Chapter 166: Gray Serpent: What the Hell, I've Seen a Ghost!
Silence. The newly connected communication line was completely quiet.
A greeting that should theoretically never appear on World Serpent's communication channel, a voice that smelled of milk powder, and words that carried an amount of information that could only be described as 'bizarre'.
Even as an eloquent individual among the Gray Serpents, never lacking in communication skills or the ability to adapt, at this moment, he still crashed.
"Hello? Don't just go silent on me. I was nice enough not to screw you over with the Seven Thunders of Retribution last time. For such an important weapon, I only asked for a little bit of money. It's not too much to say you owe me a favor, right?"
A favor, my ass!
Gray Serpent's expression darkened.
It was indeed beyond his expectations that the silver-haired girl only asked for some money to let him redeem the Third Divine Key, but for her to describe it as 'doing him a favor'?
Alright, maybe it barely counted.
But that wasn't important.
In the background of her body, the little duck felt strange about Silverwing calling Kiana and Mei her girlfriends, while the idiot Kiana was probably thinking about having them both.
However, having somewhat gotten used to the personality of her 'future self from the criminal world', Bronya focused her attention on the conversation.
"Silver Wolf of the Urals, how did you obtain this contact method?"
Gray Serpent looked up, a hoarse, electronically synthesized voice emanating from his throat.
He had investigated Bronya Zaychik's information since he began cooperating with Cocolia, and had conducted an even deeper investigation after the silver-haired girl revealed her other side. Gray Serpent knew that the Silver Wolf of the Urals possessed top-tier hacking skills.
But that was only relative to ordinary people and the surface world. Among the three major organizations fighting the Honkai, that level of hacking skill could only be described as decent.
Schicksal's development relied on excavating tombs, while World Serpent didn't even need to dig; they possessed technology passed down from the Previous Era, far surpassing the current civilization.
How could she have silently infiltrated and found an executive-level contact method?
Considering the mystery the silver-haired girl had shown, the probability wasn't zero. There was another possibility: was there a traitor in the organization?
Gray Serpent instantly transformed into Gin, smelling a rat.
"Is that sort of thing important?"
A nonchalant voice came from the other side, as if Gray Serpent had asked a trivial question like 'Have you eaten?'
What a joke. As a high-ranking executive of World Serpent, Raven, how could 'she' not know Gray Serpent's contact information?
There was a brief silence on the communication channel, followed by Gray Serpent's soft chuckle.
"Hehe, you're right. It's not important."
Like hell it isn't!
Every Gray Serpent was a walking humanoid data terminal. At this moment, he was already tracing the communication signal back to its source. He wanted to see just how much the Silver Wolf of the Urals' hacking skills exceeded what was in his intelligence reports.
Backed by the Gray Serpent Network—a super consciousness network formed by all Gray Serpents—there were few in the world who could compete with him online.
The ordinary internet was his backyard; all information in the world's databases was available to him at a glance.
"What did you mean by what you just said?"
Gray Serpent's voice was low as he traced the signal to lock onto her position.
Auntie?
Bronya Zaychik's parents were long dead, and she had no other surviving close relatives. Where would she find an auntie?
And she was asking him to connect them?
If one had to find a person who could be a point of intersection between Alexandra, an auntie, and World Serpent, Gray Serpent immediately thought of someone, especially since a certain colleague had asked him to keep an eye on Bronya.
Could it be…
"It's your company's high-ranking executive, Hare, of course."
The small figure sat cross-legged on the computer chair. On the screen, black data began to spread from the corners, forming the background of a black serpent's shadow.
A figure holding an umbrella and wearing a white mask carved with a scar stood in the center, a dangerous red light glowing in its eyes. A tangible gaze emanated from it, as if it were looking directly at the girl through the computer camera.
Gray Serpent had very easily broken through layers of firewalls and hacked into Bronya's computer.
Noticing this anomaly, the silver-haired girl just smiled, paying it no mind.
"Mr. Gray Serpent, you should know about the past between Misteln and my mother, and their relationship, right?"
Smiling, she met the gaze of the figure on the screen and nonchalantly said something that made Gray Serpent's circuits twitch. "Is there any problem with me calling her auntie?"
Misteln, is that my auntie's name?
In the background, Bronya immediately searched her mind upon hearing the name, but came up with no results. She had no impression of it at all.
"..."
The silver-haired girl's frankness caused a slight shift in Gray Serpent's mentality. It really was Hare!
Did Hare give her the contact information?
No, the silver-haired girl was asking him to connect them, so she probably hadn't been able to contact Hare, right?
Moreover, Gray Serpent didn't think Hare would take the initiative to contact Bronya!
Also, due to Misteln's presence activating the Stigmas of humans around her, and all those with activated Stigmas meeting a withered end, Gray Serpent was likely the only witness to that story.
Besides him, there were no other insiders. So how did Bronya learn of that past?
The number of questions in Gray Serpent's mind grew, and the sense of strangeness he felt from the silver-haired girl intensified—a pressure born from the 'unknown'.
"For my auntie's sake, can you let the three of us go play in the Elysian Realm!"
The silver-haired girl's tone was as lively as a child asking a zoo director if their guardian could take them into the park.
