The sense of weightlessness continued, or rather, it had evolved into a nauseating sense of suffocation, as if being slowly squeezed through a thick medium.
The sealed pod was like a metal capsule sinking into the ruins of the deep sea.
As a mass of faceless, aimless mist, Ren Yi could clearly perceive the changes in his surroundings.
The black liquid outside the chamber was incredibly dense. It didn't part easily like normal water; instead, it offered an elastic resistance, slowly and greedily enveloping the entire experimental pod.
Creak, groan.
The metal walls of the pod groaned under the immense hydraulic pressure.
In this environment of intertwined silence and darkness, any struggle seemed pale and futile.
Ren Yi pushed his perception to its limit. His detection web, which could normally cover a hundred-meter radius, seemed to be absorbed the moment it touched the black liquid.
"What's going on? Why isn't the Anomaly Appraisal app reacting?"
Ren Yi muttered to himself. Usually, any contact with anomalous energy would trigger the database-like mechanism.
But there was only this black liquid here.
The fact that the app didn't react meant that the black liquid wasn't part of S-099, or at least couldn't be identified as such for now.
"Is S-099 asleep? Or has it escaped?"
...
Meanwhile, in the control room hundreds of meters above Ren Yi, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
A massive curved display was divided into a dense grid, looking like a multi-eyed monster peering at the sinking sealed pod from every angle.
Nearly a quarter of the screen was dedicated to showing the interior of the pod.
The sealed pod utilized an expensive three-layered structural design.
The innermost layer was the white sealed chamber where Ren Yi was. Powerful incandescent lights made it look like a laboratory in heaven, where every wisp of mist was clearly visible;
The second layer was the observation area outside the transparent reinforced glass, where Evans was curled up in a corner;
The outermost third layer was an empty buffer chamber designed to handle a potential hydraulic collapse.
In the center of the brightly lit screen, Ren Yi floated with unnatural stillness.
Evans's condition, however, was concerning.
Under the gaze of high-definition cameras, the boy was deathly pale. His eyes were tightly shut, and his brow was contorted in pain or fear.
His lips trembled slightly, as if he were offering a silent prayer.
To a mortal without perception or vision, the sealed pod looked like a tin can about to be swallowed by a giant beast.
The remaining three-quarters of the screen were an abyss of pitch-black.
Most of those were expensive infrared thermal cameras, but in this black liquid, infrared rays seemed to lose their effectiveness.
Only the small, warmly glowing rectangle in the center—the sealed pod itself—was visible as it slowly descended.
Beyond that, there were no signs of life in the liquid background.
"Doctor..."
Staff B-117 finally couldn't contain her fear. Her voice trembled, and her palms were sweaty against the console. "S-099... why is it gone?"
In her understanding, S-099 was synonymous with violence and hunger.
In the past, whenever any living creature or metal sample entered this chamber, that horrific embryo would react destructively within fractions of a second.
It would even leap from the thick liquid to tear and devour them mid-air.
But now, even as the container filled with two anomalous consumables and an Anomaly descended into its heart, the creature remained as quiet as if it didn't exist.
"No rush," Cyril said calmly, her profile looking cold and hard under the screen's glow.
She stared at the white block representing the sealed pod, a faint, inscrutable smile playing on her lips.
"According to previous observations, it entered a deep dormancy after devouring Anomaly A-024. However..."
The doctor paused, her tone carrying a strange, suggestive quality. "Let's give it some time."
"...It won't be able to help itself."
...
Thump.
A heavy, dull thud came from the bottom of the pod. Ren Yi frowned inwardly; the sealed pod had reached the floor of this black void.
Through the perception he had left near Dr. Cyril, he naturally heard the talk of "dormancy" and "not being able to help itself."
It was a terrible feeling, like being locked in an iron cage and lowered into shark-infested waters while the person who dropped you in sat comfortably on deck, leisurely watching and betting on when the sharks would crush the cage.
It was a form of psychological suffocation. You knew the beast was in the shadows, yet you couldn't even hear its breath.
Ren Yi didn't wait passively.
He tried to condense his perception into a needle-like point, attempting to pierce through the shroud of the black liquid.
Just as this struggle reached a breaking point, a sudden noise made his consciousness jump.
Knock, knock.
The sound was faint, yet in the absolute silence of the pod, it was deafening.
Ren Yi turned his head in shock, only to find it was Evans in the adjacent chamber, knocking on the glass.
Evans had opened his eyes at some point, and his Best Actor mask seemed to have cracked. He didn't look like he was having a breakdown; instead, he was eerily calm.
He waved urgently toward Ren Yi, his lips moving in tiny, rapid motions.
He was speaking.
Ren Yi couldn't quite make it out; the boy seemed to be using some kind of slang or code unique to the Wilderness.
He hesitated for a moment, then controlled his misty body to drift closer to the glass, trying to read Evans's lips.
"Come..."
Just as Ren Yi was about to make out the full phrase, something changed abruptly.
Rate on N.U.
