I'm No MOTH Hero

Kevin calmly stopped his lunge in the face of the crisis. It was merely a feint, so he retracted his force with extreme speed, then took a step back, narrowly avoiding the blade's tip. His left hand, already holding a gun, pressed against the Loyal Ninja Mortal's head at point-blank range, and he pulled the trigger.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two shots left two holes in the Mortal's head. Kevin kicked away the lifeless body, then raised his rifle and swept it across the remaining Mortals in the room.

Along with the large number of Mortals, the leaked Honkai Energy had already begun to transform some researchers into Mortals. These people, who had been screaming moments before, now turned into walking corpses, lunging at their former companions.

"Is this an accident?" Kevin headshot the last Mortal, taking a brief breath before immediately sprinting to the small room where Mei was. He opened the door to find Mei sending a message to Lin via communicator.

"Mei! Are you okay!"

"I'm fine. I've already injected the inhibitor, so I can move around here for now." Mei typed the last character, then stood up and walked to Kevin's side. "Kevin, the anti-diffusion device has sealed off the floors above the fifteenth. Now we just need to wait for support."

"Alright, then stay here and don't move."

"No, we have to save people. This incident is too strange. We just arrived, and then an explosion and a containment breach of Mortals happened... There are likely survivors. We have to go rescue them."

"But you..."

"Don't worry about me. Wasn't Changkong City like this before?"

Kevin, who had been hesitating about whether to go rescue people, immediately made up his mind and pulled Mei towards the rooftop.

On the way upstairs, Kevin killed all the Mortals he encountered, searching floor by floor for any survivors.

The blast radius was enormous. Every floor above the fifteenth showed signs of explosion, clearly not a normal accident but a deliberate attack with hidden bombs.

The shocking scene turned Kevin's face pale, but he forced himself to step over the blurred corpses, trying to keep Mei away from them.

No one knew if the deceased would truly stay still in this environment with such high Honkai Energy concentrations.

"Crack..."

As he passed a small room that had been blown to pieces, Kevin heard the sound of shifting rubble and warily aimed his gun in the direction of the noise.

"Who... is it?"

A human voice. A survivor!

After a moment of stunned silence, Kevin took a few steps forward to the pile of rubble, put down his gun, and began digging with both hands.

Then, a familiar, blood-covered face appeared before him. He lay in the ruins, on the verge of death.

"Doctor Spacy?"

Chapter Forty-Six: Justice

"Doctor Spacy, how are you!"

Seeing the head, Kevin sped up his excavation, using both hands to gradually pull Spacy out of the rubble. As Spacy's horrific injuries became visible, Mei's expression grew increasingly serious.

Finally, when Spacy's left forearm, covered in purple stripes, was revealed, Kevin hadn't yet realized what it meant.

"Doctor Spacy, grab my hand..."

"Wait a moment, Kevin." Mei stopped him. As she crouched down to examine Spacy's arm, her eyes caught sight of a small arm pressed beneath the rubble. "There's someone else."

After another round of digging, Kevin gasped as SiZhi's appearance was revealed.

Twisted, ugly purple stripes spread from SiZhi's crushed legs all the way to her neck. The Honkai Energy, a symbol of death, moved within these stripes as if breathing, and was visibly spreading, about to reach her face.

Eroded to this extent without becoming a Mortal would mean immediate death. Vital areas had already been permeated by Honkai Energy. Even with an inhibitor, it would only buy a few minutes or hours. Furthermore, Mei only had one dose of inhibitor left.

Two people needed the inhibitor now: SiZhi and Spacy. If it were injected into Spacy now, Mei would still have time to perform an immediate surgical removal. But SiZhi...

This was not a difficult choice for Mei. If she were in SiZhi's situation, she would make the same decision.

She decisively took out the inhibitor, tore open Spacy's charred sleeve, and aimed the syringe at his arm, plunging it in.

Spacy recoiled in terror, avoiding the syringe. He looked at the equally dying SiZhi and pleaded, "No... give it to SiZhi..."

This was a sudden, unexpected devastation that no one had foreseen. In an instant, nearly a hundred lives vanished. For Spacy... no, for everyone in the Fifth Branch, it was sudden and cruel.

Spacy didn't know the cause of the accident, nor did he care about his Honkai-corroded left arm. He just wanted Mei to give that dose of inhibitor to SiZhi.

He knew better than anyone how weak the inhibitor's effect would be on SiZhi, but he still clung to the impossible hope of a miracle. What if... what if SiZhi's physique was special? Perhaps SiZhi had the serum to cure Honkai Sickness that he had been searching for, and it just needed the inhibitor to activate it?

His mind was in chaos, unable to think further. He only knew that if the inhibitor went into his body... SiZhi would die.

Kevin was also in turmoil. He watched Mei, who hadn't acted yet, with hopeful eyes. At this moment, he could only trust that Mei would make the right judgment.

The cruelty of the Honkai, Kevin encountered it so intimately for the first time.

And this was far from the end.

"Caw—"

Kevin's hair stood on end.

Spacy's eyes widened.

Mei turned her head coldly, looking at the staggering figure rising to its feet.

A Mortal.

"Mei..." Kevin stood up and took a step forward, blocking Mei.

He swallowed, wanting to raise his gun, but his hands felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, as if someone were dragging his arm, making it unresponsive.

Mei turned her head, raised the syringe, and gave a simple, clear order: "Kevin, shoot."

"No... please, Doctor Mei..." Doctor Spacy's tears flowed in torrents from the corners of his eyes, splashing onto the floor like a burst dam. He pleaded with Mei, whose face was cold, "Karen can definitely be saved... Please... can you detain Karen temporarily? I will definitely develop..."

Kevin's pupils dilated. The air from his lungs to his throat felt trapped, his mind a mess.

