Gakusen Toshi Asterisk - Volume 16 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

POISON AND CORRUPTION

It lasted only the briefest of moments.

In the world on this side, at least.

Orphelia, hooked to a machine at the mana collider test facility in Geneva, glimpsed a sudden vision and glanced frightfully toward Hilda Jane Rowlands.

Through a hole in her very consciousness, she established a link with another spirit.

When she came to, Orphelia found herself staring down at a huge, blue planet. She was now in space—or more precisely, in the outer atmosphere.

She had no physical sensation, and she couldn’t see her own body. It was as if she’d been thrown out of it, and all that was left now was her consciousness.

She was so confused that it took her a moment to realize that the planet below her was Earth. But even if she had been clear of mind, no doubt she would have failed to recognize it at first. That was because its shape was different to the Earth she knew—the continents and oceans were similar, but certainly not the same.

Even so, at that moment, she understood on some vague level that she was staring down at a planet Earth.

All of a sudden, something, some huge entity, reached toward her consciousness.

As it made contact, her mind was shattered into pieces. The difference in scale between the two of them was simply too immense. It lacked substance, and its form—a pure mass of information—would have been unrecognizable to most humans. Yet that overwhelming force of power distorted the space around it through its very existence. If she had to give it a name, she would call it a god.

By all rights, that being ought to have diffused her consciousness out of existence, yet the divine force restored her mind before that could happen. Nonetheless, the process was imperfect—perhaps that task was too much even for a god to complete.

Why the entity put her back together, Orphelia didn’t know.

The divine was too immense for any human to possibly understand.

It wasn’t just language that proved insufficient—its manner of thought was simply too foreign as well.

Nonetheless, through this contact, Orphelia was finally able to comprehend the human world, albeit only in vague terms. In a way, the god made it possible for her to understand.

The world known as the other side.

A planetary system filled with mana.

A universe where gods existed.

It was a world so different to that on this side. There, each planet was inhabited by a single deity. Those gods possessed absolute authority within their spheres of influence and were literally omniscient and omnipotent. It was precisely because of that power that so many people were capable of living on distant planets, whereas on this side, only the Earth was inhabitable.

Those gods protected people, but at the same time, they were capable of taking life in huge numbers, either through natural disaster or more directly as divine retribution. The people on this side, Orphelia included, couldn’t hope to comprehend such entities. Civilization had progressed through the use of meteoric engineering, and people were even capable of crossing the stars, but still they couldn’t dream of communicating with the divine.

And so people on the other side possessed an unshakable faith in fate.

No matter how unreasonable, no matter how tragic, they had no choice but to accept the actions of the Absolute.

It was a horrifying, beautiful sense of resignation.

Fate…

An unknown emotion welled up in Orphelia’s consciousness, imperfectly restored to a warped state.

And the next moment, her awareness returned to her own side of reality.

The next day, Orphelia was transferred to Frauenlob’s research institute in Lieseltania.

From that moment on, her life was a living hell.

“Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh!”

Her screams tore her throat to shreds, blood foaming from her mouth. Her limbs, fixed to observation equipment, convulsed wildly, yet the layers upon layers of restraints binding her refused to budge.

The intensity of the pain coursing through her stemmed from the fact that her body was essentially being reassembled from scratch—her ordinary human flesh becoming that of a Genestella. Every cell, from her muscles to her skeleton to her nervous system, was being reborn as a completely different organism.

Unable to pass out or fall asleep due to the drugs administered to her, she was left with no choice but to endure the wrenching pain.

Beyond a wall of tempered glass, Hilda watched with curiosity and excitement, fixing the girl with a devilish grin.

The process continued for days, for weeks, without end.

But it wasn’t the pain that made the experience a living hell for Orphelia.

No, it was because of the power that had been born in her mind, a force that continued to grow stronger with each passing day. Compared with her fear over what was happening, the pain of being literally torn apart was nothing.

That power was proof that she was connected in some way to the other side, something that under natural circumstances should never have been brought back here. A fragment of an almighty, merciless, overwhelming divinity. Depending on how that fragment was used, it had the power to accomplish impossible deeds—but at the same time, even the slightest of mistakes risked bringing about irreparable misfortune and ruin.

