At this moment, in this situation, Ren Yi had only one heartfelt sentiment, and he wasn't sure if he should voice it.
Guys, help! There's a freak here!
Cough, cough—sorry, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration.
Through the sliver of perception attached to Dr. Cyril, Ren Yi was observing this uninvited guest from a "first-person perspective."
The Lord of the City of the Sky Lake.
In this absurd, shattered world, carved into pieces by various Anomalies, the sparks of civilization were surprisingly scarce.
The People of the Abyss were, to put it bluntly, a group of profit-seeking individualists and armed mercenaries entrenched in the crevices of various ruins.
The Tide-Followers were entirely nomadic, moving in pursuit of the deadly yet life-giving Red Tide.
The only place that could be called a "city," representing the last vestiges of dignity and order of the old civilization, was the center of power behind the Sky Eye Organization: the City of the Sky Lake.
"Sky Eye Organization, Earth-Eye Lake, Lord of the Sky Lake..." Ren Yi couldn't help but complain internally.
What kind of obsession did these people have with the words "sky" and "earth"? Everything was sky this and earth that. Is this some kind of Heaven and Earth Society?
Aren't you supposed to be a high-tech containment organization?
Of course, none of that was the real issue. The most serious problem right now was...
This supreme commander who controlled the world's most powerful coercive agency and mysterious containment organization, this savior in the eyes of thousands of survivors...
He seemed to be a total nutcase!
Why else would he look at that mass of squirming, death-scented black liquid on the monitor—liquid that was ready to swallow the entire ship at any moment—and call it "my child" with such a look of paternal affection?
A reckless, suicidal thought even flashed through Ren Yi's mind.
If he rushed in front of S-099 right now and shouted, or used an illusion to tell it, "Your daddy's here!"
Would that pool of black water suddenly realize the depth of paternal love and achieve enlightenment, or would it feel insulted and simply explode?
Facing this high-ranking, delusional leader, Dr. Cyril displayed extremely seasoned workplace experience in dealing with freaks.
She didn't show the slightest hint of discomfort. She tapped a few times on the recording tablet in her hand and then bowed slightly.
"Lord of the City, your sudden arrival has made my experimental schedule a bit tight."
Cyril's voice remained cold, as if she were reporting a dull financial statement.
"S-099 has indeed entered an active phase recently. Not long ago, it underwent a violent surge, even briefly breaching the third layer of the gravity-sensing wall."
The Lord of the City walked to the massive observation screen, carefully observing the black tide swaying in the bottom chamber, and said softly,
"It's very excited. I can feel it singing. This vitality... it's charming, isn't it?"
"The price of that charm is a forty percent increase in the base's energy consumption."
Dr. Cyril replied indifferently. Then, she shifted the conversation and began reporting on the recent status of the base.
"There were also some accidents during the recent journey. Some Anomalies produced interesting byproducts."
"For example, Anomaly B-013. It produced an offshoot organism."
"I believe it warrants further study, so I have excluded it from the candidate list for 'feed.'"
"Additionally, S-099's fluctuations have indeed been frequent, so our stock of 'feed' is somewhat insufficient."
Ren Yi silently gave the doctor a thumbs-up in his mind.
Cyril's rhetoric was very clever.
Every single sentence was the truth, but when combined, the result seemed worlds apart from reality.
She admitted B-013's anomaly and mentioned Ren Yi, but she deliberately ignored the nature of this offshoot and placed the emphasis on B-013 itself.
She also admitted S-099's rampage, but she didn't say that it was all triggered by her unauthorized operation of sending Ren Yi to contact S-099.
Other than the decrease in available "feed," these two events were entirely unrelated in her narrative.
It was just that during the long journey, an Anomaly had accidentally piqued her interest.
Furthermore, she didn't mention Evans once from start to finish.
That Red Ring Tribe youth who died in the black tide—and who might have already merged with S-099—completely vanished from her account, as if that life had never existed.
Cyril was protecting herself, and in a way, she was skillfully pushing certain things to the periphery of the Lord's vision.
Just as the two had exchanged a few words, the subordinates brought by the Lord began to file out of the B-119 elevator.
According to the file on B-119, this was an extremely "fair" killing machine with a sense of aesthetic OCD.
Now, here was a word problem.
There were five more people in the elevator.
Every time one person stepped out, the elevator doors had a fifty percent chance of closing.
Question: What was the probability of everyone getting out safely?
Alright, let's just skip to the answer... There was only a 6.25% chance.
This was a devastatingly high-stakes gamble.
But in the eyes of the Lord and his subordinates, this seemed like nothing more than a routine "roll call."
The first subordinate in black stepped out, the hem of his trench coat sweeping across the threshold. Safe.
The second followed closely behind.
The third subordinate followed expressionlessly. Just as the tip of his shoe was about to cross that stainless steel track—
Boom—!
A heavy, muffled thud accompanied by a metallic screech exploded within the control room.
The two people in conversation stopped.
Dr. Cyril tilted her head slightly, as if savoring the sudden scent of rust in the air, while the Lord merely glanced back casually.
Splat.
Half of a corpse with a smooth cut fell slowly before them.
That blade—or rather, that door—had cut so fast that the half-body had even taken half a step forward out of inertia.
On the cold, reflective surface of the elevator doors, an extremely standard human-shaped blood splatter pattern appeared.
The two men in black who had already made it out didn't even look at their fallen colleague. They simply turned back in silence, naturally pulling out folding scrapers and high-efficiency decontaminants from their trench coats.
They began to clean the pattern off the door.
"Your guards are always so... full of the spirit of self-sacrifice."
Dr. Cyril watched the blood being wiped away, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly.
"No, it's B-119 helping me filter out those with bad luck."
The Lord turned around, his shadow looming over Cyril. "People with bad luck are not worthy of witnessing the 'New Era.'"
The blood on the elevator doors was still sliding slowly down the grain of the stainless steel.
The two surviving subordinates were already half-squatting on the ground with expressionless faces, their movements as practiced as if they were cleaning up spilled saline in a laboratory.
Dr. Cyril watched this scene, then looked at the smiling Lord of the City.
This moment was, for some reason, tinged with a sense of dark humor.
Rate on N.U.
