Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 684: Rebirth And Grief

Cheating death a second time, Mono laughed and laughed until her sanity came back to her. And when it did, her eyes lay on the beastmen and their son, the trio of which was startled by her manic laughter. Containing herself, however, she picked herself off the bed with her hands and sat upright while glancing between them all.

Touching her voicebox–still just lightly screwed shut, she finally realized what had happened and who was behind this unexpected miracle.

”Did you fix this?” She asked, looking at the young boy.

Hiding behind his parents, he peeked from a corner and nodded ever so lightly. A slight of herself was reflected in the dark eyes of the young man, of course, with the lack of a sense of fashion from a young age, but otherwise, he reminded her of herself while she was but an apprentice working under Aura.

”Not so different, huh...” She muttered to herself before turning her head to the parents. There was much for them to discuss, but first came a sorrowful news through those cold lips. ”Your daughter, what was her name?”

Both the father and the mother blinked at the question. Confounded, they looked at each other, unsure why their girl would ask such a thing of them. But with a step forward and hushed words, Mono cleared those doubts in an instant.

”She died a week ago, but her body saved me from being trapped within the iron core.” Darting their eyes right back at the girl whom they still assumed to be their daughter, the father was the first to step up and grab Mono by the arms. Shaking her a little, his own body stiff with the fear of confronting reality, he tried to snap his girl out of it, but with an upward gaze, the queen added. ”I’m sorry, but she’s gone. As for who I am...”

Taking a moment to assess the tension all around her, Mono watched as the father stumbled back and the tears in the mother’s eyes began to flood. Covering her mouth, she dropped to her knees as a flood of mourning cries erupted through her lips.

Mono’s words were quickly weighed down by the mother’s cries. She had never lost anyone close to her, at least not anyone whose death she knew about or understood what had happened to them before they died. Yet, something strange tugged at her heart, something that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Empathy.

And so, she let the mother mourn her child, and only after the father had guided her away and into another room, did she even attempt to convey the rest of her peculiar situation with the father and his son. In great detail, she painted a picture. From the work she was doing in the lab while she was attacked to how she ended up in this new body, the moment the previous host had died. Her soul was still trapped within the iron core, but a part of it connected her to every one of his creations. However, due to its broken state, she can’t transfer her consciousness to another machina, at least not before she gets her hand back on the iron core, at which point she might as well use one of her personal body models.

As her explanation was done, the young boy was crying his eyes out as well. The father held himself better, but the tug at his heart conveyed exactly how much pain he felt about the loss of his daughter. He didn’t wanna move on just yet, but lifting his head and looking at the queen of his nation sitting across the table, he knew that he had to be strong or who knows, at what point he might lose the rest of his family at the hands of the imposter queen seated at the castle.

”Wh...What do you need to get back in there?”

”You could bring me to Shamisha–”

Swallowing with his heavy throat, the youngster decided to speak up between his hissing cries.

”I-I heard she’d not at–at the spire, the...” Gulping yet again, she shook his head with great effort. ”She wasn’t there the last time I went to the library, nobody knows where she is either.”

”Just my luck.” Clicking her tongue, Mono glanced down at her chest and placed a hand right above her heart. Still beating, the biomechanism was keeping her alive. By destroying it, there was a chance that her consciousness would hop onto the next automaton, but with a non-zero probability of her disappearing altogether, it was far from the ideal option to test upon.

Lifting her head, she noticed the family once again being distracted by their loss. She wanted to speak about another idea she had in mind, but the sight made her reconsider it just for a moment and instead focus on something else entirely.

”I can bring her back if you want. I’m sure there’s a way to extract her soul, be it in heaven or the hells.”

Placing a hand on the table they were sitting on, the father faced the white of his palms at Mono.

”No...I don’t want to disturb her now that she’s gone.” As a beastman much like Dune Boartooth, to disturb the dead would’ve been a worse crime than not being able to save his own daughter.

”Again, you just tell me what you need to get back into the castle.” He asked again, his eyes quivering with a mix of struggle and purpose. He wanted a task, a man of hard work. Recognizing that, Mono told him that he had to get her to the spire, and she would handle the rest by herself.

Ready to leave in an instant, the father grabbed the wheelchair handles and gestured for his son to lead the way as he’d never been to the spire himself. Just before they reached the front door, however, the weeping mother came out of her room and asked Mono a question.

”Tell me!” Turned around by the husband, Mono faced the woman as she asked in a whimpering cry. ”S-she didn’t suffer, did she? She went quiet, right?”

A moment of silence lingered between the two. Mono did not know the answer, but since it meant so much to the mother, she followed her trail of logic and came up with a response.

”She lacked pain receptors, they were fried a long time ago...” With a nod, she added. ”So yeah, she went quietly in her sleep.”

The briefest of smiles tugged at the woman’s lips, and seeing that, Mono said something she couldn’t have expected at all.

”I’ve only stayed with you for a week, but it’s safe to say that you are a great mother. You still loved her despite her being a cripple, mine pawned me to a sorceress for god knows what reason.” Glancing up at the man, Mono nodded at him, and he quickly began turning her to the gate again. ”I wish my parents were half as good as you, but oh well...”

As the creak of the wheel turning echoed inside the outside, the beastwoman’s hand-stretched towards Mono’s back as a string of instinctive words rushed through her lips.

”Y-you can still be our daughter!”

With a gentle smile and the briefest of chuckles, Mono responded.

”Maybe, I’ll think about it once I’ve taken care of this mess...” And with that, the Iron Queen was on her way back to claim what was hers, no matter what it took.