I nodded to Saint Dexter without any particular emotion.
’Yuna,’ I called out in my mind.
"Yes, Lord of Shadows?"
’There is a chance the people I’m going to et will try to manipulate my mind at so point.’
’If you notice the manipulation, but I can’t, then use Beautify to improve your appearance.’
’There are many tricks that can block perception, which would lead to not notice what my opponent is doing.’
’That’s why you will warn through Beautify. It will be our basic tool to warn from now on.’
"Understood, Lord of Shadows," Yuna replied.
Her tone shifted the mont she finished speaking.
The lightness that usually lingered in her voice disappeared, replaced by sothing focused and steady.
Well, that was normal.
We had entered the base of our enemies.
This wasn’t a place where mistakes could be corrected.
If one thing went wrong, it wouldn’t just be a setback. It would be the end.
’Also, use the luck-increasing ability.’
"Done," she said.
A faint glow flickered across my hand, warm for just a mont before fading away as if it had never been there.
By then, the massive city gates had co fully into view.
They were towering walls reinforced with layers of tal and glowing lines that ran across their surface-like veins beneath skin.
The machinery embedded in them moved in slow, constant patterns, as if the City itself was breathing.
The mont we passed through, people rushed toward us.
"Welco, Rune Sage. We’ve heard a lot about you. How about you co with , and I’ll help you familiarize yourself with the City?"
"Greetings, Rune Sage. I’m the HR Head of P Corp. I ca here personally to recruit you."
"Rune Sage, we finally et. Please, co to the M Corp sector. I promise you won’t be disappointed."
"Rune Sage—"
"Rune—"
Their voices overlapped, one after another, until it beca a wall of sound.
Faces leaned in. Hands gestured. Smiles appeared, each one practiced in a slightly different way.
Right now, I was a hot potato. Everyone wanted a piece of .
I slowed my pace and looked at each of them in turn without saying a word. I let them speak, and I listened.
’Ten corporations ca to recruit .’
’The other sixteen didn’t co.’
For a place where most of them didn’t care about the outside world, ten was a high number.
I had expected seven or eight at most.
The fact that this many showed up ant my value was higher than I had predicted.
Saint Dexter stepped forward and raised his hand.
"Alright. Calm down, all of you."
The recruiters quieted.
Unlike how one would expect them to respect Saint Dexter since he was called ’Saint’, they just looked at him as if they were looking at a company employee that was lower ranked than them.
Only the person from M Corp smiled.
Saint Dexter was their product, after all. The one they had operated on, rebuilt, and sent back out into the world.
I noticed another smile as well. This one ca from the representative of P Corp.
’I can understand why M Corp is smiling. They ’created’ Saint Dexter. But why is this guy smiling?’ I thought.
Saint Dexter cleared his throat and continued.
"The Head Corporations have ordered us to guard Rune Sage until he decides which corporation to join. They have no intention of fighting over him, so you can recruit him. But do it properly. Not like this."
The people gathered there began to look at one another, asuring expressions, shifting their stances.
’If the Head Corporations don’t want right now, then it’s one of two things.’
’Either they don’t think my abilities are special, or they don’t trust .’
It was definitely the second.
They wanted to observe. Let spend ti with the smaller and mid-level Corps. Watch how I behaved. See what kind of person I really was.
Only then would they decide if I was worth pulling in.
While Saint Dexter continued speaking with the recruiters, Saint Maverick approached from the side.
"How are you planning to decide which Corp to join?" he asked quietly.
"I’ll take a tour of the City. I’ll join the Corp whose Sector manages to amaze ."
"You’ll judge the sectors, not the corporations?"
"Yes."
I already knew which Corp I had to join.
It would be the easiest to take over.
But before any of that, there was sothing far more important.
Charlotta’s brother.
Henry.
I had to find him.
This was where the hard part began.
’Find one person in a place as big as Russia is hard.’
’Doing it without anyone knowing I’m looking for soone is harder.’