She didn’t want it. She had never wanted such a thing.

It was too much for her to bear. She would have been satisfied in life to possess but a single flower, yet this thing was the polar opposite of that.

She wanted to cast it aside, to free herself of it without delay.

If she couldn’t, then…

Looking back, the fact that her Strega abilities had manifested as lethal poisons was probably the result of those toxic thoughts.

Of her wish for death.

But that wish wasn’t to be.

In the end, she was transformed, and two months after the process had begun, she was returned to the research institute as a Genestella, as a Strega.

Her chestnut-colored hair had turned pure white, her eyes bright red like pieces of ruby—and she had gained unprecedented power. From there, she became Hilda’s test subject.

“Kee-hee-hee! Today, we’ll be measuring the connection and conversion rates of your mana and the rate of your prana consumption, too!”

“Let’s see just how much control you have over your prana! Oh, and we need to confirm the range of toxins you can produce and their flexibility under different intensities! And I know this is somewhat outdated, but let’s aim for a fifty percent fatal dose! I’ll put in an order for a menagerie of test animals, so we should be able to get started tomorrow! Kee-hee-hee!”

“I see, I see! With that much prana, your flesh can withstand even this level of poison… Wonderful! Theoretically, your body should even be able to withstand a blow from a Lux, so long as it’s powered by regular manadite! Then let’s increase the output as far as it will go… Oh-ho, are you starting to buckle in there? Well, that can happen when you use an oversized pressure chamber to compress a specific point. Don’t worry, just keep going. Our healers are excellent. One or two broken limbs won’t matter, not even three!”

“Hmm… Your mental state is a little unstable, isn’t it now? I suppose even Stregas of your caliber can’t escape the fact that your mental state plays a major role in the potency of your abilities. Then again, it isn’t anything that can’t be controlled through medication. Now let’s continue with the experiments! Today, we’re going to be examining the extent of your resistance and its versatility against existing toxins!”

“Now then, today we’ll be…”

“Kee-hee-hee!”

………

……

…

Hilda’s experiments went on and on and on and on.

One could say that it was those endless trials that made Orphelia the person she was today—a soul composed of grief and resignation. Awakened by the god on the other side, nurtured by Hilda, and perfected by the power still swelling deep in the back of her mind.

Fate.

It wasn’t predestination—at least, not as Orphelia saw it.

For her, fate meant that which had been determined by a greater power.

Those with weak fates had no option but to be enslaved by greater ones.

Having come to this realization, Orphelia’s spirit finally found a sense of stability.

If this ruin could even be called stability, that is.

Objectively speaking, Hilda conducted her experiments with meticulousness and care.

No matter how overjoyed she might be to have found the perfect specimen, no matter how excited or heated her emotions or how often she might change her mind seemingly on the spur of the moment, she never underestimated the power that had been born inside Orphelia.

Orphelia had been locked away in the deepest part of the research facility, closed off by layer upon layer of corrosion-proof security barriers, each of which was replaced at regular intervals to ensure they didn’t break down. All experiments were now conducted remotely, while Orphelia was subject to twenty-four-hour surveillance. A considerable amount of funding had been spent to ensure that no one, Hilda included, needed to come into direct contact with her.

If Hilda had made one mistake, it was in trying to gauge the limits of Orphelia’s powers. Of course, that came naturally to a researcher like her. If she didn’t know the lower and upper limits of the girl’s abilities, she wouldn’t be able to attempt to push beyond them.

On this occasion, however, her efforts had resulted in failure.

The reason being there simply wasn’t a limit to Orphelia’s powers.

As a result, she had ended up rampaging out of control.

The inexhaustible supply of mana pouring through the hole in Orphelia’s being was converted into prana, which in turn converted the surrounding mana into a toxin that had never before existed anywhere on Earth. This unknown toxin consumed the surrounding equipment, the walls, and the security partitions, eroding them at a terrifying rate.

