Enforcer Manual
Chapter 369: Welcome, Adventurer _1

Chapter 369: 369: Welcome, Adventurer _1

The bionic being disguised as Gao Yuan had disappeared.

Director Obena heard the bad news as soon as he returned to the department, but he wasn’t surprised.

The surveillance video in the Interrogation room captured the bizarre scene of the bionic being’s disappearance. Before Lu Xiang arrived, arms like those of a mannequin, pristine and unpainted as they are after production, sprouted from the wall behind the bionic being.

One of the arms grabbed the bionic being from behind and dragged him into the wall.

In the surveillance video, Lu Xiang was always one step too late. By the time she managed to open the coded door to the interrogation room, the bionic being had vanished without a trace.

Director Obena had replayed this process countless times and had noticed more and more details each time.

After Lu Xiang burst into the interrogation room, she angrily punched the table; then, after a long while, she took out a piece of paper from her pocket.

One-star rescuers told him that the paper might be a legacy left by some "concerned citizens" from the Void.

They also mentioned that Lu Xiang had reasons for not wanting to disclose this information.

For humans, the more they learned about the Void, the more susceptible they were to its influence.

Deciding not to focus his suspicion on Lu Xiang anymore, Director Obena couldn’t shake off the vast shadow he had seen by the window the night before. Aside from the tremor from deep within his heart, it seemed there was something else mixed in there.

It was like a calling, beckoning him through the mist.

This was the last time he would replay the video. In fact, with the operating system adapted for him by Lionheart Military Industry, watching the surveillance once was enough to burn every detail into his brain; the mechanical repetition that followed was merely part of his thought process.

Or to put it more precisely, he didn’t want to rush his decision.

But now, after making his decision, his emotions had calmed down.

He took out a sticky note:

November 8, 2166, 14:21.

Zone 17, Rescuer Service Center, Surveillance Room.

Director Obena picked up a pen and wrote down the current time and location. He could hardly remember the last time he had written by hand. The built-in operating system gave him the ability to convey his thoughts in text without the need to write it down and to package and send it to the recipient.

But this was the insight given by the "concerned citizen".

The reason for using sticky notes to pass the message was probably deliberate—to present his situation and all his findings in their entirety to the company, Director Obena decided to follow the example of the "concerned citizen".

After carefully recording the time, location, and the important values of his prosthetic components, Director Obena stored the sticky note in his internal storage space.

Then, following the calling’s guidance, he made his way to the interrogation room.

The chairs in the interrogation room were askew, with cracks hammered into the tabletop by Lu Xiang in her frustration. Director Obena closed his eyes and turned back to every detail he had seen in the surveillance video.

He slowly approached the wall from which the aberrant bionic being had been dragged away.

For security, the walls of the interrogation room had been specially reinforced, impenetrable even to a drill.

With his eyes closed, information and data about the construction of the interrogation room’s walls were still accurately transmitted to his brain.

Director Obena stood before the wall and reached out his right hand toward the spot where the bionic being had disappeared.

His movements were slow, taking more than ten seconds before he got any tactile feedback.

Cold, yet not hard.

The operating system’s receiver stopped reporting, but he didn’t stop moving his hand forward into the wall, which felt as though it were immersing in the cold water of a lake. He didn’t know the depth of the lake or what might be hidden at its bottom.

Director Obena stopped thinking altogether and let his right arm keep sinking deeper until, after what felt like an eternity, he finally grabbed onto something.

It felt hard and somewhat prickly to the touch. Easily recognizing the object by its outline, he knew what he had made contact with.

A chip.

The "Governor" chip he had lost!

Director Obena’s hand retracted as if shocked by electricity. When he opened his eyes, he was still in the interrogation room, and the wall in front of him appeared unchanged. When he tried once more to reach forward, the cold, unyielding surface of the wall kept him out.

He looked down at the chip in his palm, seemingly unchanged.

Almost without thought, he put the chip back in its original place.

This time, the scene before his eyes finally changed.

The wall’s white surface started to peel away, flaking off like ashes into thin air, with a liquid resembling blood seeping out of the holes in the wall and spreading across the floor toward his feet.

The chair was fitted with broken shackles, and various interrogation tools were piled haphazardly on the table.

Most of the tools were stained with blood, as well as some bits of flesh of an unknown composition.

The place was still the interrogation room, yet time seemed to have regressed a few centuries—only in that era would people use such primitive and inefficient means of interrogation.

Having had experience with the hospital, Director Obena didn’t panic this time; after assessing his surroundings, he pushed his way out of the interrogation room.

The corridor had changed.

The walls on both sides had become iron sheets with rust spots, and the compartments had turned into cages.

It seemed that some creatures were held in the cages; he heard the sound of heavy objects striking the bars, accompanied by the noise of power saws and drills.

He did not linger his gaze on the cages to either side, but instead moved upward from memory, through the bloodstained stairway, reaching the place where the meeting room was located.

It was in this meeting room that he suffered his first ambush from the Void—the "Governor" chip was also lost here.

At the same time, it seemed something had detected his arrival; disorderly footsteps began to sound from the corridor outside the door.

Director Obena didn’t hesitate, he pushed the door open and entered.

The layout of the meeting room seemed to explain the source of the wound on his head—this was a surgery room, or at least it appeared to be on the surface.

It reminded him of the prosthetic hospital, filled with instruments used to open up the human body.

The position he was in during the meeting was exactly where the operating table was situated, and a drill faced directly towards it, leading Director Obena to a bizarre thought—that someone had been drilling into his head while they were meeting.

There was a note on the table, as if it had been left there for a long time, waiting specifically for his arrival.

The footsteps were getting closer.

He dashed towards the note, clutching it tightly in his hand.

In the next moment, Director Obena finally saw the true nature of his pursuers—a group of bionic humanoids that were not yet fully produced; they hadn’t been "painted" yet and only had the most basic outlines of humans. The creators hadn’t had time to give them facial features, so Director Obena couldn’t discern their expressions at the moment.

From their movements, it seemed that these bionic humanoids were angry.

They pounced on him.

For a soldier who had been on countless battlefields, this was hardly a crisis, but then, Director Obena’s movements froze.

His prosthetics failed to respond.

The operating system in his brain had also ceased to function.

In this brief hiatus, the bionic humanoids with bared teeth and claws were close enough to reach him.

Cold palms touched Director Obena’s face and body, not bringing heart-wrenching pain, but a chill from the depths of the soul.

"Thump, thump, thump—thump, thump, thump—!"

He heard the sound of knocking.

When his vision returned to clarity, he was in the conference room of the rescuer department, leaning against the back of a swivel chair—the bionic humanoids had vanished without a trace.

"Director Obena, Director Obena? Are you all right?"

The knocker was Mo Ling; he remembered the name of this one-star rescuer.

"I’m fine."

After panting heavily for a few moments, Director Obena finally spoke.

Was everything that just happened a hallucination?

But what followed brought back that soul-deep chill—he saw his own right hand, pristine and flawless, just like a newly-produced, yet unpainted bionic humanoid.

That hand still retained the motion of clutching a sticky note:

"Puppet"

"A being similar to bionic humanoids."

"Note: they are gregarious creatures."

"*Do not let them touch you!*

The content on the sticky note was very scribbled, as if it had been left hastily.

To emphasize the importance of the last sentence, the person who had written it had specifically marked it with special symbols.