Reaching the Lowest Level of Fire Moth, Its Deepest Reaches / The Deep Sea, Work, and a Request

Threat.

Lin was a reserved person. Elysia had emphasized that repeatedly, and Mei had more or less seen that trait in him as well. Once he abandoned that restraint, every word he said became a genuine threat rooted in reality.

Mei gave up confronting him and asked another question instead. "What was that version of you just now?"

"..." His indifferent gaze swept over Mei from within his helmet. "Just an enemy simulated by the Imaginary Tree based on memories. Not only mine—there are similar constructs of the Thirteen Heroes as well."

"Why? Aren't you yourselves already memory entities? Why would enemies like clones appear?"

"Hypothetical enemies."

Lin gave an unexplained answer, then turned and beckoned for Mei to follow.

Hypothetical enemies?

Whose?

Arrival at the Lowest Level of MOTH, The Deepest Place

'The Deepest Place is, simply put, a detention facility used to imprison heinous criminals or experimental subjects that are difficult to manage. Its existence isn't exactly secret. I can give you the coordinates directly, but not just anyone can enter now.'

'I was only responsible for the initial design and construction. I don't know how MOTH plans to modify it, and all authority has already been taken from me. But... the creator of a piece of equipment knows its flaws best.'

The engine gradually fell silent. Wearing no equipment apart from a helmet, Lin brought the speedboat to a stop in the shadow of a small island. He climbed ashore with a grappling line, carefully concealed it and erased the traces of his landing, then crouched behind a lush, massive tree and cautiously peered out to scout the area.

The so-called backdoor Vill-V had given him was actually a transmitting device that blocked the island's surveillance system. The surveillance system she had created was at least two levels more advanced than MOTH's own, so anyone entering its detection range would normally be scanned. However, Vill-V had specifically set a single special frequency in the system that could hide within it.

Thus, Lin only needed to locate The Deepest Place using the coordinates and sail here directly in the modified speedboat.

Lin had made a few simple contingency arrangements. MOTH probably still believed he was in his room, but he could not conceal it for long. At the latest, he had to return to Headquarters Base within a day, or the upper ranks might discover his absence.

Whether viewed from above or at eye level, it looked like an ordinary island. According to Vill-V, she had moved the original structure underground, and the entrance changed randomly at intervals. So Lin's first problem was finding that entrance.

"Splash."

The soft sound of the tide striking the shore was like the bell of an ancient temple, making one drowsy. After a brief survey revealed no guards, Lin began moving swiftly across the island.

The island itself was not large, even smaller than Headquarters Base, so it did not take Lin long to search every part of it.

There was no place that resembled an entrance.

Lin stopped at the center of the island, pinching the lower edge of his helmet as he thought.

Vill-V had not asked him for any tangible compensation. Her condition for helping him was that Lin personally crack the various mechanisms and devices in The Deepest Place, then attach recordings of how he solved them.

Her expression in the darkness had been impossible to read. It had felt as though she were observing a variable enter the labyrinth she had designed, watching the struggle of someone trapped within as its creator.

Therefore, aside from her initial assistance, Lin had received no hints about things such as what the entrance was. He had no choice but to spend more effort on it.

"Prometheus, did you detect any hollow structures?"

None. The vegetation above the island shows signs of artificial planting, but there are no concealed passages or underground tunnels.

"..."

Artificial traces meant Vill-V had not lied to him, but why could he not detect the entrance? Had she used materials that could not be scanned, like those bombs?

As Lin pondered, he lifted his head. The noon sunlight struck his helmet. Without activating its glare shield, Lin narrowed his eyes slightly, his deep black pupils clear and boundless like mirrors.

"'I love you, and it has nothing to do with you'..." Lin softly murmured the line of poetry. After standing still for nearly half an hour, he turned and ran toward where he had first been standing.

The poem was mistakenly believed to be Goethe's work, but its actual author was another female poet. Thinking carefully, that itself was a clue. He had focused his attention on the island itself and assumed the island was The Deepest Place. That was likely a mistake.

The Deepest Place was not necessarily this island.

Lin returned to the shoreline where he had come ashore. He crouched behind a cliff and watched the changes on the water's surface.

After about an hour, the sea remained exactly as it had been an hour earlier. A light breeze blew, waves crashed against the shore, and it was no different from any other island.

Lin waited patiently. He had no confidence that searching elsewhere would not make him miss the right place, so all he could do was gamble that the location he was waiting for was the correct one.

