“Aki, whatever you’re thinking of doing, you shouldn’t do it.” Said Septima as she sucked in an agonizing breath of air, standing at arm's reach of Aki, who was trying to reach for the next danger zone.

“Getting melhor.” She understood what he said thanks to system doing some gymnastics in her mind, but she fucking doubted he was getting better if this aura became even more painful despite the damage from it decreasing.

“Shut up.” Hissed Lea while holding her head. “I’m not even affected by this aura of yours yet I've been getting mental damage all this time. Almost died when you were still inside the dungeon thanks to the time dilation!” That shook him. Literally as he quickly began to tremble, falling to his knees and seemingly not noticing their reactions even as they took his arms and pulled him away from the obelisk.

Before they could get too far away however, the muttering began. Over and over again, he repeated the same thing with so many voices, so many tones, emotions, timbres, all in so little time that her ears started to bleed, her balance completely thrown away as she was disoriented. Yet she stepped forward by manipulating her body through her vitality.

Despite any complaints while learning it, hearing about the ridiculous applications of later stages and mastering the basics, she would take her mastery over her own physical being over any of the stupid skills from the system any time of the day.

Hells, it wasn't even recognised as a proper skill.

As Lea did a different set of mental gymnastics and stored his armour inside his ring so they could take it away, a rip in reality appeared in the direction they were going, something inside the indecipherable visage seemingly sucking the sound from the area.

While it felt mighty wrong, it was also doing less damage to their souls than the time defying muttering of the young man they were trying to throw onto the breach.

Actually getting near the thing was a bit hard, but then again, Aki's muterings would have likely sent anyone with a weak soul into a coma to begin with, so it wasn't exactly a fair comparison.

After throwing the man with only bare rags covering a few parts of his body inside the strange phenomenon, both women were given a proper respite as the muttering stopped completely and the tear condensed into a small dot, but still they kept their guards up until the breach condensed into a small ball of blackish purple goo.

Which then proceeded to become a cute catgirl with sickly white skin, purple hair and irises plus dark sclera.

"Hullo, nice to meet ya." She cheerfully said with a wave of her hand and a smirk, a seemingly indecipherable accent in her voice.

“We technically already know each other, but I guess this is the first time we see you as Aki imagined your presence to be.” Sighed Lea, grumbling as she took some clothes out for the beauty in front of her, as luckily she had no particular interest in humanoids nor females to begin with, so whatever fuckery had Septima drooling and babbling did not affect her with anything besides a notion that the normal looking young woman in front of her was pretty.

“True, yet now I can speak fancily and with more than one word at a time.” She grined while hugging Lea’s arm closer, which immediately caused her to rest her head on top of the shorter woman’s head and mess it up a bit with her face, retreat with a slightly puzzled look and then hit the back of Ames’ head with a quick slap. “What was that for?!” She pouted.

“You tell me.” Mysteriously said the mother bird as she walked a couple steps away from the now clothed cat. It was just jeans and a white shirt, but it wasn’t like the lack of a bra was making much of a difference due to her figure.

“*Slurp* Anyways, what did we even do to Aki again?” Asked Set as she regained a few faculties.

“Well, I'm technically wearing him as a conduit so that I can stay here without much complaint from the nexus, but I can’t really do anything that matters, so he’s currently in the equivalent of a fleshy private room where he can’t move normally and all his resources are drained until zero and he reaches a bit of a mortal equilibrium.” Calmly explained the four dimensional horror as the Farvit in front of her blanched, looking at Lea for some kind of reassurance only to find her nodding.

The woman had been completely unable to even remember what the thing said for more than a few moments, so it’d been Aki’s trusty mother figure who had explained most of the idea for her, though they did not have much time after reuniting as she could pretty much feel the fucker walking into another attempt at killing himself.

“Before you say anything, understand that he can still think normally in there and that we have absolutely no other way to contain the idiot. You saw how frail he was, even my bad acting convinced him I almost died despite him muting our bond to the point that I can barely feel his pain." Pointed out the older women, which calmed septima a bit.