Nonetheless, Hilda and her team had managed to escape thanks to their many safeguards. If Hilda had underestimated Orphelia’s abilities, if she had showed even the slightest carelessness, her fate would have been sealed.

As it was, Orphelia’s toxins destroyed the entire laboratory, and the aftermath alone caused the surrounding forest to wither and die and the soil to rot into a poisoned bog.

By the time Orphelia came back to her senses, her surroundings had become a hellscape. Every living thing around her was dead or dying, even inorganic matter was slowly decaying, and the world was filled with the stench of a putrid miasma.

Badly weakened by her outburst of power and on the verge of collapsing into a heap, Orphelia spotted a lone white flower. By some miracle, it still bloomed, as though protected by the melted walls of the research institute.

Half-unaware, she reached out to touch it—but just before her finger could make contact, that small white flower crumbled into dust and scattered to the wind.

Dirk Eberwein first encountered the Varda-Vaos shortly after he was brought into Solnage.

At the time, Dirk was highly regarded for his achievements at the Institute, and though he was still only a boy, he was soon made a staff officer at Solnage’s military division and entrusted with the planning of operations and the management of his own unit. For Dirk, however, this was but a career stepping stone. He wasn’t a Genestella, but he was highly capable and a prime candidate for a future position in the organization’s executive ranks.

One day, after returning to his dormitory room, he found a middle-aged man in a nondescript suit waiting for him.

“…Who the hell are you?” he asked dismissively.

“Varda-Vaos,” the man answered flatly. He stood alone in the room which otherwise contained only a bed.

“Never heard of you.”

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the man’s appearance, though something about the way he carried himself suggested that he didn’t belong to Solnage. Heck, it wasn’t even clear whether the figure was truly human. Among Dirk’s most potent weapons were his senses—his powers of observation to see through to a person’s innate talents and abilities—but they weren’t as effective on this man as they should have been.

No, this figure—Varda—was unmistakably different from anyone he had met before.

To have gotten this far through the dormitory’s security, they must be fairly powerful. Dirk was just an ordinary human, and had no means of resisting a powerful Genestella.

But Dirk was sure that if the figure wanted to harm him, they would already have done so.

In that case—

“Whaddya want with me?”

“I’m here to recruit you.”

“Recruit me?” Dirk snorted, sitting down on the bed as he watched Varda from the corner of his eye.

“You despise this world and everything in it, do you not?”

“…Don’t talk like you can see right through me. What the hell do you know?”

“Of course I know. Because I am the same.”

Dirk knitted his brows at this remark, but quickly realized something.

“You’re not a Dante… You’re an Orga Lux, aren’t you?”

“So you can tell. You’re as shrewd as I had hoped,” Varda said, unbuttoning their suit jacket.

There, hidden inside, was a huge, unearthly, mechanical-looking necklace.

It was said that Orga Luxes possessed their own sense of will. If that was true, it was within the realm of possibility that they could also act independently. Of course, whether or not you believed such claims was another story.

“Hah… So that’s your real body. And? What’s this about recruitment? What are you trying to get me to do?”

His curiosity had been piqued, even if only a little.

“My associates and I are working on a plan to reshape this world, but we are short on manpower. We need capable, talented individuals, people well-versed in the subtleties of the human mind and in manipulating others.”

“A plan to change the world, eh…? How?”

“By bringing about another Invertia.”

“What?”

At first, he thought the man was joking or trying to deflect—but their voice was unmistakably serious.

“That would most certainly change things, don’t you agree?” Varda asked.

“I guess so…”

Humanity had managed to rebuild after the unprecedented catastrophe of the Invertia—an unprecedented meteor bombardment that had continued for seven days and seven nights—but if the same disaster was to strike again, it would leave society in ruins. Even the IEFs themselves might well be swallowed up by the ensuing chaos.

“What do you think? Are you willing to assist us?”

“…What’s in it for me?”

“You hate everything in this world. Is it not reasonable that you would participate in a plan aimed at ending it?” Varda said, as though it was all a matter of course.

“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, I think. Yeah, I hate this planet and everything in it, but that doesn’t mean I wanna destroy it all,” Dirk answered, his voice low and angry as he glowered at Varda. “I just don’t wanna lose to what I hate.”

