This is a Beta Test?! - A Literally Broken System

Chapter 290 54.X Interlude: The Defeated

Vesper didn't know what to think as she saw all of her tricks fail her one after the other. Pulling out all the stops, she even used innovations that she swore should never see the light of day so long as she held control over them. In the end, however, it seemed as if it would all be for naught.

After all, she had been defeated.

"N-No! Noooo...."

Her voice failed her as she felt her entire body collapse as if she was a puppet whose strings had been ignobly cut before she was ready. Sprawling out on the cold hard ground of her ruined city, she could barely make out the cheers of the bastards that brought her low in the first place. That woman who had constantly stopped her from reaching her full potential excitedly voice out her intentions of never going back to Marquee, and honestly, Vesper was more than fine with that. If even their best wasn't able to contain them, then it was better that they never returned here in the first place.

'Still... This is a disaster...'

Even as she lay unmoving on the ground, the Head Intellect still had her wits about her. Her mind was a hive of activity, one further helped by her still active [Oversight] giving her a glimpse of the outside world around her. Sure, her range had been significantly reduced due to her body's current state, but it was more than enough for her to keep herself awake in a vain attempt to not get herself killed.

Sure enough, she watched as the two went and left her to die, obviously thinking that she had died against their combined onslaught. Such hubris... She would've never given them this much of a chance if she had won.

'Arrogant fools... I'll make sure they'll pay for bringing Marquee this low...'

Vesper watched and glared through her [Manifest] as she observed the group of terrorists come back together. Spotting the other group, she balked as she saw someone who was clearly a Marquean fraternizing with the enemy. She recognized the woman as Academic Lewis's personal project; someone that the man had clearly pegged as a prodigy in the making should he temper some of her more reckless tendencies. To think that this woman would willingly betray her Motherland was both an affront and a personal insult to the Head Intellect.

'What in the world is she doing?! Is she that desperate for knowledge?!'

Such was the conclusion that Vesper came to the more she observed the woman. Alset, she recalled this woman's name was... The way she looked at her own incomplete innovation told her that the woman didn't care about the consequences of her actions; that she didn't care how she went about reaching her answers, only that she got to them in the first place.

Vesper watched as their group cheered and celebrated their supposed victory. Supposed, because Vesper would never admit that they had lost that badly. It had been a battle and nothing more. This wasn't war. War was won when the terms of surrender had been hashed out. And even if she came to a point as low as she currently was right now with the enemy shoving her their terms of surrender, she would never sign away Marquee's sovereignty. She'd rather die than let that happen, and it would be her successor's job to make sure that every inch of land taken away from them would be over the blood of thousands of their enemies.

'What're they doing... Are they going to leave?'

The Head Intellect held her breath as she observed the now reunited group. They were clearly talking about some things that her [Oversight] was unable to pick up on. Although, judging by the looks of relief and resignation on their faces, they might be running over that one woman's thoughts of never going back to Marquee again.

'Good... Leave us alone to recuperate...'

Vesper let her mind run wild as she began fantasizing about the various things she wanted to do once she had fully allowed Marquee to recover from this travesty. For one, she will complete Project D and turn it immediately against her enemies. She didn't care if she sounded like a warmonger. To preserve peace, one must be ready to use power to enforce it into existence. And with her innovation, she will have all the power she needed and then some to even power the entire Deep if need be.

Next, she will make sure to uplift the two other so-called Great Nations up to the standards that Marquee itself upholds. Sure, she could acknowledge that there were some fields that her nation could improve upon by looking at its neighbors, but the vast majority of both ethics and technological know-how came from Marquee anyway. She would just be reiterating upon established norms by further ingratiating Kattleyna and Vestyge's peoples into Marquee's sphere of influence.

And lastly, she wanted to break out of this cave they called the Shallow Deep itself. There was no doubt in her mind now that there was an exit from this perpetual darkness. The fact that her innovation even reached the [Stars] was more than proof enough that exploring the Deep would be the longest way possible to achieve Daybreak. If she could just break through the sky, surely the light will come pouring forth and bathe them in its warm embrace.

But of course, all of these were just mere fantasies for now. Still, Vesper couldn't help but salivate at the prospect of a superior Marquee guiding the rest of the world out into a new age of discovery. Gone would be the days of resource wars and the constant fight to keep their environment lit to stave away the dark. They would have the light of her innovation, and if she was right, even the light of the very sky itself illuminating the dark.

'And it'll be glorious...'

Vesper shivered in her prone state, almost forgetting about the fact that she was still watching over the bastards that ruined her home. Shaking away her fantasies, she went back to the task at hand, and she spotted the young girl that she had talked to earlier, a hint of pity blooming within her chest as she saw the ragged state of the poor girl. Surely, she was with these monsters against her will, acting like some kind of slave for her barbarian masters.

Just thinking about such a scenario made her heart pump even harder. Slavery was illegal in all of the Deep except for the Empire. And while she was also sure that the Republic also had slaves in all but name, Kattleyna's blatant arrogance of even showing they had forced indentured servitude to literal children was an affront to civilization as a whole. What kind of monster would willingly enslave their fellow brethren? Their own people?

'I'll save you... I'll save you all... Even if you might not deserve it...'

Instinctively, Vesper gritted her teeth ever so faintly, a bit of her strength returning to her just as the terrorist Imperials left her range. Again, there would be no more of this injustice once her visions came to fruition. Her innovations will uplift this world, and all the hardships that came with living in the dark would be no more.

But first, she had to get back up to try and fix this mess in the first place.

Her fingers twitching, Vesper forced her body to move, her toes wriggling underneath her feet as she slowly but surely dragged herself to safety. Sure, she was still crawling, but it beat out not being able to move at all as she barely managed to prop her head up on a low-lying slab of stone. Looking around, her heart skipped in both exhaustion and anger as she assessed the carnage that needed to be addressed. From burning buildings to ruined infrastructure, to all of the dead bodies that littered the massive crater, down to the very innovation that had gone haywire and caused this massive disaster in the first place.

And of course, it was all those foreign Imperials' fault.

Crawling up to a more suitable vantage point as her body could allow, her anger boiled within her despite her throat failing to give out even the faintest grumble of annoyance. Despite her best efforts, her body betrayed even her most stalwart orders to get itself to stand back up. She didn't know when or how she would move more properly to start assessing her next move, but one thing was for sure, she'll make sure that this catastrophic incident will never happen again under her watch.

"Mark this day, Kattleyna... Marquee will pay you back for this utter destruction of our land and home..." she weakly swore, her fists barely going white with how hard she was struggling to even move. "I won't let this be the end... For every Marquean that died here, I'll make sure to charge with interest!"

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