Ch'en Hui-chieh walked straight forward, searching for the Hana Association. Very soon, she found the striking Hana Association headquarters at the head of Alley One.
"Hello? Anyone here? Personnel exchange..."
She lightly knocked on the door, softly calling out inside. Soon, someone walked over and opened the door to Hana Association for her.
"…Please come in."
A Sarkaz Infected opened the door, wearing a long white coat. After looking Ch'en Hui-chieh up and down, he led her into the building.
"Hai-san is waiting for you inside."
Hai? If I recall correctly from the exchange materials, he should be the Chairman of the Hana Association…
Mentally recalling details about the Hana Association, Ch'en Hui-chieh followed the Infected into an inner room.
"Hai-san, your visitor is here."
The Sarkaz knocked lightly on the door, then stepped aside. Ch'en Hui-chieh stepped forward, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door.
The next moment, she saw Hai—raising his head from a mountain of paperwork, fixing her with eyes utterly devoid of life or emotional fluctuation.
"…Officer Ch'en, correct? Welcome to the City."
Hai sighed faintly, stood up from behind the towering stacks of documents, and walked to Ch'en Hui-chieh as he spoke.
Meanwhile, Ch'en subtly glanced at the heap of papers on Hai's desk—judging by her experience at Lungmen's Guard Department, there must be at least two hundred documents there…
What a tough job, she couldn't help thinking.
Of course, she had no idea about the fate about to befall her.
"That Wei Yenwu-san would willingly send you here was a bit of a surprise. But this exchange will officially begin only after you return. Due to certain circumstances in the City, our own staff will accompany you back to Lungmen. Please bear this in mind."
As Hai spoke, he handed Ch'en a pen and a contract.
"From today onward, you'll temporarily be considered an external member of Hana Association's Section One. We'll issue you a Fixer Certificate, though without assigning you a rank."
"In these two months, the amount of work you'll be handling... may not be small. Do you have the capacity and resolve?"
Hai seemed to carefully choose his words as he asked.
After signing, Ch'en lifted her head, calmly meeting Hai's utterly dim gaze.
"Of course. I can handle issues like this."
"That's excellent."
Hai finally smiled faintly. He patted Ch'en Hui-chieh's shoulder, and with perfect calmness said:
"Then, I'll leave these documents to you. I need to head out for fieldwork."
"?"
Confused, Ch'en Hui-chieh turned her head—but was stunned to realize Hai had already disappeared without a trace.
At that moment, countless thoughts rushed through her mind…
Yet in the end, they boiled down to a single notion.
Wait, was I tricked, or was Wei Yenwu tricked???
Holding her head, Ch'en Hui-chieh walked painfully toward the desk of paperwork, letting out a sigh.
But then, she suddenly noticed something unexpected lying atop the documents…
She picked up a slip labeled "Gift for Officer Ch'en," curiosity piqued, and flipped it over.
"[Identity Extraction Ticket]… 'tear ticket to exchange for Identity.' What is this?"
...
After leaving the Hana Association, Hai immediately rushed toward distant Kazimierz.
He estimated it wouldn't take more than a day before arriving there.
He needed to hurry and provide support. The manpower on X's side was probably insufficient. Though he had successfully escaped the overtime at Hana Association, ultimately, Hai was still heading to Kazimierz precisely to work overtime…
For Hai, overtime was probably an inescapable fate.
Thinking about this, even he couldn't help but let out a long, heavy sigh.
How truly sad…
At the same time, Lobotomy Corporation's new branch was undergoing intense construction. With substantial resources poured in, its building speed was nothing short of miraculous.
And Lobotomy's reason for setting up an extra branch in Kazimierz… was actually quite simple.
They needed a new facility specifically to contain one particularly powerful Abnormality.
The other branches already contained numerous WAW-level Abnormalities. By X's estimation, adding another ALEPH-level Abnormality to them risked overwhelming their manpower. To avoid such issues, X, after careful consideration, decided to build an entirely new branch.
And this branch would hold just a single ALEPH-level Abnormality.
Of course, it wouldn't be Nothing There. Taking that thing out would itself pose enormous problems.
The ideal situation would be freshly extracting an ALEPH-level Abnormality and immediately placing it under containment. Thus, after prolonged thought, Lobotomy Corporation chose Kazimierz as the extraction site.
There wasn't any special reason—it was mainly because Don Quixote was here. If anything really went wrong, at least with Don Quixote around, there was a bit more hope…
As for the Well used to extract the Abnormality, Lobotomy Corporation had no ideal alternatives. Thus, their choice was to use the massive quantities of corpses collected from the Three-Nation Coalition, combined with embryonic nervous systems, extracting still-active neural tissues and fusing them together.
By this method, they created a huge artificial neural network. Although it would be disposable, at least it granted them one chance to draw "water" from the "river."
This single-use Well had already been installed beneath Lobotomy's Kazimierz branch.
Standing atop a high point in Kazimierz, X gazed down at the city and the distant tournament arena, exhaling softly.
"I hope you all can hold out…"
He murmured quietly to himself.
"After all, the extraction won't officially happen for a little while yet…"
"In the meantime, we must gather even more emotions from the knight competitions… to ensure the Abnormality we extract reaches ALEPH-level…"
...
During the branch's construction, Don Quixote naturally hadn't been idle.
He excitedly ran off to the knight registration office. Meanwhile, Nearl sat on a park bench, deeply pondering what exactly had led things to turn out like this…
Maybe it was because she'd been so moved by Don Quixote's attitude back then, that she'd said something without really thinking it through?
And just as she was lost in existential contemplation, Don Quixote's excited voice suddenly called out from in front of her. She lifted her head to see Don Quixote eagerly waving a certificate in front of her eyes.
"Hey! Nearl! Look at this!"
"It's a Competitive Knight's Certificate! Let's go! We're off to the Knight Tournament!"