Vede, the girl wrapped in ragged bandages, lunged forward with the reckless abandon of a gladiator entering an arena. She hurled her scythe, its curved blade trailing a misty aura of cerulean fire that screamed through the air like a localized storm.
It never reached its target.
An unseen protective ward flared to life in the space between them, superheating the air and melting the oncoming scythe into a rain of harmless, glowing slag.
"No!" Alex shrieked. The butler—a bizarre, doll-like entity constructed of porcelain and magic—dashed forward. Spheres of volatile, crackling aura manifested in his artificial hands as he sprinted to intercept Vede. But his desperate intervention was too late. Cold terror seized his mechanical heart; he wasn't simply afraid of the bandage girl's attack, he was terrified of what Adam would do in retaliation.
Sensing the escalating chaos, Yuruki gently slipped her fingers from Adam's grasp. Immediately, a shadow loomed over her. Her personal automaton—towering on articulated, insectoid legs—sprang into action. A marvel of engineering powered by the deep, rhythmic hum of a perfectly integrated nuclear fusion core, the mechanical beast scooped her up by the back of her dress with surprising tenderness.
As she was hoisted into the air, Yuruki merely smiled. She understood the unspoken stakes perfectly: if she failed to prove she could defend herself, Adam's paranoia would take the reins. Given the sheer scale of his abilities—the literal power over everything—she knew he wouldn't hesitate to wipe this entire existence from the fabric of reality just to keep her safe.
Adam's Perspective
A cold, sickening dread clawed at my throat. The mere thought of Yuruki dying—of her blood spilling because of my negligence—shattered my composure.
Salvation? What a hollow, pathetic joke.
Radiating hope?... I dont care about others anymore.
The realization hit me with the crushing weight of a dying star. I despised losing. I hated the suffocating vulnerability of not being in control. If my hesitation, my sheer ignorance, caused her to be taken away from me... then nothing else deserved to exist. I wouldn't let the universe take her. I would burn it all down first.
I don't want to lose you.
As her hand slipped from mine, my mind reached out to the fundamental laws of reality, preparing to unravel this forsaken universe and plunge it into eternal dark.
But before I could issue the final, apocalyptic command, blinding crimson lasers tore across my vision, slamming violently into the bandage girl.
I blinked, the destructive energy dying in my veins. Yuruki was safe, hauled high above the fray by her mechanical guardian. Yet, the sudden burst of the automaton's weapons fire triggered a violent tremor in my mind. Memories crashed over me—jagged flashbacks of the mechanical world, of bloodstained metal trenches, and the endless, haunting screams of dying soldiers.
My breath caught, but Yuruki's voice cut through the trauma, echoing across the battlefield.
"Do you see?!" she yelled, addressing the onlookers. She was navigating the laws of power with a master's precision. She knew the rule: if you want to break people's false beliefs, you have to expose their weakness and immediately offer them a lifeline of hope.
"With my power, I can give you more!" she proclaimed, extending a hand like a messiah. "Who said you don't have control? With me, you will grow stronger. You will lead a life of absolute satisfaction!"
It was brilliant, calculated manipulation. She was leveraging the ultimate rule of dominance: making her subjects believe they held the reins, and that bowing to her was the key to their own victory.
"I'm so useless..."
[Oh Adam]
The whisper barely escaped my lips. My hands shook violently, the tremor traveling up my arms until my fingertips went entirely numb. A deep, bone-weary exhaustion settled over me.
Only one agonizing thought looped endlessly in my mind: *Oh, Adam. You are absolutely nothing without your power.* It tore at my chest, hollowing me out from the inside.
"Hey! Where's the system?! The power! The golden finger!"
A loud, abrasive voice shattered my spiraling thoughts.
"You there! Are you Japanese? Did you get isekai'd too?!"
Yuruki, still desperately trying to maintain her charismatic facade for the restless crowd, forced a bright, strained smile. "Yes! With Order, everyone thrives!"
"Fuck off, you wannabe heroine!" the voice spat back, dripping with bitter venom. "Order is bullshit! If all are equal, then some are just *more* equal than others! It's always the same—the ruling power just ignores the rest of us in the end!"
Yuruki blinked, her smile faltering as she looked down at the speaker. He was a heavy-set, sedentary-looking young man with disheveled, medium-length hair and an aura of unearned entitlement.
I stared at him, a jarring sense of familiarity washing over me. *No, I'm not Japanese,* I thought bitterly, though I had spent time there with Manori. But this guy? He practically reeked of Earth. He carried the exact same displaced energy as Karrin, the vampire who had also been dragged into this twisted reality from my home planet.
The remarkably mediocre man marched straight toward me, ignoring the giant automaton and the lingering tension in the air. Beside me, I could sense Yuruki's mounting anxiety. Her mind was racing. If she used her automaton to violently repel him, it might break the fragile spell she had cast over the townsfolk and incite a full-scale riot. She hadn't laid enough groundwork to defend us against an entire mob fighting to the death.
It was a worst-case scenario, but I knew all too well that in this world, the worst case had a habit of becoming reality.
"Hey, you!" The man stopped a few paces away, jabbing a stubby finger directly at my chest. "You gotta be the one who summoned me! Look at you! I refuse to be the butt of the joke in some trashy isekai where the main character gets zero powers! Answer me!"
Before I could even process his delusion, Yuruki stepped delicately between us. Her posture was perfectly composed, but her voice dripped with a dangerous, icy politeness.
"Excuse me," she said, her eyes narrowing. "But who exactly are you?"