"Run! If we stay here, we're dead!"
"No. I'm going to keep absorbing the planet's energy here!"
"What if we die?"
"Could we die?"
"How could I possibly lose?"
All kinds of thoughts and noises came rushing in, filling Shinji's mind in an instant and plunging his thoughts into chaos.
These thoughts—or rather, these noises—brought Shinji's thinking to a halt. He couldn't analyze anything at all and could only rely on instinct to unleash Shinra Tensei again, repelling the swarm of insects attacking from every direction.
Using his ocular technique to buy himself a moment, Shinji leaped out of the swarm's encirclement.
Once he was far from the swarm, the noise in his mind weakened considerably. Shinji regained some of his ability to think, and while continuing to put distance between himself and the insects, he struggled to activate the lamp at his waist and purify himself several times.
But the purification that had worked every time before had little effect now. Plenty of noise still lingered in his mind!
"These noises aren't contamination!"
Shinji realized this in an instant and stopped.
Even after he'd moved away from the swarm, the noise had weakened but hadn't disappeared completely. In other words, creating more distance wouldn't lessen the noise in his mind. Perhaps only by dealing with the source could he get rid of it.
Resisting the interference, Shinji pondered, "Is this the ability of the Overlord behind the World Destruction Society? Can it pour noise directly into my mind and interfere with my thoughts? No, that's not right!"
Suddenly, Shinji's expression changed.
After listening closely for a moment, he realized that all this so-called noise was actually his own inner voice. It was as if countless versions of himself had split off deep within his mind, all chattering away as