Do I Fight Kal'tsit? Seriously?

"It's all your fault! If it weren't for you, Columbia's situation wouldn't have changed. Everyone could've kept doing what they were doing without worrying that some lunatic would destroy everything one day!"

"It's all your fault! My only family died because of you! Think about it—how many people like my nephew, maybe people who were just working at Beach Umbrella, lost their jobs or even their lives because of you?"

But Saria, who had heard such arguments countless times, wasn't buying any of it.

"So instead of hating the murderer who killed your nephew, you came to hate me."

She stepped forward, restrained fury in her voice. Every word was like a heavy hammer smashing his excuses back at him.

"You always have endless reasons to blame the root of every problem on someone else, yet you never think breaking the rules is any great offense."

"Even after receiving the punishment you deserved, even when another rulebreaker just like you killed your nephew without caring about the rules, you still want to throw the problem onto me."

"That's foolish, Randall."

"—Because you're merely blaming others for the emptiness you have nowhere to vent."

The moment she finished speaking, Randall's face twisted into an expression full of mockery and derision.

He took several weak breaths, then sneered.

"But what about the friend you brought with you? That man named Gerald?"

"Was his revenge justified? Was it something you could accept? Or did you simply never know about his past?"

"Forced arguments, deliberate confusion, and switching concepts." Saria swiftly retorted, "No matter how much you emphasize others, the experiments your nephew conducted, his disregard for life, and the mistakes he made won't disappear. Neither will yours."

Randall's expression stiffened slightly, but deeper hatred soon surfaced in his eyes.

He chuckled under his breath. Before long, the laughter gradually grew louder, filled with twisted delight.

"But after all that, you still came here."

His laughter finally subsided, his voice carrying the same calmness and serenity as before. "You followed the clues from Beach Umbrella, wanting to find the source of the private dealings, and discovered the target was here. So you used Anthony's case as an excuse to come to Mansfield, and shortly after entering the prison, you happened to find the passage used for the experiments."

"What wonderful coincidences. The image of someone who loves money still has some use in other people's minds, doesn't it?"

Randall's gaze seemed to pass beyond Saria, looking at something behind her. "It would've been even better if you hadn't cared about Anthony and had come earlier. Then you could've become part of this place too. But instead, you found the most troublesome person here and even became friends with him."

"But it doesn't matter. You still came here."

"Listen to this child's movements."

Saria quickly realized what he was looking at.

He was looking at the prison itself.

"Mansfield is a heart that never stops beating, racing across the wilderness every moment, never resting."

He narrowed his eyes, listening to the massive steel construct race across the wasteland. "Only crashing into towering mountains or an explosion from within can stop this child's steps."

"For twenty-five whole years, I've stayed with it and become part of him. And today, you'll be here too, welcoming rebirth alongside it."

Reluctantly, Randall drew his gaze away from the surrounding walls and returned it to Saria.

"What a pity. A truly, truly, truly terrible pity."

"If you hadn't realized Mansfield was moving at full speed, I would've wanted you to taste an even more wonderful despair—but honestly, it isn't too late now, is it?"

The wind still held his body firmly suspended in the air, but it couldn't stop him from opening his bloody mouth and revealing a chilling smile.

"Why don't you open the room behind me, Saria? You'll be surprised."

"Because the legacy of [Loken Watertank] you've always wanted is right there."

A Streetcar Comes Rushing In...

Loken Watertank.

It had once been a sensational incident in Columbia. Though discussion of it had been strictly controlled and ordinary people knew none of the details, they did know it was human experimentation conducted by a small laboratory.

But to researchers, the term meant something entirely different.

At first, the laboratory had only revealed its subdermal casting units. The technology soon appeared across every field in Columbia, and even Rhine Lab had produced similar technology. The subdermal metal Jeston had used earlier to resist Duma's Originium Arts fell under this category as well.

But before long, Loken Watertank's true purpose was revealed to everyone:

[Through experimentation, artificially create a test subject whose casting abilities are greatly enhanced without worsening their Oripathy.]

The Infected didn't need casting units to perform Originium Arts. Their infected organs could directly produce effects similar to casting units, at the cost of increasing the Originium content within them and worsening their physical condition.

