Moving House

As she was leaving, Ivette did not forget to place an order with Welder for two clean, legitimate new ID cards. This required connections within the police department, but as one of the local powerhouses, Welder had no trouble handling it—essentially, the police were selling them themselves, and he was just the middleman.

Actually, during her conversation with Welder, Ivette had already vaguely felt that she might not need to buy ID cards at all. Unless the relatives and friends of those three thugs stuffed the police with enough bribes, the cops here simply were not capable of seriously handling a case. They would muddle through it and call it done, much less have a chance to notice that the police system had been hacked and resident records altered.

Besides, Blackwater District had more unsolved cases every year than anyone could count. Other than hot-blooded rookies freshly assigned here, normal cops had long since become hardened veterans. Why would they care about one more case?

But Ivette had only arrived two days ago. She knew too little about Blackwater District, Ish City, or even Origin Civilization as a whole. Mere armchair theorizing would not do. So, out of caution, she still paid for the two ID cards, a total of 16,000, and the balance in her account fell to 69,800.

After leaving the Junkyard Black Market, Ivette took Rosaline around the city center that evening. They passed through the city park that had become a manor after the apocalypse, had an upscale dinner, and even went up to the observation dome on the top floor of the Black Tower Building. Ish City's neon nightscape spread out beneath them, filled with endlessly surging streams of magical light.

Looking at the view, Rosaline had essentially taken it for a true depiction of a divine kingdom on land, investing it with all sorts of beautiful fantasies.

Although Ivette knew there was no such thing as a utopia, and that Origin Civilization was a society with a massive gap between rich and poor, the scenery still left her briefly dazed. It reminded her of buying tickets with her family to visit the top of Shanghai Tower in her previous life. She had been young then, full of ambition—how could she have imagined that after graduation, she would end up delivering food...

Luckily, she had struck it big and become a Witch now. Whether that was fortunate or unfortunate, she had no idea.

The next morning, through a rental platform, Ivette gave up the hotel and rented an apartment of a little over eighty square meters in the Wright Apartment Building on Acid Street.

It was an apartment building beside one of Blackwater District's more prosperous commercial areas. The location was excellent, and public security was relatively reliable too. It was not like Pixel Street, where getting up halfway through the night to use the bathroom and hearing gunshots could scare the piss right out of you—of course, she did not use the bathroom or piss herself. That was merely a scientific hypothesis based on past experience.

Looking up from the entrance, the entire Wright Apartment Building was a massive bright-yellow honeycomb structure. Its upper half was much wider, with Magitech Motorcycles constantly taking off and landing on the rooftop platform in a ceaseless bustle. The lower half looked narrower and more restrained, with rooms that did not even have balconies, windows fitted with wire mesh, and only one driveway.

Soon, Ivette took Rosaline into the elevator and pressed the button for the eighteenth floor. It was a VIP elevator exclusively for tenants above the fifteenth floor. Rent in this section was more expensive, and the services naturally better.

"Hello. Are you two new here?"

When they arrived outside their rented unit, Room 1809, and Ivette had just opened the door, she saw a middle-aged man in a white coat emerge from the neighboring room. He appeared to be heading out and greeted them in surprise.

"Yes, we only arrived today." Ivette nodded slightly.

"My name is Regal Hoffman. We'll be neighbors from now on." Regal smiled, then suddenly took a paper card from his clothes and handed it over. "This is my business card. If you need anything, feel free to ask me for help."

Ivette accepted the card and glanced at it. "Hoffman General Clinic... You're a doctor?"

"Yes, but my fees are quite low, so don't worry. Many tenants above the fifteenth floor are regular clients of mine."

Regal lowered his head to check his watch, then waved. "I'm short on time. I have something to take care of, so I'll be going. Enjoy settling in!"

After he had gone some distance away, Ivette entered the room, and the door closed automatically behind her.

Rosaline had already entered ahead of her and was poking at a holographic display disguised as a fish tank.

However, her enthusiasm came quickly and faded just as fast. Before long, Ivette saw her gradually lose interest in exploring the apartment. Instead, she lay down on the living room sofa and skillfully began scrolling through short videos using the holographic projection function of her Magic Guide Terminal, like a salted fish that had lost all fighting spirit.

"..."

Shaking her head, Ivette casually found a stool to sit on and went online as well, though not for entertainment. She was looking up information about the Silent War.

There was an enormous amount of information online about the Silent War, the great conflict that had once swept across the world. It was not difficult to find.

According to the confirmed encyclopedia entries online, the war had begun extremely suddenly, with no real buildup beforehand. The governments struck first, and by the time the companies realized something was wrong, it was already too late. Thus, the corporate forces had been at a disadvantage from the very beginning.

But what Ivette noticed was that only three companies had initially been involved in the war: Spirit Vine Company, Sky Dome Technology, and Black Tower Pharmaceuticals.

The attacking side had been the New Eden Commonwealth and the Future Union. These were the two nations with the strongest overall capabilities in Origin Civilization, as well as the respective regional powers of Black Tide Continent and Silver Mirror Continent.

First came policy suppression, then regulatory intervention, leading to small-scale armed clashes. Other forces then entered one after another, completely igniting the conflict, which finally developed into a large-scale hot war between the Corporate Alliance and Global International... That made sense.

And containing the expansion of super corporations was not an unusual decision in itself. At most, the methods had been somewhat more aggressive, and the companies' resistance somewhat more fierce...

She thought silently.

As for the outcome, just as Welder had said, both sides abruptly ended the war on the grounds that they did not wish to cause further casualties. They all maintained silence as well, revealing no more information to the outside world—hence the name Silent War.

After spending the entire day sifting through countless online discussions and speculations, evening arrived. Sitting on the living room sofa, Ivette tiredly rubbed her temples, having found nothing. Even if there really had been a reliable lead, buried among so many conspiracy-theory essays, she would have had no way to distinguish it.

So she thought it over and decided to change approaches. She gave up investigating the Silent War and instead searched for tags related to the apocalypse.

The scope of the search was indeed much smaller. After browsing the major forums for a while and using various AI search engines, one post finally caught her attention somewhat.

—The original poster, whose ID was "Firekeeper," claimed that the apocalypse was approaching and had therefore built a shelter. The purpose of the post was to ask everyone to gather and contribute whatever important knowledge they possessed, uploading it to a server as the spark for restarting human civilization.

If this had been on Earth, it would definitely have been fake, no different in nature from those posts trying to scam people out of license plate numbers. But in Origin Civilization, considering its almost absurd level of intellectual property protection, the original poster's words instead seemed quite sincere.

Surely no one would risk prison just to spam a forum...

With that thought, Ivette looked at the suspicious link attached to the post and clicked into it. As expected, a risk warning appeared.

She skillfully clicked "Ignore risk and continue," and this time, a small website with a pitch-black background appeared before her. At its center was an animated image of a burning candle, while beneath it was an upload module that allowed files below a certain size to be uploaded to the server.

In the upper-left corner of the website was a logo shaped like a burning candle, beside which was what appeared to be the name of an organization—

Civilization Preservation Society.