"I can control myself," Hosoda Yoshiyuki emphasized.
"Stay here," Masasuke Hazuki handed over a peeled apple to Hosoda Yoshiyuki, who took it and ate it heartily.
"I am now accompanied by a group of good people," Hosoda Yoshiyuki looked at the friends who came to visit him, slightly embarrassed to worry them, "I’m really fine... I bought gifts for you guys from Xia, let me find them and divide them among you..."
"Woof." Snowball barked, signaling that it would take care of Hosoda Yoshiyuki.
"You shouldn’t join any other fights," Chiyuki Sajou said, "I’ve seen that White Salamander too... it’s not something ordinary people can handle."
Masasuke Hazuki believed they needed someone who could really combat esoteric disasters to help out, but he had no standing to remain at Nestor Corporation.
So he just kept quiet, randomly agreeing and then excused himself and left the infirmary.
"Where are you going?" Hosoda Yoshiyuki had a good impression of Masasuke Hazuki, a smart and perceptive guy who always completed missions reliably.
Upon hearing this, Masasuke Hazuki just evaded the question.
"Going for a walk on the streets," he said.
It was still pouring rain outside Xisheng Hotel. After Masasuke Hazuki left, he wandered for a while and then disappeared into an underground bar, leaving from a concealed exit and hailing an autonomous taxi to head to a basement in a corner of the core city area.
In the basement, a man dressed in a brown gentleman’s suit had been waiting for a long time.
Once Masasuke Hazuki entered the room, the man poured him a cup of coffee and invited him to sit at the table. The man’s codename was "Old Poet."
Masasuke Hazuki hadn’t worked with him before; the Old Poet’s field of operation was in the Western Hemisphere.
The Poet, hailing from the Rhine Region, was highly skilled and not to be underestimated. To him, keys and codes were as beautiful as poetry, and he was now a special agent hacker for the Corporate Alliance.
He wore a ceramic mask with a tragic expression marked by a downturned mouth, which made his countenance hard to discern.
The Old Poet had just returned, entering the hideout immediately before Masasuke Hazuki.
He placed a large-caliber handgun on the table. The Old Poet was both a hacker and a sharpshooter, a man of many talents as a special agent for the Corporate Alliance.
"White Salamander Blood." Masasuke Hazuki scraped off a bit of residual blood from the katana and stored it in a test tube.
"Nanobots," the Old Poet scrutinized carefully.
"I’ve never seen this kind before."
"We will confirm its age, but we don’t have any secret channels to use, so we can only wait for an opportunity to get it to Jialong Slope Airport."
"Black Fire Innovation people are watching the sea like madmen. The Invisible Imperial Guard is everywhere," the Old Poet leaned back and then handed a mission briefing to Masasuke Hazuki.
"You want me to steal information from Nestor Corporation?" Masasuke Hazuki glanced at the content, "I thought dealing with the Great River Followers was the priority."
"The news about the Ancient Witch is most important; the Alliance’s reputation has been completely lost because of that ’false alarm’ in the past," the Old Poet recalled the incident from years ago.
"It’s truly embarrassing." Masasuke Hazuki knew the Corporate Alliance hadn’t been trusted since that day.
"It was because of that incident that you decided to take a chance, right? Now is the time to regain face... or rather, to reclaim honor," the Old Poet said.
"Were you the one who fired a shot that night?"
"A poetic shot, wounded the girl’s face," the Old Poet said, "I am still searching for traces of the Cyber Specter, and it seems to be more of a bluff now."
"So you will hack into Xisheng Hotel again." Masasuke Hazuki nodded.
"I will try," the Old Poet looked towards the hacker chair at the end of the room.
"What if the Cyber Specters are inside the network? Would you dare risk entering the Xisheng Hotel?"
"I may not succeed, so you must muster the courage. You need to find Kojima Kanako and her private terminal, use this chip, it can copy the data and transmit it in real-time." The Old Poet placed a Separation Chip on the table.
"That’s not difficult, but I don’t want to do such a thing, I want to be on the front lines chasing the peacock." Masasuke Hazuki said.
