The relocation process went off without a hitch after Veyron arrived at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station and cleared out the corpses of the former research personnel who had turned undead.
Thanks to the Group Chat, which lets users instantly send and receive items even across worlds, moving stuff was ridiculously efficient.
Container-loads of supplies and oil by tons—Merlin would just tap 'Send' from the Navy base, and Veyron could instantly receive everything in a prepared field outside the South Pole station.
With most of the important resources already handled, the team could travel light.
Minami Rika, who had flight training, flew one of the military transport planes parked at the base and brought everyone to Antarctica. Honestly, what could go wrong?
And even if something did go wrong, with them being daughters of a world will, the world itself would've ensured everything stayed peaceful.
"Brrr… It's freezing out here."
The next day after arriving at the Amundsen–Scott Station.
After a good night's sleep in a warm room, and a hearty meal cooked by Saeko, everyone bundled up and headed outside.
Fujiwara Chika and Selina both shivered hard.
"You two are so dramatic."
Fubuki stood nearby in a deep green dress and a white fur-lined coat, looking speechless at the pair's reaction. "Look at Hancock—her homeland's basically a warm island from our perspective, and she's out here in that thin outfit, not even complaining."
"You call a place with forty-eight seasons a year warm?"
"Also, don't think I didn't notice—you're definitely using a power to keep warm, right? If you've got the guts, turn it off and then talk!"
Chika and Selina went back and forth, teasing Fubuki until she reluctantly deactivated her temperature shield.
"Brrr—okay, okay, it's cold!"
She immediately reactivated the shield and even extended it to cover Chika and Selina too.
"Ahhh, that's better," Chika sighed in relief, now shielded from the biting wind. "I can't even imagine what it'd be like living here long-term."
"No matter how hard it gets, we're still alive. As long as we're alive, there's still hope."
Takagi Yuriko and Miyamoto Kiriko happened to walk by and caught that last comment.
"Hope, huh... I hope you all can hold on until the day the sun finally rises again."
Chika's relaxed expression slowly faded into something softer, more sincere.
"We will," Yuriko nodded after a brief silence, her eyes deep with thoughts she hadn't voiced.
There were things none of the group had explicitly said, but the survivors already had their own guesses.
Applying basic logic— They already assumed those seven newcomers really were from another world...
Aside from the force behind the undead apocalypse, weren't they possibly the last remnants of human civilization on this planet?
That thought weighed on Yuriko heavily. Last night, her daughter Saya had finally asked a question she'd been avoiding all this time—and now, she couldn't shake the creeping fear in her heart.
Still, keeping her expression steady so she wouldn't bring down the mood, Yuriko gave Chika a glance, then gestured subtly toward Veyron, who was training with Hancock.
"Do you think I could talk to him for a moment?" she asked in a low voice.
"You can just ask him yourself," Chika replied, a bit amused.
Even before Chika finished her sentence, Veyron had already sheathed his blade and walked over.
"You need something?" he asked casually.
"Uh, yeah. Kiriko and I went out earlier to check on the supply storage. Most of it's fine—just like we hoped, this place is basically a giant natural freezer. But there are a few issues."
Yuriko explained, "Some of the testing equipment we brought won't work in the extreme cold. A few might even break from long-term exposure."
"And the station doesn't have the space to store them all. Even if we could fit them, the energy cost to keep them at proper temperatures would be huge…"
"For that, you should have talked with them, not me," Veyron gestured toward Chika and the others.
"Anyway, you've seen how fast we can move supplies. If you need to swap anything out or get replacements, let us know before we leave. We'll handle it from nearby stations…"
"Thank you," Yuriko and Kiriko exchanged a look, visibly relieved.
"Don't thank me just yet. I've got a few questions I want you to answer."
Veyron turned to Yuriko and asked, "You mentioned before that you visited an Umbrella research base once. If I gave you the chance, could you find that base again?"
"I'm afraid I probably can't help much with that," Yuriko said, shaking her head.
"Back then, the only rumor I'd heard was that Umbrella's headquarters was supposedly in Area 51. The only reason I got into one of their facilities at all was because a rich woman named Alicia hired me to go to Umbrella's lab in Raccoon City, and give her a report on whether she should invest more in their latest project."
"When I got there, I had to hand over all my electronics and was put in a blacked-out van. After about an hour's drive, they blindfolded me and brought me into what I assumed was the entrance. Then we rode some underground rail system for another ten minutes or so before finally arriving at the underground lab…"
"That's more than enough," Veyron smiled.
An hour's drive from Raccoon City, underground, secret lab.
For someone with Observation Haki like him—or with Merlin's Clairvoyance—it wasn't a hard search radius.
Not to mention, if you know Resident Evil, and you hear "Raccoon City," "Umbrella," and "underground base," it's basically a freebie. Might as well have drawn a map.