Ch.320The Water Fortress (2)

Robetz’s private mansion was located on the outskirts of the fortress.

Just because it wasn’t in the central area didn’t mean she was poor.

True to its past as a military stronghold, the fortress had excellent security. Warriors patrolled the streets, and warships frequently flew overhead. Few fools would attempt crimes in such a heavily guarded place.

Moreover, the Water Fortress was a city that had accumulated wealth over a long time. Its residents were quite affluent. With everyone living comfortably, there was little reason to turn to crime.

That’s why quite a few people, like Robetz, deliberately chose to live in the quieter outskirts.

The airship carrying Robetz passed over several houses before stopping above one mansion.

In the center of the mansion was a small artificial lake surrounded by a pentagon-shaped residence. Between the house and the lake were plants brought from other planets.

The airship landed on a platform in the lake. As it touched down, the lake’s surface rippled significantly.

“What’s that?”

Startled, Robetz checked the airship’s camera. There seemed to be an issue with the landing as water droplets covered the lens. Apart from the splashed water, no other damage was visible.

“Just my luck, seriously.”

Grumbling, she disembarked and crossed to the garden of plants via a bridge connected to the platform. With each step, sensors and cameras inside the mansion responded.

“Have you arrived?”

“Yes. I’m going to take a bath, so bring out a decent wine from the cellar.”

“Understood.”

“And check the airship’s landing system. There seems to be a problem.”

“I’ll look into it.”

After giving orders to the slave who would be monitoring the cameras, she headed to the bathroom.

The mansion’s bathroom was large enough to accommodate dozens of people. She undressed and reclined in the hot bath.

“Haaah.”

The heat from the hot water turned her pale, delicate skin pink. As her body relaxed, a moan mixed with drowsiness escaped her lips.

‘That’s better.’

Though she hadn’t been in a good mood when she arrived at the mansion, her mind quickly relaxed. She thought it wouldn’t be bad to doze off briefly before the wine arrived. She closed her eyes and surrendered her body and mind to the warm water.

Just as she was about to fall asleep…

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

A loud noise assaulted her ears. Robetz jerked upright in shock, causing the bathwater to splash violently.

“…An alarm?”

She didn’t immediately recognize the sound as she had rarely heard it before.

That sound ringing outside the bathroom was an alarm that went off when an intruder entered.

In other words, someone had entered her house without permission.

“What’s happening outside?”

Her voice echoed throughout the bathroom. As if in response, the alarm outside abruptly stopped.

“……”

Though it was quiet again, she couldn’t feel at ease.

Speakers were installed throughout the mansion so slaves would hear and obey her commands. Normally, a response should follow a command. Silently turning off the alarm was unusual.

Now wide awake, she got out of the tub. After hastily drying her wet body, she grabbed her terminal pad first.

‘I need to report this!’

It might be nothing, but she couldn’t take chances. She reported to the fortress’s warrior unit while wrapping a robe around herself.

The warrior unit members would arrive within five minutes. Until then, she needed to hide in the mansion’s shelter.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, bright lights greeted her. The interior of the mansion seemed no different than usual.

Except for one thing.

“Where is everyone?”

There was no sign of anyone. Not only was the intruder nowhere to be seen, but the slaves were also missing.

The situation was ominous. Her body trembled, and not just from the cool air conditioning.

‘I-I need to get to the shelter quickly…’

Robetz walked, shaking. The house that had felt so comfortable just minutes ago now seemed terribly unfamiliar.

After leaving the building with the bathroom and entering the corridor, she discovered traces of the intruder.

“W-what’s this?”

Wet footprints were clearly imprinted on the floor. Judging by their shape, they didn’t look like they belonged to a Cult. They were even larger than her head.

The footprints led outside the corridor, toward the wine cellar.

“…Damn it.”

Robetz created a whip with her psychic power and gripped it.

The fortunate thing was that the wine cellar and the shelter were quite far apart. Now that the unknown beast had gone to the wine cellar, she needed to quickly get to the shelter.

She ran, half-naked. There was no sign of anyone following her.

Safely arriving at the shelter, she first checked the surveillance cameras installed throughout the mansion. From here, she could monitor every space inside the mansion, just like from the control room.