Fortunately, his wait was not in vain. Another hour later, exactly three hours and three minutes after Lin had recorded coming ashore, the current on the surface changed, and a tiny whirlpool appeared.

Just as expected. Since it was not within the island's landmass, it had to be deep underwater beneath the entire island.

Lin, your physical condition does not support unprotected deep diving.

Prometheus's intelligence was advancing day by day. In just a few days, she had already become able to infer what Lin would do next from his actions and issue a warning.

This time, Lin had chosen not to equip Powered Armor. With only a helmet, he was basically unprotected. The air purification system was not an oxygen supply, and he had not brought diving equipment. Moreover, this was a cold-water region. Diving naked would likely make his already overburdened body even worse.

Lin tightened all his cuffs, expelled as much air as possible, took several deep breaths, and said, "Prometheus, record the depth."

Understood.

No matter how advanced Prometheus was, she was still only an Artificial Intelligence. She could not interfere with Lin's decisions and could only obey his will.

After taking one final breath to maintain his air balance, Lin plunged straight down into the cold, black sea.

Drowning. Struggling. Difficulty breathing.

His consciousness sank into endless darkness. Salty seawater poured into his nostrils, water pressure crushed his fragile eardrums, and everything before his eyes seemed to have been erased.

The unknown of the deep sea was forever one of the most terrifying psychological pressures humanity could face.

It felt as though a gigantic maw lined with inward-pointing teeth might emerge at any moment and swallow a person whole.

Lin had already reached the outer wall, yet he still had not found the entrance. He could only continue diving. On Prometheus's recording panel, the depth had already surpassed the world record for unprotected human diving.

Once pressure reached a certain level, nitrogen dissolved into the blood. The greater the pressure, the higher its solubility. The oxygen humans needed would then become insufficient, eventually causing blood vessels to clog and rupture.

Parts of Lin's body had taken on an unhealthy blood-red hue, signs of tiny blood vessels rupturing inside him.

Yet he remained steady and did not panic. At this moment, any sign of fear would lead to death.

A flash of light passed through his black eyes. Lin suddenly lunged forward and surged into the light ahead.

Bang!

Lin returned from high pressure to normal pressure in an instant. The drastic environmental change made him collapse directly onto the ground. He vomited out some of the seawater he had swallowed, but the reflection in his visor showed him that the whites of his eyes were filled with alarming bloodshot veins. His left eardrum seemed to have ruptured. Accompanied by pain, the sounds he could hear had weakened, and tinnitus struck from time to time. Blood seeped from his ear.

Lin quickly adjusted himself. He rose from the ground and checked the depth Prometheus had recorded, which would make things much easier when he came here again in the future.

His gaze turned forward.

A long, dark corridor stretched ahead, leading to nowhere he could see.

The Deep Sea, Work, Request

There were no patrol personnel.

The passage was wide enough for a Titan to roll around inside. Lin guessed it might have been designed to imprison Honkai Beasts in the future, but there was no lighting whatsoever. He could only move freely inside after activating his helmet's night vision.

He ran along the corridor close to the wall. His entire body ached faintly, but Lin had long grown accustomed to this degree of pain, and it barely affected his movements.

Both its depth and length were astonishing. Before Lin had even reached the end of the path, he had estimated that The Deepest Place was already far larger than Headquarters Base. It was difficult to imagine how that woman who spoke with a slightly eccentric air had built something of this scale beneath the sea.

Soon, Lin encountered his second problem.

"Still no entrance..."

The corridor was completely bare. There was no structure resembling a door, and at the end stood only a smooth, unmarked wall.

This time, however, Lin did not spend long finding several hidden hollow structures. He simply did not know how to open them, so he could only stand before the wall and carefully tap at it.

Forcing his way through was definitely not an option. Even if he found a way to enter normally, it would leave records behind. If anyone traced them back, that would become troublesome.

This time, Lin intended to "skip class."

"Prometheus, can you hack into the facilities here and delete the access records?"

I can. Doctor Mei implanted a hacking system into me.

A hacking system... As expected, Mei had considered from the very beginning that conflicts might arise within humanity.

However, my current processing power is insufficient to hack the entire system. I can only unlock some of the locks, and I cannot delete the records.

"..."

Less than two-thirds of the twenty-four hours remained. The later he returned, the greater the chance of being discovered. After considering it several times, Lin decided it was better to save time for the investigation.

"Break through this door. Prometheus, monitor the area for miniature cameras."

Understood.

