Lackey's Seducing Survival Odyssey

Chapter 1861: Do Not Pretend You Care For ME!

RIN AI fell silent, as if she were still processing the words she had just heard through the receiver attached to the table.

She didn’t understand why Aether had suddenly asked her, on the way back, to check whether any recording had been taking place inside the mech-suit. She had already checked it once and found nothing unusual, but Aether had continued insisting that she look deeper. So she had gone through the suit’s systems again, examining even the programs she normally would have considered irrelevant.

That was when she found it.

There really had been a recording.

It had been hidden inside the safety guidance program, buried beneath layers of routine functions that she had never considered worth examining. To RIN AI, it had been nothing more than a basic safety program, something designed to protect its user. There had been no reason for her to suspect that it contained a recording.

The discovery itself had shocked her.

But what shocked her even more was Aether.

Something about him had changed.

She couldn’t determine exactly when it had happened or what had caused it, but the difference was unmistakable.

His words carried a weight they hadn’t carried before.

His silence felt different.

Even the way he looked at things seemed colder, as though something inside him had shifted into a place she could no longer reach.

And now, after hearing those words from his friend’s mouth, she finally understood why.

^How could humans be so vile…?^ she said.

It wasn’t as though she had forgotten what Aether had done. She knew about the virus he had released and everything that had followed. She knew the decisions he had made and the lives that had been caught in the consequences.

But she also knew why he had done it.

He had been trying to protect his people.

And despite everything he had done. He had never harmed his friends or their wives because, to him, they were not merely companions.

They were the people he had chosen to place above himself.

That was what made this so difficult for her to understand.

It was like watching a great tree that had spent years growing around the smaller plants beneath it, shielding them from the harshness of the world, suddenly begin to collapse upon itself.

Still, one question remained.

How did Aether know all of this?

How had he known about the recording?

How had he known the truth behind his friend’s face before anyone else could see it?

Something did not add up.

RIN AI remained silent, searching through every possibility she could think of. Her systems processed the available information again and again: behavioural patterns, probabilities, and every detail surrounding Aether’s sudden change.

Yet none of the answers fit.

There was something she was missing.

Something important.

Meanwhile, young Aether stared blankly at the wall before him.

The evidence of dried tears remained visible along his cheek.

Slowly, his eyes dropped toward his chest.

Something inside him felt as though it were breaking.

No. It wasn’t about his friends.

That part of him had already broken when they betrayed him.

This was something else.

Something deeper.

Something that hurt in a place he couldn’t understand.

For a brief moment, he looked at his hand.

His eyes widened.

His fingers flickered.

For an instant, his hand seemed to disappear from reality itself before returning as though nothing had happened.

Aether stared at it in disbelief.

“What… What’s happening to me…?”

A sudden, violent pain tore through his chest.

“Argh!”

He immediately clutched his chest, his body bending forward as his fingers tightened against his clothing. His breathing became uneven, and a sharp tremor passed through his entire body.

It felt as though something inside him was being torn apart from within.

Something was breaking.

Something deeper than flesh.

Something fundamental!

Aether could feel it.

His twin domain.

Something was happening inside it.

Without wasting another second, he immediately entered his twin domain.

Inside the twin domain, everything had always existed in perfect opposition.

One side was filled with pure white, while the other was consumed by absolute darkness. The two opposing halves existed beside one another, separated by a thin border line that maintained the balance between them.

That was how it had always looked.

Even with Grace and the other elements within it, the fundamental structure had never changed.

But now…

Aether froze.

Upon arriving, he saw the entire twin domain collapsing before his eyes.

The White side was covered in enormous cracks. The fractures spread across its surface like wounds opening through reality itself. Pieces of the domain were breaking away and falling into the endless void below, resembling the crumbling surface of a building that had stood abandoned for a hundred years.

The Black side was no different.

Its darkness had begun to fracture as well, jagged cracks tearing through the seemingly infinite void. Great pieces of it were breaking apart and falling away, dissolving into nothingness before they could even reach the bottom.

The sound was almost impossible to comprehend.

The domain trembled… Not metaphorically!

Aether could feel the entire space shaking around him.

The thin border that had always separated the two opposing sides was now covered in jagged fractures. Those cracks spread along the boundary, branching outward like veins through broken glass.

The boundary itself was collapsing inward.

The White and Black sides were beginning to bleed into one another.

The balance that had existed between them was no longer stable.

It was spreading… Destroying itself.

Aether stood motionless as he watched his domain fall apart piece by piece.

He slowly raised his trembling hand.

“What is happening to me…?”

“Are you alright, Aether?”