And the existence of Loken Watertank meant it was possible to create a computer that could remain overclocked forever without suffering any hardware wear whatsoever.

After learning this, Columbia's military intervened. Its mastermind, Loken Williams, lost everything in a failed and highly dangerous attempt.

This incident also represented the consensus shared by many in Columbia's scientific community.

The essence of science was transcending common sense. Morality was merely a shackle mediocrities placed upon themselves.

When collapsed bricks and shattered human bodies piled into a mountain beneath the feet of that silver-haired test subject, the vast majority of uninvolved people felt not panic, but yearning and longing for that mountain of gold.

If they could possess this technology, and if they weren't as impatient to rush toward failure as Loken was... then Columbia's military would treat them as honored guests, while fame and money came pouring in.

Saria used Calcification to stop Randall from saying anything further. Enamel covered his mouth, leaving only room for him to breathe, while she herself walked toward the room behind her.

Gerald hadn't mentioned any traps near this room before, which meant she didn't need to worry too much about that.

And the key to unraveling everything was now in her hands. She would decide whether to open Pandora's box.

Her gaze fell on the seemingly ordinary marble door. It was no different from any normal door, yet it looked utterly out of place in this room.

Covering her hand in Enamel, she turned the lock.

A scene resembling a liminal space appeared before her eyes.

Soft light filled the ceiling above, spilling through the entire room in warm tones. The room's layout carried a strong Victorian style. An exquisite carved chandelier hung from the high ceiling, giving off a warmth like sunlight.

Yet the spaciousness made its strangeness slightly outweigh the warmth contained within. The space was large enough to house dozens of people, and every inch of the floor had been polished spotless, as though it could reflect a person's shadow.

Looking closer, four beds stood neatly arranged in the center of the room. Each was covered with soft white sheets, with a small bedside table beside it holding a lamp and several fairy tale books. Several potted plants surrounded the tables. Everything looked so peaceful and beautiful, like an ideal warm haven.

Until her gaze fell upon those beds, and that warmth was torn apart in an instant.

Two of the beds each held a young person around sixteen or seventeen years old.

They sat completely still, pale-faced, staring blankly ahead with unfocused eyes.

On closer inspection, their bodies all bore obvious abnormalities—fragments covered their shoulders or arms in a bizarre fashion, while the places where skin joined the fragments were red in a way that didn't match ordinary symptoms, as though they had been thoroughly eroded.

If that were all, it would've been fine.

The problem was that a strange phenomenon existed on their bodies.

Why would a person's flesh... have hands and feet of different skin tones and sizes?

The moment her mind returned to clarity, Saria immediately sprinted to the beds in the center of the room, and Calcification instantly covered their skin.

This was why human ethics so strongly rejected and hated using children as test subjects: they were vessels whose development had yet to be completed.

Living beings possessed limitless potential.

Faced with Saria's actions, the two people sitting on the beds were entirely unmoved—or rather, they were incapable of reacting at all. Aside from the response system originating from the human spinal cord still functioning, everything else about them seemed to have been severed out of thin air. No action could affect them in any way.

The next instant, Saria's figure shot straight out of the room.

Randall, hanging in the air, only saw the shadow flash past. The following second, a heavy punch landed in his abdomen, shattering the wind suspending him and sending him flying more than ten meters away.

Calcification caught Randall before he could freely fall. The next second, a Vouivre hand seized his collar and held him forcibly in the air, while the Enamel around his mouth was removed as well.

"Explain what you did to them!?"

Facing Saria, who was close to losing control, Randall only had time to spit out the acid rising in his stomach. That heavy punch to his abdomen had nearly displaced all his internal organs, yet Calcification had covered him a step ahead of time and neutralized the impact, leaving him precisely on the brink of serious injury.

The rumors were true. Even in a fury, she could remain rational.

That was what he thought.

"...Cough. Cough, cough."

After vomiting up the acid in his stomach, Randall's voice gradually became weak and indistinct.

"Loken really was a genius... wasn't he? Suppressing the test subjects' neural responses, bringing them infinitely close to a vegetative state while still leaving them a trace of consciousness... My former employer should've valued him more. At the very least, they shouldn't have simply handed over his research results for free."

"You're crossing the line." The anger in Saria's voice could no longer be concealed. "What about those missing prisoners from C Section?"

