The Heartthrob Guide: Dodder of S-Class Sentinels

Chapter 96 Become My Partner (Revised)
As Ronnie's voice fell, many villagers suddenly appeared around Lin Nan. Ronnie's parents stood beside her, took her hand "kindly", and said, "What a pretty girl! Are you my classmate? Would you like to come to our house for dinner tonight?"

"It's the first time a little girl has come to our house. Mother, you have to prepare a sumptuous dinner tonight."

"You don't need to tell me that. I'm going to show off my best skills."

"..."

The couple were having an ordinary conversation, but the expressions on their faces were like masks, stiff and unchanging.

"It's the first time a girl from outside has come to our village. She's a rare guest."

"Is this the girl Ronnie met outside? Are they planning to get married?"

"Ronnie, you are so lucky!"

……

The other villagers around also gathered around, their eyes blank, muttering some irrelevant words.

It was as if their souls had been taken away from them, leaving only a body mechanically acting out the scenes of their previous lives.

Lin Nan felt a chill running from the soles of her feet straight up to her heart. She tried to break free from Ronnie's parents' hands, but found that they were surprisingly strong and clamped her tightly, making her unable to move at all.

At this moment, the villagers' dull expressions frightened her more than any other alien species.

"Look, they live the way they want here. Isn't it wonderful? Guide Lin, why don't you join us?"

Ronnie was standing beside him, constantly mutating as he spoke. The black creature behind him stretched out its hind legs, followed by its huge body, which was covered with thick black carapace. It seemed to be made up of countless rotten flesh and metal fragments, emitting a disgusting stench; finally, its slightly short front legs.

Ronnie's human body shrank and decayed at a visible rate, leaving only a head. The monster, bearing Ronnie's head, stood on two legs like a rat, its already enormous body towering even more like a mountain.

Lin Nan looked at the giant monster that was gradually growing in front of him, and his heart grew colder and colder.

"It" was as tall as a three-story building, with a fishy and smelly body. Its tail was like a twisted python, swinging wildly on the ground, leaving a sticky trail wherever it went.

Its head still retained the appearance of a human, and Ronnie's cold facial features formed a strange contrast with the monster's body, as if it was a deformed product crawling out of a nightmare.

……

Not long ago, the outside world guided the college's academic affairs office.

After Huo Sen finished his business, he fell into the sofa with a tired look.

With some free time, he opened the terminal and continued to watch the progress of the league.

He clicked on Lin Nan's live broadcast room. When he saw Ronnie's face on the screen, his brows, which had been slightly relaxed, could not help but frown again...

"Have all the people participating in the league this time been checked one by one?" he asked.

Gis was processing files on the terminal nearby. Upon hearing Huo Sen's words, he replied, "They should all be available. The organizing committee will scan everyone's identity information before they board the airship. They will only release it after confirming it's correct."

Every student's information is registered in detail on the White Tower's terminal network, including appearance, family, origin, spiritual level, etc. If there is anything abnormal, the scanner will definitely respond.

"Bring the list here for me to see."

"Okay." Gis clicked a few times on the terminal and sent a document.

Huo Sen clicked on them one by one, skimmed through them, and finally stopped at Ronnie's information.

"Who are the members of the organizing committee for this league?"

"Um... well, besides the directors of each academy, I remember there are also people from Duke Ned's family. After all, they contribute the most every year—"

"Heh... what a bunch of idiots!" Huo Sen closed the terminal coldly. The cold light in his emerald green eyes was like the cold light reflected from the polar glaciers, revealing a bone-chilling chill.

"The scanner can't find anything unusual, so what if that person hasn't been through the scanner?"

"How could it be... There are so many guards guarding every place, how could someone get away right under our noses..." Gis said in disbelief, "Director, do you think something is wrong?"

The man who had just sat down stood up and said coldly, "Tell Uriel that if he finds the alienated sentinel, send his army to arrest him immediately!"

"W-What! A mutant sentinel?!" Gis's face turned pale when he realized what was happening. "Are you saying that one of the contestants this year has been mutant?"

He had just finished speaking when he saw that the signal of the live broadcast of the league content on the terminal was suddenly interrupted!

The audience, who were originally immersed in the tense and exciting atmosphere of the league, were caught off guard by this sudden situation and their faces were full of confusion.

The scene finally stops at the moment when Lin Nan and the others enter the cave.

"What's going on? Why is there no picture?"

"What are you doing? I'm watching the exciting part."

"@Organizing Committee, what are your people doing? Why is there no video?"

"The footage from Ireland's perspective was lost a long time ago. I wanted to mention it just now, but when I saw that the others were fine, I thought it was because the signal was bad in the cave, so I didn't say it."

"That's strange. We lost the signal when we entered the cave. What's inside?"

"!! What are you doing, guard? The signal's lost, aren't you going to chase them? If something happens to the guide, who's going to take responsibility?"

"The official announcement has been made. Go check it out. It seems to say that some emergency has occurred and the live broadcast will be temporarily suspended."

"What's going on?!"

At Duke Ned's residence, the moment news of the Irish disappearance reached them, the people inside were already frantic. "What should we do, Duke? Should we report this to the President? Only the detoxification center can handle this right now..." the assistant asked cautiously, sweat beading on his forehead and his eyes revealing an unconcealed panic.

"How can that be? Isn't this a disguised way of telling everyone outside that there's something fishy going on with us in this league?" Duke Ned was furious. He was worried about Ireland's whereabouts and kept cursing. "What the hell is this idiot up to? He failed at the crucial moment! If anything really happens to my precious daughter, I will not let him off!"

"Didn't that guy Quasimo guarantee that the drug was 100% controlling him and that there would be absolutely no problems?"

