SMASH or PASS

Chapter 61: Chapter Sixty-One: Noel

"Pssst."

.....

"PSSSST."

Deep into the darkness of my sleep. I heard a strange yet familiar voice.

"Wakey-wakey."

I ignored it.

"Noel? N-O-E-L? Mr. Pragmatic? Mr. Gu Changge wanna-be? You hearin’ me bro?"

I kept ignoring it.

"Alright... WAKE THE FUCK UP."

My eyes snapped open.

Darkness. What I saw was pure void.

I was standing somewhere that wasn’t anywhere. No floor. No ceiling. No walls. Just black in every direction.

And in front of me was a figure.

A Human-shaped shadow. Leaning against the ’nothing’ with the posture of someone who’d been waiting a long time.

"Hey you. Finally awake." The shadow chuckled.

"...Who are you?"

The shadow laughed.

The laugh of someone who’d just been asked the funniest question in the world and needed a second to enjoy it.

"Take a wild guess."

"Are you a god?"

"No."

"A demon?"

"No."

"Are you... the system’s creator?"

"Yesn’t."

"The fuck you mean yesn’t?"

"Look. I’m you."

I stared at him. At it. At whatever this was.

"So we’re doing the Itadori special now?"

"No, dumbass. I’m literally you." The shadow stepped forward.

A pale teenager with dark hair and black eyes showed.

He had an average build. An average height. And a face I’d seen in every mirror, every puddle, every shop window reflection since arriving in this world.

That was me.

"What kind of joke is this?"

"No joke, buddy. I’m... well, you could consider me a persistent fragment of your former soul structure?"

"...Huh?" I didn’t understand him.

"Look, I’m a... how should I explain this?"

"Are you like, my alter ego? An evil version of me or something?"

"No, I’m—" He stopped. Rubbed his face. Looked at me with the expression of a teacher who’d been asked if the sun was a planet. "You know what? Sure. If that will help you comprehend it, then it’s true. Although the thought of a heartless fucker like you thinking he can have an evil version is hilarious."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means. Moving on."

He snapped his fingers. Two chairs appeared out of the void.

He sat in one. Crossed his legs. Gestured at the other with the energy of a talk show host.

"Sit. We’ve got shit to discuss."

I sat.

I mean, what else do you do when your own face tells you to sit in a chair in the middle of nothingness?

◇◇◇

"So." He cracked his knuckles. "First order of business. I finally took good care of your little fairy problem. You’re welcome."

Everything in me went cold.

Pixia. Just before I came to this world, I was fucking Pixia. The memory was hazy, half-formed, but it was there, and it was the only clear thing in the fog.

"What did you do to her."

"I saved you fucking life you ungrateful asshole." The shadow said in an annoying tone.

"What the hell do you mean?"

"Bitch tried to sneak up into the system and extract its spiritual form, on the price of destroying our soul in the process."

I felt like a bucket of cold water was pushed over me from above.

"W-what?"

"Oh, you didn’t even think why that slut started fucking you out of nowhere like a bitch in heat? She was using this to reach the system. Every time she got close to you, she got closer to it. Every fuck, every touch, every ’oh Noel you’re so big’—she was mapping the spiritual architecture like a fucking surveyor."

"N-no way! Why would she do that?"

"Why?" He looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the void. "Dawg. You really don’t remember shit, huh? We practically made her mother our sex slave and genocided her whole race for lols and giggles."

"...Huh?"

I was confused. However, for some reason I felt that that person wasn’t lying.

"Who... are we?"

He tilted his head. "...How much do you remember?"

"Remember about what?"

"About anything. Before this world. Before the apartment. Before the wolfkin and the fairy and the whole ’surrounded by women’ situation. You know, the Isekai shit."

"I remember Earth... I was a school student with a normal life. Then I woke up here suddenly."

He stared at me. The amusement drained from his face.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

"No memories of... anything else? Nothing before Earth?"

"Before Earth? What would be before Earth?"

"Oh no." He leaned forward. "Oh no no no no. How critical is the memory loss? I mean, you should still have our basic memories even after going through the River of Reincarnation..."

"River of... what?"

"Wait. What’s the last thing you remember? Shit. Don’t tell me you think you came here straight out of nowhere from Earth."

"Yes?... Earth." I said it with confidence. But even as the word left my mouth, something shifted.

