'I hope he saw the message.'

Reminding myself of a certain demon with pink hair, I shook my head. My preparations were almost done.

All I needed were the conditions.

"Huuuh."

I looked around me while taking a deep breath.

The silence was deafening.

It was the only thing that filled the air. No sound of cars passing by or people chatting in the distance.

It was just me, standing there in the middle of an empty street.

I looked around, taking in the desolate landscape. The buildings were empty, and the only thing the occasional sound of a cart moving would reach my ears. It probably came from the little people that chose to remain back on Earth.

While there weren't many, their numbers weren't little.

Chirp! Chirp!

"I guess I'm not entirely alone."

I bitterly smiled at the thought. Apart from the few people that chose to remain, the animals were still here.

"You look pitiful."

A sudden voice brought me out of my thoughts, and when I turned my head, I was startled to see a familiar figure that bore a striking resemblance to myself, standing in the middle of the road.

His gaze indifferently fell on me.

"Why are you wondering aimlessly like that?"

"I was just looking at my surroundings."

I made up an excuse on the spot. To be honest, I actually was wandering around aimlessly, but I didn't want to admit it.

Not to him, at least.

"Should you be looking at your surroundings given the situation that you're in?"

"…No."

I shook my head.

Given that I only had half a year, and I wasn't even close to Jezebeth's level, I probably shouldn't have been roaming around the streets like I was doing now.

"You think you can beat Jezebeth with your current mentality?"

"Why are you grilling me all of a sudden?"

From the moment he appeared, he started asking me question after question. What was he doing? When did he suddenly start to care?

"Shouldn't you be hiding in some corner, muttering how you want to die and that I'm stopping you from doing that?"

I glanced at his hands and feet, which were no longer bound by chains.

"Let me tell you this, I am no longer stopping you from achieving what you wanted to achieve. Do whatever you want."

I was honestly a bit ticked off.

For the past years, he'd been manipulating me and cursing me. Many times, I tried to change his mind and help him out, and yet, all he did was spit on me and ignore me.

Understanding where he was coming from, I never paid much attention to his behavior, but now that he was finally free and could achieve his long awaited wish, he suddenly didn't want to?

What was this guy up to?

"…"

Remaining silent, he kept his gaze on me. Just as I was about to say something else, he opened his mouth and spoke.

"You're a petty man."

"…"

My left eye twitched. I visibly felt it twitch.

"You do know we're the same person, right?"

"No."

He shook his head.

"The two of us aren't the same," he continued, "What we've experienced and what we've been through… we're completely different people at this point. You may look like me, and you may sound like me, but you're not me."

"So I'm just an inferior copy of you?"

"No."

He shook his head once more, his gaze settling over my body. Although I was uncertain, for a moment, I felt his lips curl.

"…You're the most perfect version of me."

***

Maylin stood next to Gervis and Brutus. They overlooked the city from the building they were in, and their expression quickly turned solemn.

"What do you think? Do you think you can do it?"

Gervis asked, his hands placed on the glass pane. Unlike the other two, he had to move a little closer in order to get a better view of the city. It was a bit annoying, but he was already used to it by this point.

"It's not impossible."

Maylin muttered, tearing her gaze away from the city. Extending her hand, three marble sized cores of different hues appeared in her hand, and her expression became pained.

<SSS> ranked cores.

They were her most prized possessions.

The amount of mana that a single core contained was absurd and a lot could be achieved with them.

They were something that had been handed down to her by the other elven forces, and she had never gotten the chance to use them since they were far too valuable for her to use. That was until now…

"I will begin the operation."

Maylin took a deep breath, moving away from the glass pane and making her way toward a certain section of the building.

As they approached the door to the room, a faint hum could be heard emanating from within.

Gervis and Maylin exchanged a glance before she reached out to grasp the handle.

With a gentle push, the door swung open, revealing a dimly lit space that was packed to the brim with electronic equipment.

Or at least, that was what they seemed to be.

