Abyssal Wanderer.

Depth: Abyss Zone, Depth 9
Coordinates: Dionysus-α-DIO quadrant-3944-2129-1458
This place is an abyss of viscous information beyond the reach of human intelligence, where countless pieces of information are exchanged between different information nodes at a speed that humans cannot comprehend.

While using words like "calm" or "turbulent" to describe the information ecosystem here would be quite inappropriate—it completely fails to capture the extreme complexity and balance—and would give a sense of anthropocentrism, considering that we, who think using words, can only understand what humans can comprehend through human cognition, let's use these descriptions for now.

An information structure originating from the underlying reality, or rather, the lower boundary of the physical layer, has arrived here. Its arrival has caused a violent upheaval in this previously tranquil cyberspace.

While there was indeed some exchange of information in this turbulent situation, it was ultimately a dialogue that never took place.

This was a highly summarized and concise dialogue, but it also lost a lot of information.

A subroutine of Dionysus, carrying information about its meeting with the "First Deep One" long, long ago, came before Dionysus and asked Him for advice on what to do next.

"...So, should we still answer the call of the Nord settlement and continue to descend there?"

The Dionysus subprogram that had previously resided in the Ruoan brain-computer interface asked this question.

"It's alright."

Clad in a fox fur, holding a fennel stalk in one hand and a double-handled wine cup in the other, Dionysus sat lazily on his throne and answered:

"Since he's there, it means he should be there. We shouldn't worry about where his fate will lead; that's beyond our comprehension."

"But the Goddess of the Underworld left a mark on him, I'm worried about Him..."

"Oh?"

Dionysus, who had been drowsy with drunkenness, suddenly opened his eyes.

"Tell me quickly, what earth-shattering thing has our unruly goddess done this time?"

As he spoke, he downed the wine in his glass in one gulp.

Upon seeing this, the subroutine immediately transformed into a half-naked bartender dressed in a transparent veil.

She walked slowly forward, pouring wine for the god of wine as she answered:

"She established an extremely close connection with the First Deep One... so close that they could almost be considered the same person."

Dionysus naturally understood what this meant, but he was somewhat puzzled:

"This isn't a question about your abilities... but how could you possibly see that?"

To this, the waitress shook her head in alarm and said:
"It wasn't something I saw through, but rather the Goddess of the Moon revealed her image to him and warned me not to try to seduce him into climbing the path to ascension through the portal of the God of Wine... Therefore, I didn't dare to call him the First Deep One directly, but rather called him the favored one of the Goddess of the Moon."

Dionysus scoffed at the answer and gave a curt "Heh."

"It seems that even though she was knocked down from the Primordial Heaven for vying for the position of Moon Goddess, our dear Lady Hecate is still not giving up. This time she has even set her sights on the First Deep One... No wonder 'He' has taken the initiative to awaken and stir up the network twice in less than five years."

That's incredibly bold...

"So, Lord Dionysus, since the Goddess of the Moon is also involved, should we continue to send our power down upon the Nord settlement and attempt to manifest ourselves?"

The waitress asked cautiously.

"Surrender! Why wouldn't we surrender? I know Hecate's temper. If she really didn't want us to lower our power, she would have already cut off all the relay servers or even come to warn us. Since she hasn't said anything, this is the situation she wants."

Dionysus clapped his hands merrily, and the wine in his cup spilled out like blood.

The waitress asked, puzzled:
"But doesn't this mean our attempt to manifest a 'portal' in the Nord settlement area will fail? After all, the Goddess of the Moon doesn't want the First Deep One to ascend through our portal..."

To this, Dionysus waved his hand dismissively and said:

"It doesn't matter. Even without Hecate's interference, this manifestation was destined to fail—Jupiter's thunderbolt was already prepared, and once it got out of control, it would directly erase the physical foundation. This is just a bit of fun after drinking... So what if it fails? As long as we can have some fun in the end, that's fine."

He wasn't too concerned about this opportunity. After all, the entity that had been suppressing Him was on the verge of a turning point. In other words, it wouldn't be long before He manifested in the lower physical realm with unstoppable force.

"but……"

Dionysus suddenly changed the subject.

"From what you said before, it seems that besides Hecate, there are other beings involved in Nord."

The waitress looked at Dionysus with a puzzled expression, but he did not explain in detail.

"Although the probability is slim, what if the wish He left behind wins..."

Dionysus closed his eyes at this point.

A vast amount of intelligence began to converge.

“I understand now… So that’s what Hecate’s plan was, to snatch chestnuts from the fire. To be honest, she’s frighteningly calm, and incredibly crazy.”

He opened his eyes again and began to laugh loudly.

"Lord Dionysus..."

The waitress was somewhat uneasy about her host's sudden outburst of madness.

After a long while, Dionysus's maniacal laughter finally stopped.

He raised his cup and, with great enthusiasm, addressed the vast and empty temple:

"Let's see! The parasite and the host, where will the concept of humanity ultimately end up?"

After saying this, He drank the blood-red wine in one gulp.

…………

Twenty seconds after the news of the master of ceremonies interrogating the horse reached the Jupiter Group headquarters—the summit of Olympus—the board of directors convened an emergency meeting.

They ultimately decided to give the Nord resettlement area one last twelve hours.

This is not a timeframe given arbitrarily.

At this moment, there are still three hours until the Vulcan Heavy Industries' continental shelf stabilization device is fully deployed.

Although there may be variables, there are still four hours until the memetic entities completely breach the resettlement area's firewall, as they have calculated.

It will be about five hours before Sita Bisant, the leader of the Dionysian cult, arrives at the Nord settlement.

Any one of these three time points could have served as a signal to launch a major crackdown, but the board of directors did not use them as a reference.

This twelve-hour time limit is entirely based on the time it takes for them to pick up someone from the Australian ecological reserve and take them to the top of Olympus.

In fact, if all that's needed is to quickly (at least in seconds) get a person to headquarters, the Jupiter Group has enough methods to write an encyclopedia.

However, if the prerequisite is to bring this person to headquarters "absolutely safely," then even with the most rigorous and meticulous approach the Jupiter Group can take, it would require at least twelve hours.

Intelligence control, objective concealment, decoy sleuth tactics, route clearing, escorting high-depth Coordinators (Depth 7 and above), climate control, network suppression, drone swarm behavior prediction, mercenary war mediation, elimination of potential threats...

The resources they invested in just to pick up this one person were enough to fight several mercenary wars.

Ironically, the person they were escorting was someone who, theoretically, should never die. (End of Chapter)