Shrouded Seascape

When Charles came to his senses again, he found himself in the Governor's Mansion on sunny Hope Island. A group of people was staring anxiously at him.

"What exactly happened over there?" Anna asked with her hands on her hips.

Charles hurriedly peered into SITE 2 through his eyeball spider and discovered that SITE 2 had actually lost power. Charles was ecstatic at the sight; their plan had actually succeeded.

However, Charles' heart was abruptly gripped by anxiety. The Foundation was so powerful, so would they really go down so easily? Charles' keen instincts honed by his years of exploration out at sea told him that it couldn't be that easy.

With that in mind, Charles controlled the eyeball spider and made it hop onto Deya's shoulder.

"Let's go out and find out the Foundation's state right now."

Deya pointed at Tobba sitting on the floor. "What about him?"

"Ignore him. Let him stay here for now."

The eyeball of the spider rotated, looking outside through the nearby window.

Upon walking out of the streets, Captain Deya immediately tried to contact his team members. He pressed on his earpiece a few times before turning to the eyeball spider on his shoulder.

"There is zero power. I can't contact the others, too. How did you do this?"

All of a sudden, there was a whoosh, and Charles looked up to see a towering black shadow streaking across the sky. The black shadow was none other than Pede.

"Don't ask so many questions. Let's just go to Restricted Zone 19, where A2 is being detained," Charles replied. Their enemy was the Foundation, and there was no such thing as being too careful against them. He had to ensure that they'd only be exposed to the minimum amount of risk.

Deya nodded with a solemn expression. He pulled on the collar of his trench coat and walked past the other clones standing in place. The clones nearby were bewildered; they had no idea what was going on.

Soon, they arrived at their destination. Amidst the dim lights scattered throughout the zone, they saw members of a mobile task force cordoning off Restricted Zone 19.

"Do you want to go in? I can sneak in now," Deya said. He opened his trench coat, revealing some digits on his chest.

"Without any power, I'm sure things have become quite chaotic inside. Go in and take a look. We have to find a way to rescue A2!"

"Mmhm." Deya grabbed Charles and tucked him into his eye socket. Then, he started walking toward the wall of people in the distance.

Deya was the Captain of Mobile Task Force: Behemoth, and his identity was pretty useful amidst the chaos. He was quickly recruited as one of Restricted Zone 19's temporary guards.

The surroundings were so dark that no one noticed the fact that Deya was missing one of his eyes, even though both of his eyes were intact just a few moments ago.

Charles had learned about A2's location through the latter himself. He crawled along the ceiling and made a beeline for his destination.

However, he soon stumbled upon a thick wall that looked to be a full meter thick.

Clearly, the Foundation was never the type to fool around in an emergency. They were ruthless enough to seal everything inside the facility; there was no way a physical entity could get into the deeper regions of the facility without the Foundation's permission.

Charles wanted Sparkle to teleport Linda over here, as Linda's special abilities—her stomach acid and her ability to phase through objects—were useful when dealing with fortifications against physical entities.

With that in mind, Charles immediately started drawing a portrait of Sparkle using spider silk. Before he could complete the drawing, however, the steel wall in the distance rose up slowly, and A2's figure walked out from beyond the steel wall.

A pair of sharp eyes were behind A2's round-frame glasses, and it was proven by how she immediately noticed Charles on the ceiling. "Charles, we've stumbled upon a rare opportunity! Come with me! We must take control of SITE 2!"

Charles promptly jumped onto A2's shoulder.

A2 put away the light source in her hand and felt her way along the wall to their destination. Fortunately, A2 was familiar with the facility. Soon, she found an air duct and forced it open.

A2 squeezed herself through the ducts until she landed on a busy street.

A2 then made her way into a nearby building.

After many twists and turns, they soon found themselves inside a dark room full of suspended screens. The room was also filled with peculiar devices that Charles couldn't understand at all.

"Don't rush. The Foundation has a contingency plan in the event of an attack on the central computer. The reason they didn't immediately restore power is that they want to know whether the attacker is a deep sea god of the Subterranean Sea or something else," A2 said, taking off her clothes.

Charles saw that A2's slender figure was covered in what looked like physical ports. Crisp, clicking noises echoed in the room as A2 plugged the cables from underneath the screens into her ports.

A2's slim figure was clearly more complex than it appeared. In fact, she seemed to be made entirely of metal. Of course, Charles couldn't say for sure whether she was a robot or had simply replaced parts of her body with metal implants.

However, Charles was leaning more toward the latter. The idea of a robot getting influenced by an evil god like Fhtagn just sounded extremely absurd to Charles.

"There are plenty of beings more powerful than us in the Subterranean Sea. There's a reason we've been hiding, and we've been hiding on purpose. If hiding is impossible, then we don't mind playing dead as well. It can be effective, after all."

"We only have thirty seconds remaining. Once the red alert is lifted, the central computer's backup will immediately connect to the network. The backup is at its most vulnerable state while it's assimilating data from the Foundation. We have to exploit that brief weakness to tamper with its logic model," A2 said.

Charle remained calm as he observed A2's every single move. "Are you sure you can handle it?"

A tinge of confidence suffused A2's face. "Of course. The backup was made by me and my team. With the backup in hand, the Foundation will effectively be under my control!"

A2's words had yet to finish echoing throughout the room when everything around them suddenly lit up—the Foundation had finally restored power to SITE 2!

The suspended screens flashed, and a waterfall of green texts appeared before them. A2 standing stiffly with cables protruding out of her began convulsing right before Charles.

Time ticked by just like that, and Charles suddenly noticed a burning smell.

Something was burning…

Sparks flew from A2, and she revealed a look of anxiety and pain. "Damn it! My clone is standing in my way!! Just a bit more! Just a bit more! Charles! I don't care what you're going to do! Just go and attract their attention!"

"Hurry up and go! This is our last chance!" A2 screamed.

Charles spat thin, spider silk from his abdomen and started drawing a portrait of his daughter on the floor. His plan was to teleport his true body outside and attract everyone's attention.

Just as the drawing was about to be completed, Charles suddenly stopped and stared calmly at A2, whose convulsions were becoming more and more violent with each passing second.

"The central computer has already been destroyed. I'm satisfied with just that. I'm the kind of person who likes to quit while I'm ahead, so I think I'm just going to stop here."

A2 cast a disbelieving gaze at the spider not too far away from her. Her voice was trembling as she said, "Do you even know what you're saying?! You're going to get us all killed!!"

"Actually, you're the only one who's going to die. I'm just going to lose an eyeball," Charles said, writing his message on the table using his spider silk.

The next second, A2's figure ceased convulsing. The tiny room around them rapidly peeled away. The walls around them fell outward, and Charles was inundated by a dazzling white light.

The outside world had changed. Charles found himself in a completely sealed space with three towering Pedes looming over him. To make matters worse, high-tech weapons of a variety of sizes were pointed directly at him.

Charles looked around and found a glass wall not too far away. He saw the familiar faces of the GK Council members beyond the glass wall, and all of them were staring quietly at him.

It turned out that everything was just a trap—a trap that the GK Council had created for Charles. If Charles had truly teleported his true body over here, he would have fallen into their trap.

Without him, the Subterranean Sea's deterrence would disappear.

"How did you see through it? There were no flaws at all." The voice of the raven-headed K9 echoed.

"Actually, I didn't see through it. I just felt like it was too risky." The eyeball spider wrote on the floor. "The difference between us is stark—you guys can afford to lose many times to me, but you just have to beat me once, and it's all over for us."

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