Indeed, stopping Aki was impossible for anyone on the planet as far as she knew. Even if it was possible, knowing what she did about him, she quite doubted it was possible without having him killed at least three times or something of the like.

“That is probably because of the thing with his mother.” Casually mentioned Ames as she nodded at her own statement, acting surprised as both women looked at her for further clarification despite her knowing perfectly well that he had never spoken at depth about what'd happened out loud despite the ‘they are all dead’ that he’d repeated over a hundred times already. “You know how he was stuck in a dungeon when the initialization began? It’s not just that he’d failed to protect his family, but he also ended up killing his mother and uncle himself because he lost control of his emotions and his newfound magic ended up burning everything, including them. He tried to kill himself a couple of times through dumb stuff, but then went to hurting himself instead.”

“And there goes my made up story of him having had a crappy family…” Cursed Septima. It was hard to pretend he so readily threw himself into resistance training because of reasons similar to her own anyways, especially the times she caught him trying to create accessories nailed to his bones ‘for better effect’ or other such things. Those were simply signs of self hatred, not actions of a mind completely ruthless to itself.

“Emotional balance aside, I don't think we’ll be able to keep people away from the danger zones for too long if another sponsored player appears, so is there a way we could let him heal up and take the benefits inside. I’m sure that after he calms down a bit we could have him enter isolation without much trouble.” Lea sighed. This was one case where her healing flames would have been mighty useful due to their properties, though it was questionable if they’d work full time on Aki, they’d still amount to something.

Thanks to the system restrictions however, she couldn’t even tell the resident magical genius how they worked, so those were as good as gone.

“Normally, i’d agree with that, but after what Kira said and did i don’t think he will take the situation very well after i’m done with her, nor very enthused at the idea of staying besides anyone he won’t be summarily killing.” Grimace the fair skinned eldritch abomination.

“Wait, wasn’t it you who scared her?” Questioned the only one who apparently didn’t know what was happening.

“Of course not. Little feline me is ridiculously weak, it barely possessed any of my actual energy or essence so there wasn’t much to leak, meaning Aki quickly shielded her with his image and then…” As the haughty cat girl scoffed, both other women imagined the scene where the comparatively normal Kira was exposed to both the three eyed cat that could distort reality and the soul piercing gaze of a force of nature that completely laid every part of your body up for study with mechanical precision and a mocking gaze that compared you to ungodly standards, pointing all your flaws and fears in quick measure, only to be confronted by a tall, muscular and very bloodthirsty warrior who she’d likely seen decimate scores of enemies with even his bare hands, his every move fueled by a great deal of energy coursing through his body and seemingly filling his immediate surroundings with his influence.

Considering there was only a very small chance of Aki having tried to muffle her emotions, the woman probably realised what kind of monster she’d bed till now and that had deeply offended the young man that tried his best to always have his personality and disposition be known by those around him, specially if during the time they’d spent in the dungeon they’d done something stupid like exchanging vows of love or the like.

“We should probably not obliterate her soul or whatever actually causes one to be destroyed. Or kill her for that matter, since they’ll need to talk.” Pointed out Septima as Lea started to look like murder.

Lea looked at Ames, who proceeded to raise a finger and open her mouth for a counter argument, but she also knew this was Aki they were talking about, so there was a very good chance that despite whatever healing he forced himself through, he’d still poke at the wound by trying to apologize and properly end things, but she also came up with a few solutions involving time manipulation, which could clearly be… not done thanks to her lack of control over the Nexus’ territory.

The biggest downside of trying to go against one of those A.Is was that even when you got inside it was impossible to take away anything from it as long as you showed even a hint of an intent in doing so. Even beings like her had trouble maintaining absolute concentration, so of course when compared to a machine they'd come out short in a few places.

"Ok, maybe I shouldn't be doing something like that, but I'm here now, so we can explore and hang out, right?" As she changed the subject with a bright smile, Ames tried to ignore the tree roots trying to burrow out of her body as Aki panicked. Really, if she could just talk with him without having this avatar disperse due to accumulated damage she’d do it, but as it stood there was no such possibility.