Chapter 708: Neo's Suicide (3/4)

Chapter 708: Neo's Suicide (3/4)

If you cannot withstand the effects of the pollution, you will still fall in your dreams, and you will lose the assistance that those around you might have provided.

Yet this was the reality; even if it were Alfred, Kallen would still proceed this way.

"Hahahahaha! You're asleep, aren't you? Your mouth can't blabber all over the place to lecture people anymore, can it? Hahahahaha!"

Vick pointed at Alfred and burst into loud laughter.

"I despise your kind of tone and expression the most—always loving to lecture people on reason and doctrine. It truly makes one..."

Philomena appeared behind Vick, and the injection was delivered.

Vick's mental fortitude was not as resilient as Alfred's; upon being injected, his eyes rolled back, and he was instantly knocked out by the drug, collapsing to the ground.

As before, Philomena stimulated the mark on Vick's palm, allowing a milky-white light to envelop him.

Immediately following that, three more volunteers suddenly fell into an emotional frenzy. One began to curse the superior who had once bullied him, one loudly sang a nursery rhyme, and another wept and screamed, begging his wife not to leave him!

Philomena was swift, administering the sedative one by one, and three more collapsed.

Kallen spoke up, "Don't just daze off, quickly take over their work!"

Next, Kallen looked toward Nicole and Anlans, "Hurry up!"

"Yes!"

"Understood!"

The work of those who collapsed would be replaced, or rather, the others shouldered a heavier workload. The formation for receiving the divine artifact was still being laid out and was already semi-activated. The two foundational principles notebooks above seemed to sense the pulling force as well, beginning to float toward this direction.

But in just that short span of time, two more people collapsed.

One was Muri, who suddenly cursed furiously, "Mobiten, you old fossil, I..."

Just as he finished cursing his grandfather, Philomena appeared.

Yet he actually managed to turn around and strike back. Philomena, however, seemed to have anticipated this long ago; or rather, though she appeared relaxed while giving everyone the injections, she was in truth treating every attempt with absolute seriousness.

The sedative was injected, and Muri fell.

The other was Leon, who dropped to his knees, having just cried out, "Grandfather..."

This was merely the beginning of his cry before he was put under by the incredibly efficient Philomena.

The remaining individuals who had not been injected all showed abnormal fluctuations of emotion in their eyes, as if some factor within their bodies was bubbling up one after another. It was just that the water for the others had already boiled, while theirs had not yet reached that point.

Furthermore, the bodies of the six people who had collapsed began to gradually exhibit a dark red hue, as if their flesh were rotting. Yet because of the shroud of white light, the rot quickly receded after appearing, only to reemerge shortly after.

Though they had lost the capacity for action, within their soul-consciousness, they were still fighting against the pollution with the aid of the artifact's blessing. Clearly, however, this struggle would not last for long.

Neo landed beside Kallen and said, "It can't go on like this. For Alfred to collapse so quickly, I truly didn't expect it."

Kallen gave a low response, "Mm."

"Look at the others, they're nearly at their limit too. Do you see the expressions of those four babies? There must be superior protective charms at work on them, but they can't hold out much longer either.

If the others fall, it will at most slow down the progress of the work. If those four fall, how are we supposed to retrieve this divine artifact?

Kallen, we must think of a way."

"Do you have a way?" Kallen asked.

"We need to flush that thing out, or concentrate it onto a single person."

"It isn't a person; it possesses no consciousness."

"There is no such thing as an absolute non-person," Neo countered. "I know what you mean, but you should also understand what I mean. I have raised bugs. We have walked into a nest of bugs, and the one crawling on us right now is just one of them."

"The bugs raised by Philias..."

"The original strain of the curse-bug didn't just appear out of nowhere. I believe the pollution here hasn't completely erupted. Or rather, after it initially broke out, it might have retracted because it encountered a seal outside that blocked its expansion.

Just like a person who wants to throw a punch must first pull their fist back to gather strength, what is wandering outside right now are actually the weaker bugs. The true polarized pollution has not manifested yet."

"That is somewhat profound, and what you're saying is something Kevin never mentioned either."

"The perspective of a human looking at a stream is entirely different from that of an ant looking at a stream; this is not surprising."

"Very well."

"Trust me this once. There is no other way now anyway. Rather than letting this thing continue to make people lose themselves one by one... it would be better to find a place to dump the trash and collect them all first."

"Tell me, what needs to be done."

"Output extreme emotions. Make yourself the most violently boiling kettle of water, gather all the firewood to your side to burn yourself. Haven't you noticed? They are losing control one by one."

"I will give it a try."

"Let me do it."

"Don't be in such a hurry to court death," Kallen glared at Neo.

Neo raised his hands, "You slander me. I love life so deeply."

Kallen closed his eyes and began to mobilize his emotions, while simultaneously doing his utmost to capture the changes within his own body. Soon, he discovered that there was indeed an external emotion wandering deep within his heart;

The reason he had not noticed it earlier was that its influence was far too faint.

