Chapter 136: You're Also a Spendthrift Prodigy Who Doesn't Want Six-Stars, Huh?

The Director of the Rhine Lab Ecology Section possessed an absolutely terrifying amount of physical strength. She hoisted her partner onto her shoulder with a single hand, her boots splashing heavily as she sprinted along the muddy footprints left behind in the sewer.

“Doctor, if hanging like that is uncomfortable, you can always sit on my shoulder!” Muelsyse offered cheerfully, not even slightly out of breath. “I once lifted an out-of-control combine harvester, so you weigh practically nothing!”

You were already so violently shaken up that the world was spinning into a blurry mess, but upon hearing her chipper voice, you stubbornly forced your head up. “…Don’t worry about me. I’m only staying silent because I’m carefully reviewing, urp, the combat traces. Urp… I’m definitely not dizzy!”

‘Why the hell is everyone from Terra this ridiculously strong? You’re an Arts caster, not Saria!’

“Oh, Saria is way stronger than me,” Muelsyse chimed in, perfectly reading your mind. “She could stop that harvester with just one hand!”

Fine. You completely surrender. This entire planet is populated by a bunch of terrifying primitives.

The girl’s slender arms offered absolutely no soft or gentle touch; instead, they clamped down with the terrifying, unyielding force of an industrial hydraulic press. You truly admired those legendary transmigrator predecessors who dared to build massive harems after crossing over into high-martial worlds. Facing a Saiyan-like beautiful girl who could casually punch through solid concrete monsters and possessed a muscle density at least eight times that of D32 Steel, how could anyone possibly feel happy accidentally bumping their head into her chest? Had those guys never walked face-first into a brick wall before they transmigrated?

Muelsyse was currently overflowing with the fiery enthusiasm to prove to the Director that she could perfectly adapt to the newly restructured Rhine Lab, eager to show she was far more trustworthy than profit-seeking merchants like Justin. She carried her living GPS… no, wait, her partner, who for some reason suddenly looked completely lifeless. Whenever the trail of footprints broke, she would give you a vigorous shake, wait for the half-dead person slung over her shoulder to weakly point a finger in the right direction, and then resume her mad dash.

“Doctor, this direction is about to lead straight out of the city limits. Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“Sure, I’m sure, please just stop asking. I’m begging you…” Please stop trying to make small talk with someone suffering from terminal motion sickness. Maintaining even a single shred of dignity right now is already difficult enough!

“Alright, hold on tight, Doctor. We’re going to accelerate!”

Wait, what do you mean accelerate? Aren’t you already sprinting at top speed?!

As your internal ominous intuition alarm blared at maximum volume, Muelsyse planted her right foot firmly on the ground. The moisture in the air rapidly deformed and compressed around her boots like solidifying water, and then—

Boom!

She launched forward like a high-pressure water gun firing at maximum output. At that exact moment, you could have sworn you heard the sharp, cracking sonic boom of someone breaking the sound barrier.

…And this was precisely why your originally cool, calculated, and timely rescue operation had instantly devolved into Muelsyse’s cool and timely solo rescue.

Nightingale, a severe Infected, hadn’t even collapsed yet, but you were already on the verge of passing out entirely.

“Urp… don’t hold me up. Just let me lie flat on the ground and recover my soul, urp…”

Nightingale herself was almost too sick to stand straight, her breathing ragged, yet she still forced herself to reach down and pull you up from the dirt. “Just to catch a petty thief like me, did you really need to hire such an absurdly powerful bodyguard?”

To avoid involving innocent civilians in the crossfire, she had specifically dragged her pursuers toward this desolate, uninhabited area outside the city, only for her Oripathy to suffer an acute, paralyzing flare-up. She was just about to be captured alive by the mercenaries, but then these two bizarre people arrived like a pair of rampaging bandits, indiscriminately pummeling every single armed guard on the scene, and somehow ended up saving her life entirely by mistake.

