I'm No MOTH Hero

"Yes."

After Prometheus responded, the indicator lights for Area A-3 all turned red, and isolation walls descended from above, blocking the Honkai Beasts' path.

"Roar—"

Seeing their escape route blocked, the Honkai Beasts angrily searched for prey they could see—those two small humans.

Then, all the Honkai Beasts charged towards the unarmed Lin and Ritter.

"You... you're really crazy."

"I'm not crazy." Lin gently set Ritter down, letting him lean against him, and stepped forward to stand in front of him, shielding him. "You're the same. All humans are like this."

"..."

Ritter stared fixedly at the back of the young man, who was the same age as his daughter, his hands hanging down.

"You're still here, Herrscher? How surprising."

"Oh? Am I going to be kicked out?"

If there was one Hero Mei least wanted to encounter, Chrono would undoubtedly be at the top of the list: the most volatile temper, the worst attitude, and... the foulest language.

The white-haired, masked man sat on the conference table, hands clasped, staring at her like a demon.

Mei truly wondered if some of the habits of the Previous Civilization were different from the present. For instance, perhaps the conference table wasn't meant for placing things or holding meetings, but was a type of furniture akin to a chair. In her memory, Mobius and Chrono often used this table as a bed or chair. Mobius even lay directly on it.

She could only hope it was to showcase their overly prominent personalities.

"Hahaha... kicked out? You probably don't have the ability to leave before you're killed." Chrono laughed wantonly, raising his head with amusement. "But I am indeed curious, why didn't Lin deal with you directly 'there'?"

Mei calmly provoked, "Then it seems he couldn't deal with me."

The Imaginary Tree was, after all, merely a vessel for memories. Mei couldn't truly die here.

However, exceptions had occurred, and the white-haired, volatile man before her was responsible for some of them.

"Oh? So you fought him?" Chrono sneered. "With a defective product? Hahahaha..."

"Hmph, Chrono, are you so confident in your own strength that you would also endorse Lin?"

Lin's special status was vividly displayed among the several Heroes who had appeared. He was not one of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers, yet he was intimately connected to them. Kevin and Hua's friendship; Elysia and Mobius's subtle feelings; Su and Eden's respect; Sakura's inexplicable guilt... Even Chrono showed an emotion towards Lin, an ordinary person who wasn't a Flame-Chaser, that was akin to how he felt about Kevin.

Coupled with the "Core" seen in the Imaginary Tree, the "Lin" who wielded the Black Abyss White Flower and could use abilities similar to the Herrscher of Reason, Mei's curiosity about Lin's identity and past grew. She had begun to suspect that the secret of the Imaginary Tree might be related to Lin.

"You don't need to provoke me, Herrscher. I know Lin's strength better than you do." Chrono snorted coldly. "If his Hypervariable Surgery had been successful, then Kevin might not have been his match... No, even if it only failed, it might have been better."

Mei had already learned about the failure of Lin's Hypervariable Surgery from Elysia, but why would Chrono say that failure was better? And that tone... Could it be that it wasn't just a failure at the time?

"What happened then?"

"Are you a fly? Buzzing around everywhere all day, and then grabbing anyone to ask your questions?"

"...You were the one who started talking to me."

Chrono said with a cold laugh, "Yes. So now, I'm annoyed. Can you get lost?"

"What if I say no?" Tiny sparks of electricity began to dance at the tips of Mei's hair.

"Then it won't be Lin, I'll deal with you first!"

Their auras clashed, on the verge of ignition. Heat and lightning erupted in the confined space.

"Chrono."

Lin appeared behind Chrono at some point, uttering his name indifferently, which made Chrono pause.

Of course, he was Chrono. "Oh? Lin? Aren't you tinkering with your useless data in the Imaginary Tree all day?"

"That is precisely why I have come."

Lin walked in front of Mei and extended his hand.

"The materials from last time?"

"...Here."

As Mei handed over the materials, she observed Chrono's reaction from the corner of her eye.

To be honest, although Chrono's tone was no less aggressive than Lin's, he showed no resentment towards Lin's actions, not even a grunt. It gave Mei the illusion of a mother calling her son's full name to subdue a rowdy child.

Indeed, a very subtle relationship.

Lin weighed the materials in his hand, then opened them and briefly scanned the translated parts by Sakura. He nodded. "Alright. Ask whatever you want to ask."

"Your Hypervariable Surgery, what happened?"

"You don't need to know."

"Didn't you say I could ask anything?"

"I didn't say I would answer anything."

"..."

Mei pondered for a moment, then asked, "What happened between you and Sakura?"

This sentence made Chrono look over as well.

"…Poisoned Cocoon."

"What?"

"That's all I can say. Ask Sakura for the rest."

Mei watched Lin leave with the item, only realizing what had happened then.

Was I just tricked into giving something away for nothing?

Chapter 63: Turing

He had no weapon, wasn't wearing armor to facilitate infiltration, and his body hadn't fully recovered.

Facing him were twelve special Honkai Beasts, undocumented and each on par with the Heavy Crushers Lin had encountered before. While there were no large Honkai Beasts, winning… was nearly impossible.

"Lin, what do we do?"

This was the first time Prometheus had directly asked Lin, seeking a concrete plan from him. No matter how she calculated with her era-leading technology, his outcome was always death.

He couldn't even send out a message now. The path to escape was sealed off by himself, and he wouldn't abandon the others in The Deepest Place to run.

A dead end.

Prometheus's own data could be backed up, with a low chance of destruction. But when she calculated Lin's inevitable death, she didn't know why she asked the question.

Just seeing Lin reduced to ashes in her graphical calculations, she forcibly shut down the simulation.

