Chapter 81: Synergy Effect |
[Estimated completion time: 10 hours and 46 minutes (Extended due to imprecise description)]
The description was not precise enough.
But all the known intelligence was right here. It perfectly connected the behavioral logic of the Divine Anomaly: modifying corpses into Scythe Monsters to serve as tools for executing the Summoning Ritual and spreading infection, while bestowing Divine Grace upon cultists. Every single link matched up.
Shi Rang considered every possible link that could have gone wrong, yet he remained at a loss.
Either the Terminal Station was struggling under the immense pressure of analyzing a Divine Item, or the entire system had simply broken down.
The data surrounding him began to blur. He hurriedly refocused his nearly dissipating consciousness.
He had a sinking premonition that a splitting headache awaited him once he returned to his physical body, but the work was not over yet.
"Enough, turn off the sonar before something gets attracted over here."
Agent Vanessa's voice transmitted through Agent Kyle's Communication Device, followed by a series of detailed instructions for planting the Explosives.
Kyle had briefed him on the general plan. So far, the team's operation was proceeding smoothly.
They were elites; they did not need anyone telling them how to do their jobs.
However, with the intelligence delayed, Shi Rang found it hard to relax. He could not stand having a patch of fog on his intelligence map and was determined to clear it away completely before he rested.
Moreover, he harbored a deeply ominous premonition.
'Why haven't the Divine Item, the Scythe Monsters, and the Midnight Visitor made a move yet?'
'Where exactly does that Divinity manifest—the kind that can instantly classify a subject as an A-grade anomaly upon mere contact?'
Reinforcements from the Ro-6 "War Hammer" Mobile Task Force had already boarded their transport planes. They would arrive at the outskirts of Green Island City in less than an hour.
Shi Rang had no doubts regarding the firepower of the two arriving special detachments. What worried him was whether their mechanized armaments could deploy effectively within the complex underground cave system. Every Mobile Task Force within the Management Bureau had scenarios they specialized in and were adapted to.
Sending the under-gunned Pangolin task force to deal with a Divine Item was indeed cruel, but they were spelunking experts who knew how to operate in cramped environments. The War Hammer unit was far better suited for expansive ground battlefields.
The Frontline Command Center undoubtedly hoped that the N4 Squad underground could handle that sphere of light independently, allowing the soldiers to subsequently parachute down the Vertical Shaft as direct support to complete the containment.
It was a terrible decision. The N4 Squad had essentially become expendables.
Shi Rang had read the Management Bureau's manifesto—it was displayed right on their homepage—yet he still could not understand why they could not just toss Explosives down and blow the thing to kingdom come, exactly like Vanessa had angrily suggested.
'Why use human lives to fill the gap?'
'Is it absolutely necessary to capture this thing?'
The most pressing matter was to unravel the mystery and provide the N4 Squad with more support.
With the Records incomplete, Shi Rang did not dare to create an original page from scratch, completely rewriting the Blood Red God into something "friendly to humans and completely harmless" from the very source. Setting aside whether the Terminal Station even possessed such immense power, his Reality-Tampering ability operated much like a seesaw. If he pressed down on one end, the other would inevitably shoot up. If he tried to press down on both ends simultaneously, the most likely outcome was that the seesaw would snap, jutting out from the middle as two jagged halves.
He had created a Midnight Visitor, adding a ring of teeth to enhance its terrifying design, only for it to become an elusive, skin-flaying monster that ended up dragging another Divine Anomaly into the fray...
He could not make any more reckless alterations to the Records.
[Estimated completion time: 10 hours and 21 minutes]
N4-4: "Point A is done. Running the detcord now. I see a decent elevated position over here; we might be able to use it to avoid the shockwave."
N4-5: "I am almost there. Captain, are you alright?"
N4-1: "Do not worry about me... Are you sure you can hold on, Kyle? You are already... very close to it."
N4-5: "...I am a bit dizzy, but I can manage."