“Urp, how can you be so incredibly ungrateful? We clearly came all this way just to save you, urp. I wouldn’t be crazy enough to go through this torture just for a stupid box of dirt, urp…” You felt deeply indignant at the accusation and struggled to stand, nearly knocking both of you back down into the mud.

Nightingale looked even more utterly speechless. “You knew there was only dirt in that box… oh, wait, you knew I was stealing it, so why didn’t you try to stop me?”

A short distance ahead, Muelsyse waved her hand with a cool, effortless grace, gathering countless water manifolds to form fluid clones, single-handedly suppressing and controlling all the remaining enemies on the field.

“It’s precisely because you only took a box of dirt. Why would I bother stopping you? If you want to take it, just take it. I’m a guy who routinely steals from my own uncle’s entire family!” The dizzying symptoms of motion sickness finally began to subside, allowing you to sit properly on the ground, locking eyes with Nightingale.

Fake fanfiction: The author’s original, overwhelmingly powerful protagonist descends from the sky like a god, uses their omniscient knowledge of the plot to perfectly resolve the tragic character’s past trauma with a few deep words, solves all immediate problems with thunderous, flawless means, and they walk hand-in-hand to welcome a beautiful tomorrow together.

Real fanfiction: The physically weak, motion-sick transmigrator Doctor excitedly educates Nightingale about his bizarre collection of operators, including but not limited to: a wanted fugitive girl, a psychopathic killer older sister, a feline who once actively tried to unite entire armies to exterminate the Sarkaz race, a deeply anti-human boy, and a literal Red Dragon who leads a violent anti-government organization. The two of them sit in the dirt watching the water elf slaughter everything in sight, hoping the characters will just heal and grow on their own, welcoming a tomorrow where simply surviving is considered a massive victory and the Doctor wins big by doing absolutely nothing.

The characters have their own lives, their own trajectories, and their own growth. You firmly believe that Nightingale can resolve her own psychological trauma!

After all, you haven’t even come close to resolving your own psychological problems yet… Trying to act as a therapist right now wouldn’t be very convincing anyway.

Hmm… Nightingale still looked highly suspicious of the true nature of Rhodes Island, but the gratitude in her eyes was genuine. Even if there was a blazing pit of fire waiting for her ahead, you had at least saved her life today. The absolute worst she could do was accompany this seemingly unreliable, rambling guy and jump right back into the fire.

Hahahaha, surviving is good. Dead? If I end up dead, we’ll talk about it then.

Just at that moment, your mobile terminal buzzed sharply, and Yato’s masked figure appeared on the glowing electronic screen. “Doctor, a group of armed search soldiers just attacked our position. We’ve completely dealt with them, but the shop assistant is a witness to the entire incident. What should we do with her?”

The camera panned slightly, revealing Goldenglow huddled tightly under a ruined table, trembling like a leaf.

Yato frowned beneath her mask. “Normally, standard protocol dictates we would choose to recruit such Infected who have narrowly escaped misfortune and may face subsequent deadly threats, at least bringing them on as reserve operators… but she is completely unwilling to leave.”

From beneath the shattered table, a tearful, choked, but incredibly firm voice suddenly sounded. “I don’t want to leave! Thank you so much for saving me, and I know it’s dangerous here, but I’m almost done saving up enough money to finally open a barbershop. I just want to open a barbershop that belongs only to me…”

There were so many safe places in the world to open a shop, but she only wanted her Green Spark.

Rosmontis leaned closer to the terminal’s camera, her large eyes blinking as she added in a very low, soft voice. “Doctor, I feel like she seems very determined about this.”

This was a deep question you hadn’t even bothered to consider before.

What Susie actually wanted most in the world, all along, was the very first tragedy shown in the plot—the humble little barbershop she had painstakingly saved up for years to buy, the exact same one that was destined to be burned down.

Before going to the ancient castle, you hadn’t considered this kind of moral problem at all. You only wanted to collect operators, acting as cold and calculating as a hollow person. Closure gave me humanity, this is realism.

