Chapter 114: Rim Billiton Great Adventure (II)

Without needing a single command from you, the Shapeshifter Cluster had already begun to chuckle—a wet, bubbling sound of anticipated victory. Its form effortlessly liquefied, slipping into the cracks of the collapsed ruins and violently propping up the heavy concrete slabs where the faint cries originated.

The shifting debris revealed a tiny, trembling figure crying out for help.

It was a bruised and battered young Cautus. Her brown ears drooped limply over her dust-covered shoulders, and her azure eyes were half-squinted against the harsh light.

A-Amiya?!

Holy crap, I want this—pick her up quickly—you absolutely cannot throw this one away—!!!

Fortunately, the Doctor in this memory didn’t seem to have completely forgotten the plot. His eyes flickered with recognition beneath his visor; he clearly knew exactly who this familiar little Cautus was.

In Rim Billiton, every descent into the mines was a gamble with the devil. Surviving a shift brought in enough LMD to feed a whole family, but the moment a mining disaster struck, Rim Billiton’s notoriously shoddy safety tech meant the survival rate plummeted to absolute zero.

Because of this, the Cautus workers who braved the underground shafts always stuck together, bound by blood. When danger erupted and the tunnels caved in, their only hope was that the family members closer to the surface would never let go of the lifeline.

The heavy industrial rope tied around Amiya’s mother’s waist had been pulled taut against her father’s arm; the other end, secured around her sister’s waist, was wrapped desperately around her brother’s chest. Relying on the unique, deep-seated familial bonds of the Cautus race, they forged a chain of absolute trust, entrusting their lives to one another. They held on so fiercely that their grips would never slip.

—Which meant that when the subterranean gas ignited and a tidal wave of high-concentration Originium dust flooded the shaft, they had absolutely no room to scatter or dodge. That massive, catastrophic cave-in uprooted an entire extended Cautus family in the blink of an eye.

The sole survivor, Amiya, was at that awkward age where she was too young to swing a pickaxe but old enough to not need constant babysitting, placing her furthest from the active shaft. When the explosion tore through the rock, she had instinctively curled up beneath a discarded, heavy-duty tunneling machine. That sturdy relic of iron had shielded her from the worst of the incinerating heat wave and the crushing weight of the falling boulders.

But the sanctuary was temporary. The suffocating cloud of high-concentration Originium dust, coupled with a nasty wrist wound where a jagged piece of rebar had pierced her during her panicked scramble, was more than enough to claim a little rabbit’s life. Drowning in terror and agonizing pain, the young girl’s consciousness began to slip away. Her initial, desperate cries slowly dissolved into incoherent, weak murmurs.

“Save me… it hurts…”

She didn’t know how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity—so long that when she weakly reached out with the only hand she could still move, she no longer expected to grasp anything but cold, dead stone.

Then, a flicker of light pierced her heavy eyelids.

Someone gently took her hand.

“Little rabbit, take my hand.”

Arriving just a fraction of a second before the Grim Reaper was the warm, sharp, metallic taste of rust sliding between her teeth. The rich taste of blood spread from her mouth down her throat, miraculously soothing the needle-like agony in her burning lungs and washing away the bone-deep lethargy caused by her severe blood loss. Operating on pure survival instinct, Amiya subconsciously took small, greedy sips, drawing the vital energy for her next breath directly from that offered wrist.

“Hiss—gentle, gentle, don’t gnaw on it! Whether this actually works is still entirely theoretical, ow ow ow!!”

At the very edge of her fading, blurred memory, Amiya heard a helpless, dry laugh and a sharp intake of breath. Yet, despite the pain, that bleeding wrist was never pulled away from her lips.

Choking Originium dust, shattered ruins, and a mouthful of warm, coppery blood—this was the visceral first impression of her second lease on life.

It seems Terra just loves handing out little rabbits as free psychological counseling for lonely, traumatized people, you thought dryly. Patriot got one, Priestess got one, you got one, and hell, even Sakiko Toyokawa got one!

Watching the little Cautus finally relax her death grip on her own tension and pass out peacefully, the Doctor finally withdrew his thoroughly mangled wrist. “Are we really just picking up a rabbit…? Why does a kid’s bite hurt this damn much?”

The Shapeshifter Cluster leaned in curiously, playing along with the bizarre domestic scene perfectly. “Wow, what a powerful bite!”

Saying that, the amorphous Sarkaz lowered its head, looking entirely too eager to take a taste of that wrist just like Amiya had.

The Doctor immediately yanked his hand back, glaring. “I’ve poisoned my blood. It’s specifically formulated to kill Zuwangdao, Amon, Dio, Fang Yuan, and Shapeshifters.”

Compared to that legendary lineup of terrifying villains, the Shapeshifter—who had just been easily persuaded by the sight of Amiya—suddenly looked as harmless as a soft, fragrant little cupcake.

