Celestina was sort of like a mascot of the Populares faction and so there were a few girls, including Francoise, Peter’s wife, who were trying to comfort her while the men glared at me thinking that it was because of something that I did. Well, while they weren’t exactly wrong that I was partially responsible for orchestrating the current situation, I couldn’t care at all about that right now.
“Lain, this is an order, surrender immediately.”
“No, I can still go on. I can’t lose in front of you.”
“Listen to me, the reason why Arthur is stronger than you, is just because I arbitrarily created her stronger than you. There is no meaning to that, so you don’t need to fight! Just bravely surrender!”
“Master, should I just put her to sleep mode? I could make it look like Arthur knocked her out.”
Celestina also tugged at my arm, urging me to do something.
“No… If she is not going to listen to me then I trust that she must have some sort of plan of her own.”
“As you wish, Master.”
Through the increasing number of obstacles, Lain was barely able to avoid being taken out. There were hundreds of buildings without any logical order, or space for roads. It was literally a concrete forest and it was getting hard to follow the battle. However all this out of control construction was taking its toll while Arthur was only getting stronger as her armour was halfway destroyed.
“Hey, Farmer. If Lain’s power is to be able to create things then why won’t she just summon monsters to fight her battle?”
“She can’t summon monsters but just build structures.”
The goal of this exercise was to see the AIs use their powers in unorthodox ways and so to evolve, so I was hoping for something as well.
Unexpectedly, Lain suddenly waved her hand and cancelled all the structures she had been building until now, gathering all the energy she had used to create them as a ball of light.
There was a distance of about a hundred yards between the two.
“It’s time to end this.”
“I couldn’t agree any more. As soon as you use that energy to attack me, I’ll be free of my armour again and it will be over!”
Rather than wasting any time replying to Arthur, Lain turned that energy towards herself and disappeared in an ever expanding ball of light which covered the entire vision of the virtual cameras which showed me the scene.
When the light was gone, Lain was no longer to be found but in her place there was a human sized black version of Nanashi’s White Dragon Knight Frame. It didn’t take a genius to guess what had happened and what happened next all but confirmed it.
The faceplate on the dark figure raised revealing Lain’s smirking face, all of her wounds miraculously healed. Then she raised her hand and made a thumbs up towards the camera.
“Huh! Did you see that, Raphael? That’s a battle suit shaped like the White Knight. Why can’t we get that? That’s so cool.”
“This looks like a prefixed video game cut-scene… Well, at least we are winning so I won’t complain.”
“The other side must be pissed right now to have been beaten by an alt of their own mech lol.”
“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She hasn’t started to fight yet…”
“No, she’ll win. It’s a video game, so the rule of cool works.”
“I’d prefer it, if you said it was magic… but.”
Lain lowered her face mask and started to run at a slow pace towards Arthur who looked undaunted but then she sped up in the last few seconds and Arthur was barely able to block her sword with both of her swords.
“Damn you and your cheat-skill.”
“Haha what cheat-skill? I was just able to use my cheatskill more effectively than you were able to use yours. If everyone has cheatskills then no one has them!”
A crater formed where the two had met, by now Arthur’s armour had been completely replaced by the black sailor fuku, so she could not expect any more strength from that.
This time it was Arthur’s turn to be thrown around like a ragdoll and turned into a bloody pulp. Just like Arthur, Lain showed neither hesitation nor mercy. Even if I had created them it sent a chill down my spine, just as Lord Blair had warned Chamberlain about this power being used against him, I had even more to worry about since I could not escape this virtual experiment which was only growing in size in scope to cover everything.
