Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 414 - 52: Matryoshka

A sharp laugh suddenly emanated from the headphones, so piercing that for a moment, the three of them thought their eardrums were being torn apart.

"What the hell, a soundwave attack?" Lilith quickly turned off the Bluetooth headphone’s reception function, while Ling Xiao, beside her, bent over and started vomiting.

Fortunately, before the mission, he hadn’t eaten anything except some energy gel, so what he threw up was mostly watery and clear. However, the rising stomach acid irritated him, and a burning sensation surged up his esophagus, making Ling Xiao cough nonstop.

"Water... is there any water?" Ling Xiao asked between coughs.

"Water? Yeah, there’s some," Lilith nodded, "but... water in the Inner World, would you dare to drink it?"

Ling Xiao immediately fell silent, covering his throat with his hand. He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the discomfort.

"Why can’t you drink water from the Inner World?" Jiang Yu glanced at Lilith, then at Ling Xiao, asking with some puzzlement.

"Not just water; in fact, any interaction between you and anything from the Inner World should be minimized," Lilith said. "Earlier, when I said we could take these devices out, it was actually just a joke."

"Ah? Why exactly is that?" Jiang Yu was even more confused. "What’s the issue with things from the Inner World?"

"Replicas end up being replicas. If you use a glitch to bring these things from the Inner World to the Outer World, guess what would happen?"

"What would happen?" Jiang Yu followed up with a question. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Four years ago, there was a manga called ’Three Days of Horror in the Inner World’... I think Ling Xiao would have read it?" Lilith asked.

Ling Xiao nodded.

"In that manga, the second female lead brings a diamond necklace from the Inner World back to the Outer World, and the next day, she gets strangled to death by that necklace," Lilith shrugged. "Yes, that necklace, which shouldn’t have existed in the Outer World, turned into a mysterious creature and reopened the passage to the Inner World, which the protagonist had originally sealed, releasing a bunch of mysterious creatures," Lilith explained.

"But wasn’t that just a manga?"

"To ordinary people, it would seem like a fictional storyline by the manga author, but as a Hunter, I know that this manga was based on a true story... because the manga author, under their pen name, is actually a Mysterious Creature Hunter, one I know personally," Lilith said.

"So, if we take things out of here, would they also turn into mysterious creatures?"

"I don’t know. If you’ve had formal Hunter training, you should know that the traits of mysterious creatures aren’t universal. Even an identical memetic fragment can exhibit different properties in different mysterious creatures. So, I can’t give you a definite answer," Lilith sighed, "In any case, it’s best not to exploit glitches too much... be careful, or you might become a part of the glitch yourself."

"Cough, cough... I’m fine now," Ling Xiao suddenly said, "Let’s continue with the next channel."

"Are you really okay?" Jiang Yu looked at Ling Xiao with some concern — she and Lilith were both Hunters, with a much stronger physical constitution than Ling Xiao, who was a regular person. But even so, that piercing laughter had made Jiang Yu feel terrible, so one could only imagine how much it had affected Ling Xiao.

"I’ll just plug my ears," Ling Xiao took out a couple of hemostatic cotton balls from the emergency medical kit he carried and stuffed them into his ears, "If something’s wrong, I’ll plug them tighter."

"You, kid, I kind of like you," Lilith suddenly smiled at Ling Xiao, then turned to Jiang Yu, "What’s the relationship between you two?"

"What relationship?" Jiang Yu was stunned for a moment, clearly not reacting immediately.

"We’re colleagues; we’re both interns in the 67th Field Operations Group, so you could say we’re teammates," Ling Xiao said.

"So, ’partner’ isn’t even the term?" Lilith’s eyes squinted into crescent moons, "How about this, let me have your teammate, and I’ll give you a satisfying compensation."

"Let you have him... what does that mean?" Jiang Yu was feeling overwhelmed — ever since meeting this Hunter named Lilith, she felt like her way of thinking and Lilith’s were always on different wavelengths, and even their conversation topics seemed to be continuously led by her.

"I like him, and I want him to be my partner — a very close, very close partner," Lilith said unabashedly, "If we make it out alive, I’ll submit a report to the Dubhe Tower and the Celestial City Mysterious Creature Research Institute... I just thought it might be... um, more polite to ask you for your opinion before I do that?"

"You like... Ling Xiao?" Even Jiang Yu didn’t know why, but when she heard Lilith say that, her cheeks started feeling a little warm.

The one blushing should be this red-haired witch, right? Why am I blushing?

"Though it might seem like an older woman chasing after a young man... the fact is, all boys will eventually grow into men," Lilith continued to smile, "And I, I won’t age; I’m twenty now, and ten years later, I’ll still be twenty."

Saying this, she suddenly winked at Ling Xiao, "So, are you interested in becoming sister’s partner? Sister rarely invites others so proactively~"