Chapter 914 - It is all very dumb

POV Nathaniel

A good month has passed since we arrived at the resting place of Tariel the Undying. May he find peace in knowing that it could be worse. Instead of getting burned constantly for 300 years so he doesn't revive, he could be eaten by the kindred. If they weren't vegetarians, that is.

I think it is a nice thing to always find positives no matter how bad things are. That's what I explain to one of the kindred’s elders, a close to 200 year old guy in charge of the sacred machine pulling the train we arrived on.

“Stupid Stupit, brute, dumb human, head empty, might as well be eaten! Will punish Pip for recommending you. Stupid human. Should have known when others called you a mana obsessed lunatic!” he keeps shouting in a tiny voice that is so close to being high-pitched.

The elder, called Tater, stands on my shoulder and is as big as a small tarantula. After every "stupid," he hits the side of my head.

“You are overreacting,” I say to him. “I said I will fix it.”

“Fix it now! And no flying!”

“I promise you, Min-jae, Sophie, and I have a plan. A great plan! Amazing plan! Just imagine moving through the air instead of using that boring, often broken track system!”

“No flying!” This time his voice turns high-pitched as he hits the side of my head two times. “Stupid. Stupid. Young and impatient. A fool!”

“A fool?! Me? The horror! What will I do now!?”

“No respect! Too stupid for respect! Know your place! Stupid stupid!”

“Yes, yes.”

He screams in that weird way the kindred sometimes do, and I wonder if I wouldn't prefer to be hunted by kindred children instead.

The past month was quite fun. After doing their stuff in Beyond, most of Group 4 decided to stay as well. We took the opportunity to learn from the kindred and local libraries, or absorb information we had no time to study from each other.

Quite a bit of progress was made as we used this place as our base and went out on hunts, or to observe kaiju far away, or to study the bones and regenerating flesh of the one whose skeleton rests against the volcano.

Though it is very, very, very heavily punished if you take the flesh away instead of destroying it. Some experimentation on site is okay, but under strict rules. Apparently, there have been incidents where flesh taken away did some scary stuff. I'm deeply saddened I wasn't able to observe it, and Lily is probably even more so.

“Stop spacing out, go fix sacred machine!” I'm reminded once again by Tater, whom I sometimes lovingly call Hater, and with a sigh, I begin to walk toward where our train is parked.

He remains on my shoulder, his body acting as a gimbal as his legs move to balance him in the rhythm of my steps. On purpose, I start walking weirdly and over obstacles to observe that mesmerizing sight.

We left this place only twice during the past month, and always only for a short while after kindred scientists did calculations on the movements of the kaiju. Sophie is still trying to understand it because she finds it fun, but I don't bother. I just live happily with the thought that something cool like that is possible.

I think it would lose its charm and magic if I knew exactly how it works, and that isn't an excuse I'm using just because I hate the idea of doing those sorts of calculations. I wouldn’t do that.

Noticing a group of kindred children, I rush behind one of the buildings. The elder on my shoulder goes silent as well as we watch that group of buffoons run by. Each of them is taller than me and heavily painted over by their friends, the skiddle, hitting things and shouting as they go.

Only once they are gone do I begin to walk again. On purpose, I avoid flying to not anger the kindred elder even further.

“Did your human friend grow that new fruit already?” Tater asks out of nowhere.

While walking, I turn my head toward him, and he faces me while impatiently tapping on my chin. “Answer, answer.”

“I think so? Sophie said-”

“Good!” he interrupts me and doesn't say anything else, turning 90 degrees to face ahead of us again. For a moment, I feel the need to flick him off my shoulder, but I'm a kind man, a responsible adult.

Our journey takes half an hour longer until we reach the sacred machine belonging to our group, and we are both let inside. The monster whose heart is powering it lies nearby, more machine than a living being at this point. Many kindred attend to it, with some elders even moving inside its ears to reach the brain where they also did some... things. I really don’t want to know. Well, I do want to know, but I don’t. It’s that sort of thing.

Our goal is one of three power plants. The one I... worked on improving is the one that is rarely in use. The train is capable of running on just one, and the second one is the replacement in case something breaks, which is very rare. The third one is to make overly cautious individuals feel better.

“This! This stupid, stupid crap! What is this!” the elder kindred shouts in my ear, even pinching it with his clawed hands and holding on as I shake my head and he swings around.

As the adult in the room, I decide to stay quiet. There is a huge engine in the middle of the room. It can serve to boost the movement of the train, generate resources like light and warmth during the cold season, power air circulation in poisoned zones, or even help create a barrier around the train or power up weapons. It is an engineering masterpiece. The engine is a huge pile of metal, tubes, crystals, and even items such as weapons used as cores in places, along with some body parts of powerful monsters. Funnily enough, plenty of tubes are here so elder kindred can use them to walk inside the engine to fix more delicate parts.

I love this thing.