Right. That was all there was to it. He didn’t even care about winning.

He just didn’t want to lose. That was the only reason he kept living.

He hated his parents, whose faces he couldn’t even remember. He hated the Institute that had made him what he was today, and he hated all its staff, too. He hated the foundations that treated the whole of society like their personal property. He hated Genestella and the untold possibilities they represented. He hated ordinary people clutching desperately to their antiquated values. He hated arrogant winners and miserable, pathetic losers alike. He hated the fools who misjudged their own powers and failed to show restraint, and he hated the idiots left with no other choice but to reduce themselves to flattery and groveling. He hated the incompetent and the useless. He hated people’s contemptuous kindness and their strictness that did nothing but injure. He hated their sugary, sentimental love. Animals, plants, beautiful scenery, colors, nature, the food that tasted like sand in his mouth, the sleep that brought nothing but nightmares, his abominable past, his cursed future, men, women, adults, children, the elderly, himself, and every last thing on the face of this planet—he hated the lot of them.

Each was just as odious as the next, and he despised them all in equal measure.

“I see. Perhaps I was mistaken?” Varda murmured, their voice devoid of emotion.

“No. It’s a pain having to admit it, but you’re basically right on the money.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll hear you out. Let’s see if your little birdsong can catch my interest, Orga Lux.”

And so Dirk was brought on board with the plans of Varda and their associates.

That said, their scheme to cause a second Invertia was already in its final stages when Dirk joined the group. He was to receive information necessary to carrying out their plans through Varda, which he would then examine and improve—that was the extent of his role.

On the whole, their scheme was both astonishingly elaborate and appallingly sloppy. After a while, he came to a realization—the individuals involved with this plan had an unbelievably naive understanding of human psychology. Or rather, they simply had no interest in comprehending the human mind.

Dirk was convinced that was why they had reached out to recruit him: to lean on his abilities to make up for their own inadequacies. The power to make people act, to make them kneel, to make them give up and surrender. To him, those were all second nature.

Dirk hadn’t personally visited the site where the plan was to be initiated, but perhaps out of recognition of his work, or maybe because he had gained their trust, he was finally able to meet the ringleaders just before it was to be executed.

The central figure behind the effort was a boy named Ecknardt, who like Varda, was clearly not a human being. He was a visitor from the other side, a slice of a greater power. If manadite was the crystalline form of mana, and urm-manadite was the same but of a higher purity, then Ecknardt was something beyond that—the ultimate urm-manadite that required neither exterior armor nor mechanical apparatuses. He could, in other words, operate entirely on his own, without the help of human hands. In Varda’s words, he was a terminal of the divine, restored from mana.

Next came Madiath Mesa, a former winner of the Phoenix who now served as a member of the Festa Executive Committee. Dirk recognized him at first glance and took an instant disliking to him. Of course, there wasn’t a thing in this world that he did like, but he took a particular dislike to Madiath. The man went around with a friendly smile always plastered on his face, but beneath that mask burned a blaze of pure wrath.

Nonetheless, the plan was soon foiled—by none other than Haruka Amagiri.

Ecknardt vanished without a trace, and Madiath and the others were forced to set about replanning from scratch.

And then…

Dirk’s presence in Lieseltania that day was ultimately a coincidence. His unit had just completed a separate operation and was on standby at a base in the small city-state when the order came in to monitor and investigate a research laboratory owned by Frauenlob. According to their intel, security had recently been increased considerably, with a large number of autonomous puppets and automatic weapon systems having been deployed.

Given that the laboratory hadn’t directly increased its security personnel, they were most likely conducting experiments of a particularly sensitive nature. Lieseltania was extraterritorial, so the IEFs were free to do whatever they liked there. Dirk figured it was just some pet-project experiment, but this was a direct order, and work was work, so he stationed surveillance personnel around the complex. He was just beginning to gather information when the incident occurred.

“…What?”

