Black armed helicopters hovered around the building like hungry vultures.
Inside the ruined research facility, smoke was rising.
Soldiers covered head-to-toe in thick protective gear painted with gloomy gray camouflage patterns were searching the premises.
With every step they took, broken debris crackled underfoot.
A researcher emerged from a room, trembling and holding their hands up.
“P-please… spare me…”
“The corporate dog dies now.”
-Bang!
Another body hit the floor.
They shot a security guard gasping on the ground in the head and slit the throat of an employee begging for their life.
In another corner of the room, soldiers rifled through piles of documents.
Among them, a man with a longsword strapped to his back tapped the screen of a tablet connected to the office computer console.
The screen flickered chaotically as document windows flipped by at high speed.
“There’s nothing worthwhile, just basic and rough data. Could the files have been destroyed?”
The middle-aged man with the longsword on his back growled in frustration.
Accessing the intranet was impossible.
Only drafts of the project and basic records of the test subjects remained on the computers.
“We’re still checking the paperwork, Sycamore, but it seems there’s nothing useful here either,” replied a man armed with a crossbow, rummaging through drawers.
“It’s good we found this place by tracing the phone signal, but we didn’t get what we wanted.”
“The facility was already in chaos before our team entered. It seems a riot broke out at just the right moment.”
Down a hallway, a few adolescents in patient uniforms were being led downstairs under the soldiers’ supervision.
“Calix, is that everyone we could recruit? Where’s the target of the phone call we traced?”
The clans and corporations in Academy City meticulously hid their research facilities.
Tracking them required a long and brutish process of elimination.
Every stray signal from isolated areas was investigated, and every cell phone call coming through local towers was tracked and checked.
Stumbling upon this location through such a trace was sheer luck.
“They seem to have escaped just after our arrival. Two scouts pursuing an unidentified vehicle leaving the parking lot lost contact. The rest of the adult test subjects appear to have been killed resisting shortly before we arrived. These kids were found still locked in their quarters.”
“That’s unfortunate. We should have moved faster.”
Calix nodded at his lament.
Sycamore turned his gaze to the corpses scattered around.
Silently, he clenched his fists tightly.
A report came through his earpiece, and Sycamore unplugged the cable from the console before standing up.
As he walked across the messy interior littered with corpses of beasts and humans, the acrid smell of burnt electronics grew stronger.
One of the waiting soldiers held up a charred piece of equipment near the door.
“We’ve secured the server room. As you can see, this is all that’s left… And we’ve captured the facility’s director.”
Sycamore didn’t bother asking about recovery possibilities.
What remained in the blackened room were unrecognizable machinery and melted cables fused together.
The valuable data had been reduced to charred remnants.
His gaze under the goggles shifted to the bald man lying in a pool of blood.
The man’s severed wrist and ghastly state made him look barely alive.
A report came in from outside. Sycamore issued commands to his subordinates.
“The Audit Bureau agents are approaching. We’re pulling out now.”
“What about this one?”
“Extract what we can. He’ll die soon anyway, so take what’s useful and analyze it. We won’t recover all his knowledge, but we can salvage something.”
His subordinates brought out a machine resembling a trumpet.
They placed it on the director’s head and activated it, causing him to let out a short scream.
A suction sound followed, and a lump of gray matter fell into a transparent container on the machine’s opposite end.
The Obsidian Legion’s operations team quickly withdrew.
Aboard the helicopter flying just above ground, Sycamore swiped through the tablet’s screen.
A photo of a blonde girl with striking red eyes flashed briefly on the display.
* * *
“Hey, wake up. It’s morning.”
“No… I want to sleep more…”
I was drowsy, probably because I’d had a nightmare and didn’t sleep well.
In the dream, strange demons had appeared and poked my eye sockets with metal chopsticks, stirring my brain.
It was so vivid that I woke up with a terrible headache.
Kalia ignored my condition and kept trying to wake me up.
How could she be so heartless and lack empathy?
It’s truly sad…!
I ignored her nagging and burrowed deeper under the blanket.
“Get up!”
When I didn’t budge, Kalia yanked the blanket away.