"Can the door be opened again?" Lin tried to put more distance between himself and Ritter, to avoid him being hit by stray fire when the Honkai Beasts attacked. Seeing that all the Honkai Beasts had moved away from the door, he asked Prometheus.

"There's a sixty-second lockout after a forced shutdown."

Sixty seconds.

Before Lin could devise a solution, two azure Charge-type Honkai Beasts suddenly accelerated, spinning in mid-air and charging forward like streaks of light.

He couldn't confront them head-on.

A human body and a Honkai Beast's body were incomparable. It was like how even if Lin's neural reactions allowed him to see the trajectory of a bullet, it didn't mean he could dodge it mid-flight. Dodging a bullet ultimately relied on judgment of the gun and the person firing it.

Lin sidestepped, a small movement that dodged the two azure drills. He turned and kicked the Honkai Beast that had stopped spinning in its torso.

"Crack!"

Charge-type Honkai Beasts were the lightest in both body and mass. Lin easily kicked one away. Another one remained, but before Lin could act, a bright red Knight-class Honkai Beast attacked from behind. Flames ignited on its spear tip, casting a shadow of death reflected on its helmet.

Without time to think, Lin grabbed the remaining Charge-type Honkai Beast by its wings and leaped, then threw the creature. It collided directly with the Knight-class Honkai Beast's spear tip, piercing its Core.

"Creee—"

Lin landed behind the centaur-like body of the Knight-class Honkai Beast. At that moment, Prometheus's urgent alarm sounded—

"Small-scale Honkai Beasts approaching."

Small-scale?

Lin suddenly felt a sharp pain pierce his side, blood spraying from his waist. He fell from the Honkai Beast. Using the data from his helmet, he identified the culprit: a Honkai Beast the size of a fly was licking his blood and charging at him again.

A super-miniature Charge-type?

The Knight-class Honkai Beast turned, raising its front hooves, preparing to trample Lin's body.

Lin pushed off the ground with both hands, dodging the Knight-class Honkai Beast's stomp, then reached out to meet the small Charge-type Honkai Beast.

"Boom!"

Ritter felt the entire ground tremble. He bit his lip, crawled towards the main console, and pressed the emergency contact button.

There was no response.

Logically, the moment containment failed, The Deepest Place should have sounded an alarm, and guards would be dispatched for suppression. Even if the first wave of attacks couldn't be stopped, it could prevent an increase in casualties.

But now, no alarm sounded, and even the emergency contact was useless. Area A-3 had become an isolated island.

Ritter felt his heart freeze into a small shard of ice, a chill freezing him from the inside out.

From the moment he agreed to Lin's request, he had been treated as a disposable pawn. And he hadn't noticed any surveillance equipment on him the entire time.

His clothes? Or during a meal? It didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that the person who had once ordered him to attack the Fifth Branch was now, just like him back then, pressing the button to kill their own people.

"Is this… retribution? Hahaha…" He collapsed powerlessly onto the ground, looking at the ceiling and laughing desolately. "This world really is fair."

In the final moments of his short life, Ritter didn't think of his critically ill daughter. Instead, he thought of the scene he witnessed when infiltrating the Fifth Branch.

In that meticulously organized MOTH branch, a little white-haired girl treated it like an ordinary amusement park, running, playing, and roughhousing.

She didn't understand the meaning of the liquids in the transparent containers being held up, nor did she understand the experiments the walking researchers were conducting for humanity.

But her childlike innocence touched everyone. Those who risked their lives for humanity paused their busy work to play with her.

The birth of a child was the greatest kindness in the world.

This was the most emotional statement that the most rational people could utter.

After seeing that scene, Ritter stood before the door of destruction, head bowed. He was too far from that dazzling light.

Ultimately, he lightly pressed the button, causing the photo of the family of three to vanish in the flames.

It truly is... as expected, that things would end up this way.

A Knight-class Honkai Beast approached him, its crimson eyes radiating a merciless glow as it raised its lance.

Ritter maintained a self-deprecating smile, wanting to face his own worthless life's death with composure.

But as the gleaming spear tip stabbed down, he finally broke.

He didn't want to die.

"I can't even die gallantly in the end."

Ritter raised his hands to shield himself, his face contorted in fear. The only act of nonchalance he could manage was to shout, mocking his own weakness.

"Screech—"

"You're overthinking things. This isn't retribution, it's an arrangement made by someone behind a screen."

A drop of blood landed on Ritter's cheek.

Lin, holding Ritter by the scruff of his neck with one hand and his own shoulder, which had been cut open while saving Ritter, by the other, sprinted towards the exit, gasping for air. While Ritter had been waiting to die, Lin had killed three more Honkai Beasts. The remaining ones couldn't be dealt with barehanded.

There were nine seconds left until the gate opened. Lin and countdowns certainly had a connection; almost every time he was in mortal danger, a countdown tied to his life would hang above his head.

"You created a father who lost his wife and daughter, and a daughter who lost her parents, cough..."

Lin coughed up blood, his physical condition rapidly deteriorating in the high Honkai Energy environment. He spoke weakly to Ritter behind him.

"Could you have stopped your destructive actions back then? Did you ever feel compassion? Did you consider another possibility?"

"And now, the person hiding behind the screen is doing the same thing you did. So, tell me now, is that person the so-called retribution?"

"Lastly... if you can't die with grace, then live first, and then accept your true 'retribution'."

Ritter stared blankly at Lin, who was bleeding profusely. Lin spoke those unbelievable words calmly.

The gate slowly opened before them. Lin rushed out, but two tentacles suddenly emerged from behind him, wrapping around his heels.