Si Ming hadn't lied to Colonel Robert Neville—he really did have a degree from Miskatonic University. It was one of the identity documents he'd prepared for his return to the AVP world, courtesy of the Main God, with quality guaranteed. Never mind how implausible the details on the certificate were; it was fully functional.
He saw the colonel's mouth fall open. Sam, lying beside him, raised his tail. The colonel looked at Si Ming, then at the Skeleton Soldiers, then at Si Ming again, and then back at the Skeleton Soldiers. Suddenly, he slapped his forehead and let out a crazed laugh.
"I'm crazy. So I really am crazy... I knew it. How could there be any other living people, let alone a professor from Miskatonic University... Ha ha, ha ha. There's something wrong with my head."
One second, two seconds.
Si Ming watched him quietly.
The next moment, the colonel let out a wild yell. He lunged at Si Ming, all teeth and claws, only to be immediately pinned to the ground by Skeleton Soldiers Si Ming summoned.
Perhaps the cool ground, shaded from the sun, would help him come to his senses. Si Ming casually reached out and caught Sam, who had lunged at him with a low growl too. A wisp of invisible Night Battle Qi seeped into the dog, just in case the poor thing met the same fate as in the original story and died of the infection.
Three seconds, four seconds.
Shizuka Ishikawa, seeing Si Ming's true abilities for the second time, covered her mouth with one hand. The colonel, pinned to the ground by the Skeleton Soldiers, stopped struggling. His pupils kept widening and shrinking, shrinking and widening. His worldview was clearly being rebuilt.
Good. His SAN hadn't dropped too much; he wasn't on the verge of temporary insanity.
A few more seconds passed.
"...Does Miskatonic University really exist?"
"What do you think?" Si Ming countered, asking the question the colonel was about to ask first. "If it exists, where were all of us when the KV Virus broke out?"
Then he pressed on.
"But if it doesn't exist, what exactly is this necromancy I just used?"
Si Ming smiled and finally offered a conclusion.
"So, all of this can be explained by one thing. Miskatonic University does exist. But it doesn't exist yet."
A contradictory statement, but a reasonable conclusion.
The colonel's eyes suddenly lit up as a concept common in the Cthulhu mythos appeared in his mind like a light switching on.
Time travel!
Miskatonic University didn't exist in the present, but it could exist in the past or the future... No! It had to exist in the future! That was why Professor Si was wearing that "motorcycle suit"—because it was a piece of equipment for individual combat, or perhaps exploration, that wouldn't exist until the future!
His voice trembled violently.
"Did humanity... defeat the KV Virus in the future?"
Si Ming didn't answer directly. Instead, he offered a piece of information to establish which timeline they were in. "As far as I know, Colonel Robert Neville, you made a breakthrough in today's serum trials. It was a compound serum formula you called Compound Six, and it proved effective at suppressing the KV Virus in laboratory animals."
With every word Si Ming spoke, the colonel's eyes grew brighter. Those were tiny details only the colonel himself could have known. For anyone else to know them, either his storage drive had been hacked despite there being no internet, or his memoirs had become a bestseller in the future!
"Did it work? Did I succeed?"
Si Ming's gaze left him and turned toward a huge building not far from the harbor. It was a metal facility where a large amount of obsolete U.S. currency had been stored. Many Night Demons had made their home there, including a Night Demon Lord.
In the original story, Robert had used bait to capture the Night Demon Lord's daughter inside that building. He then used her for human trials of the serum and eventually developed an antidote that could cure the KV Virus. Of course, he was also targeted by the Night Demon Lord and its forces in retaliation. In the film's two endings, he either survived but gave up on developing the cure, or sacrificed his life to protect it.
"You need to run some experiments to further verify the sample's effectiveness and improve it."
The colonel paused, then nodded firmly.
"Right! I was planning to catch a Night Demon today for human trials!"
"One won't be enough." Si Ming shook his head. "You don't run a trial just once, and you have plenty of test subjects. Developing and improving a drug is a long process. I think you should be a little bolder and move a little faster."
"Let me help you."
—[Side Quest triggered: Assist Colonel Robert Neville in completing the KV Virus cure. Success will grant 1 B-rank side-story reward and 5,000 reward points.]
A voice rang out.
At last, the Main God's announcement reached Si Ming's ears.
Shizuka Ishikawa let out a small gasp. That reminded Si Ming that he had another assistant who could help with other tasks.