Without enduring this specific ordeal of pain, without having her dreams burned to ash, would Susie still eventually become the Goldenglow in your memories?

You only liked the Goldenglow in your memories, the powerful caster who had survived the fire, but should you actively force these horrific pains upon her just for the sake of her growth?

You looked quietly at the other side of the video feed, at the pink-haired feline girl trembling under the table, terrified out of her mind, yet with eyes that sparkled with an unyielding dream—Susie.

Fine. This was the very first time you had subconsciously called her by her real name instead of the operator code name locked in your memories.

Actually, the moment you chose to call her by her real name, you had already made up your mind, hadn’t you?

“Fine, I’ll take a gamble,” you sighed softly, making a massive compromise in your grand, overarching plan for the first time in a true sense. “At least, please accept this Rhodes Island name tag. We will help you deal with the immediate aftermath of this attack. If one day you change your mind, or if you ever need help, remember to come find me, okay?”

“Rhodes Island will prove with our actions exactly why we invited you.”

You really weren’t going to use that twisted Social Darwinist theory to raise children.

You believed she would eventually transform into the Goldenglow in your memories, but pain was simply pain; there was absolutely no need to forcibly glamorize suffering or orchestrate tragedy.

Even if she didn’t get that cruel opportunity to grow up overnight through fire and loss, she was naturally destined to become brave as she grew older, to forge her own strong principles, and to eventually reunite with you on the landship… Just assume you believe in the natural convergence of world lines.

At least for right now, you had to let her realize her simple, beautiful wish.

“Thank you for your hard work, Ms. Susie. I will contact the person in charge of this local Rhodes Island branch shortly to officially purchase and sell this shop to you. After all, we still need to deal with some messy aftermath here, so congratulations in advance to the new store manager on your appointment.”

Yato glanced back over her shoulder, swiftly switched the mobile terminal’s public channel back to a secure private conversation, and nodded quietly in complete agreement with the instructions from the other end of the line. Susie tentatively poked half her head out from under the table, still trembling.

They were really… letting me go?

After the chaotic battle that had just erupted and been resolved so terrifyingly quickly, looking at the heavily armed peacekeepers knocked unconscious on the ground, no matter how slow Susie was, she should have fully realized that this group of people was anything but simple.

Not to mention anything else, that strange man who kept emphasizing that he was a cat had displayed vicious, elusive, and deadly movements, almost taking down the entire scene by himself in a blur of shadows. Now, he was just standing there looking down at his own hands, muttering something cryptic about it “not being an illusion.” It was blatantly obvious that his clumsy, harmless behavior during the day was nothing more than a carefully crafted disguise.

I’m actually going to have my own shop?!

As the sheer panic finally began to fade, Susie’s second reaction was pure, unadulterated disbelief.

Rhodes Island… exactly what kind of organization was it? What was the true identity of that mysterious person on the screen who so lightly, so casually wished me success as a store manager and bought a building on a whim?

Out on the desolate wilderness outside the city, Muelsyse had already easily taken down the large mercenary force entirely by herself. You and Nightingale were sitting back-to-back in the dirt, catching your breath. Halfway through assigning the final cleanup commands, you couldn’t help but let out a dry, self-deprecating laugh.

Catching a four-star and letting a six-star go… Your brain really must be completely broken from staying up too late grinding stages. Whatever, I’ll just come back to her shop for a few more haircuts to make up for the massive strategic loss.

[Rhodes’s Note: “Stealing from my uncle’s whole family” is a meta-joke referring to the Arknights player base’s habit of aggressively farming and hoarding materials, often joking about robbing the wealthy Nearl family (Mlynar) of their resources. The “catching a four-star and letting a six-star go” line is a self-deprecating gacha joke; the Doctor is lamenting his terrible luck and decision-making by securing a lower-rarity operator while willingly letting a top-tier powerhouse like Goldenglow slip away to live a normal life.]

[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!]