N4-6: "I cannot get any closer; I will end up falling over... Come over immediately once you are done, I will set up a zipline for you... Do you guys really not have an ominous feeling of impending doom?"
N4-1: "No monsters are approaching, rest assured."
Every minute and every second, the N4 Squad remained on the move. Due to their desynchronized perception of time, the progress they achieved during each communication sounded to Shi Rang as if it were being played on fast-forward.
Wait a minute.
When the squad exchanged intelligence earlier, they mentioned the ambush that the group of four had faced. Right now, the squad's movements were glaringly obvious.
'Why haven't the anomalies swarmed over to launch an attack?'
'Since the N4 Squad is deep inside the nest, shouldn't they be subjected to endless pursuit?'
'What exactly is the relationship between the Divine Item and the two individual anomalies? Furthermore, how do these anomalies connect to this underground Spatial Anomaly?'
Shi Rang dragged the Midnight Visitor's page over, placing it side-by-side with the page currently undergoing Analysis.
He had tried appending the details of the Divinity to the Visitor's file, categorizing it as the catalyst for the Visitor's mutation. He even tried the reverse, but neither attempt succeeded.
'Where exactly did things go wrong?'
The Management Bureau Main Station contained explicit documentation explaining the Synergy Effect. It referred to the potential assimilation, hostility, mimicry, exploitation, and even symbiotic fusion that could occur when multiple anomalies came into contact with one another. The Stitched Walkers, for instance, were highly suspected to be a synergetic byproduct of the Seed of Doom and the Zombie Virus.
Therefore, ever since the Scythe Monsters were discovered, everyone had assumed they were a synergetic creation spawned from the Midnight Visitor and the Divine Item.
'But what if... that is not the case at all?'
Shi Rang tried shifting his perspective.
If an ancient Divine Item truly existed beneath the earth, its sheer status dictated that it should be the overarching force driving all these anomalies.
But wasn't the very thing that awakened it an incomprehensible and even more formidable power—his Tampering?
Suppose...
Shi Rang ripped both Records apart, rearranging and recombining the strings of text inscribed upon them.
[The Divine Item can convert human corpses into Scythe Monsters, which house infectious parasites internally. Their remains transform into a noxious gas, and under specific conditions, this gas creates the Visitor while triggering a Spatial Anomaly.]
[Save]
[Initiating Analysis of the Anomaly Project, please wait...]
Following the anxiety-inducing prompt, the page format shifted. Content that Shi Rang had never seen before—visible only on the data stratum—suddenly manifested:
[Locking Successful]
[Estimated completion time: 25 minutes and 40 seconds]
'Just as I thought!'
There indeed was a dominant hierarchy between them, but the Divine Item strictly adhered to a highly convoluted process: manufacturing the Scythe Monsters, which then generated the toxic gas, which subsequently manifested into the Visitor. Only through this exact sequence could it fulfill every single trait of the "monster that quietly comes and goes amidst poisonous gas" authored by Dump Truck!
'So all of this... was triggered solely to manifest what I wrote...'
Shi Rang was about to return to the Communication Device to warn Kyle when he noticed another anomaly. The Main Station did not display the new page he had just created; it solely existed within Dump Truck's personal workspace.
The personnel at the Command Center were still making endless attempts at Analysis on the Terminal Station, battling against the ruthless "imprecise" feedback loops.
They lacked the vast amount of information Shi Rang possessed; they could not even access the historical data logs of the communicators!
After a moment of thought, he dragged out a copy of this new page and tossed it into the Terminal Station, allowing the system to synchronize it across the network.
[N4 Squad, precise intelligence will arrive within half an hour!]
For the first time, the Frontline Command Center proactively sent a message to Kyle.
During missions, carrying and actively utilizing a Special Communicator carried extremely high risks. Kyle did not know the exact intricacies, but within the Management Bureau, every single regulation was penned in blood.
Yet, he was willing to brave the peril in exchange for real-time intelligence support.