He raised his hand, and a large stack of black sleeping bags from an underground supermarket tumbled onto the ground. The obvious display of spatial folding made the colonel's eyes shine with even more excitement. Si Ming gave Shizuka a slight nod.
"Shizuka, sort out these sleeping bags. We'll use them to hold the Night Demons later."
"Colonel, sorry for the trouble, but please get a fairly large vehicle ready. You should know the area well."
The young woman nodded without hesitation. That was an easy enough task for her. Robert responded at once as well.
"Understood. I know where there's a usable truck nearby... Wait, my underground lab at home probably can't hold that many Night Demons..."
His lab was small, and there weren't many beds. He'd always worked alone, so he'd never needed a larger facility.
"That's a problem for later." Si Ming raised his hand, and the next moment, more Skeleton Soldiers emerged from their summoning space at his will. They quickly formed ranks and advanced. Before long, they were approaching the area where the vault stood.
The group got moving.
Shizuka Ishikawa was safe in the sunlight, while Colonel Robert set off to get the truck, full of excitement. At first, he wanted to enter the vault with Si Ming, but Si Ming politely declined. Once Si Ming explained why, the colonel stopped insisting.
"You don't have night vision, and you can't match a Night Demon for strength." Si Ming lowered the helmet of his Nano-Biochemical Suit and pointed to his heavily protected body and eyes. "This is a job for the professionals."
He was, indeed, a professional.
When he entered the vault with twenty Skeleton Soldiers whose combat abilities rivaled those of Xenomorphs—fast, strong, equipped with night vision better than the Night Demons', and completely fearless, with reinforcements available at any time—there was probably no one in this world more qualified to deal with Night Demons.
Was there anything else to worry about?
The only thing he had to be careful about was keeping an eye on the surroundings, so the Night Demons couldn't escape through any underground passages that might exist.
Si Ming realized this, so he was cautious.
Once the Skeleton Soldiers had secured all the major routes marked on the Nano-Biochemical Suit's minimap, the ensuing fighting and subduing proved easy.
No, it was only a fight. There was no killing.
Si Ming didn't even pick up a gun. Instead, he used a Main God-branded blunt weapon shaped like a large hammer. It cost fifty points and came with a high-voltage stun function. He'd found it while racking his brain beneath the giant orb, looking for ways to fill the gaps in his preparations. It was meant for nonlethal strikes against targets he needed to capture. He even instructed his Skeleton Soldiers to attack with their shields and the hilts of their swords.
The first Night Demon soon fell to the ground.
Then came the second, and the third.
The remaining Night Demons woke up, letting out piercing shrieks. They futilely hurled themselves at Si Ming, but posed no threat to him at all. Even the Skeleton Soldiers they managed to knock down failed to give them any meaningful advantage.
What did it matter if they knocked down one Skeleton Soldier?
What difference would it make if they knocked down ten?
For every one that fell, another immediately took its place. For every ten that went down, ten more appeared to replace them. Meanwhile, every swing of Si Ming's electric hammer effectively reduced their numbers and fighting strength.
Clang—a particularly loud impact rang out.
He felt a tough resistance through the handle. One Night Demon was much stronger than the others and had hardened skin. The large stun baton knocked it to the ground, but it didn't pass out. It kept roaring and struggling, so Si Ming gave it another heavy blow.
The sound of bones cracking came from it.
At last, even the strongest Night Demon fell completely still. With it unconscious, the Night Demon population inside the vault fell into confusion. It was obvious, then: this was the Night Demon Lord of the area.
The final boss of the movie, the Night Demon Lord that could shatter bulletproof glass with a series of bare-handed blows.
Its only advantage over a stray dog on the roadside was that it took Si Ming two hits to beat it.
As for the actual strays—the infected dogs that bit Sam in the original story—one casual kick from Si Ming sent them crashing into the wall, where they turned into heaps of meat paste wrapped in skin.
Objective complete.
Clearing the place took Si Ming about ten minutes.
By the time he and Shizuka Ishikawa, who had finally finished sorting out the sleeping bags, had stuffed and tied up all the Night Demons and piled them by the roadside, less than half an hour had passed in total.
Colonel Robert finally arrived in a large truck. Then—
"I found the biggest vehicle I could. This truck can fit at least twenty Night Demons..."
He stared at the pile of at least a hundred black sleeping-bag bundles at the mouth of the road. He nearly drove the truck straight into the wall.
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