The Shapeshifter merely tilted its head, its curiosity doubling. “Do those entities share a common biological trait with me, or is there some highly specific, exotic ingredient in your veins?”

“You’re all just equally annoying to kill.” The Doctor abruptly killed the topic, gesturing for the Sarkaz to pick up the unconscious Amiya. The sky above the wasteland had already begun to bleed into a bruised, dark purple.

The Shapeshifter dutifully scooped up the little girl. She was as light as a Feathered Beast in its arms. The Sarkaz weighed her gently, its shifting faces morphing into an expression of genuine surprise. “Such aggressively high-activity Originium in her system, and it was suppressed just like that? Are you perhaps a Yan Monk straight out of those eastern mythological stories?”

Very good, you mused. Earth’s famous monk is surnamed Tang, and the monks on Terra follow the True Dragon’s surname, Yan. Impeccably rigorous worldbuilding!

The Doctor didn’t bother hiding his mechanics. “It’s just an accidental byproduct of an old experiment. After surviving in this hellish wasteland for so long, the fact that I can’t cast a single Originium Art is already pathetic enough. I had to give myself some kind of superpower, right?”

When he had first transmigrated, he had genuinely fantasized about being a battle-crazed, power-fantasy protagonist who could punch mountains in half! Naturally, he had drawn his own blood and studied it obsessively.

Unfortunately, even after min-maxing this one unique biological trait to its absolute limit, he didn’t evolve into a Sanguinarch Pro Max. Its only practical application was acting as a living Originium analyzer or reenacting tragic scenes from a cheap blood merchant novel…

Suddenly, the entire fabric of the world twisted violently, stretching like pulled taffy before snapping back into place.

[System Notification: Finished watching? I cannot maintain this side’s projection any longer. If you are not done, remember to save your progress and continue next time.]

The reality before your eyes violently sheared into two overlapping layers. One was the desolate Rim Billiton wasteland where you had just been traveling with the Shapeshifter and Amiya; the other was a gloomy, magnificently gothic castle, where a colossal, mechanical structure resembling an Armillary Sphere was spinning at a dizzying speed.

You looked down at your own hands. The ghostly semi-transparency that had plagued you since the vision began was rapidly solidifying into warm, opaque flesh.

Is this a parallel world, or what?

[System Notification: This is a sealed ‘possibility.’]

Everything inside the gothic castle had fallen into an absolute, eerie standstill. The “Doctor” standing in the center of the room, casually fiddling with a blood-red diamond ring on his gloved finger, slowly looked up. His gaze pierced straight through the frozen time and space, locking directly onto yours.

“I am the administrator in charge of the Phantom & Crimson Solitaire save file 0325,” he announced smoothly. “And I am also one of the fragments you once left behind.”

“Why is it 325 again?” That was your immediate, deadpan reaction.

The alternate “Doctor” smirked, the expression looking incredibly punchable on your own face. “Because our pasts have all been rendered invalid, and save files aren’t necessarily bound to objective reality. Whoever wakes up and gets activated first gets to pick their own serial number. If the ‘real’ 0325 has the guts, he can come out here and fight me for it.”

You: “…”

How the hell did he even fragment himself in the first place? Which specific Doctor is this maniac?!

You stared at this self-proclaimed “fragment” in utter bewilderment. “Then what exactly are you popping out here for? Are we seriously playing the role of a severed centipede that’s dead but refuses to stop twitching, just randomly popping out of the woodwork whenever and wherever?”

Save file 0325 suddenly became visibly ecstatic. Taking full advantage of the localized time stop on his side of the rift, he strode forward, grabbed your hand in an iron grip, and stared intensely into your eyes with a face identical to your own.

“—Because you need me, of course, my brother! We don’t need to settle for a mere quarter of a life; every single one of our fragments is your most loyal, unyielding ally. Do you still remember our ultimate goal…?”

He leaned in, his voice dropping into a fanatical, chuunibyou whisper.

“Set this world ablaze—burn the entire galaxy into our colors!”

You: “…”

Buddy, I distinctly remember my internal monologue never being this intensely cringe.

[Rhodes’s Note:

– Yan Monk: A localized reference to Tang Sanzang, the famous monk from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, whose flesh was said to grant immortality. In Arknights, the nation of Yan represents China.

– Chronicle of a Blood Merchant: A famous 1995 Chinese novel by Yu Hua about a man who sells his blood to support his family.

– Sakiko Toyokawa: A character from the anime BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, often memed in the CN community for her dramatic character arc.

– Burn the galaxy into our colors: A reference to the popular sci-fi grand strategy game Stellaris, known for its community’s tendency to roleplay as fanatical, galaxy-conquering empires.]

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent! 🙇‍♂️):

Massive thanks for reading and supporting the operation!]