, he was to be confined to the bottom floor of the Tower. The brain map didn’t include any of his memories either. Other players would be tuned to ignore any inhuman abnormalities they see in him.

And that, is your boyfriend.”