Chapter 256

Chapter 256

CLANK!

The thirty-centimeter-thick door closed.

The door, made from a special alloy and even magically treated, was sturdy enough to withstand the charge of a large-class monster.

And it was not only the door.

The entire room was made from the same material as the door.

Naturally, escape was not even something they could dream of.

After looking around the room for a moment, Zeon smiled bitterly.

“Locked up in a place like this again.”

It was the same situation as when he had been imprisoned in the NSSC prison.

It was a perfectly sealed structure where not even a single speck of dust, let alone sand that Zeon could use as a weapon, could enter.

Levin apologized to Zeon.

“I’m sorry, Brother! Because of me, you got dragged into this......”

“No. More importantly, I’m glad you carried out your revenge safely.”

“I took revenge, so why does it feel this awful?”

It was the revenge he had dreamed of for so long.

There had not been a single day when he had not dreamed of revenge.

Whenever he closed his eyes, the agonized faces of his mother and younger sibling appeared, making it unbearable.

Even so, he had not shown it and had chewed over his rage in silence.

After enduring like that, he had finally completed his revenge. Even so, he did not feel relieved.

“That bastard...... Neo Seoul made him, didn’t they?”

“That seems to be the case.”

Zeon nodded.

One could tell from the fact that Lee Jeong-ho, none other than a member of the execution unit, had been mobilized.

If someone of Lee Jeong-ho’s caliber had been deployed to wrap things up, it meant that even Neo Seoul had paid considerable attention to the project.

Mandy sighed and said,

“I’ll look into this as soon as I return to City Hall.”

“Thank you, Sister!”

“No. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

After learning that City Hall had been connected to the death of Levin’s family, Mandy did not know what to do with herself.

Countless projects she knew nothing about were being carried out in City Hall.

No matter how much of a Supervisor she was, she could not be involved in every single one of those projects.

In particular, there was no way for her to know about experiments carried out in individual laboratories.

The same was true for other Supervisors and high-ranking public officials.

What they knew was only an extremely small part.

There was no way to know unless they were directly involved.

Only one person knew and coordinated all of it.

Mayor Jin Geum-ho.

The one and only man who stood at the summit of Neo Seoul.

Everyone else was nothing more than a component of the massive city known as Neo Seoul.

Mandy was no different.

Although she had a powerful martial force named Eloy beside her, compared to Jin Geum-ho or Neo Seoul, her presence was barely the size of a speck of dust.

Briel looked around the room and said,

“This place feels really unpleasant.”

WHIRR! CLICK!

Mechanical sounds came from behind the thick walls.

It was a faint noise ordinary people would not have been able to hear, but there was no one in this room who could not hear it.

Machines were operating nonstop behind the walls.

The building they were currently imprisoned in was Mega Tower.

Mega Tower was the building located at the center of West District.

It was slightly lower than City Hall, but it was still the tallest building in West District.

On the top floor of Mega Tower was the residence of Kim Hyun-soo, the ruler of West District, and deep underground existed the main unit of the AI known as the Three-Legged Crow.

The Three-Legged Crow managed everything in Mega Tower.

From trivial tasks such as opening doors to the overall operation, the Three-Legged Crow intervened and handled everything.

That was why mechanical sounds rang out without pause.

To Briel, a High Elf, that noise was extremely grating.

The metallic sound, with no trace of life in it, felt like torture.

At that moment, Zeon walked toward the inner wall.

His gaze was directed at the corner of the wall where it met the ceiling.

He had discovered a lens in the ceiling.

Zeon stared intently into the lens. Then a red light came on inside it.

Zeon spoke.

“It seems to be something like a surveillance camera.”

“Huh, it really is.”

“Then doesn’t that mean someone’s watching us?”

Briel and Mandy looked at the camera with displeased expressions. Then the light in the camera grew stronger.

Just then—

KEEING! KEENG!

The noise beyond the wall intensified.

An unpleasant frequency emerged.

The first to react was Briel.

“Damn it!”

Briel covered her ears with both hands and grimaced.

Mandy’s reaction was not much different from hers.

Although she was only half, she too was an elf.

She could not help being sensitive to sound.

She had heard countless sounds until now, but this was her first time hearing a high frequency this unpleasant.

It was as though the sound had been made to torture elves.

On the other hand, Zeon and Levin’s reactions were calm.

Even a high frequency painful to elves had no effect on them.

In that instant, the frequency changed.

BZZZZ!

It gradually shifted from a high frequency to a low frequency.

“Urk!”

During this process, Levin frowned.

A certain frequency had unpleasantly stimulated his hearing and brain.

By contrast, Zeon showed almost no change in expression.

He, too, had been stimulated like Levin, but this much was not enough to draw a reaction from him.

When Zeon did not respond to the frequency, an unpleasant smell drifted in this time.

“Urk! What is this?”

“What the hell is this corpse-rotting smell......?”

As expected, Briel and Mandy reacted fiercely.

Since their senses were sharper than those of humans, it was only natural.

Zeon glared at the camera and thought,

‘It’s as though it’s experimenting to determine our weaknesses.’

Humans had many kinds of weaknesses.

No matter how strong a human was, weaknesses were bound to exist.

They varied—sense organs such as sight, hearing, or smell; missing portions of the body; reaction speed, and so on.

