The walls of the Princess Palace rumbled as Matsumoto and Vivy struck them. The hallways, the rooms, the ceiling, the floor, and all the opulent decorations were destroyed as they tore through one of the few perfect replicate castles in the world, causing a distortion in Vivy’s consciousness.
How much time had Vivy spent here?
Some parts of the castle had been redecorated during its long history, and there were places where the exterior looked exactly the same even after renovations. Diva’s room was one of those places. No matter how much time passed, or however many renovations it went through, it remained exactly the same as it was when it was first captured in a photograph. That way, NiaLand wouldn’t betray the dreams of all the visitors who came to the park.
The sight of this manifestation of dreams being destroyed, soon to be lost forever, was burned into Vivy’s consciousness. She didn’t memorize it so she could object. It was so she would never forget its destruction. There was no doubt that she was the one destroying it.
Vivy, the AI who wasn’t Diva, failed to carry out the Singularity Project. In the end, she found herself destroying the place she belonged, the place Diva belonged.
As that pain skimmed Vivy’s thoughts, she and Matsumoto broke into a large hall. Unlike the back of the castle, this area was always open to visitors. It was so big that it covered two floors, creating an opulent space often used for weddings.
A NiaLand Bride. This sacred ground inspired the phrase, and now it was the battleground for two lifeless, mechanical frames colliding with each other in showers of sparks.
“Urgh…”
The pole Vivy was hanging on to snapped. It broke somewhere in the middle, half of it still in Matsumoto, taking away Vivy’s ability to resist his changes in direction. Matsumoto took that as an opportunity and purged the part with the pole in it, shooting it directly at Vivy’s torso. Her frame jolted upward, and Matsumoto shuffled his parts around to strike down at her from above while she had no handhold.
Vivy raised both her slender arms to block the attack coming from overhead. The massive destructive force ran through her body, her beautiful hair a mess as she went flying headfirst toward the ground.
Unlike when she was up in the sky, she had no way to avoid her collision with the ground from this height. As it was, she would crash—unable to do anything—and suffer fatal damage to her head.
“Don’t go giving up, stupid!”
“…”
As Vivy’s frame plummeted, Kakitani came swooping in from the side to snatch her. Vivy looked to see Kakitani holding a long curtain with one hand, swinging sideways across the hall like Tarzan on a vine to expertly catch Vivy midfall.
“How did you…?”
“Pure chance. I was looking for an opening to jump on him.”
“Pulling that off…goes beyond human limits.”
“Which is why I barely did pull it off,” Kakitani said curtly, as if throwing out a reminder that she was still human.
The blood running from her temple to her cheek proved that to be true. Vivy could also feel an abnormal amount of tension in Kakitani’s lower left side where Vivy held on to her, meaning she was almost certainly injured there as well.
“Stick the landing!” Kakitani shouted.
She released the curtain, and they went sailing through the air, flying straight into a corridor on the second floor of the hall that overlooked the stairs. Vivy spun around to see what Matsumoto was doing behind them and immediately leapt toward Kakitani’s back.
The next moment, fire erupted from Matsumoto’s artillery, and a slanted hail of bullets showered the hall. It was like a nightmare seeing the glass in the windows shatter, the walls split, the corridor chewed up. Now that there was distance between them, Matsumoto was no longer in danger of firing at himself, removing the limits on his artillery.
Vivy kept her arms wrapped around Kakitani as they fled further into the castle while the rapid-fire guns punched hundreds of bullets into the walls per second, tearing them to bits as if they were nothing more than delicate candy art.
“Urgh…”
Raining bullets struck Vivy in her shoulder and leg, tearing off her clothing. Her synthetic skin split, the metal frame inside deformed by the impacts. Sparks fired from the exposed circuitry, and the oil that adjusted her internal pressures flowed out like blood.
Vivy chose to be a shield against those bullets, knowing she would take some damage in the process. If she didn’t, Kakitani would get hit. The shots were powerful enough to tear a human’s leg or arm off with one hit—just one in the head or torso would be lethal.
“Shit! This way!” Kakitani said, yanking Vivy into a side passage. She tossed a smoke grenade to the ground with a clatter before Vivy was even out of the line of fire.
Matsumoto immediately pierced it with a bullet when he saw the pin was pulled, but that only triggered it. A curtain of smoke erupted, hiding Vivy and Kakitani. They would only be able to hide from the direct detection of his visual sensors for a moment.
“He’ll quickly switch over to thermal imaging and detect us using heat. The smoke grenade won’t buy us more than a few seconds,” said Vivy.
“I know! Damn, this guy’s dangerous! The real Cubeman from the stories… Can’t believe they had to deal with this monster in my granddad’s day!”
“Unfortunately for us, we were always trying to avoid—” Vivy was about to say they were trying to avoid fighting Toak as much as possible, but something felt off.
There was a temporary lull in the mountain’s worth of bullets threatening to end their lives. Or, in Vivy’s case, threatening to render her nonfunctional. Vivy used that moment to reopen the transmission circuit she’d shut down earlier.
“Professor Matsumoto.”
“Oh! Vivy, are you all right?! I was on pins and needles because the transmission cut out all of a sudden! The battle there—”
“Is it really true you didn’t make Matsumoto the AI?”
Vivy could hear the professor’s breath catch on the other end of the transmission while he was typing away. The hesitation lasted only a moment, though. “It’s true,” he said, fingers gliding across the keys. “I couldn’t do any more for the Singularity Project than send you data about the future and give you orders. I have no involvement beyond that.”
“…”
“It sounds like there was an AI calling itself Matsumoto who worked beside you. And that’s the same AI who shows up several times in Toak’s records as Cubeman.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“If that’s the case, the only thing I can think of is that something hitched a ride. That AI stood beside you, remodifying what you modified to make sure the world ended up like this.”
Remodifying. Error messages flooded Vivy’s consciousness at that word.
Vivy and Matsumoto’s role had been to modify the Singularity Points to reshape the world as it should be. That was their role. Did this mean that Matsumoto had actually remodified the Points and undid everything she had accomplished, feigning innocence all the while?