’They will be suspicious how I know about Henry if I suddenly start asking about him.’
’And searching in restricted areas isn’t even possible yet, since those areas will be heavily guarded.’
For now, I did exactly what I said I would.
I toured.
Yuna had used her luck increasing ability on , and since I had no bad luck right now, there was a chance that I would get a lot of good luck.
It might help find Henry, Charlotta’s brother, by chance.
’If I can’t find Henry within one week, I will have to start taking drastic asures.’
Soone might think searching like this, touring the city with no destination in mind, was a stupid thod.
But since I had increased my luck, it was actually possible to find Henry or clues to his location.
During the day, my Shadow wore the disguise of Caelum Nocthera and moved through the Sectors in my place.
At night, I ca myself.
I could always feel the eyes on .
Hidden drones hovered just out of sight, their presence like a faint pressure against the back of my mind. Corporate recruiters followed at a distance, pitching their Corp.
Saint Dexter, Saintess Cossette, and Saint Maverick stayed close enough that no one dared to try anything openly.
’Honestly, the problem right now isn’t the corporations trying underhanded tricks to recruit .’
’It’s these cyborgs.’
The streets were taken over by discarded failures. Machines that had once been human. They had no real awareness left, only broken routines and flashes of aggression.
Sotis they stood still for hours, staring at nothing.
Sotis they attacked without warning.
That made traveling through the City dangerous. Not to ntion the people—the human inhabitations of the City—who kept eyeing .
"I don’t see any other race than humans here," I said as we walked.
"That’s normal. We believe humans have the most computability with machines, so they are the only target of our research," Saint Dexter replied.
I nodded, letting him continue.
"Humans have the highest adaptability among all races. The sa is true for machines. You can fit a new component to a machine depending on the situation, and it can adapt to almost anything. That’s why we believe humans are the ultimate machine, created by the [True God]."
He paused for a mont before adding, "It’s also the reason we operate only on humans. They have the highest chances of success."
I glanced to the side without turning my head fully.
Yuna, who had been listening quietly, had gone still.
Her face was stiff.
She... was angry.
This was the first ti I had seen her like this.
She had found out how the discarded cyborgs on the roads were created. And how Saints and Saintesses were made.
That made her terribly angry.
’Yuna, are you alright?’
"..."
’Yuna?’
I let out a quiet sigh.
In this place, the World of Innovation, far out in the desert, there was a massive factory network that had once belonged to Legion.
Legion, the last Emperor of Nocthera Empire, might be dead, but his work wasn’t.
The factories kept running, producing weapons, automatons, and other types of machines.
The automatons created like this—through Legion’s factories—had artificial souls, also known as machine souls.
And because Legion had access to the System, those machine souls had access to it as well, even if it was limited.
The System Church captured those machines.
Then they ’fused’ them with humans.
Most of the ti, the result was a misshapen cyborg with limited access to the System and no real sanity left.
It would be just a broken mix of instincts, routines, and half-functioning commands.
In rare cases, a cyborg ca out the other side with full access to the System and a mind that still worked.
Those were the ones they called Saints and Saintesses.
Which ant that every groaning pile of tal that wandered the streets, every berserk figure that attacked without warning, had once been human.
I was still thinking about that when I noticed a trashcan near the side of the road.
This sight was perfectly normally.
The Corps was never bothered maintaining anything that wasn’t directly useful.
With berserk cyborgs roaming around and corporations that didn’t care about public order, sanitation was low on the list of priorities.
Garbage on the streets was normal.
But...
I stiffly walked towards the heap of garbage.
Because...
’Henry.’
He was inside.
Half of his face was torn open, exposing tal pipes and wiring where skin and bone should have been.
Small electric sparks flickered from his body, snapping and fading like a broken machine.
His eyes were open.
There was no light in them.
’So they failed the operation and threw him away.’
The fact that he wasn’t even moving, not like the other berserk cyborgs, ant sothing else too.
’They didn’t just discard him. They destroyed him and made sure no one else could get anything of value out of him.’
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