Kisaragi Station || Apocalypse Paradise #3

222: Getting Others to Do Your Dirty Work

In all fairness, Lin Sanjiu had to admit that she wouldn't dare to do such a brazen thing if she were in Silvan's position. Firstly, she wouldn't trust an enemy who was trying to escape. However, Silvan seemed to trust her words instantly. He didn't show even a hint of hesitation. 'Courageous' wasn't the right word to describe this man. Instead, he exuded a sort of assertiveness. He didn't even have to explain himself. Lin Sanjiu sensed that his assertiveness came from a near-arrogant confidence. He did not care about the possible risks involved.

He showed an 'I know you are up to something, but I don't care' attitude.

'Is such a person truly part of a small team?' Lin Sanjiu tried to recall the other members' appearance, but she only had a hazy impression. None of them left a lasting impression like Silvan.

Silvan stood in the quiet, dim elevator lobby of the building. He smacked the upward button beside the elevator absent-mindedly. The elevator immediately hummed softly as it came down from the 26th floor. Just a day ago, Lin Sanjiu probably wouldn't believe she would return to this building voluntarily.

But her mentality was different now. No matter what this building was planning, she hoped it would act quickly.

"My teammates did enter this building to retrieve the Gangrene Chaser, but how did you know they found that duoluozhong first?" Silvan had already pulled down his ballistic eyewear and fit them properly on his face once again. With his striking looks half concealed, he immediately looked more reserved, appearing to be a typical handsome man. Lin Sanjiu stopped momentarily and tried to listen for the sounds within her scanning range.

There was only a dead-like silence in the building. She couldn't hear a single noise.

IF THEY FOUND THAT THING, IT WOULDN'T BE THIS QUIET, Lin Sanjiu wrote quickly. Of course, she hid that the silence proved that his teammates had already fallen into the building's trap. Silvan didn't reply. Instead, he stared at the numeral display in the elevator.

After some time, he asked, "Which floor?"

Lin Sanjiu wrote: 26.

Even though the black arrow was always trapped on the 26th floor, Lin Sanjiu was confident they would not find it when they went there. The elevator door opened slowly.

"You mentioned that you are not a duoluozhong. What are you then?" Silvan asked curiously as he pressed the button marked 26. He sounded sincere, but Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell if he believed her. "Someone who didn't corrode their eyes with dark matter probably can't see you, right?"

'So, this team used the same method,' Lin Sanjiu thought. She gave him an ambiguous answer, THIS IS MY ABILITY. I CAN REVERT TO MY HUMAN FORM. After that, Lin Sanjiu had a sudden thought. She remembered that the siblings had told her they learned about the method of corroding their eyes from someone else's experience in Red Nautilus. If that was the case—

She couldn't help asking: ARE YOU GUYS FROM THE TWELVE WORLDS CENTRUM?

Silvan lowered his head slightly. He was holding the cylindrical container that Lin Sanjiu was in. He eyed Lin Sanjiu and laughed.

"You too? But how could you not recognize this if you're from the Twelve Worlds Centrum?" He patted the emblem on his shoulder lightly. His tone was a little weird when he said, 'this.' As he pointed to it, he revealed slight contempt and subtle amusement before pulling his slender fingers away.

Lin Sanjiu had noticed that emblem ages ago but didn't know what it symbolized. The emblem had a silver-black outline. In the middle, there was a beautiful war hammer. There was an eagle with extended wings in the background of the emblem. It looked imposing.

Silvan spoke when hesitating about whether she should question the man further.

"There's no harm in telling you," he said indifferently, but he seemed to be holding back some emotions, "I didn't come here from any of the worlds in the Twelve Worlds Centrum. I come from the Munitions Factory."

'The Munitions Factory!' Lin Sanjiu, who was in the container, was shocked when she heard this. She had heard the name of this place many times. She heard it first from Shen Lianqi and, recently, from the siblings. Almost everyone from the Twelve Centrum had mentioned this name. Between the lines, Lin Sanjiu could tell that the Munitions Factory was an unavoidable subject of discussion if you lived in the Twelve Worlds Centrum. It seemed to be some sort of large organization.

That explained why the men were so well-equipped. In her Higher Consciousness form, Lin Sanjiu had been sucked into this container without a chance to resist.

'But what is the Munitions Factory capturing duoluozhongs for?' Lin Sanjiu pondered.

Noticing that the weird thing in the container had not responded for some time, Silvan seemed a little baffled. "You must not be from the Twelve Worlds Centrum," he said. His following words immediately stunned Lin Sanjiu, "You probably just met residents of the Twelve Worlds Centrum. The people lying at the train station's entrance seemed the same as in the pharmacy store. Are they from the Twelve Worlds Centrum? They're badly injured but still alive. Their wounds were also tended to. Are they your friends? If so, you might not be a duoluozhong after all."

The elevator door opened slowly, and Silvan walked out. Lin Sanjiu didn't read his expression, still stunned. She had simply asked a question from her speculations, but the man managed to infer so much about her based on that.

Furthermore, he got everything right. The man's quick wit was certainly worthy of praise. She suddenly felt unsure about her plan to use the building to eliminate the team of men.

'Let's hope that it works,' Lin Sanjiu thought. When she found herself in the familiar dim corridors, she felt that the events that happened to her in this place seemed to be a lifetime ago. When Lin Sanjiu recalled the scenes of her escape, she couldn't help looking at the man beside her. Silvan appeared as relaxed as before, as if he had just found another place to stroll around.

Thankfully, the building did not let her down.

They heard a sudden click coming from the locked door of an apartment unit ahead. The door slowly swung open. From where they were standing, they could only see a few fingers at the edge of the door.

'Is that one of Silvan's teammates behind that door or—'

Silvan threw aside the container Lin Sanjiu was in. A black gun barrel appeared silently by his wrist. Next, Silvan aimed the line of blue flames from his gun at the door. The flames swallowed the door instantaneously.

"This is your chance!" Mrs. Manas shouted in Lin Sanjiu's mind. Lin Sanjiu, who had already been prepared, did not waste a second. She quickly activated and gathered all her Higher Consciousness together. She started compressing it as if her life depended on it.

While the torrent of flames continued engulfing the door, Lin Sanjiu felt the pain she had never experienced in her life before. Usually, compressing two strands of Higher Consciousness was hard enough for her. Right now, she was trying to compress all her Higher Consciousness as much as possible. Even though she no longer had a physical body, she could not deny the bone-shattering pain she felt.

'Damn it. I should give up. I might not die even if I'm captured.' Giving in to such thoughts was tempting. While enduring the vivid pain, Lin Sanjiu tried to curb her impulse to give up. Though the vague encouragements from Mrs. Manas, a few words pierced through the haziness of her pain like the first light of dawn. "Do it now!" She heard those words very clearly.

If Silvan were to look at the cylindrical container at that point, he would have noticed that the weird creature in it was becoming smaller and smaller. It finally condensed itself to the size of an apple. In that condition, it glowed erratically as if in an unstable state. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion. The blue flames from his gun finally stopped as he turned around. At the same time, the container exploded into bits. The swelling black shadow from within shot out the window like an arrow on a taut bow. It disappeared into the boundless sky.

"I didn't expect it to act so fast." Silvan leaped up from the ground and stared at the broken fragments of the container. His eyes revealed slight amazement. "That's the Munitions Factory's newest—Oh, I forgot you're still here." He looked at the person who had just walked out of the door and threw his thoughts about that weird thing to the back of his mind.