The protests in the corridor finally subsided.
The Blue Cloaks, who had moments ago been red-faced and waving their arms, now stood with ashen faces, their jaws clenched tight. They no longer looked at Lynus, nor at the row of wheelchairs. Silently, uniformly, they retreated until they were behind that invisible "safety line."
Lynus let out an extremely faint sneer.
He raised his hand with exquisite elegance, using the tip of his white-gloved finger to lightly dust off his dark blue robe—even though there wasn't a speck of dust or a single crease upon it.
I am the only one. The words rolled on his tongue before he arrogantly swallowed them back. This absolute sense of control, of having everyone beneath his heel, holding the power of life and death over them, was utterly intoxicating.
He was greedily savoring this afterglow. But suddenly, a nerve in his face twitched.
His hand... was empty.
That right hand, which had been rigidly gripping something just moments ago, now hung suspended in mid-air, its palm clutching only cold air. The sensation was too abrupt, too nauseating. It was like being accustomed to holding a dead object, and when you subconsciously go to grip it again, to toy with it, you find it's not where it should be.
That thing which came at his beck and call, which went at his dismissal. That "furniture" which never resisted, which let itself be dismantled and reassembled at his whim... was not at his side.
A flicker of indescribable panic, like touching a reverse scale, violently surged up, but was instantly and forcibly suppressed by an even more morbid desire for control.
The smile on Lynus's face didn't change by a fraction of an inch. He absolutely could not let anyone see—not the Blue Cloaks who had retreated, not the Black Robe, and especially not Cassius.
Maintaining his composed posture of 'everything is under control,' his neck turned inch by inch, stiff as a rusted gear. The movement was so rigid he could almost hear the faint grating of his own cervical vertebrae.
His gaze swept the corridor like a cold searchlight. The wheelchairs were still there. The nuns were still there. The Black Robe was still there.
Then—he finally locked onto the "private possession" he was about to push into the abyss.
Erika stood before that massive French window. Far away from everyone, so far he seemed utterly detached from this world.
He was tilting his head back slightly, staring blankly at the dark red bloodstain outside the glass. That lump of mangled meat had completely slid out of the lower edge of sight, falling into some darkness where even gods couldn't pry. It left only a wide, blinding trail of blood on the impossibly clean glass, like a desperate red handprint.
The boy just stood there, quietly. Those hollow eyes stared at the vanished meat, stared at the glaring bloodstain, stared at the abyss outside the window that was capable of crushing everything.
In his pupils, there was only a stagnant pool. No fear. No resistance. Even his most basic survival instinct had been utterly drained.
The nameless fire in Lynus's chest miraculously subsided the instant it touched this 'absolute emptiness.'
He withdrew his gaze, no longer paying attention to Erika. He turned back to face that row of lifeless wheelchairs, the expressionless Black Robe, and the Blue Cloaks beyond the safety line.
Beyond the safety line, the Blue Cloaks had no energy left for anger.
The distribution of interests was always more important than dead subjects. They lowered their voices, heads together like a pack of hyenas scenting blood, fiercely fighting over the "priority pick for the next batch" Lynus had promised. Greed reignited their ashen faces. The sounds of bargaining, though kept low, still leaked out as a faint buzzing in the dead corridor, like flies circling carrion.
Lynus listened to the commotion behind him, the corner of his mouth curving again. That smile was shallow, but filled with the satiation of a predator watching hyenas fight over his leftovers.
He composed his expression, stepped forward, and walked straight to the Black Robe administrator, who stood like an iron tower. The man was so tall Lynus had to tilt his chin up slightly. But Lynus merely raised his head with sheer arrogance, the message clear—spare the talk, proceed directly with the Deep Dive protocol.
However, that seemingly emotionless Black Robe, staring at the panel in his hands, asked one superfluous question in his flat, monotonous voice:
"Do any other Abyssal Walkers have objections to clearing the queue?"
Lynus's gaze instantly froze.
An irritation cold enough to freeze the surrounding air seeped from the depths of his eyes. The annoyance coiled up his heart like a venomous snake.
This damn, rigid protocol. This hypocritical ritual of going through the motions with a bunch of trash was testing his patience. He couldn't even be bothered to listen to the Blue Cloaks' timid "waiver" responses behind him. Those voices drifted over like mosquitoes, each one proclaiming his victory, yet he found them unbearably noisy.
Enough.
He spun around violently, so fast the hem of his dark blue robe whipped through the air in a sharp arc. He strode toward the still-dazed figure before the French window.
Erika stood alone before the massive glass, still tilting his head back, staring at the dark red bloodstain outside. Most of it had already slid down; only the last bit clung to the upper edge, like a coagulated, desperate teardrop.
Without any warning. Lynus reached out with his white-gloved hand and viciously grabbed the back of Erika's collar.
The movement was as brutal as hauling livestock to slaughter. Erika's body was violently dragged away from the glass, stumbling backward, his boots screeching horribly against the metal floor.
Then, he was viciously slammed into an empty wheelchair.
