A+A-

Prologue

Alexander Arcturus, the commander of the third squadron of Stars, was ordered to sabotage the thermonuclear fusion reactor on Miyako Island in Japan. He successfully arrived there on a transport aircraft belonging to the USNA army, but immediately after landing he was attacked and has since been unconscious.

When Arcturus awoke, he felt disconnected, as one does after dreaming for a while, but at the same time felt he had only slept an instant. He was in total darkness.

Absolute, total darkness, without any light - but this darkness was not something heavy and enveloping as it would if it were a burden. He did not feel pressed from this darkness… he did not feel anything at all.

He couldn’t even tell whether his eyes were open – if he even had eyes. His consciousness was separated from his body, his link to the physical world.

“…I died?”

Such were his thoughts in this confused, absolute isolation, this indefinite void.

“… Is this Death?”

His thoughts continued, trying to make sense of his surroundings without senses.

“In death, it isn’t judgement that awaits, but isolation? …sinners do not burn in hel fire, but become null?”

As his despair accumulated, a thought suddenly caused him to feel forsaken.

“…Why am I alone?

…am I the only one?”

Only now did Arcturus realize he couldn’t hear the voice of his “relatives”. For as long as he had been a Parasite, a whisper had spoken to his ego from the depths of his consciousness, subdueing it, suppressing it – but now he could not hear it. For the first time in a while, Arcturus’ mind was filled only with his thoughts.

“What does this mean…?”

Arcturus had become a Parasite against his will. He was forcible assimilated when a spiritual life form penetrated his mind. But this unification acted both ways – the Parasite did not unilaterally dominate over Arcturus. Control acted in both directions.

In merging with the spiritual life form, he ceased to be a man, but at the same time remained similar. He was no longer the person he was before the merge once his ego had been suppressed, but he still held the memories and thoughts of who he once was

– he was now the Parasite Alexander Arcturus.

Merging with the Parasite changed his values and thought process, but his consciousness was preserved. And since he retained his memories from both before and after he became a Parasite, he knew clearly what a Parasite was – what changed in him.

Parasites have no ego; no, more accurately, it is inferior. The ego remains, but does not take precedence, so Parasites are missing part of their personality – their individuality. Their desire to stand out, to be unique.

Parasites are separate as they are united – they have separate consciousnesses, but the boundaries are stretched as their thoughts mix with others. The thoughts of others whisper to their ego in the depths of their consciousness, taking precedence over individual ambition. Beyond telepathy, thoughts are transmitted unconsciously, even without the intent to share.

At first, one can still distinguish their thoughts from other individuals. But over time the line between “oneself” and “others” blurs and it becomes impossible to distinguish one’s own thoughts from others’. Given the thoughts of other Parasites at al times, one absorbs others ideologies as their own. It’s like an extreme form of propaganda, except instead of just a compelling voice, its invasion on the level of one’s mind. It isn’t feasible for Parasites to keep their individuality as they forget who they are in the presence of the crowd.

As for the spiritual form of life parasitizing people – they can hardly be called life. It might be more accurate to call them viruses; they are clots of information attaching to physical bodies to replicate and spread. In addition, being immaterial, they are not consumed, only growing stronger when used. To cement their spiritual and informational existence, Parasites look for hosts with strong thoughts, and to ensure their existence endured, they suppressed the individuality and therefore the resistance of their hosts. The host was pressured by the Parasite to accept others’ thoughts as their own; to accept the exchange of thoughts and fusion of consciousness.

And Arcturus realized he was free from this pressure.

“Did I become a human again… separate from the Parasite?”

However, this thought did not bring him joy at being free, at having regained humanity, but rather fear that he became a different species once again. Though he was initially a man, he was now a Parasite. From his perspective, it was the same as the initial transformation – he was forced to change his core against his will.

Life generally tries to preserve itself, and to accomplish this, it resists change – change is scary, change is dangerous. Unplanned changes bring fear, regardless of their effect.

Arcturus suppressed his instinctive emotions and instead focused on what was happening to him now through force of will. In doing this, he realized he was still half asleep – functional adherence was only one fifth of normal. Even worse, he didn’t even know what “normal” was anymore; his abilities had certainly deteriorated in his little nap.

***

July 8, 2097, 14:07.

Alexander Arcturus suddenly awakened.

The darkness shrouding Arcturus shook. This was an excess stream of psions originating from Ichijou Masaki’s Ocean Blast, but Arcturus had no way to know.

The fog cloaking his consciousness dissipated, and his thoughts cleared up immediately.

"…was that a psion wave?

So, mass of psions shook the psionic shel ?

…am I locked inside my own psionic informational body?"

