Director Cox’s fingers were pressing against his palm. Pressing so hard on a certain part of his palm, it looked like he was piercing it to bleed. After a while, the motion became deliberate, rhythmic, urgent. It looked like he was triggering some kind of concealed device.

The masked man seemed to notice, too.

The masked man’s head turned toward the bound director even as they deflected another attack with brutal moves. But the group, even though they outnumbered him by three to one, was still pinned down by him and unable to break free.

Neville didn’t know what he was thinking when he stepped forward, when a sonic round screamed through the air from somewhere to his left.

It struck Director Cox in the back of the head.

The man’s fingers went still.

The masked man froze for a moment.

Neville could practically hear the annoyance of the masked man from where he was. The masked man exploded into motion.

The remaining attackers didn’t stand a chance.

The masked fighter moved in brutal, precise, and utterly without mercy movements. He wasted no motion, each strike flowing into the next.

One by one, the remaining attackers fell. It seemed that since Director Cox died, he had no reason to hold back anymore.

Neville pressed himself against the wall, terrified to breathe, let alone move. He was just an ordinary person, a mermaid/merman. Even if he had transmigrated, it was still expensive to buy emergency supplies from the system.

Realizing how stupid it was to go into the scene personally, Neville felt dread.

’Shelly,’ he thought frantically, ’Do you have any idea what Director Cox did? What was that signal?’

[Analyzing...] Shelly said as Neville kept his breathing stable. [It appears to have been a transmitter! But Shelly cannot determine the recipient or content. (◎_◎)]

The masked man finished their grim work and knelt beside Director Cox’s body. Neville watched in morbid fascination that rooted him in place. The masked man examined the still-blinking light emanating from the dead man’s palm.

With a decisive motion, they drew a blade and stabbed directly through the skin, killing the signal in one swift move. Then the masked man began searching the corpse. It seemed that he found what he was looking for because the man straightened up with a small vial clasped in their glove.

What came next made Neville want to puke right there and then.

The masked man poured the contents of the vial all over Director Cox’s corpse. The liquid began dissolving the body upon contact.

Flesh, bone, clothing—everything simply... melted. The chemical reaction was silent but violent, leaving nothing but a wet stain on the ground.

Neville clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle his horrified gasp.

The masked man moved methodically through the clearing, applying the same treatment to every single corpse. His movements were fast and efficient, like they had done this many times before.

As the masked man was doing his thing, something caught Neville’s attention. The masked man’s collar had moved a little during the fight, exposing a little bit of his skin on the back of his neck.

And there was a barely visible in the fading light—

A black mole.

Neville’s breath stopped.

The placement of that mole looked incredibly familiar. But that wouldn’t make sense if it were that person—

The masked man turned around.

Their eyes seemed to have met; Neville was at least 80% sure about it. Every cell in his body screamed at him to run, to hide, to do anything but stand there like an idiot waiting to be killed.

The masked man stared back at him for a long time.

Then he just turned around and walked away without saying anything.

Neville felt his hand reach the nearby wall, trying to support his body. But then the terrible smell snapped him awake, and he breathed a couple of times to calm himself down.

But Neville knew he couldn’t stay there any longer. There was still a chance that the masked man would come back and clean him up like those corpses. All he needed was to shut up and never mention ever witnessing what happened.

His survival instincts finally kicked in. He turned and fled, stumbling on his feet a couple of times toward the direction of the parking lot, where he had left his rented hover car. He did not care how much noise he made or how undignified he appeared.

But he didn’t look back.

Not even once.

Neville’s hands were shaking so badly that he had to engage a complete autopilot.

"They let me go?" he whispered to the empty cabin. "Why?"

Shelly had no answer for that.

Neville slumped back in his seat, replaying the encounter in his mind with obsessive attention to detail.

The masked man had seen him; he was clearly a witness, and yet he had done nothing to him.

Since the masked person ignored him, it seemed that they wouldn’t come for him to kill him... right?

It was a naive thought.

But Neville found himself believing it anyway.

Neville looked at the side quest again.

It was still there, D-9.

Director Cox was dead.

Mick was dead.

George and Killian were accounted for.

So who was left?

Who still posed a threat significant enough to trigger the system’s warning?

Was it really Ethan?

Neville cursed under his breath. He really had no clue where to find Ethan. If he were to have Shelly search for him in the entire planet or galaxy, he couldn’t afford it. He still had nine days to figure out who, but he was already losing his mind.

"I won’t let you die," Neville murmured to the empty air. "Not while I’m still breathing."

The hover car banked toward Maxwell Corporation’s parking lot, carrying its exhausted passenger back toward the lion’s den.

Neville glanced at his light brain and felt another set of dread. He needed to report back to work as soon as possible. He had to find an excuse; he took this long for a simple lunch break. He felt helpless as he could already imagine the cut in his salary for the month.

Poor me.