WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 51: A New Beginning
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1.
Ceres simply stood there.
The remnants of golden threads drifted down behind her like pollen.
Li Cheng apparently had talent as a stage director too.
What could suit a climax better than this?
Ceres looked at me, then at Yiming, who had breathed his last in my arms.
“...”
It was hard to tell what she was thinking from her expression.
Ceres had always been nearly expressionless, with a perfect poker face.
Still, I could tell her feelings were complicated.
After a long silence, just as Ceres was about to speak, someone else broke it.
“Ceres Cassian.”
Shit, that startled me.
A carp-headed phantom poked its head out of the pool of blood.
The carp opened and closed its mouth as it spoke in an androgynous voice.
Was that the Gold Carp Family House Head's surveillance spell, Turbid Water Fish?
“This is a...”
But with a single wave of Ceres's hand,
it vanished without so much as a sound.
Ceres let out a long sigh.
“I... truly don't understand you.”
Let's think about this calmly for a moment.
Quantitatively speaking, I had received a lot from Ceres.
She had comforted me when I was at my most exhausted and miserable, and she had taught me magic.
Thanks to Ceres's help, I had been able to stop Project Z smoothly.
If I had not earned her trust in this hellish city, I never could have made it this far.
I understood her actions too.
My movements this loop had looked a little like those of an informant, hadn't they?
Ceres also seemed to have some connection to the fake Progenitor...
From her perspective, she had recruited me as a spy, only for me to join forces with Yiming and steal away the fake Progenitor.
Even so, she had not discarded me immediately.
She had tried to understand me until the end, even though I looked like an obvious traitor.
She had tried to protect me from the Gold Carp Family, who wanted me dead.
Until the very last moment.
She gave me a chance, saying that if I told her the truth, she would overlook everything and take my side.
The reason she finally abandoned me was because I had missed that chance due to the penalty.
And after hearing that I had a sick older sister, she had even looked after Arbel.
Since the Premium Route had not cleared yet, she must have kept that promise.
I admitted it.
Honestly, I had not expected Mama Ceres to do this much for me.
We had never had a relationship founded on solid trust and close bonds.
I approached her intending to use her,
and Ceres had willingly used me as well.
That strange tension between us was, when you thought about it, closer to a byproduct of our mutual interests. Leftovers.
“That's good, then. Yiming, whom you wanted to get rid of, is dead. That means I did what you told me to, right?”
Even so, the reason I spoke so sarcastically
might paradoxically have been because I was emotionally relying on her.
Thinking about it, it did piss me off a little.
I lifted your Commandment, so we're done now? Huh?
Even the loyal male escort Cedric was bound to hit puberty after that.
Ceres's straight eyebrows twitched.
After taking a breath, Ceres spoke while suppressing a faint anger.
“Stop talking nonsense and come with me.”
“Where?”
“Are you planning to stay here? Whether you remain here or go to Aden, you'll die.”
Ceres grabbed my wrist.
As usual, her fingers were slender, but I could feel an urgency in them that was not normally there.
“You're going to save me?”
Ceres abruptly turned around and snapped at me.
“Yes, you idiot! Do you even know what you've done?”
Hmm.
Still, she was going to save me.
Okay.
Cedric was feeling a little less hurt now.
If she later gave me that one-woman mother-daughter special, I'd probably be completely over it.
“...I'm sorry.”
But I could not follow her now.
I quietly pulled my hand from hers.
“What do you mean by that?”
Yiming-hyung had no idea, but...
He had activated Echo of Death with his moving last words.
The moment a Universal Coin landed in my hand, this loop was over.
Kisara Yagyu would arrive here in around three hours.
An Executor.
The hunting dogs of the Paradise Administration Bureau, who protected Aden's order.
People counted among humanity's strongest.
They were hard enough to get involved with in the first place, but if you did, it was easier just to swallow cyanide.
The problem was that the moment the mighty Executor Kisara appeared in Necropolis, she would try to kill Arbel and me.
My death did not particularly matter.
But if Arbel died first and cleared the loop, then I met Kisara and the save point updated?
That would be an absolute disaster.
I could never lose my beloved doll!!!
Do you know how much work I've put into her so far?!
And Yiming would even stay dead at the end of it.
My relationship with Ceres would still be in ruins too.
Maybe Kisara would arrive even sooner than three hours this time.
I had to move on to the next loop as quickly as possible.
“Ha.”
Ceres gave a hollow laugh.
It sounded like a short sigh, as though she were mocking herself.
“I don't understand. Why are you angry at me?”
“I'm not angry.”
“You are. Right now.”
No... I was not actually angry.
My emotions were a little heated, but I did not have any particular ill will toward Mama Ceres.
I was just a little disappointed, that was all.
“Do I look like someone who can move however I please, according to my circumstances? Are you saying I should have saved Yiming? That necrophiliac bastard who was always trying to take me out?”
Ceres bit down on her lower lip and spoke as though making excuses.
“Fine. Let's say I saved Yiming, like you said. Let's say Ceres Cassian, a director of Twilight Resource Development, saved Incense Master Yiming of the Xuan Family, who was facing a purge. Then what? Do you think I'm a god?”
Ceres fired off the words without giving me a chance to answer.