The body is the prison of the soul - at least, Plato believed this. This was Arcturus’

current situation, however, in a far more literal sense than was meant in the original words of the ancient Greek philosopher.

An ancient magic seal was burned on his body, separating his mind from the physical world. Arcturus was able to understand the technique binding him due to his experience with ancient magic he inherited from the indigenous people of America, but he also realized the technique was far too strong for him to break with his skills in ancient magic. But even if he couldn’t remove the seal, the ancient magic was based on the connection between the mind and the physical body. In that case, if he could cut off the connection between the mind and body, the seal should dissipate.

Using only his mind, Arcturus prepared to use magic. It felt… odd, without the physical sensations he was used to, but albeit with confused difficulty, he built a sequence of magic.

“Astral Projection.”

The ancient magic that bound it used the connection between the mind and the physical body to bind the mind from the physical body. This wasn’t his first time using this magic, so while he wasn’t quite “used to it”, he had enough experience to keep control.

He had the feeling of a chain tied to him coming undone. Arcturus tried to get out of his physical body. Usually, it felt like stepping out under the open sky, no longer protected by shelter – except figuratively. But this time, he felt resistance, as if he was held by a spider web, an invisible net.

He imagined reaching out a hand towards the net and tearing it off.

Suddenly, he could see.

He was staring at the ceiling of the transport plane. If he remembered correctly, he was in the cargo bay.

He realized what he looked like and where he was without even looking around. On the floor was Arcturus, lying with a pale face in what appeared to be a coffin.

When he used Astral Projection, his mind and body were connected by an almost invisible link, like a thin thread, but now he could not sense the connection. His mind was not able to communicate with his physical body.

“Did the link break with the invisible net?

Am I dead?”

The old woman who taught him this magic told him that the thread bound his body and soul. A Japanese monk he studied with in his youth claimed that if said thread breaks, he would not be able to return to his body.

Arcturus was distraught for a movement at his worldly detachment before remembering the current circumstances. Quickly he quelled his fear of death before his conscious fled for panic. His current state, in which he could see, hear, and even feel the world, was incomparably more preferable to being locked in the null, dark void for eternity.

From a different perspective, his attempts to return to life may have seemed ridiculous

– his life had already ended when he became a Parasite. It was already too late to continued living. However, he believed that he should do something, even if he exists only as a ghost with the consciousness of Alexander Arcturus.

Arcturus remembered his identity as a soldier of the USNA Army. He remained

“himself” enough to serve America as a soldier, even after becoming a Parasite – his principles were ingrained so deeply that it was comparable to faith.

Arcturus believed himself to be “Alexander Arcturus” as long as he was conscious of his self.

What do I need to do?

“…I need to fulfil the task assigned to me.”

And what task were you assigned to?

"...Destroy the thermonuclear fusion reactor and create a situation in Shiba Tatsuya cannot refuse participation in Project Dione. That's what I was assigned to do."

Magic can still be used, even in an astral state. It was not possible to use magic requiring physical weapons, like Dancing Blades, but activating magic interfering with fluids or EM waves would not be a problem, and some types of magic became even more convenient while existing only as an astral body – specifically, mental interference magic.

Arcturus came to his decision just one hour after waking up in complete darkness.

However, it was already too late. His comrades’ attack on Miyako Island had already failed. The physical bodies of Regulus, Vega, and Deneb had already been erased by Tatsuya, and their astral bodies were already completely sealed.

Translator’s Note

I don’t really know what I should say here, but with how much I’ve edited this novel, I thought that I would like to leave a note about my experience, signifying my existence beyond a small note at the bottom of the page. Even though I don’t speak Russian and this is a MTL, I think I put about as much effort in as one would a normal translation, and as a result, I think the quality is similar. While I’m sure there are a few inaccuracies, none of it should be anything that affects the plot in any major way.

I translated this in about 100-120 hours (my estimate, I have no idea how correct this is but I tend to be good at making BS estimates based on intuition) over 6 weeks. I used Google Translate to translate, but I retyped every word and changed/fixed the format of pretty much every sentence. I tried to write somewhat similarly to the Author’s style, but I could only do it so far, and I only matched some aspects – there are parts of his style that I very much dislike. Tsutomu Sato seems to like to write long-winded explanations that only cover information talked about before throughout his novels. I tried my best to cut most of these out, as I don’t find it entertaining to read explanations that emphasize “Minoru is not kidnapping Minami out of greed” for the 10th time. While I think there’s value in repeating things for emphasis, Sato takes it to an extreme.

I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good writer (I’m much more into Computer Science), but in translating this, I’d like to think I improved, and I hope that my style is at least interesting to read. In translating this, I hoped to become a better typist as well as a better writer, and I know that I achieved at least one of these goals.

With that said, thank you for reading my translation, and I hope you enjoy it.