Hell Difficulty Tutorial 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’ve been worse. Instead of getting burned constantly for 300 years so he doesn't revive, he could’ve been 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, stupid, 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 only about as big as a small tarantula. And after every "stupid," he hits me in the side of the head.

“You are overreacting,” I say to him. “I said I’d 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 twice. “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 the kindred children instead.

The past month has been 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 their local libraries, or absorb information we haven’t had time to study with each other.

Quite a bit of progress gets made as we use this place as a base of operations and go out on hunts, or to observe distant kaiju, or to study the bones and regenerating flesh of the one whose skeleton currently 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 only under strict rules. Apparently, there have been incidents where any 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’ve taken to lovingly calling Hater, and with a sigh, I begin to walk toward where our train has been parked.

He remains on my shoulder, his body acting as a gimbal as his legs move to balance him in rhythm with my steps. This leads me to deliberately start walking in weird ways and step over obstacles to observe the mesmerizing sight.

We’ve only left this place twice in the past month, and always only for a short while after the kindred scientists did their 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 so cool can even be possible.

I think it would lose its charm and magic if I knew exactly how it worked, and that isn't even an excuse to cover for the fact that 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 we watch the group of buffoons run by. Each of them is taller than me and heavily painted over by their friends, and they skitter around, hitting things and shouting as they go.

Only once they are gone do I begin to walk again. I deliberately avoid flying to keep from angering the kindred elder any further.

“Has your human friend grown 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 once more. For a moment, I feel the need to flick him off my shoulder, but I'm a kind man, a responsible adult.

Our journey continues for another half an hour before we reach the sacred machine belonging to our group, and we’re both allowed inside. The monster whose heart is currently powering it lies nearby, more machine than living being at this point. Many kindred attend to it, and some of the elders are even walking through its ears to reach the brain where they’ve apparently done 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 before 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 just there 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’s a huge engine in the middle of the room. It can serve to boost the train’s movements, generate light and warmth during the cold season, power air circulation in poisoned zones, or even help create a barrier around the train or power the weapons. It’s an engineering masterpiece. The engine itself is a huge pile of metal, tubes, crystals, and even items such as weapons are being used as cores in places, along with the body parts of powerful monsters. Funnily enough, there are plenty of tubes here so the elder kindred can use them to walk around inside the engine to fix its more delicate parts.

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I love this thing.

Currently, the room and that engine are covered by thin manabloc tubes that shine a very pale, transparent blue. All of them twist and form shapes that almost resemble inscriptions while maintaining smooth turns and free of 90-degree angles and the like.

Most of the tubes are currently filled with manasol that’s been heavily compressed. Not to the max, as I could, I experimented with that, and it gets a bit dangerous at that point to risk putting it here, but it could be said that within these tubes is, if I had to use a technical term, a shitload of mana.

“What it does, what it does!” 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 for the moment, 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 currently preparing.

POV Isabella Martinez

Nathaniel, Lily, and Kim have their own rooms on the train while the rest of us are in the city. But it isn't much trouble, if only because Nathaniel just teleports around whenever he can, and the rest of us can move pretty 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 with ease, and without anyone noticing.

I know it’s not true, but maybe… just maybe they’ve been 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 has my face been this asymmetrical?

I hate it. I hate all these silly thoughts that keep popping 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 the facts.

Sophie can be very lazy and gets angry when she’s scared. Tess always seems so reliable and easy to smile at, but she rarely gets scared, and somehow 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’ve been avoiding it on purpose. I just want to know too much about what they think of me, and I'm scared of finding out.

All of this is stupid. 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 at the thought of it.

I hug Noodle, who shrinks a bit and nudges my head with his, matching his size to mine.

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

“Don't ask.”

“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 head toward the rooftop garden of the nice house Sophie and I have been 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 being mind controlled by Sophie. Or “influenced”, as she calls it, saying that it’s 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, everyone 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 use of mind control, but I stop myself. She knows that, and I know I'm being unfair. We’ve had this conversation so many times, and yet I still want to be a brat about it. I hate the way I’ve been 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 ensure that the people under my control carve where the kindred won't see. I’ll be trying to get some of them into the skull, I think that's where they’re going to 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’s 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 it.

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

“No! You’re dumb!”

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

It’s all very dumb.