Currently, the room and that engine are covered by thin manabloc tubes that are a very pale, transparent blue. All of them twist and form shapes akin to inscriptions while having smooth turns and no 90-degree angles and such.

Most of the tubes are currently filled with manasol that is quite compressed. Not to the max, as I could, I experimented with that, and it's a bit dangerous at that point to risk putting it here, but it could be said that in these tubes, there is, if I had to use a correct scientific term, a shitload of mana.

“What it does, what it do!” the elder shouts in my ear.

“Nothing,” I say happily.

“Nothing? You stupid, stupid!”

“But I have a plan,” I say.

Immediately, I filter out his screaming. Indeed, it does nothing so far, as the manajuice refuses to listen to me even after all these weeks, but I have a plan, as I said.

I’m confident it’s a safer one than whatever monstrosity Sophie is preparing.

POV Isabella Martinez

Nathaniel, Lily, and Kim have their rooms on the train while the rest of us are in the city. But it isn't much trouble, as Nathaniel just teleports around whenever he can, and the rest of us can move quickly when we want to see each other.

It shouldn't be that easy to teleport through the many layers of protection the kindred have set, but of course he does it so easily without anyone noticing.

I know it is not true, but maybe… just maybe they are staying away because they don't want to spend time with me? Aaron didn't laugh at my joke last time, and Maya was late to our training. Maybe she had to force herself to even come by?

And I noticed a pimple on my face. Since when is my face so asymmetrical too?

I hate it. I hate all these silly thoughts that pop up in my mind. I hate the changes I'm going through, and they scare me a little.

Sophie, Tess, and Nathaniel, people I used to look up to, no longer seem like the reliable, near-perfect adults I made them out to be in my mind, even as I sensed their emotions and ignored some facts.

Sophie can be very lazy and gets angry when scared. Tess always seems so reliable and easy to smile at, but she rarely gets scared, and that's even worse than if she were. And Nathaniel… yeah.

It's been a while since I read the emotions of anyone in the group, and I'm avoiding it on purpose. I just want to know too much about what they think of me, and I'm scared of finding out.

How stupid this all is. The boys' joking around is beginning to feel annoying at times, and I notice myself pulling back a little or acting annoyed and bored. Sometimes I wish the others could feel my emotions, but at the same time, I'm terrified of it.

And not using my [Empathy] feels weird. It has become a part of me, and I have been using it constantly for years. It is like I lost one of my senses, as if I could no longer hear or see.

I hug Noodle, who shrinks a bit and nudges my head with his, which is the same size as mine.

(Care. Curiosity.)

“I'm okay. Just... this is okay.” I hug him tighter.

(Confusion. Curiosity.)

“Don't ask.”

(Confusion.)

“I know.”

As I stand up, he shrinks in size and coils around my arm while I make my way out of my room and toward the roof garden of the nice house Sophie and I are staying in.

There is one of the humans from the city standing there, speaking with her telepathically and receiving orders before he gathers his things and leaves.

Sophie notices me and, with a smile, opens her arms for a hug, but I quickly walk past and sit in a nearby chair. She then sits opposite me.

I stare at her, wanting her to speak first. Of course, I know that the man is mind controlled by Sophie. Or mind influenced, as she calls it, saying that it is much easier and more reasonable to just poke certain behaviors and twist some emotions rather than take full control and risk making them useless.

Currently, all beings in the city other than the kindred are under Sophie's influence. Thousands of them. They bring her materials, they do experiments for her, they gather knowledge.

They try to carve inscriptions into the bones of Tariel the Undying.

“There was progress,” she smiles, and even without my skill, I can see that she is happy with it.

My first impulse is to remind her how I view her mind control, but I stop myself. She knows that, and I know I'm being unfair. We have had this conversation many times, and yet I still want to act like a brat. I hate the way I am as of late. I want it to stop.

“So Lily's chisel is working?” I ask.

“Yes! This version can finally carve into them. And thankfully the bones don't 'heal,' unlike the flesh. Of course, I will have to be careful and have people under my control carve where the kindred won't see. I will try to get some of them to the skull, as I think that's where they will work best.”

“I see,” I say and force myself to smile.

A shadow falls over me, and when I look back, Blackie is standing there as well, as always entirely covered in his red armor.

“He is worried about you, Izzy. I am too,” Sophie says gently.

I believe her instantly. I don't have to look at her or touch her emotions.

“Last time, Nathaniel called me an agitated, dumb teenager,” I whisper.

“Nathaniel is an ass, but you kind of deserved it-”

Sophie reaches for me just as I stand up to storm away and pulls me closer to her. She chuckles as I try to pull away or overpower her, but without using more of my powers, I don't have a chance, and I would never use them against her. And she knows that.

Even as I struggle and insult her, she keeps laughing and hugging me. “Oh, to be a dumb teenager again,” she chuckles.

“You are dumb!”

I could touch her emotions, but I don't want to.

It is all very dumb.