“You betrayed my trust first. Even so, I tried to protect you! I knew you had betrayed me, but I still gave you one last chance to explain! You only had to say one thing! You're the one who threw that chance away!”
For some reason, she looked smaller than any Ceres I had ever seen.
Like a child who had been scolded by her parents and did not know what to do.
Wait.
This situation felt strangely familiar.
#Regret #Angst #Obsession
The tags flashed through my head.
Come on, no way.
Our Mama Ceres was not that kind of character.
Could she have promised to care for Arbel because she secretly had a soft heart?
Sure, that was possible.
Could she have taken another political risk to save traitor Cedric?
That was a little unexpected, but...
Sure, that was possible.
But Ceres losing her composure and nearly crying because she thought I hated her?
That contained way too much otaku wish fulfillment.
Ceres had always been ruthless.
“So you'll protect your pathetic pride and die? Do you think you'll look cool if you die acting so recklessly?”
When I pouted and went, “Hng... I'm sulking,”
she should have said, “Then die,” rather than desperately asking, “Do you think you'll look cool if you die acting so recklessly?”
Hmm...
It felt a little wrong to play with someone's feelings like this.
Mama Ceres.
I'll just confirm this one thing, then next loop we can agree there are no hard feelings between us.
“Hoo...”
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, my eyes were perfectly acting out the sad, clear gaze of a deer.
Resignation and forgiveness rested on my barely raised lips.
“Ceres, I'm sorry.”
“What?”
“I wasn't honest. But... there really are circumstances I cannot tell you about.”
Ceres narrowed her eyes.
“I know you gave up a lot for me. I know you thought of me as special.”
“You...”
“I'm truly shameless for asking, but... please take care of my sister.”
Ceres's cheeks stiffened.
Her eyes shook violently.
“Don't toy with me. Do you think I'll so much as blink because you're acting like that?”
Blue veins stood out on Ceres's clenched hand.
Killing intent she could not hide, and an agitation even deeper than that.
I closed my eyes, pretending to have accepted it.
“Please kill me.”
“...”
“If I must die, I want to die by your hand, Ceres. I...”
I even gave her a bitter smile.
“...am a traitor.”
At least I was not lying.
And now, I really needed to die soon.
Ceres's response was...
“Are you pulling this childish trick because you think I can't do it?”
Utter fury.
Whoosh.
Black mana bloomed in Ceres's hand.
It was an overwhelming density on an entirely different level from any mana I had seen before.
“Then die.”
Craaack!!!
Ceres lightly swung her arm.
That simple motion crushed space itself.
As though chewed by the jaws of a giant transparent monster, everything in that space vanished cleanly.
The searchlight that had stood there moments ago, the brick wall, even the rain pouring down.
All of it disappeared without leaving a trace.
To be precise...
It was not me, but the space directly beside where I had been standing.
“...Why am I... doing this...”
Yet Ceres, who had just shown that terrifying strike, lowered her head and muttered weakly.
Her hand, with nowhere to go, trembled.
Ceres turned her back to me.
Her rounded shoulders looked especially pitiful.
Ceres's form turned into a heat haze and faded away.
“Die. Go die somewhere I can't see you, Cedric.”
Her broken voice lingered in the air, then scattered.
I waited in case she came back to kill me, but...
“...”
No. Really?
She let me live?
Could I say Ceres's attachment to Cedric was greater than I had expected?
I had half doubted it myself.
But seeing it with my own eyes left me dumbfounded.
“Anyway... this is really, really, really the end.”
In any case, I had extracted every scrap of information I could before moving on to the next loop.
All that remained was to use it and charge toward a happy ending.
“No.”
There was still something I could do.
.
.
.
A little later.
I stood before Yiming's corpse.
“Hoo...”
The more personally I had experienced a death, the more vividly Death Sentence could recreate it.
And I was currently receiving the benefits of Premium Fever.
In other words, every death itself was a super power-up event for Cedric.
My body was slick with oil.
I had poured Zippo lighter oil from the Old World shop all over myself.
“Fuck... but is this really right?”
It sounded unbelievably painful.
No.
Enough weak thoughts.
I had to put Arbel in a bunny girl outfit, didn't I?
And I still had to see Mama Ceres's one-woman, two-role roleplay.
“Hyung, watch over me!!!!!”
Remembering Yiming, who had remained gallant until the very end,
I steeled my wavering heart.
“Everything is for the happy ending!!!!”
I gripped the lighter.
“El Psy Kongroo.”
2.
Magic.
It was the act of painting one's delusions over the firm laws of the world.
To deny cold reality, one needed an obsession hotter and deeper than reality itself.
Something too immense to control, something that sometimes swallowed even reason.
The only anchor that bound one to the world.
The word that dressed it up respectably was Mandate of Heaven.
“...Cedric.”
Ceres lifted a charred corpse into her arms.
Her shoulders slowly began to shake as though they might break.
That was why a Mandate of Heaven could not be a noble mission.
A terrible lack. Or a beastly craving. Or endlessly twisted desire.
An eternal curse.
Footnotes:
“El Psy Kongroo” is a recurring nonsensical catchphrase from Steins;Gate, used here as a dramatic pop-culture reference.
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