Shrouded Seascape

The tiny sky-blue flower remained unmoving even after a few seconds, but the living wall behind it abruptly opened.

Vines, shrubs, flowers, and grass—a vibrant forest path appeared before everyone.

"Let's go. Sir Attendant of the Gods has invited us inside," the priest said. He stepped forward and walked beyond the living wall. The others quickly followed suit.

Charles looked around while pondering how to achieve his goal.

He still had no idea the reason behind this island's existence, so he could only act according to what was going to happen next.

From what he knew about the Foundation, however, Charles was convinced that this island wasn't made for them to play house on it. There had to be dangerous beings on this island, and they could become his helpers.

A perfectly circular pond was at the end of the forest path. The water wasn't deep, barely reaching their ankles. The priest led them to the middle of the pond and waited patiently.

One of the crew members bent down, scooped up some water from the pond with his hands, and drank it.

"Boss!" the crew member exclaimed in surprise, "This isn't seawater. It's drinkable!"

The captain was a bit exasperated as he glared at his crew member. He felt like his crew had just embarrassed him before the gods. "So what if it's drinkable?! Stand up straight!"

Just then, it started raining in the forest, drenching everyone down below.

The rain soon disappeared, and gusts of wind blew across them.

Charles instantly realized what was happening. They had just been disinfected, and the fact that they were disinfected meant that they had to be going to an important location.

The group moved forward, and Charles' deduction was proven in just a few steps.

The living wall next to them abruptly cracked open, and two people wearing black hazmat suits walked toward them. They waved their right hands, which were wearing rubber gloves, signaling them to follow suit.

The crew was uneasy, but they had no choice and could only follow the two figures in black.

Everything beyond the living wall was covered in wood, but the greenery looked attractive and deliberate compared to the haphazard growth of the forest outside.

The minimalistic architectural style of the interior told Charles that he was definitely inside one of the Foundation's buildings. It was a familiar environment to Charles, but the Haikors were terrified by the unfamiliar surroundings.

"Sir Attendant of the Gods, um... we just need a little fresh water. After getting the water, we'll leave immediately," the captain said, sounding uneasy.

"It's not that simple." Due to the hazmat suit, the voice of the figure sounded a bit muffled. "You must be interrogated before you can leave. Not a single detail can be overlooked. There's a new project here, and the protocols are strict."

"Sir Attendant of the Gods, we really—"

"Just call me Smith," the other figure wearing a black hazmat suit said, "We work in different departments, but we're still colleagues in the end. Don't be so formal toward me.

"And don't make things difficult for me, too. I can't intervene with the decisions here. As I said, there is a strict protocol that must be followed. It's like a program, and once it is triggered, it has to be executed at all costs. No one can intervene."

While the bald captain was talking to the figures clad in a black hazmat suit, Charles took advantage of that opportunity to take a good look around. He had seen a similar facility layout—the layout of Laboratory 2 and Laboratory 3.

If the layout of this facility was consistent with the layouts of both Laboratory 2 and Laboratory 3, then there had to be a containment floor downstairs.

From Charles' experience, every single project that had to be contained on a separate island spelled trouble, so something dangerous had to be under containment down there.

Regardless, he had to confirm his suspicions first.

Charles gently bit Shindy's eye socket with his fangs.

Shindy nodded in tacit understanding and took out a fake eye from his sleeve. The moment he scratched his forehead, Charles jumped out of the eye socket. Shindy then pushed the fake eye into his eye socket while Charles hid in his palm.

When Shindy put his hand down, Charles crawled into his clothes, crawled down his leg, and finally to the floor. Charles scaled the walls and eventually scuttled upside down across the ceiling.

He headed toward the stairs and took advantage of the terrain to hide in an effort to avoid being spotted by any patrolling sentries or surveillance cameras.

Fortunately, the facility's internal security seemed weaker than it appeared on the outside, as Charles had yet to see any patrolling sentries.

Charles descended and saw offices belonging to the many different departments of the Foundation. Upon reaching the second floor underground, Charles came to a halt upon catching a glimpse of his own head.

He turned and confirmed through a window that he was not hallucinating. A projection of his own head was actually floating above a desk in a room.

What is the Foundation planning to do to me? Charles thought. He looked around carefully and saw that there was someone inside the room. The other party had their back turned toward Charles, seemingly engrossed in writing something. At the sight, Charles decisively made his move. He crawled into the room through the window and rushed toward the desk.

Upon landing on the keyboard being projected on the desk, the projection of Charles' head disappeared, and a line of text appeared—"Charles' Psychological Profile."

Charles lifted his spider legs and flipped the file open, only to be stupefied by the following discovery. The file contained a ton of information about him, and they were extremely detailed.

The Foundation seemed to be attempting to extrapolate Charles' mental, emotional, and behavioral characteristics from his personality, living environment, occupation, and upbringing.

For some reason, the Foundation couldn't extract information from Charles' brain, so they had no choice but to use Charles' environment as pieces of information to make deductions about the kind of individual the latter was.

Basking in the sunlight of sunny Hope Island, Charles broke out into a cold sweat upon seeing the conclusions that the researchers had reached. They were far too accurate!

The Foundation had accurately deduced his desires and thoughts!

All of a sudden, the door next to him was pushed open. Charles hurriedly crawled behind the table. Just as he stabilized himself, a pair of legs wrapped in black stockings appeared before him. "Huh? 2854, did you touch my stuff?"

"Who would touch your stuff? Your research has already been uploaded to the central computer. If I want to see what you're researching, I can just download it myself and read it then."

Charles' heart tightened at the response.

The realization that every single member of the Foundation could see his inner self made Charles feel as if he had been stripped naked and shoved toward a spotlight for everyone to gawk at.

It wasn't a great feeling at all.

Unfortunately, things were only going to get worse, as the fact that the Foundation could make a complete profile of him meant that they could do the same for Julio, Jax, Jenny, and even those lunatics of the Fhtagn Covenant.

Once the Foundation became capable of predicting all of their moves, it wouldn't matter even if they had a trump card to turn the tables around, they'd still inevitably lose!

The Foundation would become capable of manipulating them into doing their bidding in surreptitious ways. Eventually, they'd be able to initialize Plan Three once again.

Fortunately, Charles had discovered what they had been doing behind the scenes all this while. It wasn't too late for him to ruin their plans. The information he had just obtained alone was enough for Charles to feel that this operation was worthwhile. His efforts had really paid off in spades.

When the commotion died down, Charles crawled down the table and slipped out of the room through a gap in the wall. He had just squeezed himself out of the room and had yet to even catch his breath when he froze upon recalling something.

Didn't they just say that the research has been uploaded to the central computer? If I can somehow access their central computer, doesn't that mean I'll find more top-secret information?

With that in mind, Charles was no longer in a hurry to find the contained project.

If he could find the information that he needed here, then why would he even go to SITE 6? Charles searched the floors room by room, looking for unattended computers.

Upon finding an unattended virtual computer, Charles immediately took advantage of that opportunity to use it. In no time, a search bar appeared in front of Charles, but he froze upon seeing it.

He had too many things to search for that he had no idea what to search for first.

Charles hesitated for a while before eventually jumping a few times on the virtual keyboard.

Just like that, the digits, "001", appeared in the search bar.

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