"Vill-V, if you've got some trick up your sleeve, now's the time to use it! What are you standing around for? Weren't you about to activate some mechanism just now? Oh, right—don't forget to take me with you after you activate it!" Pardo urged anxiously.
"Don't be so impatient, my dear little assistant. Are you really that eager to observe a nuclear explosion up close?" Vill-V remained perfectly composed. "Look, the audience isn't anxious at all. An outstanding performer must use an elegant rhythm to meet the audience's expectations. Isn't that right?"
"Vill-V, what are you talking about? I don't understand any of this."
Watching Odin fly toward them astride the giant steel eagle, Vill-V remained utterly calm, sitting atop the stone coffin without the slightest reaction.
The panicked escape expert Pardo gritted her teeth, switched on the coffin's loudspeaker, and shouted a threat at Odin:
"Don't come any closer! I'm warning you, Vill-V is super strong! She's fought both the Third and Fourth Herrschers before!"
"Do you even know what a Herrscher is? They're beings who can destroy the world with a wave of their hands. If you make her angry, you're definitely going to regret it!"
Whenever she encountered a powerful enemy, intimidating them with sheer momentum might buy her an opportunity to escape.
This was kitty survival wisdom learned from dealing with thugs on Dusk Street!
Vill-V: No, Pardo, do you perhaps have some misunderstanding about me?
Conductor emerged and tapped the coffin lid with faint amusement. "Ahem, Pardo, haven't you noticed that we're already completely surrounded?"
Pardo jolted in alarm and immediately poked her head out of the coffin to survey the surroundings.
Sure enough, a group of people clad from head to toe in heavy powered armor had descended from every direction aboard hovercraft.
"One, two, three, four... Huh? I don't have enough fingers to count them all. There are this many people? Then... we surrender!"
When escape was truly impossible, surrender was also an unavoidable option. This, too, was part of kitty survival wisdom.
...
The enormous disturbance caused by Vill-V and the Ghostfire Syndicate had ultimately alerted the Mobile Response Force under Heliopolis Life Sciences in Dusk City.
They had laid down an electronic dragnet throughout the area. Even if a fly tried to escape, drone-mounted autocannons would shoot it down with perfect accuracy.
Seeing that even the sky was now occupied by those vicious-looking, fully armed men in powered armor, Pardo hurriedly shrank her head back into the deepest part of the stone coffin.
Mm. If I can't see them, I won't be scared.
Anyway, even if the sky falls, Vill-V is outside to hold it up. What does that have to do with an ordinary passerby like me?
"Pardo, I seem to remember preparing a Mole Mk. IV for you to dig your way out. The Mole Mk. IV high-speed excavator can let us escape underground in no time."
"Ah, well, about that... Hehehe..."
Seeing Pardo scratch the back of her head and stammer, Vill-V asked:
"Don't tell me you sold the Mole Mk. IV as a pet?"
"How could I? Do I look like that kind of person?" Pardo retorted righteously.
Then where had the Mole Mk. IV gone?
Surely it had not been eaten by the stray cats of Dusk Street under her command?
Well... those feral cats really were vicious toward small animals that invaded their "territory."
Only Pardo, for reasons no one quite understood, seemed to have gained the feral cats' approval and been accepted as one of their own.
"Fine. Looks like sneaking away won't be easy."
Compared with the flustered Pardo, Vill-V remained completely calm. Even with pitch-black gun barrels aimed at her from every direction, she showed no fear whatsoever.
"Don't worry, Pardo. Trust Seele. From this point on, we can do whatever we want. Even if you restock right in front of them, it won't be a big deal."
"Who's Seele?" Pardo looked baffled. After thinking for a moment, her eyes suddenly lit up with expectation, and she smacked a fist into her palm. "Oh~ I get it! She must be some huge tycoon who spent a fortune buying this entire place, right? When I was doing... work with HoMu Company, I saw Zofia do something like that once. She looked so cool back then. When the CEO opposing us found out that every director above him had been bought off, he was completely stunned."