Grace’s voice echoed through the collapsing twin domains.

Aether slowly turned his head toward the cage and stared at her.

“…”

Grace frowned.

There was something wrong with his eyes.

Those weren’t the eyes she usually saw whenever he came to speak with her. They were dull now, almost hollow.

She lowered her gaze for a moment before slowly nodding.

“I see…”

She shook her head, her expression becoming more serious.

“Doubting your own existence… is not the same as wishing for death. It is asking reality itself to acknowledge that you were never meant to exist.”

She took a slow breath before continuing.

“What drove you to question your own existence? This isn’t something even we would do to others. In fact, I don’t know if it is even possible to question your own existence in the first place.”

Her eyes moved toward the cracks spreading across the twin domain.

“How did you reach that point?”

She paused.

“I don’t know whether I should be surprised by it… or horrified that I’m witnessing it. Or… Is there something fundamentally wrong with you?”

Her words were met with silence.

Grace stared into his dull eyes for several seconds before speaking again, this time with unmistakable seriousness.

“Aether… this is not mere death. You cannot simply reverse time if you begin to doubt your own existence. You will die.”

“I mean literally die. There will be nothing for you to return to. Not even the Path of Samsara could guide you back to life.”

She looked at the cracks spreading throughout his domain.

“This is an existential question. What made you reach something that should have been impossible to reach?”

Still, there was no answer.

Only dead silence.

Grace watched him for a while longer.

“I don’t know what happened out there… but I’m all ears.”

She folded her arms across her chest.

“Tell me… what drove you to this extent?”

She sounded like an older sister who had finally realised that her younger brother was carrying something far heavier than he could bear alone.

There was genuine worry in her voice.

She actually cared about him.

After all, Aether had been the one who kept talking to her all those times before… The Delphine issue.

But anyway, he talked a lot, right?

The changes happening throughout the world.

The things he had discovered.

The things he was planning.

He would come to her and talk endlessly about what had happened, what he had seen, and what he intended to do next.

At first, she had genuinely been annoyed by it.

She had literally wanted to punch him for disturbing her solitude.

But as time passed, something changed.

She began to expect him to come.

She began to expect those conversations.

The stories he told were things she had never heard before.

And, strangely enough, they became stories she wanted to hear.

It wasn’t as though this was her first time being alone.

Even within the Void, she had always been alone. Solitude had never frightened her, nor had it ever felt particularly unusual.

But after Aether entered her existence…

She realised she wanted more.

She wanted to hear another story.

Another complaint.

Another meaningless question.

Another explanation about the world outside.

She wanted to feel something beyond the endless silence she had known for so long.

Young Aether continued to stare blankly at her.

Then, with a bluntness that carried no anger, only exhaustion, he finally spoke.

“How can you worry about me… when I’m the one who caged you?”

His eyes remained fixed on hers.

“You’re pretending to care about me, aren’t you? Even after I was the one who locked you inside that cage… Don’t do that. Don’t stand there and pretend that you care about someone like me. It’s ugly… pretending to feel something when there’s nothing there.”

Those last words came from somewhere far deeper than anger.

They came from the wounded part of him that could no longer understand why anyone would choose to care about him.

The moment those words left his mouth, the twin domains crumbled even further.

Grace stared at him for several seconds.

Then she looked toward the collapsing twin domains.

Something clicked inside her mind.

Slowly, she nodded.

“Understood…”

Her eyes returned to Aether.

“But I am not merely pretending to care—”

Click!

Her words stopped.

The cage door had opened.

Aether had opened it as effortlessly as though it had never been locked in the first place.

Grace blinked in shock.

She stared at the open cage.

Then slowly looked back at him.

For the first time in a very long while, Grace had absolutely no idea what to say.

“Heh… Hehh…”

Aether let out a broken laugh,

“You want to pretend that you care so badly? Then come out.”

He stared at Grace through the open cage.

“I lied to you all this time… The cage was never locked, Grace. Not once.”

His smile slowly widened, but there was no happiness in it.

“I could have let you go whenever I wanted. Do you understand that? All those days… all those conversations… all those times you complained about being trapped here…”

He gave another quiet laugh.

“You were never actually trapped.”

His eyes became colder.

“I kept you here because I wanted to. I could have opened that door from the very beginning, but I chose not to. I kept you inside that cage like a mere bug because I wanted to see how long you would remain there.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“Heh… hehehe…”

His smile twisted.

“Come out and kill me.”

He spread his arms slightly, making no attempt to defend himself.

“Isn’t that what you truly wanted now? Killing the one who caged you?”

“…”

Grace stared blankly at the open cage.

For several seconds, she couldn’t process what she was seeing.

