Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

“Location entry, Alice Project... Experiment site located. Establishing communication link... Link complete.”

Her form suddenly vanished, reappearing in another separate compartment within the Hive—a secret laboratory with only one exit. In the center of the laboratory, on an iron bed, lay a sleeping woman, her body connected to life support systems.

That's Alice, the protagonist of the Resident Evil film series. According to the original plot, she should have been awakened after several days, or even hours, and then subjected to observational experiments under Umbrella's covert surveillance—her body had already been implanted with Umbrella's monitoring system, and her memories, her brain, had all been tampered with. Oh, perhaps that's not entirely accurate, because the individual 'Alice' never existed in the first place.

She was actually just an artificial being; her memories, her thoughts, her beliefs, and her body were all creations of Umbrella. She was an artificial tool used by Umbrella to develop the T-virus—she wasn't truly human, even though she appeared to be. And if everything were normal, her identity would be kept secret until her death.

No, perhaps not before her death. In the plot of the third installment, the original Alice may have already died in the experiment. The one active in the subsequent works is actually just another clone implanted with memories. It's even possible that even she is just a fake at this moment, and the original Alice was completely eliminated in Umbrella's retrieval operation as early as the end of Resident Evil.

Poor protagonist, poor guy, poor person.

The Crimson Queen reached out and pressed her five fingers onto her head.

Implant detected... Excluding...

A metallic liquid oozed from Alice's face. Even in her sleep, the pain from the expulsion of the foreign object continued to torment her nerves. Her brows furrowed deeply, and beneath her tightly closed eyes, her eyeballs rolled wildly.

'Implanted memory detected... Excluding...'

The unknown liquid substance had completely evaporated, and before the poor Sleeping Beauty could even relax, the intense heat emanating from her brain turned her head into a blazing red-hot shrimp! A very clear gurgling sound, like boiling water, emanated from within her skull. Her limbs, connected to numerous life support devices, convulsed violently as if electrified, and her tightly closed eyes seemed about to open at any moment!

'Soul-like algorithm structure detected... Extracting...'

A small sphere of mixed-color light was extracted by the Crimson Queen, and the woman's convulsing body immediately returned to calm. The Crimson Queen waved her other hand in mid-air a few times, and quickly created a small, exquisite, translucent container out of thin air using the wisps of matter escaping from the air. When she put the sphere of light into the container, the translucency turned pure white.

The appearance of a soul-like structure within an artificial human's body is indeed surprising, but a soul-like entity is ultimately just that—a soul-like entity. It's not a real soul, at best a consciousness on the same level as those ship girls in a bubble world. Perhaps, allowed to evolve freely for a while, it could become a true soul. But now…

'Project complete, establish remote connection...'

The humanoid AI withdrew its hand from Alice's head and quietly stepped aside. As it did so, the numerous life support devices attached to Alice's body detached one by one. The injection sites healed quickly, skipping the scabbing process and regenerating flesh indistinguishable from normal skin. The flushed skin also faded rapidly, returning to a healthy balance of white and rosy hues.

Alice slowly opened her eyes. In the instant she first opened them, her irises had a pale purple glow—she blinked, and the pale purple quickly turned into the bluish-green common among Western Europeans.

“I understand now why Alice hates meeting people with the same name. It’s really not good for your mental and physical health to always encounter people with the same name and similar fates.” Alice got up from the iron bed, stretched out her hand, and with her precise manipulation at the molecular level, she directly transformed the white experimental body coat she was wearing into a combat jacket with certain protective and enhancement functions. She also put on a pair of tall boots on her bare feet. She stretched out her hand, and two sawed-off shotguns turned into smoke and disappeared before they appeared in her hand.

"However, this unfortunate experience is not a reason for me to let that idiot off the hook. This time, I must teach her a lesson and correct her distorted values."

“Master,” the Crimson Queen, standing solemnly to the side, added at just the right moment after she finished speaking. At the same time, a list of information about someone unfolded on a light screen. “Alexia Ashford will arrive in Raccoon City soon. The exact time is uncertain; the possibility of him using spatial jumps cannot be ruled out.”