"Has the peacock captivated your thoughts? In any case, the decision is yours," the Old Poet reminded, then pushed the gun and chip across the table towards Masasuke Hazuki.
A notification sounded, and Masasuke Hazuki looked down at the message.
Seeking Shadow invited him to go against the current along the Golden Cicada River, to track down the potential Secret Ritual Group "Great River Followers", to prevent the revival of the Great River Goddess.
As long as the ritual process is interrupted, the battle of Jialong Slope will be decisively resolved, the Great River Goddess will continue to slumber, and after the acquisition of Jialong Slope’s industries, other companies will move in to restore order. Nestor Corporation is said to be the next security contractor, and since Nestor Corporation’s reputation is well-known, everyone knows that once they arrive, the situation will get better.
Masasuke Hazuki fell into deep thought.
"It would be wonderful... to fight for honor, to battle the peacock and the White Salamander for the mission, to kill these deities and uproot their conspiracies... People could live in peace without fear... I could protect a region, save an entire area’s population," Masasuke Hazuki murmured.
"But their main forces have been sent to trace the Great River Goddess’s whereabouts, leaving the Xisheng Hotel defenses empty. This is your great opportunity, once you steal the information, Nestor Corporation’s secrets will be laid bare! All their hidden secrets about the Ancient Witch will be exposed, then every power in the world will be alerted, and they will go all out to end their ambitions completely before the Witch claims her final victory..." The Old Poet’s voice was hoarse, but earnest.
Humans had struggled to destroy the Witch and the occult to usher in this age of technology, and now...
Masasuke Hazuki looked up outside, where the torrential rain had caused flooding and waterlogging in many areas, vehicles congested, and the city seemed increasingly cramped with people drowning.
"Are we protecting humanity, or the business system?" Masasuke Hazuki asked.
"That’s not for you to ponder, child. If you think about it simply, you can return to the essence and treat this as a job with an annual salary of 500,000." The Old Poet was surprised that Masasuke Hazuki could also be bewildered.
"Money is not what I want." Masasuke Hazuki said, grabbing at his hair in distress.
The Old Poet silently watched Masasuke Hazuki, as he drank one cup of coffee after another. After the coffee was finished, the Old Poet poured him some more liquor, realizing now that Masasuke Hazuki was a poet as well.
"Do you wish... for the Ancient Witch to rule the world? By then, a single thought from her, the whole world resets to zero, a single thought, and 10 billion people sink into a blood sea. Masasuke Hazuki, you know, one righteous person outweighs a multitude of the wicked," said the Old Poet.
Masasuke Hazuki understood, right then, that moment decided his fate, either to sabotage the Great River Followers’ ritual or to secretly steal the Nestor Corporation’s intelligence.
Without a word, he grabbed the Old Poet’s gun and the chip.
"Go on, the Corporate Alliance’s orders won’t be mistaken," the Old Poet reassured.
Masasuke Hazuki closed his eyes, trying to empty his mind.
He left his hideout and returned to the medical department, saying he decided to stay at the Xisheng Hotel to look after Hosoda Yoshiyuki.
"I can prevent him from... you know, going maniacal," Masasuke Hazuki said.
The others were tracking the Great River Followers, and the only plausible reason for Masasuke Hazuki to stay would be to take care of the injured, so once they left, Masasuke Hazuki could make his move.
"I’m not sick!" Hosoda Yoshiyuki cursed.
"..." Masasuke Hazuki looked at Hosoda Yoshiyuki.
The others tended to agree, it seemed fitting for the two of them to stay behind at the hotel, one manic, and one earnest.
"Forget it, I feel more at ease with you here," Hosoda Yoshiyuki sat on the hospital bed.
"Woof!" Snowball jumped up, burrowing into Masasuke Hazuki’s arms, sniffing and barking vigorously.
Masasuke Hazuki held Snowball, gazing at everything before him, his vision gradually blurring. He knew he had betrayed something, but what exactly was it? He couldn’t say.