"Oh, and also, one of my little sisters wants to go inside to visit family."
Zzzt~!
The serpent shadow and Gray Serpent on the computer screen flickered as if the signal was bad. This wasn't a real image captured by the camera, but a composite image directly edited by Gray Serpent.
This showed just how powerful the silver-haired girl's words were; they nearly short-circuited him.
The sealed Elysian Realm was one of World Serpent's greatest secrets. Only high-ranking executives knew of its existence. It was completely isolated from the outside network. Besides the executives who had entered it, it was absolutely impossible for anyone else to know!
At this moment, even though he thought he understood Hare's personality and code of conduct very well, Gray Serpent had to wonder: had Hare really betrayed them?
Otherwise, there was no other explanation.
Gray Serpent's mechanical face showed no expression, but he was actually notifying the other Gray Serpents on the network, urgently contacting Hare to inquire.
"Why have you stopped talking? The connection is fine, isn't it? The network isn't having problems either."
The frozen image seemed to puzzle the silver-haired girl. She leaned her delicate body forward, cutely shaking her little duck head to check the network status. After confirming the signal was good, she looked at the screen.
"Gray Serpent, are your parts getting old? Or are you still running on an Android system with too much redundant data? Do you need us to help you clean up your system data?"
Like a child proactively helping an elderly person who can't use a smartphone clean up junk software, the silver-haired girl offered her suggestion with great enthusiasm.
Having hacked into the computer, Gray Serpent could see the angelic smile on the girl's face through the camera. Then, the silver-haired girl tilted her head, smiled lightly, and called out:
"Rin~"
It was a simple syllable. Through the gaming microphone placed on the desk, Gray Serpent heard it very clearly, even clearer than if they were face-to-face.
On the bed, amidst the messy covers, the black and red tachi automatically levitated and slowly flew in front of the silver-haired girl.
The moment Jizo Mitama entered the camera's field of view, Gray Serpent, back in the World Serpent base, froze. He stared in disbelief at the black and red tachi.
That weapon… it looked familiar.
Gray Serpent was born from the hands of Mobius. As a relic of the Previous Civilization, his database naturally contained information on all the Divine Keys.
Could that be…
A fierce red light suddenly erupted in his eyes. Gray Serpent had a bad feeling.
He saw the black and red tachi being grasped by a small, delicate, jade-like hand, and then eerie red particles began to emanate from the blade.
Gray Serpent's mechanical compound eyes, composed of optical and thermal detection components, were now clearly conveying emotion.
Before Gray Serpent's ghost-like gaze, the eerie red light converged into a cute, chibi-fied little fox girl, barely two feet tall.
Her cuteness wasn't the point. The point was that her fox ears and appearance perfectly matched a face recorded deep within his database—a face that also appeared in the information about the Twelve Divine Keys.
Combined with the name Bronya had just called out… the bad feeling transformed into an absurd sense of crisis.
What the f*ck!
He had really seen a ghost!
A real ghost!
The ghost of the girl who had died fifty thousand years ago?
"Jizo Mitama."
Her smiling cherry lips parted slightly. The silver-haired girl grasped the hilt and slowly drew the blade. The unsheathed part was surrounded by a dark red flowing light.
As the silver-haired girl infused Honkai energy into it, the flowing light burned with magnificent and mysterious colored particles.
"Go, Rin."
"Alright, Sis Silv— I mean, Big Sis Bronya~!"
With a soft, delicate voice, Rin, like a little pixie, transformed into crimson particles and flew into the computer screen.
In an extremely short amount of time, she seized control of Gray Serpent's hacking program and, in turn, invaded Gray Serpent's main body through the network.
"W-Wait!"
Even someone as calm as Gray Serpent couldn't help but feel a sense of panic at this moment. He could feel a power that he, as a mechanical being, was completely unable to resist.
A power that could destroy or control most of the Gray Serpent Network and spread to countless individual Gray Serpents.
"Don't get excited, don't get excited~ I mean no harm."
"I just saw your reaction speed was slow, so Rin and I are helping you clean up the junk files in your system."
The silver-haired girl was all smiles.
Gray Serpent was like a newborn snake facing its natural predator in its prime, a terrifying eagle from a prehistoric era, which could swallow him in one bite.
And at this moment, what caused Gray Serpent's cognitive plug-in to nearly cease all calculation was that this terrifying predator, this eagle, was using its beak to help him, a little snake, clean the dust off his body.
Second Silverwing didn't directly control Gray Serpent with Jizo Mitama. Rin entered the Gray Serpent Network and found that not all individual Gray Serpents were online.
Since she couldn't wipe them all out in one go, she temporarily left some of her power in the Gray Serpent Network and then retreated.
While Rin was in the Gray Serpent Network, Second Silverwing really did use Jizo Mitama to clean up Gray Serpent's junk, and while she was at it, she copied a tiny little bit of World Serpent intelligence.
"So? Mr. Gray Serpent, can you properly consider my proposal now?"
Gray Serpent stared at the smiling silver-haired girl and the ghost sitting on her shoulder, speechless.
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on Patreon. with 50 advanced chapters available on Patreon
patreon.com/Leanzin