Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)-Chapter 1131. Raoul’s Folly

A deep throb reverberated from the egg. The chill Raoul felt was the same when one sensed that someone was observing them from the shadows. Her mind commanded her to retreat, but her heart kept her firmly in place.

Presence was everything she lacked. So no matter what, she Raoul planned to remain as close to the twins as possible. She raised her sword, and conjured words in her throat to increase their morale.

A word failed to leave her.

Instead, it was a hideous, crushing sound.

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [Prickly Surprise] >

< “They come, and they die. Why can’t they stay longer?” >

< “Cyclic sorrows. Cannot become attached. We’ll poison them again.” >

Raoul, upon interacting with the membrane of the Corrupted, experienced her bones in a thousand different places. Her blood vessels swelled and pockets of muscles began bursting. Her eyes soon popped, and she grasped at her sockets as her fingers suddenly exploded like an overfilled balloon.

She had received 100 Stacks of [Euthanasia]. Its effect was instantaneous and killed Raoul where she stood. However, the bullets Abigail fired into her back prolonged her life, and she maintained her posture till the bitter end.

“I WILL NOT LET YOU GET RID OF ME!”

Her declaration was short lived.

An unceremonious death followed as a praying mantis with multiple arms was spat out where Raoul perished.

Morale: -10

< “Love is cruelty.” >

< “Love is violence.” >

< “Is that the way it’s supposed to be?” >

< “It has to be.” >

Neither Cer, Ber, nor Res were fazed by Raoul’s death. It was to be expected when facing a Woe of the Fallen Star. They resumed dealing with the Denizens and the statues, whilst Cer damaged it down to a sliver of HP, priming it for Raoul.

But Raoul was dead. Resurrection would require a miracle to bring her back.

However–

“Tch…”

–Black lightning struck the edge of the Corrupted Zone. Raoul’s figure emerged from a hill, covered in blood. Her eyes carried a tinge of blue now, and her hair hovered as if suspended in water.

“You can’t get rid of me… Not like how I threw you aside. No matter how many times you kill me, no matter how far you break me: I’ll return! Again, and again!”

Morale: 0

< Raoul’s Emotional State Has Risen to the Second State >

Raoul

Hati Form

< The Wolf of the Moon >

LEVEL : 100ORIGIN : Demi-Human (Wolf)HP : 9,400

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

ATT : 850MAG ATT : 400ATT DEF : 300MAG DEF : 300MP : 7,300

RESIST : 45AGI : 30

Raoul was a Repenter. Because of this, Raoul could be revived as many times as their resources allowed. Alcina carried a small number of Reconstituting Fluids for resurrection. It was likely that this was the only life she had left, but even so, it did not deter her from approaching the twins.

< “They spread us open.” >

< “Like flowers.” >

< “Kept us potted.” >

< “And plucked our petals.” >

< [Polymeliatic Tear] >

A hideous screech came from the mantis. All four bladed arms hacked at the air, releasing a barrage of pale arcs. The arcs sliced through the mountains of scrap with little resistance. The speed was far too fast for Raoul to dodge, yet she kept running forward.

“Thank you… Cer. Res.”

Spears and electric beams struct down any arcs that would have reached her. They riddled the battlefield, eventually becoming a path as she pushed towards the mantis and shoved her blade into its chest.

“The expedition. Letting you go was my way of setting you free. Wherever they took you, wherever you departed to would be a new world for you to discover. You’ve been in Emivta and Brandar long enough to feel trapped.”

Morale: 15

Golden cracks shot into the ethereal mirror above the twins. Between each crack was a new memory. One depicted the twins’ moments before their departure. The sadness in their eyes as they watched Raoul’s back turn to them caused Raoul to twist her blade, as though she had plunged it into her own heart.

“I had a choice. If I kept you by my side, then I believed you’d follow in my footsteps. Or worse. I had many enemies. Too many people have died because of me. I wanted to walk away from it all. But…”

The memory adjacent to it showcased a bloody room, where chains dangled from the ceiling. It was the Leviathan. Metal scraping with metal, and the sound of an electric static came from that memory, as if it was desperately being suppressed.

The sounds were unusual. Between each noise was a constant hum.

Raoul knew what these sounds were.

Dream Catchers, a type of device that allowed one to implant a dream into unwilling participants. They were a prototype device predating CogitO’s emergence, back when Descartes and Nilhim worked on the first instance of the Collection.

That dream could last anywhere from a minute to ten thousand years depending on one’s willpower and RESIST. The view panned from the ceiling to the bed, where the twins were chained down and wore dome-shaped devices on their heads.

“… To make no choice is a choice in itself. I paid the price, once again, for my inability to take control of my life.”

Morale: 20

< “It doesn’t hurt as much.” >

< “Nowhere near as much.” >

< “As what it led to the aftermath.” >

< “Destruction of loved ones again.” >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [Petal Plucking] >

Zodiygotmortem | HP: 7,000,000

The mantis perished, and in its place, an angler fish spat out. A second body was fossilized into its abdomen, and the creature walked on a pair of human legs. Its maw opened as it went to take a bite at Raoul, only for Cer to intervene and knock it off balance.

“Did you check how many times you can revive!?”

“I was in a rush, so no.”

Raoul took a swift step back to avoid being crushed by its feet, then, she moved in and stabbed its legs.

Morale: 30

Two last fragments remained. The first illuminated, revealing the moment Raoul turned his back on the twins. She dismissed them. Then, the scene moved like the pages of a picture book. The twins disappeared, and Raoul gazed into her own reflection in a nearby river.

“… Regret filled my heart. But I’ve seen what I can do to people. You were safer in the hands of Inflow Direct. The expedition was bound to free you. But it never occurred to me that this was a trap.”

< [Vanishing Twin] >

A supersonic pulse of energy cascaded across the scrapyard. It originated from the fossilized angler fish within the Corrupted’s body. Raoul expected this to annihilate her. Shards of metal disintegrated before her eyes, creating a massive crater beneath the anglerfish.

However, the world did not turn dark. Her eyes were still fixated on the anglerfish.

< “Enough is enough.” >

< “Hurt you once, shame on me.” >

< “Hurt you twice…” >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] >

< [To Be Pierced] > 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

< [To Be Pierced] >

It was reluctant to strike back.

The final memory played.

A series of cuts of Raoul’s desertion as a Star of the Nexus, and his subsequent massacre across the City of Spades replaced each of the cracks. The first showed her abandoning her post in south Emvita, which led to a Corruption Event that eliminated two Kingdoms.

The second was a battle she waged against three Eclipses on the way to the City of Spades. She survived by the skin of her teeth and banished those same Eclipses into the Subderma Layer.

The third was her miserable pledge to Galia’s Second Apostle. The fourth had her interrogate high-ranking Atelier personnel, especially from CogitO, Oboros Infinitas, Inflow Direct, and Caldera Industries. It was through this that she was able to call the Orange Disruptor and a manner of the Condemned to join her.

The fifth depicted the extent of her carnage across the City of Spades. Tens of thousands of homes were bulldozed as Raoul rode the back of his shadow wolf. Her mere ability to travel across multiple city blocks wiped out countless lives as she followed the tracks of the Leviathan, until finally, she found the train…

… And found the twins in a catatonic state.