“It’s destroyed! Completely destroyed! The whole lab…! We were able to confirm a helicopter leaving—the staff have taken flight…! Huh…?! I-impossible…! Th-there’s a monster here! Arrrggghhh!”

The choppy call was interrupted by a rush of panicked voices and a volley of gunfire, before cutting off abruptly.

Deeming the mission unimportant, Dirk had sent a rookie to keep tabs on the laboratory, but that seemed now to have backfired. The personnel he had assigned to other locations weren’t picking up, and the data feeds from the various instruments they had deployed had likewise fallen silent.

Safe in his command vehicle, he folded his arms and immediately set to thinking.

If that final report was true, then the laboratory had already been destroyed and the staff were gone, no doubt having fled to Frauenlob’s Lieseltania base of operations. Given their location, it would be some time before they could dispatch any rescue or investigative units to the area.

Besides, the last words of that call had caught his attention.

“If I can get ahead of them here…”

He divided his forces into two groups, sending the first to investigate the laboratory itself and the second to seal off the surrounding area. Fortunately, he was well within his rights to exercise his authority within Lieseltania. He was clearly acting of his own accord, but management wouldn’t complain so long as he styled his actions as a rescue mission or something of the sort.

The images from the small, unmanned reconnaissance aircraft he had dispatched did indeed show that the laboratory had been devastated. Nonetheless, it wasn’t long before the connection was lost and the visual feed dropped off. It seemed the mana levels in the surrounding area had temporarily dropped, causing the lost connection. Could that be why the rookie’s call to him had abruptly cut off, too?

Considering the possibility of a biohazard situation, he notified his team to equip special protective equipment and to carry old-fashioned radios that didn’t rely on meteoric engineering.

After a while, reports started to come in: first data on the atmospheric conditions as measured by the team’s equipment, and then—

“There’s a woman here, standing in the middle of it all.”

The team that he had sent to investigate was made up of veterans, unlike his choice of surveillance. But even so, Dirk could still hear the confusion in their voices, impossible to fully conceal.

“A woman? Explain.”

“That’s…”

Unable to get an answer to his question, Dirk clicked his tongue and stepped out from the command vehicle.

He wasn’t the type to directly involve himself with operations in the field. Unlike the other members of his unit, he was just an ordinary human. On top of that, he had little in the way of combat training and wasn’t very athletic.

But this time, he wanted to see what was happening for himself. He didn’t quite know why. It was just a gut feeling. He normally thought of himself as a creature of logic, but he still recognized the importance of intuition. People weren’t machines. After all, without understanding the emotions that drove people to make irrational decisions, it would be impossible to manipulate them.

When he arrived at the scene, he could see the surprise in his masked subordinates’ eyes. Nonetheless, they silently opened a path for him.

In the center of that hellscape, with everything rotting around him and a strange odor burning his nostrils, he did indeed find a young woman standing there, just as reported. Instantly, every hair on his body stood on end and a cold sweat poured from his forehead in torrents.

It seemed the rookie wasn’t mistaken.

This was undeniably a monster.

His squad members surrounded the girl with their guns at the ready, but Dirk raised a hand to restrain them.

“But, boss…”

“Stand back, you hear me? Don’t tell me you haven’t caught on yet? If she wanted, she could have slaughtered the lot of us a dozen times over by now.”

“…!”

His troops looked indignant at this remark, but did as Dirk instructed and lowered their weapons, falling back a few steps.

“…Hey,” Dirk called out.

The girl slowly turned her crimson eyes his way. In her gaze, he saw resignation and sadness deeper than any he had witnessed before.

“What are you?”

“Me…? I’m…Orphelia. Orphelia Landlufen.” Her voice was flat and indifferent, yet at the same time replete with desolation.

“Are you responsible for this mess?”

“…Yes. I don’t really remember it all, but it must have been me,” Orphelia whispered, casting her gaze over her surroundings.

She looked exhausted, on the verge of collapsing.

“Oh… Were those people who attacked me earlier your friends…? It was all so sudden, and I… They’re still alive, at least. I think.”

“Hmph. That’s not what I’m here for. From what you’re saying, I’m guessing you didn’t mean to do all this?”