Taking a deep breath, various images flashed through Kallen's mind as he forced himself to become extreme and excited. A reaction followed swiftly; that strand of emotion began to swell, its original disguise gradually tearing away. Yet just as it was about to reveal its fangs, it seemed to perceive something and abruptly shrank back.

Kallen thought, "This..."

Undeterred, Kallen continued to stimulate his emotions, but after fattening it up once more, it shrank back yet again.

It was not that Kallen's emotional management was too perfect, but rather that this thing simply could not grow within his body!

"Hey, hey, hey."

Neo reached out and patted Kallen's shoulder. Kallen turned his head, staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

But Neo was not frightened in the least; instead, he laughed. "I say, are you so used to being proper all the time that you don't even know how to summon your emotions now? Tsk, you shouldn't believe in Order; you should go found your own Law of Propriety."

"I felt its presence, but..."

"Normal. For a guy like you who can usually roast his own soul with flames, added to the things inside your soul... it would be a true miracle if it could grow and backfire within you.

Let me do it."

"Fine." Since he could not do it himself, he could only rely on Neo.

"It should have been this way from the start. What a waste of time," Neo complained.

Kallen reminded him, "Hurry up."

"Heh."

Neo let out a disdainful cold snort. Then, closing his eyes and opening them again, his gaze turned desperate and numb: "Eliza."

In an instant,

Kallen sensed Neo's emotions rising at a rapid pace.

Was this entering the state in a single second?

Or was this, in fact, Neo's truest self in life?

Neo spread his hands, then clenched them into fists.

In an instant, an aura of death burgeoned from his form, evoking the image of a nonagenarian plagued by terminal illness, whose family, children, and indeed the man himself, had already accepted the approaching cadence of mortality.

The corner of Neo’s mouth twitched as he muttered to himself:

“It is not enough, I have no desire to die just yet; if it were that easy to perish, I would have been gone long ago.”

At that moment, the volunteer—who had been on the precipice of losing all emotional control, prompting Philomena to manifest half her silhouette behind him—suddenly found the turbulence in his eyes receding, and he bowed his head once more to resume setting up the instruments.

Even Philomena was momentarily stunned, casting her gaze toward Neo's position, where the head of reconnaissance now stood like a desiccated corpse newly exhumed from a century-old coffin.

Karen offered a reminder: “Very well, the tide seems to have been stemmed.”

Neo shook his head, letting loose a sigh: “I miss you so dearly.”

In the ensuing breath, the skin across Neo’s body began to flush a dark crimson as patches of rotting flesh manifested, and with a sickening thud, a chunk of meat sloughed off and hit the ground.

Concurrently, the dark crimson hue faded from Alfred, who, never truly susceptible to the sedatives, broke free of his restraints and forced himself into a sitting position.

“Young Master… that emotional contamination has vanished.”

Contamination does not merely vanish; it transfers.

Neo spoke once more: “Yilisha, I was wrong.”

The entirety of Neo's being began to age at a terrifying velocity, his hair bleaching to white, as rancid flesh continuously bloomed and his underlying muscle and skin withered into gaunt desiccation.

Correspondingly, those who had previously collapsed saw the dark crimson drain from their skin, their forms gradually returning to normalcy.

“Director?” Philomena asked, seeking Karen’s directives.

“Administer the antidote.”

“Understood.”

Philomena began injecting the antidote into those who had recovered, and before long, they stirred from their comas one by one, losing no time to survey their surroundings before rushing forward to assist with the deployment.

Because Neo had shouldered the entire burden alone, a situation that had verged on total annihilation was suddenly cleared away; on the experts' side, the configuration was now but a hair's breadth from completion.

The optimal outcome would be to usher down those two journals, seize them immediately, and flee outward as swiftly as possible.

Yet Karen detected an abnormality: Neo had become entirely consumed by his role.

Karen stepped before Neo, but Neo did not so much as glance at him; the decay of his physical vessel persisted, and in a short while, perhaps a mere gentle nudge would cause him to collapse, crumbling into dust the moment he struck the ground.

“You can exercise a modicum of control now, Neo.”

Karen’s words failed to elicit even a sliver of reaction from Neo.

Karen released his own soul consciousness, and upon its release, he perceived countless gazes fixing upon him, though they remained somewhat distant—or rather, they were hidden away.

It was as though beyond a certain membrane, a numbing multitude of eyeballs had gathered and compressed themselves together.

When you truly sought to observe them, you inadvertently granted them the opportunity to observe you in return.

Karen could even perceive the collective impulse they exhibited upon laying eyes on him, as though a myriad of eyeballs had suddenly become flooded with a bloody crimson.

Yes, Neo had been correct; the contamination was being suppressed, though not by anything external, but by its own self.

It possessed no self-awareness, yet it abided by a primal instinct of rules: to diffuse… to propagate… to survive.