Now, should he directly shoot the approaching Mortals? No matter who they were in life, after being corrupted by the Honkai, they were nothing more than puppets of Honkai Energy. Therefore, Kevin wouldn't spare his bullets or his sympathy.

But at this moment, the arm that wouldn't waver even in the face of death was trembling.

Because the Mortal who had stood up was none other than Doctor Spacy's wife, Karen.

Her once beautiful, gem-like sapphire blue eyes were now filled with terrifying whites. Her skin had turned the pale white common to Mortals, and her flawless white hair was matted with the filth of dirt and blood. She was moving slowly, dragging her feet towards their location.

Kill her here?

In front of her husband and child? Just pull the trigger so simply, and then... stop her movement?

Kill the love of Doctor Spacy's life in front of him?

At this moment, Kevin saw not Karen as a Mortal, but Mei.

If he were lying in the ruins, watching Mei turn into a Mortal and approach, and someone else raised a gun to kill Mei.

Would he, too, let out a heart-wrenching scream? Would he cry and beg?

If it were Lin? What would he do?

The face of the person holding the gun gradually transformed into Lin's.

He turned a deaf ear to Kevin's wails and then, towards his friend, pulled the trigger leading to death.

"Doctor Spacy, perhaps what I'm about to say is inhumane, but in my eyes, only true healing of the Honkai Sickness and saving humanity is justice," Mei pushed her glasses up, and the cold light emanating from behind the lenses sent a chill through one's body. "Please do not doubt my choice. You are an important talent in fighting the Honkai Sickness, and I... I can't save them anymore."

"Kevin, shoot."

Mei raised the syringe.

Kevin raised his pistol.

The white-haired youth gripped the gun handle with both hands, stopped the trembling in his hands, and transformed all his mercy into the resolve to end suffering, aiming at Karen's forehead.

His fingers tightened.

"No—no—" Doctor Spacy struggled, reaching out.

"Bang!"

The bullet pierced Karen's skull.

Doctor Spacy's time stopped.

In his frozen moment, his nerves had already collapsed. He watched Karen fall forward, watched SiZhi breathing rapidly, watched Mei, who had plunged the syringe into his shoulder, watched the shocked Kevin and...

Lin, standing in the distance, firing the gun.

"Hiss..."

The inhibitor was fully injected into his body. Doctor Spacy's nerves completely collapsed, and he passed out.

"Lin..." Kevin's body trembled as he looked at the man in the helmet who had lowered his gun, his lips twitching uncontrollably.

Lin walked forward, passed Kevin, picked up SiZhi, and headed towards the rooftop without looking back.

"Let's go, we'll perform the excision surgery on the rooftop," his voice was as cold as ever.

As if nothing had happened.

Lin lowered his head and gently touched SiZhi's face with his finger.

"...Team member Lin."

Someone was kneeling on the rooftop.

Tears fell like broken pearls.

A corpse lay beside them.

Chapter 47: The Minority and the Majority

Humans always look back at the past, pointing fingers at the unbearable history, as if doing so would awaken them to create a better future.

But the reality was not so.

[Support from the Third Branch will arrive in seventeen minutes and thirty-one seconds.]

Lin picked up some fragments from the ground, scanning the composition of these remaining scorched metal pieces.

Soon, the results came out, faster than Lin had expected. But after seeing the list of components displayed, he understood why.

Almost all of them were new substances, with at least 80% being artificially synthesized. This also explained why he hadn't detected these bombs at all when he first scanned the Fifth Branch. Like that greatsword, they used new technology that Lin hadn't encountered yet.

Not being able to detect the bombs wasn't surprising to Lin. But the fact that the man could secretly plant so many bombs in the Fifth Branch and open the detention facility, which could only be accessed by the physiological permissions of high-ranking branch officials...

Even without knowing the full picture, the answer was almost obvious.

"What if one day humanity disappoints you?"

Elysia's question echoed in Lin's ears.

Lin slowly closed his palm, crushing the fragments into a ball before letting them fall to the ground.

A new notification received by Prometheus caused Lin's gaze to freeze completely.

[Lin, thirteen seconds ago, the assassin resisted during transport to headquarters and was executed on the spot. The execution video has been added to the database.]

Executed on the spot? Less than half an hour passed between detention and transport, and the assassin was executed before even being interrogated. And this happened on a transport plane with only the prisoner and escorts?

With MOTH's technology, creating a realistic video would be easier than Lin killing a Honkai Beast.

Lin guarded the corridor leading to the top floor, gazing at the devastated Fifth Branch, and secretly clenched the hand holding his pistol in its holster.

"What's next?"

[The original plan was to detain them in 'The Deepest Place' after interrogation. Now, the body will be transported to headquarters for dissection and identification. This is the publicly available information; your clearance is insufficient to view further details.]

"The Deepest Place?" Lin softly murmured the unfamiliar name.

[Information on The Deepest Place has not yet been recorded in the database.]

In other words, regarding the handling of that "corpse," those with the rank of "Captain" or below would only know so much. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it was a blank slate.

An incident that nearly destroyed an entire branch, and the final outcome was so unclear and veiled, like an old woman's fig leaf – stinking but obscuring the full picture.

Therefore, it was likely that an announcement regarding this incident would be made soon. It would probably contain a vague investigation report about a mysterious organization attacking the Fifth Branch, followed by an ongoing investigation into this "mysterious organization" whose technology was comparable to, or even surpassed, MOTH's. It might even hint that the attack was due to MOTH's human modifications.

You ask where the mysterious organization is? Please, since it's a "mysterious" organization, of course, we "don't know yet." We're investigating too.

Even though everyone understood that replacing "don't know yet" with "no comment" would make no difference.

"Lin."