As the seconds stretched into long, dragging minutes, I could not bring myself to release the shot.
The ball simply hovered there, glowing softly blue and pulsing in slow, steady rhythm with my growing hesitation, refusing to obey the command my mind kept trying to give.
Suddenly, killing a mad Titan set on nothing but destruction started to feel like... killing a person who was just trying to survive in the only way she knew how, fighting desperately for every extra mont of life.
"Pa..."
Hm?
She was trying to say sothing.
And she was... smiling(?) for so reason, a small, fragile curve forming slowly on her grey lips even as her body continued to shake.
Ready for death to take her with a smile?
Ah, yeah... she had spoken before; said "an" that ti when D’Lion confronted her last.
Her voice ca out rough and croaky, like an old lady’s worn-out whisper, a sharp and jarring contrast to her sowhat beautiful face in the humanoid shape.
Though those teeth and eyes that had ford erratically across her body definitely weren’t beautiful at all.
"Pa?" I pressed gently, my voice coming out softer than I intended, urging her to continue whatever she had last been trying to say.
Maybe I would be able to end her peacefully because of what she was about to reveal, giving her at least that small rcy.
But what she said next made my head go dull for a mont, a heavy fog settling over my thoughts as the focus holding the Power Stone together fell apart instantly.
The blue ball dissolved into harmless blue mist that drifted away on the hot, ash-laden wind, fading like a forgotten dream.
[...Hey, Sys, this thing just called ... Papa].
{Affirmative: it truly did.}
What’s with that laidback tone?!
Her response ca so casually, as if we were discussing the weather instead of sothing this insane.
I could almost picture her shrugging if she had shoulders, delivering the confirmation with that flat, emotionless precision that always left feeling like I was the only one panicking here in the middle of all this destruction.
[What is that supposed to an? Like, that thing we see on TV where an egg hatched, and the first person they see is decided to be their "mama?" Does the Eldest Born think I’m her father right now...]
{Affirmative.}
Sys can be very annoying at tis, delivering these blunt information with zero emotion or warning.
It leaves to deal with the emotional whiplash all on my own.
But now that I look closely at her trembling figure lying there in the crater... she did hold the essence of Titania and myself inside her.
It had managed to create sothing unique, like when Vaelora mixed with my magic.
But honestly, she could tell soone she was my kid, and if the person being told was like Lotus or Sakura, they would probably believe her without questioning it too much, accepting it as just another strange truth of Elyndor without batting an eye.
Huh? Wait...
[Sys... You know, this world is totally whack... Could it be that my aura and Titania’s magic cumulated into sothing actually alive? I an, did it form an actual kid? That’s bonkers, right?]
{...}
[...Right?]
{...I have been trying to inform Master, but he would not listen to . When Master asked to strike the shepherd, I said strike yourself because that would have potentially ended the titans too.}
[aning?]
{By the laws of Elyndor, offspring creation is not limited to only copulation and pregnancy. The titans are not called "Children" as a race. They were all Master’s children. The parasitic-type titans are Master’s and Titania’s children. I was urging Master to stop trying to slay them.}
Eh?!
Why didn’t you tell more concretely?!
The realization hit like a slap across the face, making my thoughts race in frantic circles as I tried to process what Sys was revealing, the weight of it pressing down on heavier than the lingering heat from the crater floor that still radiated upward through my boots.
B-But they were trying to eat us!
Stabbing Clay and the others with those sharp, sneering attacks that ca out of nowhere, their forms lunging with hungry intent that left no room for rcy in the heat of battle.
They forced us to fight back with everything we had.
My children or not, they had to be stopped, right?
The mory of the chaos and the danger they posed flashed through my mind again in vivid detail, making my stomach twist with a fresh wave of unease and regret that I couldn’t quite push away no matter how hard I tried.
{When the titans were created, six of them were at full maturity, unlike the thousands. So those six instructed the little ones to "find Papa." They possibly assud you were all playing with them, until the demigods arrived.}
Yiiiikes...
The word escaped my thoughts as a long, drawn-out groan of pure regret that echoed inside my head, the sound of it mixing with the faint crackling of cooling lava in the distance.
I turned slowly to look at the trembling alleged daughter of mine lying there in the smaller crater, her body still shaking slightly even in the intense heat radiating from the cracked ground around us.
She had been asking to help her, and that she was hurt, I think.
Her earlier words replayed in my ears, soft and broken, pulling at sothing deep in my chest that I didn’t want to examine too closely right now while standing here with my hand still raised.
Damnit!
Why did Elyndor have to be so complicated?!
Every ti I thought I understood sothing about this world, it threw another curveball that left reeling and second-guessing every decision I had made since arriving.
And the complications kept piling up like layers of the cracked earth beneath my feet.
I seriously thought the titans were like...
Let’s say I took a piss sowhere, and that pee suddenly turned into a monster or sothing ridiculous like that.
It was the kind of absurd explanation that would make anyone laugh if it weren’t so embarrassingly close to how I had been rationalizing it in my head all this ti.
So yeah, it would be embarrassing to tell the fairies later: "Ah, sorry, sorry! Those gross crawling things with eyes on their arms? They actually belong to ."
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