"Klein, compile the statistics for this experiment. Have them on my desk before eighteen hundred."

"Yes, Doctor."

Doctor Mobius casually dropped a thick data ledger onto an experimental desk already piled high like a mountain. She gave an instruction to the green-haired girl, who was also green-haired and writing furiously with her head lowered, then lifted her coffee and took a satisfied sip.

The green-haired girl in a white lab coat stared dazedly at the mountain of documents that nearly buried her, her spiral eyes spinning as she instinctively agreed.

The scene bore a striking Déjà vu to a medieval landlord whipping slaves.

"Wow, Senior Klein took over most of the work the moment she arrived." Danzhu pretended to add a few strokes to a blank register as she quietly spoke to Cangxuan beside her.

Although they had joined earlier than Klein, Klein's degree, age, and status as someone from the same academy as them were enough to make them respectfully call her Senior... Besides, she would even help revise their reports. Showing her respect could not go wrong.

Cangxuan was seriously compiling data. Without looking away, she lowered her voice. "Shh, keep it down. Doctor pushed all her work onto Senior Klein today. Be careful—if she dislikes you and gives you even one-tenth of it, you'll be working overtime until tomorrow."

"Eek—"

"Who knows what Doctor is doing today? With this much work, we'll probably be eating instant noodles in the lab again. Sigh, I kind of miss that helmet guy now. His cooking was really good."

"Yeah, and if he were here, he'd probably help too."

"I heard he was at the scene when Fifth Branch was attacked. Maybe he got injured and is recovering now."

"You two seem to be having a wonderful little chat. Do you want to help Klein share some of the workload?"

Doctor Mobius's voice, carrying a faintly chilling edge, appeared above their heads. They were so frightened that they did not dare raise their heads and hurriedly wrote away. Danzhu was so nervous that she even wrote down the names of several figurines in a row.

Doctor Mobius looked speechlessly at the two clowns of the laboratory. If the entire lab's efficiency was 1, then Klein alone was 1.5. Those two combined were -0.5. It was not that she did not want to assign them work—she was simply worried about receiving data so absurd that she would suspect the experimental subjects had been switched.

Still, she really did have something to do outside today. And there were only a handful of people capable of pulling her out of the laboratory.

She adjusted her lab coat. She had originally made slight alterations to some of the lab coats she wore personally, but after thinking of Lin's observational ability, which could practically expose even her underwear, she had started wearing only standard lab coats.

As she walked through the corridors of Headquarters Base, the expressions of everyone who saw her were comical enough to be used in a comedy. Doctor Mobius simply pretended not to notice.

Outcast. Monster. Cold-blooded creature. She had heard those words until she was sick of them. Before Lin came along, they had been used specifically for her. After Lin arrived, some of those words had instead become exclusive labels for him.

After all, they were different people, yet the same kind of freak.

"..." Doctor Mobius rubbed her face, feeling that she was being inexplicable.

Just now, she had actually felt that Lin might understand her feelings because they were similar people.

No, their ideals were completely different. With his human-origin supremacism, it was impossible for him to get along with her. If there was anyone whose views might be close to hers, then perhaps only...

Doctor Mobius stopped before an office and knocked on the door.

"Come in."

She pushed the door open, a curious smile appearing on her face.

"You really are important, making me come find you in person. By the way, is this little follower of yours bound to you or something?"

"He is a layer of insurance, and of course, there are personal reasons involved as well. I do not deny that." The long-haired girl picked up her glasses and put them on, then nodded to Doctor Mobius. "After all, MOTH has no rule prohibiting its members from dating."

"...You called me here just to talk about that?"

"Of course not, Doctor Mobius." Mei smiled. "But if you want to talk, we can."

"..."

"Let's get to the point. Doctor Mobius, I invited you here to prevent anyone from overhearing us. After all, MOTH's level of attention toward both you and me is among the highest."

Mei looked at the increasingly impatient Doctor Mobius and placed an inconspicuous-looking document on the desk.

"This is a proposal for Flame-Chasers."

That casual sentence changed Doctor Mobius's expression. She glanced at the document, then at Mei's smiling face, and sneered. "You drafted it so quickly? It seems what happened at Fifth Branch was even more astonishing than I imagined."

"This is only the initial proposal. Subsequent improvements and revisions may take several years, but the greatest issue is not how to improve it—it is how to implement it."

"...I see. That is why you called me here."

"Yes. We have encountered some small problems, and Lin is currently investigating their essence."