Why was it so cold? The chilly morning air swept over my frail body.
“Ugh… You’re so mean… Sometimes you need to embrace laziness, you know…”
Wasn’t she supposed to be some delinquent teen archetype?
Why was she so diligent?
Ignoring the cold, I hugged my clone tightly. It was warm.
Nothing beats cuddling with my clone when it’s cold.
‘My clone’ is so warm and soft!
Kalia, giving me a pitiful look, turned and headed for the door.
“Fine, then. I’ll tell Aunt Pola you’re skipping breakfast.”
“Eeek!”
I jumped up with my clone and scurried after her.
Breakfast was crucial!
As I stepped down the cold, creaky stairs, Aunt Pola had already set breakfast on the table.
“You’re up, Kalia, and Violet too.”
“Good morning!”
She greeted us warmly, her round, cheerful demeanor instantly putting people at ease.
I quickly took my seat. Aunt Pola served pancakes—three of them, no less!
“Thank you for the meal!”
I didn’t forget to express my gratitude.
As I picked up my fork to eat, I felt Kalia and Aunt Pola staring at me strangely.
“Is something wrong?”
“Well… Violet, can your clone eat too?”
Huh?
Now that she mentioned it, my clone was sitting beside me.
It even mimicked my movements with the fork over an empty plate.
I snapped my fingers to recall my clone.
It shimmered with an ethereal glow before fading away.
“Oh, I forgot to dismiss it. It must have followed me from the bedroom and sat there.”
“I see. For a moment, I thought…”
I drizzled syrup generously over my pancakes and savored the fluffy, sweet bite.
‘But this clone of mine… it’s been acting oddly.’
It was strange now that I thought about it.
Lately, my clone seemed to act more autonomously.
Unlike how it had behaved back at the lab, it moved with a certain independence.
Maybe it was just my imagination.
It could be that I’d grown so used to controlling multiple clones simultaneously that I moved it unconsciously.
There’s no way a clone could develop self-awareness.
I opened my status window.
—
<CHARACTER STAT>
Name: Violet Dunhind Rugilinn
Alias: None
Condition: Undefined
Lv: 7
Health: 1500/1500
Mana: 3500/3500
Unique Ability:
■■■■: ???
└ Not unlocked due to unfulfilled conditions.
Level 4 Clone Technique: ???
└ Slightly increased maintenance duration of clones.
└ …■■■: Under certain conditions, ■■ triggers the evolution of unique ability Clone Technique into unique ability: A%S^&QD/S@~13…
Synchronization Affinity:
Backstab Proficiency – Increases damage when attacking enemies from behind.
Weakling Extermination – Increases damage when attacking opponents with low health.
—
‘It’s true, I’ve grown a lot since that time.’
Right after defeating that Ogre Team Leader bastard, my level surged dramatically.
Killing researchers or guards didn’t seem to contribute to my level, so it must be because I defeated a strong opponent.
Moreover, I acquired a new synchronization skill.
The ability to deal more damage to opponents with low health would surely come in handy for future battles.
Oddly, my setup seems optimized for backstabbing.
Is it the heavens’ will for me to become an assassin?
‘What’s with the censorship in the unique ability section of my status window?’
My Clone Technique evolved to another level.
Thanks to this, the duration of my clones had increased, and with good management, they could now last for almost half a day.
The problem was the unsettling censorship in that section.
The description wasn’t fully written, and some of the characters were corrupted.
It seems to suggest that fulfilling certain conditions would change the skill, but I couldn’t fully grasp it.
‘Well, I’ll figure it out when I level up further.’
After finishing my meal, I tossed the dishes into the sink and sprawled onto the tattered sofa in the living room.
“Hehe…”
I turned on the TV.
The weather forecast was on.
“This week, Rustlum’s temperatures are expected to fluctuate between above and below freezing due to ether-atmosphere disturbance phenomena. Viewers are advised to prepare warm clothing to brace for the sudden cold…”
No wonder it suddenly got so cold that frost was forming on the windows, even though it’s supposed to be August summer.
This world is a complete mess, from its weather to its people.