“Call me Miss,” Alice snorted. “The original copy of this body was created by one of Umbrella’s major shareholders. If you’re going to play the part, play it full, Red Queen.”

"Yes, Your Highness." The Red Queen bowed slightly, indicating that she had fully accepted and understood the current situation. "Shall we participate in the operation immediately?"

“No, wait for her to come. I need to take this time to properly modify this fragile body. Although a blank sheet of paper is perfect for drawing, a paper that is too white is not a good thing.” Alice glanced at her arm. The flesh attached to her limb instantly turned into purple crystals, and then immediately returned to flesh from the crystals—the color and luster remained unchanged, but the strength and toughness were completely different.

She threw a punch forward, and a tangible gust of wind slammed into the steel wall, creating a crack. Her brow furrowed, and a crystalline spear materialized, blasting open a path from the laboratory to the outside as it struck the crack—and she proceeded toward that path—Red Queen following closely behind.

The enhancement is not ideal; at its current level, it's at best a CC-level enhanced Tier 2 Gene Lock Reincarnator. It's barely passable against regular enemies in this world, but if you include the playful Reincarnators, it's far from enough.

Fortunately, there is still plenty of time, and she, 'Alice', is very good at turning time into power.

"It will take some time to modify this body, and most of my computing power will have to be used to handle the endless construction work in the Grand Library. But I think it shouldn't take long. It would be nice to use this time to play some role-playing games with the new Miss Sirin."

Her gaze moved upwards, and as she walked through the passage, it was as if she were passing through Umbrella's underground base and the protective crust above it, vaguely locking onto a guy who was unaware of the impending doom he was about to face, heading south.

“Alexia Ashford, huh?” Large swathes of purple crystals appeared around her.

"Today, I, Alice, will show you how to use the 1,335 ways to train the Philosopher's Stone!"

Section 17. Hesitation Leads to Defeat

"Wow, it's so lively... Did everyone have so much free time before?"

"Poor Captain Zheng Zha, he put in a lot of effort to help everyone get back into the swing of things, but in the end all his plans turned out to be nothing but empty talk."

As a creature calling herself 'Alice' emerged from the Hive accompanied by an unnamed AI entity, on the other side of Raccoon City, in a secret base that was nominally an orphanage but actually the home of a police chief, a corpse lying on an autopsy table began to tremble.

The injected formalin was expelled from the body, and the pale skin visibly regained its rosy hue. The dead cells began to function again, and fresh blood was regenerated in the body after the filler was removed.

Blood, internal organs, bone marrow.

The dead woman came back to life, opening her large, sky-blue eyes. On the autopsy table, she found the annotations for the vessel she controlled, and carefully scanned them from top to bottom—'Katherine Warren, female, eighteen years old, only daughter of Mr. Warren, Mayor of Raccoon City.'

A good identity, an interesting identity.

If any players who have played the second installment of the Resident Evil series are here, they will immediately recognize that the mayor's beloved daughter is an NPC with little role in the story but a memorable one—she is already a corpse when the player sees her, the cause of death being the lethal venom injected by Raccoon City Police Chief Irons. This poor girl, misled by Irons's obsession with collecting corpses during the disaster, not only unwittingly lost her life, but her partially disposed of body is also left in the game environment for countless players to screenshot and photograph. Truly, her life was tragic, and her death was horribly unfortunate.

After all, she is young, beautiful, and has a great figure.

Katherine Warren jumped off the dissection table, her chest swinging vertically in a perfectly mechanical manner due to gravity as she landed. She moved her revived torso and limbs with satisfaction, nodding after discovering many similarities between the husk and her original body.

She was short, slender, and had a youthful face... well, there was no need to say the last word. She thought for a moment, then untied her two braids that were hanging down her back, coiled them up, tied them into a bow with a black ribbon, and picked up a scalpel from the dissection table.

"It's a pity there aren't any suitable large weapons here. Actually, I think I could bring a two-handed sword that can unleash sword energy right now." She looked at the white dress she was wearing. The sleeveless design made her feel a little unhappy because she couldn't hide her scalpel in the cuffs, but she quickly calmed herself down because she heard footsteps coming from outside the room, as well as some unknown person humming an incomprehensible tune.