The first thing that caught their attention was the wires - thick, black, and snaking across the floor in a chaotic mess. They seemed to converge towards a central point, where a large device sat, humming softly in the dim light.

A faint glow emanated from it, casting an otherworldly sheen over everything in the room.

The device was surrounded by a veritable forest of screens and projections. Holographic images flickered and danced in the air, forming intricate patterns that roamed in the air.

"It looks like you've put quite a lot of work on the device."

Mayling commented, observing the piece of machinery in front of her. She was rather surprised by the structure.

While she was already aware of what the dwarves had built, she didn't think it was to this scale.

It made her feel rather complicated, but at the same time, she felt relief.

"Come here."

At Gervis's call, she moved toward one of the projections.

"Is this where I put them?"

Maylin pointed toward a small slot on the machinery. It was a smooth concave dent and matched the size of the orb in her hand.

"Yes."

Gervis nodded, his fingers dancing across the piece of machinery in front of him.

Beep―! Beep―!

Once his fingers moved, the machinery came to life, and the entire room trembled.

Lights flickered in and out of the room, and the roaring sound of an engine reverberated throughout. It startled Maylin, who took a step back and looked at the machine with even more wonder.

"Place the core on the slot."

It was only after she heard Gervis's words that she snapped out of it and did as she was told.

Taking a closer step toward the machine, she took out one of the <SSS> ranked cores and placed it on the slot.

WOOOOM―! Coming into contact with the core, the machine trembled, and a terrifying pressure suddenly bore down on the entire room.

Cr… Crack.

The floor of the room started to crack at the pressure, and the building seemed to be on the verge of shaking.

Thankfully, Brutus was there.

BANG―!

Lightly stopping his foot on the ground, the building stopped shaking, and the pressure that was coming out from the core suddenly subsided and re-entered the core.

Gervis shot him a grateful look and turned his attention back to the device in front of him.

There was a long bar in front of him. It was slowly filling up, and right when it filled up, he pressed a certain button.

With a smile, he mumbled.

"Mana extraction complete. Time to send the mana out."

WOOOOM―!

The building did indeed start shaking at his point.

***

The bustling Metropolis of Voss city, which had just started to be a place of constant activity, with people rushing to and fro as they went about their daily business, underwent strange changes on this day.

It started with a faint tremor that rippled through the ground, almost imperceptible at first.

But as the seconds ticked by, it grew stronger and stronger until it felt as though the very earth was shaking beneath their feet.

Rumble―! Rumble―!

The first sign that something was wrong came when the barrier that encircled the entire city began to wobble.

At first, it was just a faint ripple, but soon it was shaking so violently that people were knocked off their feet.

The once-sturdy barrier was now like a flimsy sheet of paper, barely holding on against the immense pressure that seemed to be bearing down upon it.

"Aha!?"

"W,what's going on?"

Panic quickly set in as people began to realize the gravity of the situation. It was understandable - after all, they had been told the barrier was supposed to be extremely sturdy, and nothing should be able to get through it.

Amidst the chaos, questions flew through the air like so many panicked birds.

"What's going on?"

"Are we under attack?"

No one seemed to have the answers, and fear began to spread like a contagion through the crowds.

Thankfully, the panic was somewhat contained.

With no alarms ringing and no visible signs of danger, people began to calm down and take stock of the situation. And when a certain few didn't seem to be concerned about the shaking barrier, it served to calm down the rest of the populace somewhat.

But even as people tried to make sense of what was happening, something strange began to occur.

The mana in some people's bodies began to boil, almost as if reacting to the seismic tremors that were rocking the city. It was an unusual sensation and one that left people feeling confused and disoriented.

Swoosh!

As the trembling continued, a sudden breeze blew past, carrying with it an almost tangible wave of mana.

The air around them thickened considerably, the mana that had previously been thin and insubstantial now thickening and coalescing into something much more tangible.

And as the ground continued to shake, it was clear that something truly momentous was happening―something that would change the course of Voss City's history forever.