Simultaneous Transmigration: We Share a Role-Playing System

When Locke's unequivocal "NO" echoed in the secret room, the fervor and pleading on Cypher's face vanished instantly.

For some reason, even though he only showed the most ordinary expression, with no frown, no twitching at the corners of his mouth, and not even his usual faint sense of aloofness, it still gave people the creeps.

His eyes were like stagnant water shrouded in mist, unfocused and devoid of any emotional fluctuation. He showed neither anger nor panic, nor did he look at the person in front of him. It was as if he saw through everything, yet also as if he saw nothing at all.

He showed no panic, remaining calm as if he had anticipated this outcome. He took out packaged sterile gauze and thrombin freeze-dried powder from his jacket pocket and tossed them to his deputy behind him to help treat the wound.

"You have no idea what you're missing."

"Of course I know what I missed. I missed the chance to save you. You deserve to die, but your life is worthless to me."

"Really? Well, I think so too. Your life is much more precious than mine. If I could trade my life for yours, I think it would be a good deal."

After his wrist cut was hastily treated, Cypher lost all interest in dealing with Locke and turned to leave the secret room with his deputy.

"Leaving already? Not staying a little longer?" Locke's voice came from behind, tinged with a playful provocation. "Maybe in a little while, you'll get to see my new form for yourself."

Cipher showed no sign of turning back; he was resolute and showed no trace of his previous pleading.

"No need. I still have a lot of things to take care of. Since you insist on not cooperating, there's no need to continue the research on your superpowers. Even if you conjure up all sorts of amazing abilities, it's meaningless."

The two reached the end of the corridor, where Cypher suddenly stopped, turned his back to Locke, and remained silent for a few seconds before speaking in a voice as cold as ice: "Enjoy your last moments, goodnight, Locke."

As he finished speaking, he and his deputy turned and walked into the elevator.

Almost simultaneously, cracks slowly appeared in the walls on both sides of the corridor, and dense gas surged out from the cracks, instantly filling the entire passage.

The elevator doors slowly closed, shutting out everything behind them.

The hypnotic gas quickly filled the entire space. Locke's bloodshot eyes glanced one last time at the faint light outside the secret room before his consciousness was completely swallowed by the overwhelming drowsiness. His body went limp and he fell into a deep sleep.

In the elevator, the deputy recalled what he had just heard and finally couldn't help but ask:

"Mr. Cypher, is the group really going to get rid of 0165?"

Cipher glanced at his deputy as if examining a tool.

The deputy, feeling uneasy from the rebuke, instantly regretted his loose tongue, but before he could apologize, Cypher averted his gaze, turned his head back, and answered his question.

"Yes and no, Edgar did have a plan to get rid of 0165, but I still managed to get a chance."

"What opportunity?"

"Try to see if he can withstand the fear of death. Imagine you've been imprisoned for a year, subjected to inhumane experiments, unable to move, unable to see, and even unable to eat normal food. Now, a chance to change everything is placed before you. What would you do?"

"I will not hesitate to grasp this lifeline."

"That's right, that's what a normal person thinks, but that was 0165's state six months ago. Now he's already died once, and all that sustains him is anger and injustice."

As soon as he finished speaking, the elevator doors opened, and fully armed security guards and researchers in biohazard suits waited at the elevator entrance with their tools. They waited until the two of them got out of the elevator before entering to prepare to go down and clean up the mess.

Cypher placed his blood-red right hand in front of the medical staff, seemingly oblivious to pain, refused the anesthesia, and turned to continue chatting with his deputy.

"I originally wanted to destroy his will, but I underestimated him. Everything I did failed to defeat him; instead, it made him stronger and turned him into a big problem."

As he spoke, the deputy's thoughts drifted back to half a year ago, the day he first met Locke.

At that time, the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center was experiencing its worst riot in history, and the instigator was 0165, who had transformed into a clown. With exaggerated green hair and a face covered in comical paint, he seemed to have no superpowers, yet he caused the entire rehabilitation center to pay a bloody price.

His predecessor was in charge of guarding 0165. He had freed the 0165 and allowed it to cooperate with the experiment for three whole days. However, in the end, the predecessor was bewitched by the clown and, together with other security personnel, secretly released nearly half of the research subjects, plunging the entire Elmira into a mad inferno.

That was the closest 0165 ever came to freedom. If Homelander hadn't rushed to his aid in the suppression, and if he hadn't just happened to regain his dominant personality at the right time, he might have actually escaped with a group of experimental subjects.

Afterwards, the official definition of 0165's clown form was "mind control type superpower," but anyone who had seen the video footage firsthand knew that this statement was pure self-deception.

That clown didn't have any superpowers, yet he was more terrifying than any superpowered person—he was a complete devil!

