After the hazy smoke cleared, the abominable lips opened with a hideous smile.
“I’m sorry, Hoaphilen Legiers. I’m just too strong.”
“…No. This can’t be.”
The momentary joy was swept away, replaced by despair.
A cumulonimbus cloud, large enough to summon a storm, as if the sun had never shone, filled her chest.
Hoaphilen’s lips trembled at the unbelievable reality.
Her neck was clearly torn open.
It was a fatal, life-threatening injury.
The Roilnia she knew should not have the ability to regenerate her body this quickly.
Yet, the Roilnia in front of Hoaphilen had recovered all her body parts except her arm, returning cleanly to the state before she was shot.
Only the pool of blood on the floor and her torn and scorched clothes faintly proved that the woman had been shot.
Hoaphilen alone was utterly bruised and broken.
“The idea was pretty good. I’ll compliment you.”
The nonchalant shrug was terrifyingly unreal.
This wasn’t what she wanted.
Whatever the outcome, it should not have been this result.
The worst of the worst that she didn’t even want to contemplate.
The effect of the drug was theoretically sound.
She had even injected a lethal dose to maximize the effect, yet she hadn’t anticipated her being completely fine.
It didn’t work at all? Not even a fraction?
Hoaphilen bit her lip so hard that it drew blood, and with all her remaining strength, she pulled out the spare cylinder she had prepared in reserve from her other sleeve.
However, her injured arm made her movements slow, and there was no obstacle like the flashbang to interfere with Roilnia.
Consequently, the object in her hand was easily snatched away by the woman’s telekinesis.
“Is this a souvenir? Thank you.”
Roilnia, who had intercepted the cylinder, looked at the green liquid and smiled.
Instead of cruelly smashing it, she opened a space with her fingers, as if collecting a travel souvenir, and put Hoaphilen’s cylinder inside.
Hoaphilen, pale with shock, spoke with a bleeding heart.
“Why, why?! Why are you fine?! You should be dead!”
“How naive. Did you think this much would do anything? It only made me feel something, just a little bit, and that was it. And I wasn’t just sitting still while you were busy making that drug for me, was I? Shall I tell you the difference between you and me?”
Roilnia stood up and kindly bent down towards the collapsed Hoaphilen.
Her long red hair slithered like a snake, draping over Hoaphilen’s face and crawling across her skin.
Hoaphilen squeezed her clenched jaw against the sickening sensation.
“Your drug has too many variables, it’s incomplete. Did you think I would still be using the exact same drug your husband made, word for word? If you really wanted to beat me, you should have done anything it took. You should have injected drugs into all sorts of people, experimented, improved, and made it more complete, like I did. Or, what, was it that pathetic last shred of conscience?”
The woman harshly denounced Hoaphilen.
It was miserable, but Roilnia’s words were not wrong.
As she said, Hoaphilen’s drug had many variables.
This was a risk she had taken since she first started developing the drug.
Hoaphilen’s drug was not a drug that eliminated the effect of a real Guide’s Guiding; it was a drug that detoxified the components of the targeted medication.
But her husband’s drug was a failed one, so no other Espers would use it.
Since Roilnia was the only person this drug needed to be applied to, it was difficult to find suitable test subjects.
That’s why it was a big gamble, and it was only theoretically perfect.
In cold terms, it was a half-baked drug.
In fact, if she had wanted to increase the level of completion, there was a way.
No matter the obstacle, she only had to conduct random, unethical experiments without reservation, even at the cost of countless sacrifices, like Roilnia.
The various reasons, such as not knowing the recipe or the husband’s drug being a dangerous failure, were mere excuses.
Regardless, the fact that Hoaphilen could not do that was the reason for the current outcome.
And the reason she couldn’t act like Roilnia wasn’t because of a petty conscience that didn’t want to hurt people.
‘Failure.’
It was the fear of failure.
Hoaphilen needed only perfect success.
At this point, where success was the only hope, she constantly had to fight her inner anxiety about failure.
She desperately clung to the drug under the shadow of anxiety about whether she could capture Roilnia with her own hands and the fear that she might fail.
