Love and passion, cutting up the wasteland.

Chapter 565: Bone Man
"Oh!" Spider Foreman once again exclaimed with heartfelt admiration, "It's our brother."

The scene had already been played to the point where Zero Two confirmed the other party's identity and prepared to evacuate from the revenge site, but was sniped instead... He already knew what happened next.

Because it was his own son who did it.

To be honest, after reading Zero Two's memory of the massacre and skinning of the village, as a former member of the Empire Screamers, he did not have a good impression of this skeleton man, and he was more convinced that the general's order was correct.

Now that he sees the other side "turning against each other", Spider Foreman, while happy to see it happen, also develops some sense of closeness to the other side - does he seem to be a prodigal son who has returned?
Adding to the previous appreciation...

"No wonder he was able to come up with a strategy to utilize 'Purpose'. As one of us, he has kept the relevant memories until now without erasing them. This is a wise choice." Spider Foreman said, "But why does he look so much like a human? And there are the previous anomalies..."

"Huh? What did you say..."

Punk had just figured out the circuit and came back to his senses.

Skeleton!

Then everything would make sense.

The existence of "Eye" was no secret in the past. It was even just one of the many defense systems above the planet...but the others had either been abandoned and crashed, or had gone out of control.

There is only this one eye.

Only one fruit remains.

The old guys who have survived to this day still have memories of the glory of the past, and out of the contract between the citizens of the empire, all skeletons are obliged to protect these secrets.

But they didn't know.

After thousands of years of work, he has repaired many abandoned control towers in the Land of Revenge and cracked some of the commands transmitted to "Eye"... In the eyes of many skeletons, "Eye" is just still aimlessly following the orders of the ancients and spreading sky fire in Revenge... This is all a disguise.

This is punk's secret, a secret above all else.

"Why do they look like humans?" Thinking Punk didn't hear clearly, Spider Foreman repeated it again.

To him, matters concerning the eyes and the skyfire were not worth discussing, so he did not have as many concerns as Punk.

Instead, it is Zero Two's actions and the person in the picture, who has a human appearance but is identified as a "same kind" as a skeleton, that are more worthy of attention.

"...I see." Punk said slowly, "This confirms my previous guess."

This engineer-model skeleton fell into a long silence, but the signal light on its head changed from green to red and kept flashing - this was a sign that it was reading data.

Looking at the time, one can imagine that even for him, the memories required seem a bit too old.

There are only researchers like them.

Will free up storage space, so focus on history.

The Spider-Foreman waited.

The projected image came to an abrupt end here, and along with the end of Zero Two's memory and life, it froze in the last scene... He looked at Agnu in the cage. The skeleton warrior with a camera head was lying on the ground at this moment, and there was faint blue smoke rising from the cracks in the steel, which was a sign of overheating.

Obviously, activating the hidden function that Punk had found and playing it for such a long time was a big burden for Agnuo. Spider Foreman was about to go over to check on the situation and show some concern, when Punk spoke up:

"Have you ever heard of a skeleton model... 'Whistler'?"

Spider Foreman paused: "No."

"I haven't seen any relevant numbers in the Imperial Library..." he added.

"This is normal." Punk actually began to pace like a human, as if this could ease the confusion of his thoughts just like easing anxiety, "Because the existence of the whistleblower was just a rumor even in the Empire era..."

"Legend has it that there are skeletons with flesh and blood."

"Flesh and blood?" Spider Foreman was stunned. "But, what's the meaning of this——"

As we all know, skeletons are mechanical life forms. The parts that make up their bodies are not all made of metal synthetic materials, but at least most of them are inorganic. This gives them a solid body, resistance to high temperatures, resistance to strong acids, and a long lifespan.

If it were replaced with flesh and blood.

This has become a weakness.

"It's just that the outer skin is covered with flesh and biomass... the inner skeleton is still a mechanical body." Punk said, "Have you ever thought about why we are called 'bone' people?"

"Skeleton? Skeleton... Skeleton!" Spider Foreman was led to think of a possibility that he had never thought of before. He couldn't believe it: "You mean..."

"There used to be a small school of thought in the Empire that believed that all of us skeletons originally had flesh and blood on our bodies, and looked just like humans," Punk said, "but as our flesh aged, decayed, and fell off... what was left was naturally our current bodies."

-

Mechanical skeleton.

Skeleton Man.

Spider Foreman couldn't help but look at his arm. It was made up of two transmission steel bearings, and it really looked like a human ulna and radius...

"This theory has many loopholes. For example, your body and mine are fine, but the head has different functions and structures. I don't know how weird it will be after flesh and blood are attached to it." Punk continued, "And our creator, why did he design these extra biological tissues after we were born? If it is for industry and military, the steel body is enough, unless there is another need..."

"The most important thing is that they have no evidence. According to this theory, the flesh and blood of the skeletons have long decayed, and what is left is machinery. At most, it is a hypothesis that cannot be proven or disproven. It looks like a fraudulent project used to obtain the Empire's scientific research funds..."

"However, that school of thought still found a clue in the literature...that is the existence of the whistleblower."

"It is said that this type of skeleton is designed completely according to the human body. In addition to the mechanical skeleton, it has muscles, organs, nerves... everything. However, it cannot function as it should. It is like a decoration... They even have gender differences."

"It sounds like..." Spider Foreman hesitated, "If there really are such skeletons, the purpose of their existence... is to simulate humans."

This specialized ability is not too strong, but it is not weak either... Perhaps some ancient people used the so-called "whistleblowers" as tools to vent their unspeakable desires for their own kind, such as killing and sex... But from another perspective, they are also excellent spies and assassins, blending into human society and being impossible to detect.

If it was during the First Empire or the Old Empire, when ancient humans still ruled the world, the role that the whistleblowers could play would be even greater than that of ordinary skeletons...mechanical life forms.

(End of this chapter)