Chapter 54: Turmoil in the Bureau of Defense, Monsters Emerge!

The moment Ye Mi’s first foot stepped out of the deputy director’s office, the gentle smile on her face vanished, replaced at once by a look of utter dejection. She had just dredged an important piece of information from Ian’s mind: the deputy director had a three-person guard team, each a C+ level superhuman, tasked with his personal protection. In other words, within the Defense Bureau headquarters, there were currently three C+ superhumans and one B-level, the highest combatant present. With them around, Ye Mi’s plan to sow chaos might have its window of execution drastically reduced, and the difficulty would soar; the monsters she planned to release might not last even ten minutes.

Of course, Ye Mi had already calculated that seven or eight of those ten minutes would be lost to the time it would take for the guards to receive the alert and rush to the scene. If it truly came to a fight, those monsters, most of which didn’t even reach C-level, could be wiped out in three moves or less. Fortunately, Ye Mi had no intention of fighting them head-on, and it was highly likely their attention would not be on the experimental subjects of the Mother Project. Donning a mask and escaping in the confusion… perhaps, after all, would not prove too difficult.

“…I almost forgot.” At this thought, Ye Mi suddenly came to her senses and shifted her focus to Rust Tide’s body. She guided Rust Tide away from Gina, placing the Mask of the Divine upon the metal skull. The bronze mask shimmered with the faintest light; Rust Tide’s figure began to fade, becoming translucent—at a glance, it looked like the air itself was distorting from intense heat. She extended a hand to touch Gina, who stood nearby, firmly gripping her arm, yet Gina’s body remained perfectly visible. “As expected, it’s no use…” Disappointment flickered through Ye Mi’s heart. If only she could make another body invisible along with her own, none of this would be so troublesome.

She took off the Mask of the Divine, gazing toward the distant silhouette of the Defense Bureau building. Adjusting the focus in her artificial eye, she spotted a white figure emerging from the building. Before long, that figure passed smoothly through checkpoint after checkpoint, drawing ever closer to Ye Mi—it was Ian, now fully under her control.

It was difficult for her to describe the images in her mind: like a two-player split-screen game, the left side the vision of Rust Tide, the right side Ian’s. The sceneries gradually converged, until at the final moment they merged completely—frozen on the scene of a metal arm passing over the Mask of Tranquility.

The hem of Ian’s white lab coat fluttered lightly in the wind. She took the bronze mask without a trace of hesitation, turned, and left. Not long after, the mask was safely delivered into Ye Mi’s own hands. With everything set, all that remained was to await the unimaginable chaos that would erupt in the Defense Bureau—enough that no one would spare a thought for a weaponless experimental subject like her.

To ensure this, Ye Mi guided Ian to the monster containment zone ahead of time. The layout was little changed from what Ye Mi had first seen, except that many once-empty cells were now packed with all sorts of monsters.

“…What a motley collection.” Even Ye Mi, who considered herself well-traveled, couldn’t help but mutter in astonishment. Indeed, anyone would be shocked to see a Buddha statue whose head was covered in cobra heads, each at least three times normal size; an arcade machine sprouting a wriggling clown’s head; or a tree whose fruit were countless human limbs. The monsters of the Light Ruins seemed obsessed with fusion—melding with all manner of things.

Nearly thirty additional research specimens had been brought in. Ye Mi examined them one by one, and in the largest cell she spotted the Flesh Bed, a creature with which she’d briefly crossed paths before. It was now the most powerful among the monsters, having reached C-level, its body bristling with oozing, inexplicable organs. Rust Tide, on the other hand, which had initially impressed Ye Mi, was now rated only D+—after all, while the Defense Bureau might feed monsters to the Flesh Bed, they would hardly waste high-grade metal on Rust Tide.

She lingered among the monsters until late at night, finally leaving the containment area and slipping into her laboratory, where she accessed all surveillance feeds to which Ian had clearance. It was done in utter silence. As long as humanity still lived by the rhythm of night and day, the dead of night would always be a time of stillness. Save for a single patrol squad and some mechanical sentries, there was no one else moving about the Defense Bureau.

In its cage, the Flesh Bed stirred sluggishly, its crimson flesh covered in eyes—all of which snapped to attention at the sudden opening of its cell door. The door was open. Not just for it, but for every cell in the monster containment facility—each and every one had been unlocked.

In an instant, the monsters erupted in a cacophony of shrieks and buzzing.

“Warning! Warning! Containment system failure! All personnel evacuate immediately!”

The blaring alarm echoed throughout the Defense Bureau. It was 3:12 a.m., only three minutes since Ye Mi had released the monsters, yet the Bureau had already been plunged into infernal chaos.

The Flesh Bed was first to surge out, its swollen body swelling to fill the corridor, the innumerable eyeballs on its flesh whirling madly. A researcher who had worked late and fallen asleep in his lab awoke to the commotion, bewildered, and stepped out to investigate—only to be seized by a tentacle that whipped out and coiled around his waist. “He—!” His cry for help was cut short as he was stuffed into a massive maw that split open at the center of the Flesh Bed, fresh blood gushing from the fissure.

Elsewhere, the Buddha-statue monster with snake heads slithered along the glass corridor, each serpent spitting venom. One unlucky employee ran for his life, but the venom splashed him nonetheless—his skin dissolved at once, and he writhed in agony on the floor until he was nothing but a puddle of blood.

The deputy director jerked awake at the piercing alarm to find the entire Defense Bureau bathed in wild, pulsating red light. He hastily called up the surveillance feeds, only to see the Bureau transformed into a slaughterhouse. For two seconds his mind went blank; then, trembling violently, he roared: “What is going on?!”

“Guard team! Get to my office at once!” His face had gone deathly pale as he sent the message. Three seconds later, the familiar faces of the superhuman guards burst through the door, allowing him a shred of composure.

On the monitors, Rust Tide was slicing through the ventilation ducts with its sharp metal limbs, dragging out one cowering clerk after another and impaling each effortlessly with metal fingers. Blood streamed down the ducts, looking especially ghastly in the alarm’s red glow.

When he saw the Flesh Bed already rampaging through the Bureau and gnawing the head off a security guard, the deputy director’s face drained of blood. Watching as the body count on the monitors mounted, cold sweat soaking his pajamas, he shakily dialed Watanabe Zero: “At once… at once, go and subdue those monsters!”