I was familiar with most concepts from Earth but not... anything specific. No street names. No school name. No faces. It was all foggy.

"...Or was it?" I muttered.

"Shit." The shadow leaned back. His chair creaked. "This isn’t supposed to work like this. Someone somewhere played something, for sure... whoever they were, when I find them I’ll skin them alive."

His eyes went cold. The temperature in the void dropped.

I couldn’t help but shiver a little.

Then it was gone. The grin came back.

"Well. This makes things more complicated. But whatever, we work with what we’ve got. Let me give you the CliffsNotes version of our life, since your brain apparently factory-reset itself."

"Our life?"

"OUR life. Singular. You and me. Same soul. Same person. Different iterations." He held up a finger. "I’m the version that remembers. You’re the version that doesn’t. Think of it like a save file that got corrupted during transfer. I’m the backup running in the background."

"I... see."

◇◇◇

"Let’s start with the fun stuff." He cracked his knuckles. "You know the system? SMASH/PASS? The whole collect-women-get-stats thing?"

"Obviously."

"You didn’t make it."

"I never thought I did."

"Good. The system is something we got from a deal with... whatever. That’s above your current clearance level. Point is, it’s not ours. We’re just the ones running it."

"Why does it exist? Why is it designed the way it is?"

"Ah. Now THAT is the right question. Gold star." He held up his hands and made a frame, like a director composing a shot. "Picture this: humanity’s genetic pool is fucked. The ratio of ninety-nine women to one man did that shit. Gene diversity went off a cliff. Recessive diseases spiking. Fertility rates tanking beneath the surface even though it looks fine from above. The species is slowly, quietly dying."

"And the system fixes that?"

"The system is a breeding program in a video game costume. Keep mating and collecting women. Spread genes as wide as possible. After a hundred years or so, our descendants will make up the majority of humanity’s gene pool. Diverse enough to fix the bottleneck. Or that’s the pitch."

"Whose pitch?"

"A certain goddess who was very persuasive and very annoyed at us. Since we’re the ones who fucked up the ratio in the first place."

The void went quiet.

"...What?"

"Yeah. Us. We did that. The ninety-nine to one thing? That was us."

"How the hell do you mess up the entire world’s gender ratio?"

"Timeline manipulation." He said it casually. The way someone says they forgot to buy milk. "We thought — and I’m quoting our actual thought process here — that more hot bitches would be, and I quote again, ’essentially better.’ So we pulled some strings. Tweaked some causality and adjusted some variables."

"You thought messing up the entire world just for fucking more women would be a great idea?"

"That was our thought process, yes."

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

"In our defense, it sounded great at the time. But timeline manipulation is a bitch. Small changes cascade. We wanted a ratio adjustment, we got a civilizational restructuring. Bit of an overshoot."

"A BIT?"

"Okay, a lot of an overshoot. The goddess in charge of that particular cosmic department was, uh, not thrilled. She’s the one who put the system on us. Fix what you broke or suffer consequences that I’m not gonna describe because they involve dimensions of pain that your current brain literally cannot process."

"Do you have ANY idea how many issues and problems you caused for humanity? For men? For EVERYONE?"

"So? Why should I give a fuck?"

"...Huh?"

"Since when did we care about those insects? If we liked a woman, we took her. If a man stood in our way, we slaughtered him. If it was a kingdom, we burned it to dust. If it was a race, we genocided it." He shrugged. "I will admit it was kinda too far."

"Just ’kinda too far’? Do you know how evil—"

"Oh boo-fucking-hoo. Mr. I-Will-Do-Anything is having a moral crisis?" He leaned forward, grinning. "You and me are literally the same person, you fucking hypocrite. I’m reviewing our current incarnation’s memories right now and it isn’t any better. Farming women for stat points? Turning a school into a brothel? Coming home smelling like fifty different bitches while your beloved wolfkin cries into a wall? It’s just a matter of time until we go back to our old habits."

"That’s different—"

"Different HOW? Because you use a spreadsheet instead of dark magic? Because you say ’I cannot be weak’ instead of ’I want it’? Dude. That’s the same shit."

"You have any idea how hard this made it for me? For other men?"

"Oh! Aww, is that you? Little Noel must be the saddest person alive, surrounded everywhere by hot bitches that want his dick. You must be the most miserable person alive."