"The intel is arriving in half an hour!" Still suspended over ten meters above the ground while stringing the detcord, he eagerly relayed the good news to his teammates. "Also, Point C is secure!"
Vanessa spoke up, "Zip back down and toss me the detcord."
Kyle complied, just as eager to get out of there.
The rest of the team remained at least seventy meters away from the sphere of light. They all reported severe dizziness and even slight memory fragmentation. That was the absolute maximum distance they could endure, even relying on the protection of their Suits.
If the sphere possessed such devastating power when completely passive, it was unfathomable what the O Squad had experienced during their rapid aerial descent. As someone indirectly connected to the luminous sphere, Kyle felt an intensifying itch on the back of his hand as he approached. He occasionally heard indistinct whispers, but he was still able to resist the effects.
Relying on his immunity to the Cognitohazard, he was even able to directly observe the sphere of light.
The sphere was not floating out of thin air. Instead, it rested upon an indiscernible conical pedestal, hovering just over ten meters above the ground. Its radiant intensity was blinding enough to overwhelm his visor's filters, leaving Kyle completely unable to determine what the pedestal was composed of.
The strangest part was that both N4-4 and Vanessa had noted the complete absence of any Ovisacs within the illuminated radius.
'Aren't they supposed to be part of the same collective?'
Kyle touched down, walking backward to unspool the detcord until he safely regrouped with his teammates.
The detonation point Vanessa had selected was situated on a shadowed slope. It was positioned far away from the glowing sphere, boasting high elevation, stable rock formations, and an excellent vantage point. Furthermore, it provided a swift evacuation route into a nearby tunnel.
"That settles it. Assuming the equipment hasn't malfunctioned, all you have to do is twist and press this detonator to blow it." Having completed the final adjustments, Vanessa handed the remote-control-like detonator over to Holly. "If you don't mind, I'm going into the tunnel to secure our escape route."
Holly's voice was frequently interrupted by heavy breaths, her words wheezing out in fragmented gasps through her filter. "Don't go alone. Wait for the intel to arrive first, just in case... When the time comes, Kyle, you go with her."
Vanessa did not argue back, offering silent acquiescence.
The most perilous phase was over. Lying at the peak of the slope, Holly finally breathed a sigh of relief. The effects of her medication were mostly wearing off, and she had been forcing herself to stay conscious while handling reconnaissance. As she closed her eyes and rested her head against a rock, she looked as if she had completely passed out.
It was not just her; for the past hour, everyone's hearts had been in their throats. Now, as if a massive weight had been lifted from their shoulders, they all collapsed onto the ground.
The moment they split up to plant the Explosives had been the squad's most vulnerable window.
Had a horde of monsters swarmed them then, every last one of them would have perished right there.
Nobody spoke. There was no one trying to lighten the mood. Even talking felt like a form of torture, as it inevitably reminded them that they were missing two members, and a bitter argument had erupted not long ago... Thus, they waited in suffocating silence. All eyes were locked onto the Communication Device in Kyle's hands—it had logged into the Main Station and located the intelligence currently under Analysis. All they were waiting for now was the exact file to manifest on the screen.
Suddenly, Kyle clutched his head over his helmet, his entire body convulsing violently as if suffering from a seizure. He collapsed to his knees, still fiercely gripping his head.
The clatter of the falling Communication Device jolted Holly awake. In an instant, she spotted the ominous crimson glow radiating from the back of his hand. It pierced right through the thick bandages, glowing so intensely it practically illuminated the immediate surroundings.
N4-4: "Is this a—"
N4-6: "That tattoo—"
"You're an intruder too?"
"Wait..."
Holly struggled to sit up. Her hand hesitated for a fraction of a second over her gun before she gripped her weapon firmly.
But the very next second, Kyle used that same glowing hand to point directly toward the backlit darkness.
The moment they laid eyes on that spot, N4-4 and Vanessa immediately forgot all about Kyle's sudden mutation.
A tightly packed cluster of countless crimson eyes was drifting out from the abyss.