In that instant, the image of those crazed eyes flashed through the deputy's mind. He instinctively shuddered, swallowed hard, and said to Cypher with lingering fear, "Sir, do we... really have a way to control him?"

Cypher knew perfectly well that the "control methods" he spoke of ultimately meant whether or not Locke could be completely killed. He shook his head without hesitation, his tone crisp and devoid of any emotion: "No."

"..."

An eerie silence spread between the two, just as Cypher's wrist wound was being treated.

He lifted his bandaged right hand, examined it to make sure it was alright, and then got up and left, as if he hadn't just been injured and lost a lot of blood. As he walked, he continued, "..."

"Every time we tried to inflict fatal damage on him, he would awaken a new form that was never before seen. At first, we didn't figure out the pattern, and we kept stimulating him, causing his forms to increase and his abilities to become more and more terrifying, until finally he was completely out of our control."

At this point, Cypher paused, a barely concealed apprehension flashing across his eyes, his expression several times more serious than usual: "Although we later figured out the pattern and discovered that the stronger his form was, the shorter the time he could maintain the transformation."

But it was too late. His abilities were now beyond our control, and we dared not gamble, nor could we be certain whether inflicting fatal wounds twice in succession would result in killing him or causing him to transform into an even more powerful new form.

After saying that, Cypher suddenly turned his head and stared coldly at his deputy.

There was no warmth in his gaze, only a chilling coldness, as if he were looking not at his subordinate, but at his own foolish past self, the foolish shadow who had dragged him into this terrible situation.

"If he dies completely in his transformed form, even in the lowest strength form awakened by fatal injury, we must be prepared to lose a Homelander—that's why we stopped the experiment altogether."

Before he could finish speaking, Cipher suddenly reached out and, to his deputy's astonishment and bewilderment, grabbed both of his ears tightly. He pressed his face against his deputy's, almost forehead to forehead, and screamed hysterically, "He's getting stronger! Do you understand?! We've been out of control for ages!"

If we can't figure out why he possesses such innate superpowers—why he can distort reality and defy the laws of physics—how can we explain this to Wotler?!

As he roared, the wound on Cypher's wrist burst open with his increasingly violent movements. The clotting agent completely lost its effect, and blood gushed out like a fountain, splashing directly onto his deputy's face and neck. The warm liquid slid down his cheeks, making his vision increasingly blurry.

"It's not him who's been driven to the brink, it's us! We're the ones who've been driven to the brink! You want to kill him? Then tell me, how many Homelander's lives would it take to kill him?!"

In his deputy's blurred vision, Cypher looked ferocious, like a madman. Veins bulged on his forehead, his eyes were bloodshot, and his once neatly combed hair was disheveled, with splattered blood droplets sticking to his cheeks, filling the air between them with a gunpowder-like, bloody smell.

"If that day really comes, who will clean up this mess? Who will explain to those insatiable vampires that all their money has gone down the drain? It's you! Or me!!!!"

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Meanwhile, in an old office building tucked away in the heart of New York City, the air was thick with dust and the acrid smell of cheap coffee. The Boys, who had finally managed to reunite, sat around a worn-out computer desk, the oppressive atmosphere weighing heavily on everyone's hearts like a damp rag.

Butcher Butcher leaned against the corner of the wall, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, his knuckles white from the force of his grip; Breast Milk, Frenchman, and Kimiko sat at the table, their brows furrowed, staring intently at the computer screen as they listened attentively to Hugh recount the news he had received from Starlight.

"Uh... um, that," Xiu Yi's voice trembled slightly as soon as he started to speak, perhaps because he had been separated from these old friends for too long, or perhaps because of the excitement of catching a big fish.

"These are confidential documents that Anne risked her life to steal from Walter, containing nearly a year's worth of financial statements."

As he spoke, he pulled up the financial statements on his computer screen and continued:

"After a long analysis, we discovered that over the past year, Stan Edgar, the president of Water International, has invested nearly half of the company's profits into a project codenamed 'Hope'."

"Fifty percent?"

The butcher suddenly sat up straight, his fingers holding the cigarette frozen in mid-air, his tone filled with disbelief and skepticism.

For a business behemoth like the Wotech Group, a 50% profit margin is astronomical. Any project that would make them spend so much money on it is unlikely to be simple.

"That's right, so I asked a friend to help me trace the source, and finally figured out where several large sums of money from Waters ended up in the past six months."

As soon as he finished speaking, Xiu Yi's fingertips tapped the keyboard a few times quickly and somewhat stiffly—a small, unconscious movement when he was nervous.

The image on the computer screen instantly shifted, revealing a massive, all-white building with stark, angular lines. The metal sign directly in front of the building was exceptionally clear in the virtual light, its large, bold characters almost blinding:

Elmera Adult Rehabilitation Center