"It's just an F-class alien—" Duke Ned picked up the exquisite teacup beside him and threw it to the ground angrily, "I should have killed it when I fished it out of the contaminated area!"

……
-
"Guide Lin, please join us."

Ronnie's voice, repeated over and over again, seemed to come from deep underground, with a bit of hoarseness and weirdness.

"The first time I saw you, I knew you and I were on the same side. We possess the same abilities. As long as we join forces, no one will be our match..."

Only a few of Ronnie's human facial features were left, which looked particularly abrupt. His big round eye was wide open without any emotion, staring at Lin Nan.

The familiar shrill metallic buzzing sound came again, causing Lin Nan to have a splitting headache. He subconsciously hugged his head tightly with both hands.

The first time she heard this voice in the Black Bear Sentinel's mental image, all her mental power was plundered away. Now it wants to use the same trick again and control her!

Lin Nan gritted her teeth, endured the headache, and tried to calm herself down. The vines twisted restlessly around her, as if sensing their owner's fear.

Do you also want her to turn into such a disgusting monster?

Only a ghost would want that!
Lin Nan couldn't help but feel disgusted.

She released all her mental power in an attempt to capture Ronnie's emotions, but before her vines could extend over, they encountered a strong resistance and were bounced back!
"what!"

The nerves in his head seemed to be forcibly torn apart, and Lin Nan couldn't help but scream in pain.

"It's useless. Your trick doesn't work on me. My mental ability level is higher than yours. I can block your signal. As long as we are here, you can't beat me." Ronnie said calmly.

Lin Nan weakly supported himself, holding his temple, and said, "Ronnie, you used to be a sentinel, right? I'm just a little curious, why can you still control your consciousness after you transformed?"

The black wolf she had encountered as a guide had transformed into a beast intent on killing. Unlike this monster, it still retained its own consciousness, able to communicate coherently with her and even use its abilities to suppress her with precision.

what on earth is it?

She really wanted to know, so after clearly guessing that he was an alien, she didn't expose him immediately.

"This... I'm not very clear either. I just know that when I woke up, I became like this." Ronnie replied. His only remaining human eye became blank again, and his memory seemed to have returned to that moment in the past.

"Back then, I was most afraid of the conscription soldiers who would come to the village and bully people from time to time. I thought they deserved to die, but they were also terrifying. Until later, I gained the same abilities as them - everything changed at that moment..."

At the age of sixteen, he became a sentry and became the pride of the whole village.

As everyone expected, he walked out of the mountains for the first time and saw the outside world.

He was requisitioned by the White Tower stationed in the No. 8 contaminated area and became a soldier. He thought he could change the fate of his family from then on, but reality was like a heavy hammer that smashed him to pieces.

Although he had become a sentinel with special abilities, he was still the lowest of the low, earning the lowest wages and doing the dirtiest and most tiring work. Every time he went to the contaminated area to clean up the aliens, he was the one who rushed to the front...

Countless times, he was used as a human shield and almost died under those ferocious fangs and claws. However, in the eyes of those high-ranking officers, their reckless charge into battle was just a matter of course.

The superiors sat in the comfort and safety of the command room, watching them indifferently as they teetered on the brink of life and death, as if they were a group of insignificant ants. Their sacrifice and dedication seemed merely fulfillment of their obligations, unworthy of any praise or sympathy.

Ronnie, who escaped death, could only cover his wound secretly and hide in a dark corner, letting this unwillingness grow wildly in his heart like a cancer.

After joining the army, he couldn't go home for many years, until that time, they received a mission, saying that a village in the nearby forest was invaded by a species of rats, and no one in the village survived...

"I've forgotten how I felt at that time," Ronnie murmured. "That was my first time home after becoming a sentinel. Looking at those familiar scenes, I didn't even have the courage to step in..."

"The village was filled with the smell of blood, rats were everywhere, and human remains were piled all over the path... A teammate brought back a dying little boy from the back mountain and handed him to me."

"He said, 'Ronnie, you seem to be from this village. Do you know this child? He seems to have been calling you.' I held that child in my arms. I remember him. He was a neighbor's child."

"He only had one breath left, and his eyes were already blind. He grabbed my hand and kept saying, 'The aliens are coming, go tell Xiao Ni quickly'..."

At this point, Ronnie's voice had become as low as a thread, as if filled with uncontrollable sobs and grief.

In those final moments, his family searched for him, knowing he was the sentinel and instinctively pinning their hopes of survival on him. They had tried their best to send out distress signals in his direction.

However, the staff on duty in the White Tower where he was stationed, who were supposed to be constantly monitoring distress signals, neglected their duties and left their posts to drink without permission, failing to detect any abnormalities. Consequently, an entire village died...

That day, his nerves, which had been tense all the time, finally broke completely. He didn't know what he had done at that time, but he just fell into a state of crazy chaos.

People screamed in terror all around him, and a black mist emerged from his mental image, completely engulfing him...

"Later, when I woke up, I saw this. Someone took me back to a dark underground place. They locked me up, spending countless hours studying me every day, forcing me to swallow all sorts of drugs... I became less of a human. No—perhaps by that time, I was no longer a 'human'."

"When I was completely stable, I met a man. He told me that I was already an alien species. They used drugs to restore my human consciousness. They didn't need to hand me over to the country, but I needed to obey their 'instructions'."

"At first, I was unwilling, but they were able to use countless methods, all kinds of inhumane experiments, to gradually strip away my will and my resilience..."

"Later, they succeeded, and I really became an 'obedient' alien."

The day he was "released", he had a new identity, that is, a guard in the Duke of Ned's mansion, and his first task was to become a student of the Sentinel Academy, accompany Lord Ireland to participate in the league, and win.

Everything was so ironic. When he saw the Duke, he laughed silently...

The content has been modified.

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(End of this chapter)