The Cult-style computer activated, projecting camera images into the air. She moved her eyes busily, searching for the intruders.

‘They’re not here?’

But she couldn’t see any intruders anywhere. There wasn’t even a trace of the slaves who were presumably attacked by the beast.

“What is this…?”

As she was turning the cameras around in confusion, suddenly a sound came from outside.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

It was the same alarm she had heard in the bathroom. At first, it was faint, but it grew louder. It meant the intruder was approaching.

She hurriedly checked the camera in the corridor where the alarm was sounding.

“What’s going on? Where is it? Where on earth is it?”

The corridor was completely empty, yet the security system was loudly announcing someone’s presence.

As she was checking the footage to find the cause of the alarm, something caught her eye.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

She brought her face closer to the image floating in the air.

“……”

At first, she thought it was just a stain or pattern—some geometric decoration commonly seen in corridors.

It wasn’t.

It was a wet mark.

Something invisible to the camera was leaving footprints as it walked along the corridor.

Beep-beep-beep *click*

And those marks stopped right in front of the shelter door.

Her head slowly turned around.

The alarm sound stopped, and a different noise was heard.

The sound of something heavy being dragged.

It was similar to the sound of a thick alloy door opening.

–

“Ahem, so there’s no problem?”

“Yes. The security system is outdated and seems to have malfunctioned. I’m really sorry for troubling you over nothing.”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to look around?”

“That won’t be necessary. As you can see, I’m in this state.”

The armed warrior unit members glanced at my body and quickly turned their faces away.

“Ah, ahem, I see. Understood.”

“We’ll be going then. Please go back inside and rest.”

“Thank you.”

They awkwardly bowed and retreated.

“Of all times, she had to come out during her bath. She could have just sent a slave.”

“Maybe she was having a good time with a slave? It certainly looked that way.”

“Enough with the useless talk.”

The voices heard from beyond the closed mansion door quickly faded. Soon, the small fighter jet parked outside took off and left the mansion.

With no sign of more visitors, I went back inside the mansion.

‘That was startling.’

Until I first attached myself to the airship and arrived at the mansion, I hadn’t been too worried.

Unlike Alqadi’s mansion, there were no armed guards in the Water Fortress. Perhaps because the city itself was safe, only a few slaves resided in the mansion.

Submerged in the lake where the airship landed, I roughly assessed the personnel inside the mansion with my auxiliary organs and took action.

I planned to quickly deal with everyone, starting with the slave carrying wine and ending with the mansion’s owner.

‘If it weren’t for that noisy bell, I surely would have succeeded.’

Transformed into a “Clever Weakling,” I’m immune to various detection systems thanks to the “Cryptid Fur” effect. The waves generated by the fur disrupt various detection equipment. Even vibration monitoring systems are no exception.

The reason I was detected was because of water.

When the fur got wet, it malfunctioned, and the effect that neutralizes detection systems didn’t work properly.

Moreover, while my appearance wasn’t captured by cameras, my wet footprints were. Anyone with a keen eye would immediately notice something invisible was present in the footage.

‘An unexpected weakness.’

I knew the cryptid fur wasn’t perfect. But I didn’t expect such a simple yet fatal weakness.

‘This is a desert planet, but here it’s the Water Fortress. I need to be careful.’

Making a mental note to be cautious around water while in the Clever Weakling state, I returned to the shelter. There, I retrieved the pad-type terminal left by the mansion’s former owner.

‘Good. Now what’s left is…’

I need to confirm something with Robetz, the slave trader I devoured. In other situations, I would have used parasites, but currently, my “Parasite Swarm” trait is sealed.

So now it’s time to use a face-bug instead of parasites. I summoned a face-bug that had replaced an existing member.

A bug with the face of a Cult woman burst out of the nest on my back. Since I summoned it while in the Clever Weakling state, which significantly reduced my size, the face-bug’s size was also much smaller.

The face-bug, now about the length of an adult man’s arm, fluttered its wings and landed in front of me. The slave trader, aware of the changes to her body, had turned pale.

“I have something to ask you.”