The seat was stained with a dark brown, grotesque filth—whether blood or some other bodily fluid, it had long since dried into a hard crust.
THUD. Erika's thin spine hit the metal backrest heavily, emitting a dull sound like meat hitting a slab. The impact pushed the wheelchair half an inch backward.
But in that instant of pressing down, Lynus's palm abruptly faltered.
He felt it. That hand pressing on Erika's shoulder, in the microsecond of forcing the boy into the wheelchair... the body beneath his hand—that body which was always submissive, hollow as a dead object, which never reacted to any command—its muscles had instinctively tensed.
It was an extremely faint, almost negligible resistance. Not a struggle, not even a conscious movement. Just the body's most primitive instinct when being forcibly shoved into the filth of the dead. Like a dead cat being picked up by the scruff, subconsciously pulling its limbs in.
But to Lynus, it was unforgivable betrayal.
His pupils contracted. That panic of finding his "furniture" out of place, combined with this extreme irritation, instantly ignited in his bloodstream. It mutated into a morbid, almost unstoppable frenzy and brutality.
You're hiding from me? The words roared frantically in his mind.
He violently grabbed that coarse, purplish-black restraint strap. Its edges were soaked with stains, emitting a stench that mixed disinfectant with rot. With purely punitive intent, he viciously pulled it across Erika's chest.
The motion was ruthless. Erika's body arched violently in the wheelchair, a heavily suppressed grunt escaping his lips. The strap sank deep into the straitjacket, leaving deep, dead folds.
Right then, the boy in the wheelchair spoke.
No struggle. No fear. Certainly no begging for mercy. In this moment of being brutally treated, of being strapped down to the point of suffocation, he merely tilted his head up slightly.
With those hollow eyes, he looked at Lynus, who was teetering on the edge of rage. Like a confused, innocent child who didn't know why he was being scolded.
He asked a question. A question so soft, so absurd, so utterly out of place in this hellish slaughterhouse:
"Did I misbehave...? Is Sela still waiting for me?"
Lynus, gripping the strap in a vice-like hold, paused for half a second.
That half-second was almost imperceptible. But in that fraction of time, the raging fire in his chest—the fire that was about to tear everything apart—suddenly twisted.
It turned into a sensation of extreme, twisted euphoria.
He looked down at this boy. At this face covered in blood and bruises. At this boy who, in the deepest part of hell, violently forced into a wheelchair stained with the filth of the dead, nearly suffocated by the straps—still clung only to a false promise.
The perfect vessel.
Sela. The prayer room. Warm water. These words he had personally planted, these reactions he had personally trained, these lies he had repeated until they became the very bones of the other... right now, in this most impossible, desperate situation, they functioned perfectly.
Too perfect.
Lynus slowly leaned down. His face approached Erika's ear, so close it almost touched the freezing skin. Hot breath sprayed onto the boy's earlobe, sending chills down his spine.
"Sela will personally wipe your face with warm water." His voice was soft as exhaling venom, every word carrying an absolute, unquestionable certainty. "She will wait for you in the prayer room."
Click.
The final strap. The final heavy metal buckle engaged with a dead lock.
That strap bound Erika's only remaining good left arm, fixing that still-slightly-trembling hand, along with the straitjacket, in absolute, dead stillness to the wheelchair's armrest.
Lynus straightened up. He looked down from on high at this boy, bound by straps, imprisoned in a wheelchair, filled to the brim with lies.
All the restraints on this piece of "furniture" were complete.
He turned, not looking back. His leather boots clicked on the metal floor, a crisp, rhythmic sound like a death knell.
"Proceed." He tossed one final, ice-cold command at the distant Black Robe.
The buzzing in the corridor instantly vanished.
The Black Robe administrator stood at the corridor's end. Those stagnant-water eyes swiped across the glowing panel in his hand. Then, with extreme mechanical precision, he pointed at the row of lifeless wheelchairs on the left, the ones Lynus had just singled out:
"Sequence Seven... Sequence Twelve... Sequence Fifteen. Push them in."
The command was given.
The nuns, who had stood like stone statues behind the wheelchairs, now moved in terrifying unison. Expressionless, they gripped the push handles, propelling the consumables bound in the chairs—those whose very pain had been stripped away. Following the Black Robe, they formed a line, passing through the door to Erika's right, slowly sliding toward the test area.
The mechanical wheels grated against the metal grid floor, producing a teeth-grinding creak, creak, creak.
THUMP.
Accompanied by a heavy thrust, Erika's perspective violently turned, finally pulling away from that desperately clean French window with its hanging bloody teardrop.
The Black Robe pushed him, silently and mechanically joining the procession of consumables, nuns, and death.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack—
In the extreme silence, the monotonous roll of the mechanical wheels toward the darkness was infinitely magnified. The procession slowly passed through the heavy blast doors at the corridor's end.
Erika could feel the temperature plummeting around him. The air no longer smelled of disinfectant. Replacing it was an extreme, pungent odor of metallic preservatives, and a massive, crushing silence that made his eardrums ring.