"What does it matter what day it is... today you finally have some free time, right?" Mercer leaned in with a smile, while V blushed and stared at him, "You're never honest even when you're busy... acting like a rogue."
He eagerly slipped into the warm bed where V had been sleeping, closely admiring her beautiful face.
"Who can resist such beauty... only someone strange would, right?"
Mercer's sweet talk made her blush even more, but soon after, she aggressively pushed him down and sat on him, "You dared to sneakily hold Lucy's hand while kissing me earlier? You think I wouldn't know?"
"I wasn't sneaking... I was doing it openly..." Mercer tried to explain, but her gaze made him switch topics in time, "V, you look really beautiful today."
She huffed, feeling a bit shy but still boldly showing off her alluring figure under the black veil, "You're one lucky bastard..."
"Yeah, I've always thought... I'm really lucky." Mercer smirked.
"Don't mess around... anyway..." V's face turned red, as she looked at Mercer, finally blurting out, "If you dare make fun of me, you're dead!"
At first, Mercer didn't understand what she meant.
It wasn't until V awkwardly started that he couldn't help but laugh, pulling her close and taking the lead, "Let me do it."
"...I'm this old, and it's my first time... is this embarrassing?" V blushed and said, "Just so you know, it's not like no one's chasing me, it's just that those idiots before only wanted this, and I wasn't interested..."
"V, I'm really lucky." Mercer's expression turned sincere as he gently touched her cheek, "Truly."
V blushed, but her gaze was just as tender as she looked into his face, "I really think you've brainwashed me."
"Then I want to brainwash you for a lifetime... is that okay?" Mercer smiled, lowering his head, their eyes meeting closely.
V nervously wrapped her arms around his back, "Then you better not let me catch on while you're brainwashing me..."
"I love you, V." He whispered against her face, his voice so soft it made V feel like she was melting all over.
"...I too..."
She wasn't fond of such sappy words, but in this situation, at this moment, she still resisted her shyness and bit his ear:
"Love you."
.....
In the Cyber World, amidst the ocean of data.
Bartmos, Ultraman, and Spider Murphy quietly tilted their heads back, observing the distance.
Blue data surged like waves in the ocean, at this moment, constructing a passage resembling a tornado in the void, and on the other side, a screen-like world was vividly visible.
"The passage is open." Ultraman stared emotionlessly at the terrifying blue data — the volume of these data was extremely massive, even the visible portion to the naked eye could fill up a Busan Ghost City server's storage space.
"It seems that Mercer is indeed special." Bartmos remarked.
"Should we notify him?" Spider Murphy turned his head towards Bartmos.
"Yeah, tell him — in the beginning, he stumbled in and helped us so much, at least now, we should give him the opportunity to choose for himself, shouldn't we?" Bartmos nodded lightly.
"What if this is the last chance for the passage to open, Bartmos? We might never have another opportunity to connect with the world beyond the wall, what then?" Ultraman questioned.
Bartmos, however, laughed, "Wouldn't that also be great? It may prove that it's not a higher world over there, just by chance, two equal worlds happened to open a window due to some special coincidence."
"We might lose the chance to evolve further... that is a safer, new world, Bartmos." Ultraman emphasized.
"So, do you plan to keep it from him and mess around? You don't still think he's the newbie he used to be, do you?"
After Bartmos spoke, Ultraman merely replied with an expressionless face, "What if he decides to go back?"
"Then let him go back... what, you can't bear the thought?" Bartmos smirked, looking at her.
But Ultraman simply snorted, "We need him, don't we? As it stands, this guy might really achieve what we've been trying to, yet failing even in simulations."
"Alright, notify him, but I have to say... he might already have noticed something strange."
Just as Bartmos finished speaking.
A smiling mask silently floated down from the sky.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Mercer's cyber image suddenly appeared before the three of them, formed from an ethereal voice solidifying.
"Long time no see, Bartmos, and Murphy."
Mercer's figure emerged silently.
Compared to before, facing the three of them, he no longer looked small; choosing the Super Deep Dive State, Mercer's form, nearly becoming a pure data consciousness, now appeared enormous.
For the first time, they met almost as equals.
Bartmos gazed at Mercer's chest, where the core encased in blue data, a faintly visible spinning polyhedron, rotated, "Truly beautiful, I must admit that Ultraman might have a point; you do seem like a more advanced being."
"Alright, I permit you to make me a god statue... is this the data passage you summoned me for?" Mercer joked, then his gaze shifted to the enormous data passage visible even to the naked eye in this sea of data.
"That's right, it's because we found this in the old network that we've been able to establish a connection with you through this data channel."