Damn ether.
Lost in such thoughts, I sank deeper into the sofa.
Soft.
It was a bit old and dirty, but compared to life in that lab, this space felt truly human.
It made me feel genuinely happy.
Isn’t this what the happiness of ordinary life is supposed to be?
Currently, I’m staying in an old house used as the base for the Osprey Brotherhood.
It looks like a worn-out warehouse from the outside, but inside, it’s designed like a two-story American-style home.
The Brotherhood members had made it somewhat cozy.
Although it’s familiar now, it was all so foreign at first.
A few weeks ago, after escaping the lab, I rode in one of the Brotherhood’s trucks for a long time.
Unfamiliar roads, unfamiliar villages, unfamiliar everything.
Exhausted and sore, I lay on my back, staring at the sky.
Before I knew it, night had fallen.
In the sky hung a blue moon unlike anything I’d seen before.
It was only then that I fully realized I’d fallen into the world of Deep Crimson Academia.
The scenery, something I’d only seen in a game, felt utterly alien compared to Earth’s moon.
As I got lost in my short reverie, the truck stopped.
When I looked up, a run-down residential area came into view.
As soon as I got out of the truck, people standing on the roadside rushed over.
All of them were muscular and rough-looking men and women.
Instinctively, I hid behind Kalia.
Their reactions were intense.
“Kalia’s back!”
“You idiot! Do you know how worried I was about you?”
“How’s Marco doing?”
The Mohican man, apparently Marco, who got out of the passenger seat, raised his hand briefly to calm everyone down.
“All right, all right. Let’s all calm down. Let’s get some rest first, and then we’ll talk.”
“But who’s the kid behind you?”
Someone pointed at me.
Suddenly, everyone’s gaze was on me.
Of course, a bloodied little girl in a lab coat would stand out.
“Right. Let me introduce you all. This is Violet! She helped me escape from those Laplaxia bastards.”
At Kalia’s introduction, the intimidating muscleheads’ expressions softened like snow melting.
“She helped Kalia? Then she’s trustworthy!”
“A benefactor of the Brotherhood!”
“This little one? Impressive.”
Being surrounded by these burly men and women shaking my hand nonstop made me dizzy.
Thankfully, Kalia stepped in to pull me out.
Weeks passed, and eventually, I got to know these people quite well.
The Osprey Brotherhood is introduced in the main game as a notorious gang.
But in their current state, they seem more like construction workers than criminals.
That was indeed the reality.
The Brotherhood members made their living exploring interdimensional dungeons or doing manual labor.
They weren’t involved in crimes.
Their gatherings resembled a local neighborhood watch group.
According to Kalia, their only job was occasionally beating down beasts that attacked the neighborhood.
How did a group like this transform into villains rivaling the Mexican cartels in the future?
It was puzzling.
Even Kalia, a member of the Brotherhood, seemed like a good person.
‘Right. It’s time to review the knowledge of the main game stored in my mind.’
I’d been resting for weeks after escaping the lab.
During that time, I ate, slept, and lazed around without a care.
However, at some point, it was time to think.
Let’s imagine my brain as a council.
Everyone peacefully debates topics like ‘What fun thing should we do today?’
Then suddenly, an orangutan congressman barges in and says:
‘So… now what?’
That’s right.
While I was in the lab, all I did was read the staff’s mood, try to please them, and plot my escape.
But after regaining my freedom, I had more options.
It was time to choose.
‘I have an advantage thanks to being in a past timeline.’
It’s currently Federation Year 25, August 2nd.
The game’s timeline starts in the late 30s.
I have about 4–5 years of leeway.
Unfortunately, this damn game’s service was discontinued after Part 1 because its creator disappeared.
The full story was supposed to have five parts, so my foreknowledge only covers the first part.
‘But is there any point in overthinking?’
The truth is, the final boss of Part 1, the Boundless Witch Violet, is gone.
Now, there’s just me, the possessed Violet.
From this point on, the future is already skewed.
So, I decided.
The best course of action was to focus on growing stronger.
I pulled out a yellow envelope I’d taken from the lab.