Moments passed as the myriad of fantasy creatures organized themselves in the town square, their wary eyes fixed on the white-haired woman. To them, she was a walking impossibility. She was entirely devoid of the faint, ambient energy that normally resided within all living things. The locals called this force Anima—the energy of the soul—a poetic, almost religious notion she found mildly amusing. To Yuruki, bound by the immutable laws of thermodynamics, it was simply energy. Whether it functioned like the kinetic energy of matter that generated heat, or behaved as a spectrum of light, she preferred to call it ether.
Yet, she couldn't deny the constructive absurdity of this world. It challenged the laws of constants and energy she knew from her past life. If this reality had been forged entirely by randomness and the slow crawl of evolution, the mathematical probability of its ordered existence was so infinitesimally small you could safely call it impossible. Perhaps that was the root of her atheism, a trait common among her kind. To attribute the complexities of life to a silent, cosmic creator who neither responded nor listened felt useless to her pursuit of knowledge. In scientific terminology: if a hypothesis cannot be proven false or true, it remains entirely baseless.
But still, that's not my problem, she reminded herself.
Children peeked out from behind firmly shut doors as the crowd gathered in the square—the administrative and economic heart of the town. Beneath her completely emotionless exterior, Yuruki's imagination formed a tight, anticipatory smile. Come on, where are the people at?
And there they were, a dazzling display of aggressive polymorphism. Humanoids with vibrant yellow or deep purple skin stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Some bore the distinct visages of foxes, a biological quirk that profoundly irritated Yuruki's sense of anatomy; the cranial ratio simply couldn't support the brain mass required for complex, abstract thinking. Others had massive, brutish faces, curling horns, or wildly varying ear lengths. Even after weeks in this town, she couldn't help but be fascinated—and slightly weirded out—by the sheer diversity of the organisms. She hypothesized that either a hyper-accelerated form of evolution or a very eccentric creator was actively mutating these people.
My back freaking hurts, she thought with a silent sigh, but I have to do this. Even if I don't want to.
Slapping on a charismatic, perfectly manufactured mask of a smile, she projected her voice over the crowd. "Hello there! I am the owner of the facility—the very same one you've been calling the 'monster' that is destroying your lives!"
Before the stunned crowd could break into a murmur of outrage, Yuruki raised her voice, cutting them off to prevent the hatred from taking root.
"And don't worry! Your lives are about to be made significantly easier because I am here."
On cue, sleek robots and hovering drones emerged, extending mechanical arms to distribute pristine clothing and nutrient-dense food to the humanoids. The locals shrank back, eyeing the machines with profound doubt, refusing to take the offerings.
"We will also be providing educational courses for all of you," Yuruki continued smoothly. "Since you cannot simply work in the facility without prior knowledge, and frankly, your current bodily capabilities are not quite optimal yet."
Beside her, Adam visibly relaxed. The plan was finally in motion; this was exactly what they wanted.
"For the collective, am I right, folks?!" Yuruki smiled, attempting to drive the statement home.
"What do you mean by that?!" someone shouted from the back.
The tension violently spiked as the Magisteers stepped forward. They were hollow "dolls"—humanoids who had been killed by the local Witch and reanimated as incredibly powerful, magically bonded servants. Their slow, deliberate, and terrifying advance made the rest of the townsfolk lose their nerve, stumbling backward in fear.
But one small figure held their ground. A hobbit-like creature pushed to the front, thinking furiously for a moment before speaking up.
"We can't work for you without owning anything for ourselves. That's someone who rules everything. How can we trust you with our future?"
Yuruki looked down at the dimi, brave soul.
"I..."