Then her expression changed.

Her tiny wings fluttered violently behind her.

Her aura began rising.

The pressure that had been suppressed for so long started returning in waves, spreading through the domain and making the fractured space tremble around her.

She could feel it.

Her powers were returning.

Her senses were returning.

Even her thoughts, which had felt strangely dulled and muted while inside the cage, were becoming sharper.

And with that clarity came the realisation.

She had been fooled.

By him.

By this foolish man!

She had been tricked like a little girl who couldn’t recognize the obvious trap sitting in front of her.

She had been forced to listen to his endless rambling.

He had occupied her mind for so long that she had gradually stopped questioning why she continued listening.

He had corrupted her thoughts with his presence.

She was the King of Death!!

The one who should have been feared by everything that possessed the slightest understanding of death.

And yet…

She had been sitting inside a cage.

Like an animal.

Like something that belonged to someone else.

Grace’s eyes slowly turned bloodshot.

“How dare you…”

Her voice trembled with restrained fury.

“I WILL—”

Her words abruptly stopped.

Since he was close, she could see clearly…. his broken, dead eyes stared directly at her.

Yet there was something strange about his smile.

It was forced.

Wicked.

Almost desperate!

Grace stared at him.

Her fury remained, but something else began creeping into her expression.

Memories. The countless times Aether had come to her.

The way he would tell her about people she had never met and places she had never seen.

At first, she had hated it.

But he kept returning.

Again and again.

And eventually, his presence became familiar.

Then expected.

She remembered the silence before him.

The endless Void.

The emptiness that had never bothered her because she had known nothing else.

But after Aether…

The silence had begun to feel different.

She had started waiting for the sound of his voice.

She had started wondering what story he would bring next.

She had started wanting to hear about the world she had never experienced.

She hated admitting it.

But somewhere along the way, the foolish man had become part of her existence.

Grace’s murderous expression slowly changed.

Then she snorted.

Her tiny wings fluttered.

She walked toward the cage door.

Then…

Click!

Grace closed the cage door.

Aether blinked.

He stared at the closed cage.

Then at Grace.

Grace sat on the bar and turned her head away from him.

“There is no point in killing a dead man…”

“…”

Aether stared at her. His forced, wicked grin slowly disappeared.

His face became blunt and emotionless.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You lose, then.”

Then he disappeared.

Grace remained sitting on the bar.

Then she glanced back… seeing him disappear.

For a moment, her expression seemed to become sad.

She quickly shook her head… she must have lost her head for feeling something for him!

Then her eyes suddenly widened.

“Wait!”

She looked at the cage around herself.

Her face slowly contorted.

“Why the fuck did I lock myself in again?!”

She stared at the cage door in disbelief.

After all, even if she didn’t want to kill him…

Why the hell had she locked herself inside again?

“Fucking bird mind!!”

Grace immediately flew toward the cage door.

The instant she touched the cage, her body jolted.

Her powers began draining away again.

“Argh!!”

Grace yanked back her hand!

“FUCK ME!!!!”

****

**

Meanwhile, in the real world, Young Aether’s eyes slowly opened.

He stared at the wall in front of him.

^Are you alright? I had been calling you, and you haven’t responded… I thought you went just like before…^

RIN’s voice echoed through his earpiece.

Young Aether remained silent, then,

“Hey… Are you really concerned about me?”

RIN didn’t immediately respond.

Young Aether’s expression remained empty.

“Why? You’re an AI. Why would you care about me?”

He lowered his head slightly.

“In fact… I never called your name. I never did. Do you know why?”

His voice began carrying something deeper.

“Because I never considered you someone who needed a name.”

He laughed quietly.

“You were useful. That was all.”

“You were a system installed into my life. A machine that answered when I asked something. A machine that helped me when I needed something. And somehow, you started thinking that meant you mattered to me.”

His voice rose.

“You started acting like you were concerned about me.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t pretend that you’re something you’re not.”

“You’re a tool.”

His voice cracked slightly.

“T-That’s what you are.”

He took a breath.

“I could use you today and throw you away tomorrow if you stopped being useful. You’re fucking technology.”

He pointed toward the earpiece.

“That’s all.”

“That is all you have ever been to me.”

He stared forward.

“There is no bond between us. No friendship. No family. No emotional attachment. Nothing.”

His voice suddenly exploded.

“I NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED YOU AS AN EXISTENCE!!”

The words echoed through the room.

Afterwards, silence returned.

Young Aether remained motionless.

His breathing slowly settled.

He had said exactly what he wanted to say.

At least, that was what he told himself.

^…^

RIN fell completely silent.