A smile spread across Randall's lips.

"You still haven't realized it, Saria?"

"Because of rejection within the human body, the process of suturing bodies together must undergo the strictest screening and evaluation to ensure tissue compatibility and surgical success."

"But what if—"

He lowered his voice and exhausted all his strength to slowly move one step closer to Saria. Looking up at the fury on her face, he said, "What if we suppress their consciousness inside their brains beforehand, then use organs from people infected with Oripathy as casting mediums and perform the suturing with that as our direction?"

"Then the body's rejection response will be governed by Originium's influence, forming a marvelous balance within the human body."

"—Rejection, excessive accumulation of Originium particles in the blood, and the body's self-repair. The three restrain and merge with one another."

"Ah, yes. What wonderfully harmonious notes."

"This is a gift bestowed upon us by the Creator." He spoke slowly, then closed his eyes, admiring the creation he had reproduced like a devout believer. "Although we still can't reach Loken's level, and we can't understand how he made test subjects achieve this balance while retaining consciousness, even now these specimens can only borrow the power of the Originium in their bodies through output and input."

"But clearly, our experiment can still be considered a success."

"My child, Mansfield's heart, can even transcend the limitations of those inferior industrial products with their amplification."

"Listen to it running across the wilderness." Randall slowly laid his body flat, feeling the tremors of the mobile platform beneath him. "Don't you understand yet, Saria?"

"These test subjects have long since become [wands]."

Weapons.

Only one word flashed through Saria's mind, then extended endlessly from there.

If these experiments could be reproduced, casters who didn't require casting units would soon appear in the military. Soldiers would become devastating weapons capable of immediately entering the battlefield without extensive theoretical training in Originium Arts.

It would be an endless disaster.

Columbia's military, which relied on research and armed itself with tools, would never reject such temptation.

"Ah, don't be so sad, Saria. Smile."

Randall's malice finally reached its peak. Smiling, he spoke words Saria didn't want to hear. "I have good news and bad news for you."

"The good news is that, just as you thought, these experiments are difficult to replicate, and the military doesn't know about them for now—after all, we didn't want to attract the attention of the Maylander Foundation's people planted within the military. The risk was simply too great."

"The bad news is—oh, right. Maybe this is good news to you?" He narrowed his eyes, his tone growing increasingly excited. "After all, Loken Watertank's greatest legacy wasn't taken over by anyone else. Even Beach Umbrella only found some remaining fragments. We only managed this much because we had the opportunity to research it early, allowing us to exploit a loophole."

"And the one who truly inherited that legacy was no one else."

The malice in his words struck Saria precisely, like a piercing steel bar linking the fragmented clues in her mind together.

"It was your Rhine Lab, wasn't it?"

"Ms. Saria, a founder of Rhine Lab who has been kept in the dark all along."

The mobile platform continued racing forward.

Saria silently released Randall's collar. Her gaze lost focus as memories and clues intertwined in her mind, forcing her thoughts to overclock without end.

The greatest sponsor of the "Ifrit" experiment, someone capable of hiring several top laboratories to conduct research at once, Ferdinand's recent actions—no, there was too much. She couldn't sort through it all.

How could she stop this streetcar that kept rushing forward and make it halt?

Was she strong enough to stand before the streetcar and stop it? If she used her body and Enamel together to block it, jamming its wheels, would that be enough to end all this? Could she save the people on both sides of the forked tracks?

Randall continued speaking.

"I don't like that expression on your face, Saria." He sighed unexpectedly. "I was expecting to see despair, helplessness, and perhaps watch you pull yourself together afterward. After all, you're the renowned Saria."

"You should start thinking about how to deal with these test subjects. If you involve yourself personally, you'll replace them in entering the military's sight early. Otherwise, they'll be discovered by the military."

"You should consider whether to kill me. After all, I'm a living witness. You don't have the right to kill me; the law should punish me instead. Right? Our hero, Saria?"

"And I should be watching you descend into despair amid your struggle, not seeing nothing but such a boring expression. I should also see you regain hope—"

Randall licked his lips. "That way, when I tell you Mansfield can't be stopped, that hope you just recovered will be broken in an instant."

"My revenge should reach such an ending."

After hearing those words, Saria slowly raised her head.