"Uh, that's close enough. According to my deductions, Seele used a Herrscher's authority to 'find' this world's 'future.' She's the Herrscher of Death."
"Oh, so she's the Herrscher of Death. No wonder she's so rich... Huh? Wait, the Herrscher... of Death? Vill-V, you're not messing with me again, are you? I know Herrschers are all unforgivable monsters. How could one possibly help us?!"
...
Above the enormous pit, which plunged a full kilometer deep, everyone from the Taixu Gang had been detained and placed under the control of the Mobile Response Force.
Inside the pit, elite soldiers of the Mobile Response Force stood in solemn, orderly ranks behind raised riot shields, fully prepared for battle.
The soldiers' thoughts were linked through military neural implant chips, and every one of them was running the exact same movement template.
The military neural implants contained enormous libraries of combat movements and martial techniques, allowing Heliopolis Life Sciences to rapidly mass-produce large numbers of soldiers capable of entering real combat immediately.
When these robotically orderly soldiers reached Odin and Vill-V, they suddenly opened a path between their ranks.
An officer dressed in purple mechanical battle attire slowly drove out aboard a personal transport vehicle.
He drove up before Odin and stopped.
Then, astonishingly, he saluted Odin. "Director Odin, the perimeter has been completely suppressed. No one escaped."
The intense heat from the exploding blue kitty head had scorched Odin's metal arm red-hot, yet he did not spare his arm so much as a glance. His face remained frozen in an expression of icy indifference. "You are not worthy to address me by name."
The officer's expression changed. He heard the killing intent in Odin's words. With a sweep of his cloak, the man dropped to one knee and corrected himself, cold sweat pouring down his face. "Yes, my Father, great Divine Sovereign who governs souls."
"This sinner has completed the mission perfectly. Please look at this."
As he spoke, he presented Odin with a scepter approximately one foot long.
The scepter was entirely snow-white, cast as a single piece from some special metal. At the same time, its surface was covered in elaborate patterns concealing mechanisms unknown to outsiders.
"This is the Heliopolis Spine Key. Now, following the Divine Sovereign's guidance, we can open the mysterious thirty-third underground floor of Heliopolis Life Sciences at any time. May the God of Humanity be with us."
There was a hint of pride in his tone. He hoped his achievement would make up for his mistake.
Watching this scene, Vill-V pointed at Odin and asked Pardo, "Is this guy the boss of the Mobile Response Force?"
Pardo gave Vill-V a concise explanation of everything she knew.
"So they're the Mobile Response Force of Heliopolis Life Sciences' Strategic Security Department. And judging from this man's behavior, the Strategic Security Department clearly never escaped Odin's control. Jeffries has been dancing in Odin's palm this entire time."
While she was thinking, Odin extended his hand, upon which the blue kitty-head flames were still burning, toward the officer.
The officer's eyes filled with conflict and misery, but in the end, he still chose to press the blue flame into his own chest.
"Meeooowww—!"
A kitty head erupted in flames over the officer's body. He then collapsed to the ground in agony, his features twisting into a mask of pain as he clutched his head with both hands and screamed miserably.
"Ah... Thank you, Divine Sovereign... Ah... my soul has been purified once more."
Vill-V, who had brought Pardo along to enjoy the spectacle, sighed. "Tch. What a lunatic. He's being tortured and still has the nerve to thank the guy doing it."
Hearing Vill-V's words, Odin seemed to remember something. A trace of what might have been a smile appeared on his icy face. "What is it? Confused because you cannot imitate my thought processes? The star-silver plating covering my entire body was not applied for nothing."
The current Odin had turned into a chatterbox, speaking endlessly on his own without any trace of the cold ruthlessness with which he had attacked immediately before.
"Star-silver is the world's most mysterious and rare metallic substance. It is the finest material for severing thought. Inject just one microgram into a human brain, and that person will become a dissociative patient capable of conversing with themselves."
"Now you should be able to remember, shouldn't you? Vill-V of Helix, the sole survivor of the Heavenly Collapse from Shenzhou's Ninth Mausoleum, and the Ninth Mausoleum's one and only perfect masterpiece in five thousand years."