Briel was still young, so she was not skilled at hiding her weaknesses. Mandy, too, unlike Eloy, was easily agitated by this kind of experiment and revealed her weaknesses.

Levin at least gritted his teeth and tried not to react, but he could not hide everything.

By contrast, Zeon did not react at all.

He did not budge, as though he were an inanimate object.

Perhaps frustrated by Zeon’s reaction, the light from the camera lens grew more intense.

The intense light painfully stimulated Zeon’s retina.

“What the hell are they doing?”

“I’m going to go blind at this rate.”

“Fuck!”

Briel, Mandy, and Levin reacted one after another.

The repeated experiments continued to expose their weaknesses.

By contrast, Zeon stared at the lens without blinking even once.

“You’re taking this prank too far.”

CRACK!

In that instant, the lens shattered.

Zeon had fired a Fire Missile and destroyed it.

Then a camera lens protruded from another corner.

A mechanical voice followed.

―I apologize if this was unpleasant. I could not restrain my curiosity.

“Who are you?”

―I am called the Three-Legged Crow.

“The Three-Legged Crow?”

―I am the AI that assists Mr. Kim Hyun-soo and manages all of West District.

“If you’re an AI, does that mean artificial intelligence?”

―It is a little more complex, but there should be no issue if you understand it that way.

At the Three-Legged Crow’s answer, Zeon frowned.

He already knew that the high-ranking Awakened of West District received help from auxiliary AIs. However, this was his first time facing the main unit, the Three-Legged Crow, so tension arose in him on its own.

Zeon asked directly,

“Was this Mr. Kim Hyun-soo’s order?”

―Mr. Kim Hyun-soo is not idle enough to give such an order.

“Then this was your own will.”

―I possess that degree of autonomy.

It was clearly a mechanical voice, yet a strange sense of pride could be felt from it.

As if it were human.

Zeon asked,

“Then can you release us as well?”

―That would be difficult.

“Why?”

―Because the truth of the incident has not yet been determined. Because of you, one floor of a building was destroyed. This is a serious crime.

“If you check with City Hall, you’ll know soon enough. We were not the ones who caused it.”

―The facts are being determined. Once they are determined, judgment will be made and appropriate measures will be taken.

“There is a Supervisor from City Hall here.”

―I am aware. Mandy Sistain has been identified as one of City Hall’s key Supervisors.

“And yet you’re saying you’ll detain her? City Hall will take issue with that.”

―Under City Hall’s procedures, approximately one day is acceptable.

In other words, there would be no problem even if they were detained for about a day.

A considerable degree of autonomy was given to each district.

They possessed authority equivalent to that of autonomous districts.

Unless an incident was fairly serious, City Hall did not infringe upon the authority of each district.

Even if City Hall learned that Mandy had been detained, it would probably observe for about a day. If she continued to be detained after that, it would certainly make an issue of it.

Knowing this, the Three-Legged Crow had clearly judged that about a day would not be a problem.

“You’re cunning.”

―I will take that as praise.

“Why go this far? Is it because of Cha Jin-cheol?”

―He was not such an important person. The important person is you, Zeon.

“I’m honored to hear that from the true power holder of West District.”

―I am not a power holder. I am merely an AI that assists Mr. Kim Hyun-soo.

“But you are the one who actually operates West District, aren’t you, Three-Legged Crow?”

―......

Perhaps because it had been rendered speechless, the Three-Legged Crow’s words cut off for a moment.

The autonomy the Three-Legged Crow possessed was beyond imagination.

One could tell merely from the fact that it was trying to identify Zeon’s weaknesses through its own judgment.

An ordinary AI would never have dared make such a decision.

The Three-Legged Crow had judged the being known as Zeon to be a risk factor and was searching on its own for an efficient way to eliminate him.

CRACK!

The lens shattered.

Zeon had destroyed it with a Fire Missile.

Perhaps the two cameras installed in the room had been all of them, because no new camera appeared after that.

Levin rubbed both shoulders and said,

“Brother, I’ve got goosebumps right now.”

“Hm?”

“I mean, that AI is making judgments with such malice. Is an AI allowed to be that smart? How did West District even create an AI like that?”

It was shocking enough that he would not have believed it if he had not seen the conversation between Zeon and the Three-Legged Crow with his own eyes.

---

One hundred meters below the prison where Zeon was being held, there was a massive transparent tube inside a bunker.

Inside the transparent tube was a huge lump of stone.

Countless wires were connected to the stone.

The sight looked exactly like a bundle of nerves connected to a brain.

At first glance, the object looked like an ordinary lump of stone, but it was the true form of the Three-Legged Crow.

The Three-Legged Crow was the product of an Ancient Golem’s brain accidentally merging with a supercomputer.

The Three-Legged Crow was wary of Zeon.

―Extreme risk factor. At present, clear weaknesses are difficult to identify. To identify weaknesses, slightly more direct action is required. Whether Mr. Kim Hyun-soo will allow this is unknown. Proceeding without permission may be preferable. The present moment, while he can be legally confined in prison, is judged to be the only opportunity.

Just as the Three-Legged Crow was busily establishing countermeasures against Zeon, an abrupt abnormal signal was detected.

―Auxiliary AI Black Tortoise, abnormal activity detected.