“…I don’t want to do anything anymore.”

“Oh?” Dirk said, his eyes narrowing.

This, he realized, could very well be the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Yes… This must be my fate.”

“Hmph. Fate?” Dirk scoffed.

He, of course, didn’t believe in such a thing. Fate was no more than the ramblings of fools who had given up on thinking for themselves.

And yet…

“So you’re saying you were just going along with your fate here?”

“…”

At that moment, Orphelia’s eyes met his for the first time.

Until that moment, though she had been looking at him, she hadn’t seen him. It was fair to say she had responded to his words only by reflex.

But this was different.

“Okay, Orphelia. It’s not like I’ve got any sympathy for you, but I understand you. You wanna follow your fate, am I right?”

“…Follow my…fate…,” she mumbled, repeating his words.

“In that case, come with me. I’ll give you the freedom to follow this fate of yours,” he said, fixing her with a glare.

“I wonder… Are you—is your fate strong enough for that?” Orphelia murmured quizzically, almost to herself. Then a long plume of gray gas, like the hand of a wraith, rose up from her feet and loomed before his eyes.

His troops all lifted their weapons, but Dirk raised a hand once more to urge restraint.

“Who cares? I don’t believe in fate. Still…” He paused there, staring at the thin tendrils that could no doubt kill him with the slightest touch. “I’ll accept it, for your sake. All of it. Even if you end up taking thousands, millions of lives some day in the future, I’ll accept that it was your fate.”

“…!” Orphelia’s eyes widened.

Here was a woman who had given up on everything, who had resigned herself to grief. Dirk could tell all this just by looking into her eyes. From his point of view, the decision was an easy one.

But at the same time, Orphelia possessed a horrifying power. Even at the Institute, packed as it was with so many prodigious talents, he had never before seen a Strega of her caliber. Not even the most elite units of the foundations were in possession of someone as gifted as her.

Perhaps Orphelia was still struggling to come to terms with her overwhelming power. Considering the devastation around her, that was little wonder.

It was also as clear as day that she fundamentally abhorred this power she called fate.

That being the case, the easiest solution was just to accept it all, exactly the way it was.

No matter what happened in the future, no matter what she might do with her powers, he would accept that it wasn’t Orphelia who was responsible but rather the fate that had ensnared her.

That was her only possible escape route from a future of depravity and irresponsibility.

And he was the devil, offering her a deal.

“…” Orphelia watched Dirk in silence for a long moment before she averted her gaze in apparent exhaustion. “All right. What are you going to do?”

With that, she accepted the devil’s hand.

“I’m going to remake this shithole world. So first, come with me to Asterisk.”

“Asterisk…?”

“You look like you’re around school-age, right? You’re definitely not any older than twenty, I’m guessing? That’ll do, then.”

Dirk himself had decided to enroll at Le Wolfe Black Institute starting the following spring.

That offer included the position of student council president.

Le Wolfe had been unable to control the campus and the Rotlicht entertainment district for some time, and while a lack of restraint masquerading as freedom and the individual power it nurtured was part of the school’s core values, the place was of little use to Solnage if it remained completely disorganized. Dirk had been entrusted with the task of reestablishing control.

“I see… If that’s my fate, then so be it.”

“With your help, I’ll be able to draw up a new plan. It’ll be much easier to get things done with you as student council president rather than some Solnage pawn.”

Le Wolfe’s student council president had the right to appoint the school’s highest-ranked Page One. Whenever one president’s term of office expired, the top place was always given to the next one’s choice.

“First things first, I’ll need to solidify my position. Then I’ll gradually introduce you to the others.”

Already, Dirk had put together the bare bones of an idea.

It might not have been as grand or as organized as the plan for which Varda had recruited him—to bring about a second Invertia—but so long as the goal was achieved, nothing else really mattered.

Certainly, with both Orphelia’s and Varda’s power at their disposal, it wasn’t out of reach, and with Madiath and Dirk’s positions, the groundwork was in place. Finally, Asterisk would make the perfect stage for their show.

After all, Dirk absolutely despised that godforsaken miniature garden of a city.