Intense pain shot through me. I was attacked by a heat that felt like my internal organs were burning. I had consumed a mass of power so great that merely drinking the water of the spring the stone was soaked in would fill one with aura—and I had taken it whole, without dilution. It was equivalent to a toxic substance. My body was being destroyed from the inside, ignoring my poison resistance.
I had expected this. I knew it was dangerous, so I had never thought to try it before. But that didn't mean I hadn't considered the power that act would bring.
This stone promotes life force and grants life. An excessive supply of life energy gives power to a creature, but at the same time, it brings it closer to death.
Biological activity was rapidly accelerating within my body. The acceleration of my breathing and blood flow, the activation of metabolism, and the overproduction of eggs. An immense number of eggs were being born and dying, followed by the birth of new ones.
Luan Almeiza was given life force beyond his limits by drinking the spring water. However, that power was not lost even when his body perished, and his soul was trapped in the spring as lingering thoughts.
My eggs, too, did not lose their will upon death. As 'Nen that strengthens after death,' it grew larger by the moment.
There was no hierarchy between me and the eggs. The will residing there was a single thought. There was no self-loathing. I would no longer compare 'myself' with 'myself.'
I compare 'myself' with 'him.' When he acted as the rearguard to let the team escape from the Worm attack, I must have felt an extraordinary interest. I must have sensed 'something' that made me want to know him even if it meant incorporating him.
That is the beginning of my sin, and all the answers are there.
The sight of him fighting to save someone struck a chord in my heart. It made me want to be like that too.
For my sake, I save him; for my sake, I save myself.
To save humans in order to be human. That is my 'Proof of Humanity.'
I activate Idolatry (The Ideal Me). I pour all the 'Nen that strengthens after death' I can muster into the created Quinn. As if lighting the flame of will, Quinn's body was enveloped in a flickering armor. It did not run rampant; I could control it.
An explosion of leg strength. Quinn's body soared through the sky. There was no hesitation in my destination. I generated bud-like organs in the arms and set them rotating. Quinn's body was pulled by the generated magnetic force. I sucked myself toward the red Colossus.
Seen up close, the body of the Colossus was not armor made of Almeiza Machines. Most of its composition was the main bodies. Countless ant bodies gathered and swarmed, hardened to form the shape of the Colossus. The statue itself was a single hive.
If I dive into that, I won't escape unscathed. What lies ahead should not be a struggle. The important thing is not to defeat, but to understand. I don't know how much time that will require. Unimaginable hardships must be waiting.
But I felt no fear. There was an emotion filling my heart. Not affirmation or denial, but a firm determination. Along with that surge, power welled up infinitely.
I will likely die soon. The life accelerated by the Spirit Stone will burn out before long. However, even if my body perishes, this determination will never vanish. And there was nothing I needed other than that will.
I don't think my choice is correct.
Even so, after acknowledging that it is a mistake, I choose this path.
Simply to save the person I cherish.
The Colossus turned toward me. A hole opened in its featureless head. It was a mouth meant to welcome me in. My comrades clicked their mandibles in welcome, longing for my return.
I fell deep, forever deep, into the depths of that vortex.
The ship moves forward.
Through the seabed without a single ray of light.
Aiming for the land of hope.
To paradise.
Amidst an immense number of corpses.
The egg hatched.
Outside the window, it was snowing again today. The snow sliding off the triangular roof made a heavy thud. Every single day, without fail, it fell. Thanks to that, if I neglected to shovel the snow, the windows and the entrance would be buried in a single night.
I climbed onto the shoulder of a silver-haired girl. The girl began to walk awkwardly.
This is a certain deserted island. Inside it is a mountain hut. For certain reasons, I live on this island, but it can still be called deserted. Because I am not human.
I am an ant. My appearance and size are a bit different from the ants you generally see, but I am that ant known as a type of insect. And while being an ant, I am equipped with a power of thought that transcends ants, allowing me to objectively analyze my own existence. This stems from my ability as a species.
The Queen Ant of our species has a truly rare reproductive system called 'Phagogenesis,' where by eating other creatures, she expresses biological characteristics she does not possess in the next generation. Presumably, the Queen who birthed me ate a human and produced me, who possesses human thinking power.
I was the Ant King. Not the Queen, but the King. When a colony reaches a certain size, the Queen Ant gives birth to a King Ant. The King Ant has the role of leaving the nest to create a new colony. However, for me, who possesses human consciousness, such ant-like activities don't feel like my own concern.
Do you think it's a tragedy for a human consciousness to reside in an ant only a few dozen centimeters long? Although I was surprised at first, I soon grew accustomed to the current sensation. Or perhaps I just haven't fully accepted reality.
While I have a clear identity as an ant, human consciousness is also mixed in. It feels as though I've become a ghost possessing an ant. Within my head, along with the power of thought, human knowledge has also been inherited.
However, that is merely a record in the form of information and not memories I actually experienced. My consciousness is formed with the personality of 'someone somewhere' as its foundation, but I don't know what kind of life that person led. In a way, I might be an existence like 'a different person with a similar personality.'
Still, there was no particular problem. I had enough knowledge to suffice for thinking. Perhaps there's all sorts of knowledge that wasn't passed down, but since I don't even have the awareness of that, it didn't feel strange.
All there is is emptiness. What should a single ant, merely given knowledge and allowed to think, do from now on?
If I were just an ant, I wouldn't need to worry. I would simply execute the program etched in my genes as a biological organism, following my instincts. There would be no need to think about meaning.
I didn't know what I should do or what I wanted to do. Precisely because I was able to do the unnecessary thing called 'thinking,' I had to search for the meaning of life. Where could that be? It's not as if it would be lying right in front of me.
Then I met the white girl. She appeared before me, who could do nothing but be bewildered. No, she was there from the beginning. When I was born and my self-awareness began to function, she was already by my side.
She was white, as if carved from the snow. Her white skin blended into the snow as if melting, and her silver hair shone like the sunlight reflecting off the snow's surface. She was a human girl, as fragile as a snow statue that would crumble if touched.
The girl, half-buried in the snow, lay as if sleeping. Just as I thought she might be dead, her eyes quietly opened. Those black pupils looked at me.
Through those eyes, I saw my own form.
A bug with a somewhat machine-like atmosphere, covered in red, armor-like exoskeleton, was there. I could recognize what the girl saw as if I were seeing it myself. Not just vision, but all five senses were integrated.
That mysterious sensation was a shock great enough to blow away my tiny values. I could move the girl freely, as if I had obtained a human body. I ran around on the snow in a frenzy, trembling at the piercing cold. I will likely never forget that emotion for as long as I live.
It felt as though that body were my true self. Having human consciousness and being able to move a human body. I was happy about such a natural thing.
That was my beginning. The beginning of the two 'me's,' the ant and the girl.
[THOUSAND PHANTOMS (CARMINE ARMS)]
The King Ant is born as an existence with a soul different from the Queen Ant and has not inherited Nen abilities such as Mental Synchronization, Idolatry, or Sacrificial Cradle. The girl who looks like Quinn is a type of Nen beast called a Parasitic type. Many Parasitic types are manifested by borrowing the host's aura when someone's lingering thoughts possess someone else. As a rule, because it is not an ability created by the host themselves, it cannot be moved by one's own will, but Carmine Arms acts spontaneously by grasping the host's intent through shared senses. Strictly speaking, the host is not directly controlling it.
[CONSTRAINTS]
The design of this Nen doll cannot be changed (injuries and missing parts recover automatically).Among the shared senses, pain cannot be blocked.Materialization is maintained under any circumstances (when the aura required for materialization can no longer be supplied, the host dies).