Chapter 153: Truths About Typhon

"...Urgh...that nightmare...I’d forgotten that Nioh does this," Typhon mutters as she wakes up with her face covered in tears, even though her expression hasn’t changed in the slightest.

She looks to the side, where the two Nios are sharing a bed. Since Nioh is angry at Typhon, she unintentionally causes Typhon to have nightmares with her powers whenever she sleeps irritated or stressed.

Of course, Typhon doesn’t care, but now that she has less power, she was much more affected by the nightmare she had. She always resisted them before, but this time she couldn’t.

"Nioh...and Nio...both of them are sleeping, so they won’t wake up no matter what I do to them..." Typhon places a hand on her head, feeling pain from the nightmare she has just woken from.

"..." Typhon looks out the window of the inn’s second floor, then looks at Nio on the bed, sleeping peacefully with a serene expression.

"What a painful nightmare...I think I need to speed up my plans a little..." Typhon grotesquely opens her mouth, taking one of the items she managed to remove from her inventory out of her stomach.

The item is shaped like a large black box with a single red eye in the center. The eye stares at Typhon, then at the two Nios lying on the bed.

"The fifth floor is perfect for this...sorry, Nio, but I’m going to have to be a little cruel to you...because I know you’ll try to run away as soon as you get the chance, and I need to know this before we’re separated again," Typhon clenches her hand tightly, pouring blood over the eye.

She then goes to the two Nios, injuring their hands and collecting their blood to place on the eye and properly activate it, defining only the three of them as those who are supposed to participate in the box’s test.

"At some point, both of them are going to find out anyway...it’s better this way. If I can discover what I want, then having my secret uncovered is worth it," What Typhon activates is an extremely powerful item, called the [Pandora’s Box] by many races, but it is actually the [Catalyst of the End].

Many races opened this box, and all of them were plunged into misery, diseases, pestilence, plagues, destruction, and wars. That was why they treated the box as something terrible, but in reality, the box had never been used correctly.

The Catalyst of the End is an object that forces all selected targets to experience each other’s greatest fear. Normally, it was made to be used among a maximum of 7 people and a minimum of 3 people, but when people opened the box, they didn’t know that, so they didn’t limit the box’s range.

Thus, the box personified the greatest global fears, meaning hunger, death, plagues, and wars, using everyone on the planet as targets because of the lack of markings made with the blood of at least two targets.

But Typhon knows how to use it, and plans to experience Nio’s greatest fear to concretely discover the center of Nio’s emotions, just as she plans to make Nio experience her greatest fear.

"I hope my secret won’t be revealed...but if it is, that’s fine...Nioh will be furious when she discovers that the end of our universe is my fault..." Typhon hid this very well, but the universe of the two of them collapsed because of Typhon herself.

Part of the blame lies with the humans from Nio’s world who created that dangerous technology, but most of it was entirely Typhon’s fault, because Typhon tried to forcefully increase the connection, breaking everything and making an already unstable situation even worse.

It wasn’t only Typhon’s and Nioh’s universe that became extinct. Because of the collapse of Typhon’s original universe, a new form of matter emerged in Nio’s original world: Cosmonite, something that could be called "perfect matter." It is so perfect in its state of existence that any other form of matter it touches will be atomically reorganized into Cosmonite.

That means Nio’s original universe will become extinct. Every living creature, planet, star, and even cosmic dust will become Cosmonite, and Typhon knows this, but Typhon feels nothing about condemning two universes because the two of them are in a "third" safe universe.

However, she knows she won’t be able to hide that she caused this for much longer, because she is honest as much as she is suspicious, and Nio is close to asking her more about the universes, and she cannot answer that question, but if she avoids answering it, it will only give Nio unnecessary reasons to become suspicious.

So she prefers to let them discover it on their own and fix the damage afterward rather than tell them directly. It’s easier, more practical, and an indirect way of telling them, since she is the one using the Catalyst of the End.

And ironically, this choice comes purely from observation. Typhon realized that, for mortals, discovering something on their own and discovering it after asking have different weights, and Typhon considers it worse for Nio to discover it by asking than to discover it on her own.

Because when she discovers it on her own, there is uncertainty, deception, and "Loose Ends," pieces of the story that are missing and don’t allow her to believe in it one hundred percent, while discovering it after asking removes that uncertainty.

"I wonder who will get my greatest fear...I hope Nio does...Nio is the one who has to feel my fear..." Typhon has no control over anything. She can only choose what she will experience because she is the activator, which means she will be able to feel Nio’s fear and overcome it as a test.

When the box is activated, the three of them will be in unreal scenarios to experience each other’s greatest fear. Typhon is curious about Nio’s fear, and she will take advantage of this to discover this valuable information.

The only problem is that she would like Nio to see her greatest fear, but since there are 3 people, Nioh is a variable that changes the equation. Nio could end up seeing Nioh’s fear and Nioh could see Typhon’s fear, or Nio could see Typhon’s fear and Nioh’s as well, or Nioh could see Nio’s fear too. There’s no way to know.

"...A gamble...I’ve never liked gambling much, but it’s easier to fix this after breaking it than to wait for it to break on its own..." She activates the box, and a black mist engulfs the room, the "Pandora’s Box" being opened.

"...I know it will work. I just need to manipulate the right pieces when both of them finish the box’s tests and wake up...I should finish my test and wake up first."

Typhon may be being reckless, but the nightmare she had left her slightly shaken, shaping her choice this time. Even a rational being like her can sometimes make decisions based on impulses that come from outside influences when that impulse comes from someone she cares about.