But if the years of her devotion were confirmed to be useless through this experiment, Hoaphilen did not want to know where to start over.
She didn’t want to despair. She hated the thought of time passing without having gained anything.
So, she excluded failure from the realm of possibility.
At this point, she had already effectively lost to Roilnia.
Thus, her inability to act more viciously than the woman was a clear mistake.
“Besides, even after seeing all that, don’t you get it? If the drug was going to harm me, wouldn’t it have happened already?”
She feared failure, yet Hoaphilen’s drug failed.
Even if the components were valid, it was still a failure since it didn’t properly affect Roilnia.
It was the defeat she desperately wanted to avoid facing.
In contrast, that woman succeeded brilliantly.
Going beyond being without a Guide, she even pioneered another ability that Hoaphilen hadn’t realized.
However, even with all this, there was a point that Hoaphilen couldn’t understand to simply explain it as the power of the drug.
Roilnia must have consumed and experimented with countless drugs over the not-so-short period of two years, so why did her body show no signs of abnormality?
Whether it was an ability enhancer or a Guiding drug, there was a limit to consumption.
Excessive intake could strain the body due to drug addiction and cause severe side effects.
Furthermore, the drug her husband had created had side effects so severe that the drawbacks overshadowed the benefits.
That’s why it was a failed drug.
Since side effects occurred in almost all test subjects after just one injection, they decided to discard it after much deliberation.
But Roilnia, far from having side effects, had even dangerously refined the drug and abused it with other drugs, yet she was swaggering around with a healthy face and no impairments.
Hoaphilen couldn’t help but feel skeptical.
“I can’t understand. Even if it wasn’t this, it wouldn’t be strange for you to be ruined by drug addiction. What kind of trickery are you employing?!”
“Think simply. It’s just because I’m special. I was chosen.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
Frustration.
Frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration!
She was going mad with frustration.
“Why should you be special? Why, exactly? Why you? Why, of all people, are you the one?!”
“Why are you making it so difficult? That’s the truth.”
It was too simple an answer.
It was so simple that she didn’t want to willingly admit it.
In her mind, she understood the remote possibility.
In the natural world, complete one hundred percent certainty does not exist.
Her husband’s drug was a failed work with severe side effects, but not everything in the world could be one hundred percent certain.
The probability was extremely low, but adding all possible assumptions and imaginations, one in a hundred million, or one in ten billion people, might experience delayed side effects or none at all.
Like rare, naturally occurring species, it was a possibility, however rare, that was not zero percent.
But why did it have to be her?
Hoaphilen’s heart refused to accept the idea that the woman was simply born with a peculiar constitution that made her less susceptible to side effects.
The fact that it was explained by the single reason of ‘Roilnia is special,’ with no other explanation, felt utterly unfair.
Why her, of all people! Why did Roilnia Ranilgref alone win this impossible, wicked lottery of chance!
Why did the gods bestow favor upon her alone, as if deflecting every arrow aimed at her!
“As long as you’re an Esper and a human, this can’t be. There has to be a limit. There is definitely a limit. A limit that someone like you can’t handle…!”
“No matter what nonsense you spout, I have evolved yet again. You saw it, didn’t you? That injury was healed without a trace. That is an achievement I’ve accomplished again. With my current recovery ability, I might have been able to recover my arm immediately after losing it to that man, but perhaps because too much time has passed since the injury, I can’t. That’s a bit disappointing.”
Roilnia ran her hand down the arm that didn’t exist from the shoulder down, letting Hoaphilen’s desperate cries wash over her.
The fate of the arms, both broken and seemingly useless, and the lament of an old woman were none of her concern.
Roilnia, using her one arm to cup Hoaphilen’s face, put on a phony expression, pretending to gently wipe away the blood that had splattered on her face.
With the trivial show over, there was only one remaining piece of business the woman had with Hoaphilen.
“I asked you earlier if you would let me open the bag.”
The one-armed witch leaned closer, her lips near Hoaphilen’s ear, and sweetly whispered:
“The lock on the bag opens with biological information. Tell me, who is the key?”