Ah, how wonderful, it's Director Irons, who has a 'life-or-death feud' with her.

The scalpel, which had previously seemed to have nowhere to go, suddenly found a new purpose. She raised her hand, and the scalpel shot out the instant the door opened, accurately striking the police chief's throat. As the latter collapsed, clutching his bleeding wound and looking terrified, she had already walked past the unfortunate man. She had no interest in him, no interest in speaking to him, and no interest in hearing his dying words and wailing. She simply walked past him quietly, disappearing into the corridor behind the door amidst his gaze, a mixture of terror, disbelief, and despair.

A crawler should die silently, just like a crawler, shouldn't it?

She walked through the deserted corridor, entered the orphanage's foyer, descended one staircase, and ascended the other. Her nose twitched slightly, and her bare feet sensed the pulse of the building's cement and bricks with each step. When she reached the top of the other staircase, the entire orphanage's tangible layout became clearly visible to her. As she left the staircase and changed direction, the location of the armory in this 'Director's Secret Base' came into view.

No keys were needed, because she only needed to touch the door with her fingers to unlock all the locked doors with the slight vibrations caused by the contact. Mechanical locks, electronic locks, fingerprint locks, and all sorts of other high-tech composite locks made no difference to her. However, when she entered the armory, she was slightly surprised by the vast collection of items held by Raccoon City Police Chief Irons.

The weapons stockpile here is... plentiful.

Her gaze swept over the firearms, some powerful, some not, all meticulously crafted. Police revolvers, hunting revolvers, standard pistols, lever-action rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, rotary cannons—weapons that normal people could use and those that normal people couldn't were stored here in abundance, and the ammunition reserves were also plentiful, more than enough for her to wage a small-scale war.

Arming herself to be a Terminator might be a good strategy, but after thinking for a while, Miss Catherine Warren turned her gaze away from the tempting handheld Vulcan cannon—she only took a large hunting revolver, model M500, and a few dozen .50 caliber high-powered pistol rounds. Actually, she preferred the Colt Python series, but unfortunately, its previous owner was a legal arms owner who preferred simple large calibers to variety, and she had no intention of crafting a brand new one herself.

She carefully sheathed her secondary weapon, then turned her gaze away. A decorative alloy Japanese-style great armor set beside her seemed to ignite and melt into a scorching crimson hue. The metal was purified, smelted, and reassembled, transforming into something else within a few seconds—she acquired a well-fitting suit of samurai armor and a samurai sword that was both sharp and sturdy enough.

Although Western-style plate armor and greatswords would suit her better, considering that this world originated from a series of games created by the Japanese, she consciously adapted to local customs and prepared suitable equipment. And when the armor parts that floated up due to her will precisely fitted onto her body, a dashing Western-style female warrior was born.

Everything was ready; her current goal was to participate in the Raccoon City game in this form and wreak havoc. Whether the art style fit the world view was not a consideration for her; her objective was to at least defeat one player other than herself.

"Very good, that's settled." A satisfied Miss Catherine nodded and then joined the battle. Before finalizing her persona and withdrawing her power, she noticed from the fluctuations in the energy sea that there were other participants besides herself and a few others who had already entered the arena, and she easily discerned their true identities from the energy fluctuations.

"Brother...in what capacity will he participate?" She tilted her head slightly, pondering.

..............................

Meanwhile, in the monitoring room of the Raccoon City Police Department, as the vibrating sound grew louder and louder, like the footsteps of an approaching rhinoceros or a raging elephant, becoming increasingly clear and powerful, Miss Sirin, who had been on alert since the sound began, suddenly shouted loudly.

"Everyone! Get away from the wall!"

With a loud 'BOOM—! ! !', the four-finger-thick barrier suddenly cracked open, and a huge, bluish-gray hand, as big as a washbasin, suddenly emerged from it! Claire and Marvin, who had been warned beforehand or had already sensed something, suddenly lunged to either side, while the most vulnerable and petite Sherry quickly covered her head and crouched down, then was protected behind Claire who lay down.