"Fuck you."

"I don’t swing that way, thank you. And technically that’s just masturbation."

"You son of a—"

"Careful. We don’t wanna insult our mommy now."

I clenched my fists.

The void around us vibrated.

He laughed with an amused smile. "Calm down~ we don’t want to break this temporary world. Let’s just change the subject. What about the demonic arts?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Oh right, you don’t remember those either." He sighed dramatically. "We’re the founder of the Blood Path. Back in the day, we slaughtered ten million souls to cultivate the Blood Ocean. Fun times~"

"Ten million..."

"Give or take. I stopped counting after the first continent. The point is, you’ve got the foundation for demonic arts buried in your soul. It’s dormant. It’ll wake up eventually. But beware of the old vampire marquis, by the way. You’re not ready to practice yet, and she’ll smell the Blood Path on you before you even know it’s there."

"Vampire marquis?"

"Later problem. File it." He waved his hand. "Where was I? Oh right. The atrocities highlight reel. So basically, anyone who dared to stop us? If it was a woman, I ravished her. If it was a man, I killed him. If it was a kingdom, I burned it to dust. And if it was a race..."

"You genocided it."

"Now you’re getting it! See, the memory isn’t totally gone. Although you went sloppy with that fucking fairy. I was nice so I took care of her for you."

"...Pixia."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Pixia?"

"Yes. Fucking Pixia. What the hell did you to her?"

"Damn. The bitch got you that worked up?" He laughed. "That’s kinda funny. We really weren’t on good terms back then."

"What did you do to her."

"Alright, storytime." He leaned back. Steepled his fingers. "Ever since we fucked the fairies and their plane into dirt, Princess Pixia was a thorn in my side. Too weak to specifically hunt down, but too strong to not cause issues."

"Princess?"

"Oh, you didn’t know? Your little glowing roommate is fairy royalty. Last of her line." He examined his nails. "Anyway. Her mother was the Fairy Queen. Gorgeous woman. Amazing pussy. We conquered her realm, broke her mind, turned her into a dick hungry whore." He paused. Chose his next words like someone picking items off a menu. "Then we wiped out every fairy in existence because we needed their magical energy for stuff. Pixia was the only survivor because she was off-realm when it happened."

I couldn’t speak.

"So yeah. She has reasons. Valid ones, even. By normal people standards. Lucky for us, I’m not normal people."

"What did you DO?"

"Well, just like her mother I messed up with her mind and wiped it clean." He tapped his chin. "Although I should take suggestions. What should we turn her into? Turn her into a dick hungry slut like her mother? Make her a blank plaything? Keep her hateful personality but bolt a leash on it? I’m flexible. Consider it a birthday present."

The void shook. I was shaking. The darkness around us crackled at the edges.

"Turn her back."

"What?"

"I said make her normal again."

"And have her kill us on the spot?" He stared at me. "What about a no? Are you fucking nuts? Back in the day she could’ve done absolutely zero harm to us, but now? In this weak-ass body? She might actually cause us some serious issues."

"I don’t care. Turn her back."

He studied me. The grin was gone. For the first time, he was looking at me not with amusement or contempt but with something close to confusion. Like a programmer staring at code that shouldn’t compile but was running anyway.

"Huh." He tilted his head. "You actually mean it."

"I mean it."

"You’d rather have a fairy who wants us dead than hot sex slave?"

"She’s not a slave. She’s a person with her own will."

He stared at me for a long time.

The void was very quiet.

"Sigh." He said the word out loud. Actually said "sigh" with his mouth. "It seems your current personality is quite problematic. Until I find a way to fix this whole... situation... I’ll just wipe your memory of this encounter."

"Huh—"

"Relax." He stood up. The chair dissolved. "I’ll also return your fairy back to normal. Well, I’ll wipe her memory of the extraction attempt so she’s actually helpful to us, but I won’t destroy her core personality. She’ll still be the same fairy you know. She just won’t remember why she hates us."

"Wait—"

"You won’t remember this conversation either, by the way. None of it." He walked toward me. Put a hand on my forehead. His palm was ice cold. "Don’t worry. Soon enough I should be able to handle this mess."

His black eyes met mine. My black eyes.

"Sweet dreams, current me. Try not to fuck up too bad before I figure this out."

"Wait—"

"Good night~"

The void swallowed everything.

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