When my mouth produced a voice identical to hers, her eyes widened.

But there’s only one thing she can do when all control of her body belongs to me.

“…Please speak.”

Simply fulfill her duty as a minion.

–

Siheyon Yujin realized she was having that dream again.

A white room.

Herself sitting in the center.

Faceless beings whispering something to her.

This recurring dream that she saw every time she slept had become part of her life.

Recently, she even felt like she couldn’t do without this dream.

“You ■■ ■■■.”

‘She’ in the chair speaks. As always, Siheyon couldn’t understand what was being said.

Siheyon wondered.

What would it feel like to sit in that chair?

It was a thought she had never had before, but she didn’t feel any strangeness.

Her consciousness gradually drew closer to the chair. The faceless beings stopped whispering and looked at her. Though they shouldn’t have visible expressions, somehow they seemed to be smiling.

Everything was bizarre, but she didn’t recognize that fact. The thought that she must sit in that chair right now consumed her mind.

“You ■■■ ■■■.”

Ignoring ‘her’ cry, just before sitting in the chair, her gaze suddenly turned to one of the faceless beings.

Looking closely, she could see.

His body was cracked like a broken mirror.

The moment she recognized this fact, she woke up.

“……”

Despite the familiar dream, waking up drenched in cold sweat was quite unpleasant. After roughly pushing through the glass wall to exit the biocapsule, she habitually picked up her pad.

She soon frowned. A lengthy message was displayed on the pad screen. Her eyes fixed on one word mixed among the long sentences: ‘Analysis Failed.’

“…A failure, huh.”

Though she had won the battle against the monster, it was a victory with only wounds. She had lost the important relic, the crystal battery.

Now only enough energy for two more uses of the “Deep Destroyer” remained.

‘This isn’t enough to kill Akira.’

Megacorp CEO Akira Yujin, like Siheyon, was a genetically modified being. Perhaps he had as many transplanted genes as the monster she had killed.

That means the Deep Destroyer might not kill him in one shot.

Akira is an enemy more cunning than any monster. If something similar to this recent incident happens when fighting him, she would be defeated.

“So I was counting on this… sigh.”

She put down the pad with a sigh.

Since she couldn’t freely use the relic anymore, she needed a new alternative.

Her new hope was the blood on the power suit “White Maiden.” The monster had been completely incinerated by the Lightning God’s attack, but dried blood still remained on the power suit.

Siheyon ordered the laboratory on the flagship to analyze that blood. If she could transplant the monster’s genes into her body, she could gain immense power.

But contrary to her expectations, the blood analysis kept failing.

There were too many different types of genes in the blood, and many foreign substances were mixed in.

To solve this, more samples would be needed, but the creature had evaporated without leaving a corpse. That was an impossible request.

Eventually, the research team concluded that analysis was impossible at this point. At least with the flagship’s facilities, they couldn’t analyze the monster’s genes.

‘If it were the Megacorp database, it might be possible…’

The Megacorp database on the moon has the best research facilities. It might be able to analyze the monster’s genes.

The problem is that infiltrating the Megacorp database is not easy at all.

That place, the heart of Megacorp information, has such thorough security that even Yujin’s shadow would have to risk their life multiple times.

If she loses her life during infiltration, that would defeat the purpose. Unless there’s absolutely no hope elsewhere, infiltrating the Megacorp database should be postponed.

‘So the only option left is that?’

Siheyon recalled the incomplete map left by Bumho.

Her current situation wasn’t much different from before coming to Beryan02. She had somewhat restored her forces, but in exchange, she had lost the hidden card of the relic.

To fight a formidable enemy like Akira, she needed a new weapon. In the current situation, she could only hope that map would produce meaningful results.

The problem was that there were no clues needed to complete the map.

If she had plenty of time, it might be different, but she didn’t. Megacorp’s civil war was also in the process of ending. Once the war ends, Akira would move to eliminate Siheyon Yujin’s forces.

She needed to complete the map somehow before Akira’s tracking team moved.

“…My head hurts.”

Was it because of the recurring nightmares combined with real-world problems?

She needed to clear her head. And also clean her body drenched in cold sweat.

She staggered toward the bathroom.