Page 208 of Light Leech

A light line shot from the prism into Kim–Dokkaebi’s back. His light lines flashed with green. He shook with an electric tremble but remained standing.

I pried the center open, reached inside for the man that had called himself Kim Jong Il, and stomped on the fleshy abomination that he was.

His vehicle of body lost the vibrant light in its lines as the pyramid absorbed it.

I reached inside and tore at any vital wire I could find until the body collapsed. The lifeless vessel stared up blankly with its homunculus pilot reduced to a pile of fleshy mush.

I breathed out and rested my hands on my head.

The light line from the body retracted to the prism. I followed it, letting the white noise of the few intact machines in the room numb my every thought.

I stepped down into the hole in the table’s center, then placed my hands on the prism and leaned in. My face was an inch away from the green ghost within.

I let out a relieved laugh. “We did it.”

Ralia nodded.

“Holy… I didn’t think it would be that easy in the end.”

She smiled, but it was missing her usual light. “Easy? You were on the brink of death.”

“I think I realized that when I fed.”

“Forget about that, Pet. It’ll only make your life harder. The… um… Naoma part, that is. Don’t forget what it feels like to almost die, though. You need to be more careful in the future. A virus feeding on your reserve like that means death. Got that?”

“You remember that, too. You plug?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head. “We’ll get to that in a moment. Are you okay?”

“Sure? Is he really… dead?”

“Kim? Oh yeah, that thing stood no chance outside of its carrier.”

“Dokkaebi?”

She nodded. “You consumed one half, I finished him off.”

“How?” I laughed, feeling a little more joyous now that it was all behind me. “What is with… this? I thought you were–”

She was quick to cut off that thought. “You criticize me for being a skeptic, but that’s what saved me in the end.”

“You mean… you knew that Sha was not Sha?”

“I knew he was something, until I gave myself to him. With his guard down, I saw what the creature wanted. I knew that we would make it through the Test without a problem. Once I saw how hungry it–he, I don’t know what to call the freak–once I knew what he wanted, it was easy to see that he was part of the system. My theories proved true and look at who won.”

“Right, but what about you in the system?”

“He was my virus so I became his. I used his supernatural light and let him pull me through until the end. When they pulled him into the system, they pulled me in as well.”

“Does that mean—“

“It means Dokkaebi is gone and I am the system’s controller now.”

“You’re… the Correction?”

“I’m the zegging Correction. Sure, we have the rest of humanity to convince of the truth of their planet, but with the enemy out of the way and their mind in my hands–or my mind in their body–we should be able to do something.”

“What about Pure Knowledge?”