'Bang! —Bang bang bang bang bang—! !! ' Without thinking, as the large, bluish-gray hand withdrew from the crack created by the blow, she raised her gun and fired a series of shots at the crack. The sound of bullets hitting flesh sounded very strange to her ears. She instinctively jumped back and slammed a round stool she had picked up toward the crack. However, at the same second, the entire wall shattered into pieces with a huge cracking sound!

It was a giant, at least three meters tall, a bald giant with a bluish-gray body. It wore a black leather coat with protective plates, and the volley of bullets that Sirin had just fired only managed to leave a few dents in the chest area of ​​the coat!

The hurled stool struck its head and shattered into pieces, yet it did not cause it even the slightest injury.

"Go! Get out of here!" Sirin shouted, dodging a heavy punch from the gray-blue giant with a tactical maneuver. The wind from the punch grazed her cheek, drawing a trickle of blood, and the ground where she was hit immediately cracked outwards like a spider web!

[A punch with 6.42075 tons of force... Damn! The data I sensed was too precise, which doesn't fit my character. Let's just say it's 6.5 tons for now. Seriously, with that kind of punch, even if I unlocked the second stage of my genetic lock, I wouldn't be able to withstand it head-on!]

Thoughts flashed through her mind, but her hands and feet did not hesitate at all. She swayed her body, turned her body to the side of the gray giant, and slipped behind the giant. The combat dagger she had prepared beforehand popped out of her sleeve. As she moved like a venomous snake, she climbed up the giant's back from behind, and the sharp tip of the dagger slashed fiercely at the back of the giant's neck!

Giants always have a weak point in the back of their neck—Cirin firmly believed this. And she was equally confident that the dagger in her hand could pierce the giant's neck skin—the inherent weakness of humanoid bio-weapons was that their nervous systems were not much different from ordinary humans, and once the central nervous system or cerebellum was damaged, even the strongest monster would instantly collapse into a lump of mud!

She moved swiftly and confidently, her five fingers gripping the dagger unwavering.

This confidence lasted until the gray-blue giant, with the agility of a skilled dancer, dodged her seemingly inevitable strike and seized her right leg, which was climbing up the giant's lower back.

"Ah?"

The sensations of weightlessness and loss of speed came simultaneously. When Xilin regained her balance with her current perceptive abilities, she found her forehead rapidly approaching the partition wall to the side. The whistling wind from her ear and the feeling of restraint from her left calf clearly presented the terrible situation she was facing.

[The second stage of the genetic lock is now unlocked!]

The muscles in her left calf, which the giant was gripping, suddenly bulged. The sudden burst of strength and the expansion of her muscles effectively freed her from the giant's grasp. Her ten fingers then curled slightly, and before the girl's slender knuckles touched the wall, they suddenly swelled up like newborn carrots—with a 'crack', she managed to dig two basin-sized dents into the already not-so-sturdy wall with her brute force, and the enormous force that should have stuck her to the wall like a potsticker was completely dissipated!

[Damn it, this thing is way too sensitive for a biological weapon! A normal second-tier reincarnator with only low-level enhancements would be in serious trouble... Wait, did I break character rules again?]

Celine's mind raced. The wall slab she'd torn off, using a deflection technique, slammed straight into the giant's head and exploded into a cloud of dust. In that brief moment of exchange, Claire, carrying Sherry, scrambled out of the monitoring room and, near the door, joined Marvin in firing repeatedly at the gray-blue giant's head!

The explosions were deafening. The giant raised an arm to cover its face, but it had no intention of attacking Claire and the others. Its upper body leaned forward slightly, and like a raging bull, it charged at Sirin, who had just landed and adjusted her position. The desk that Sirin had kicked out to temporarily block it was smashed in half, and the huge, mountain-like body was already in front of Sirin!

With a punch and a cannon roar, Sirin narrowly avoided what was practically a fatal blow, but the wall behind her was blasted open, leaving a hole half her height! She dodged, rolled outwards, and fired her gun at the giant's face, but before she could empty half a magazine, the giant tore off a section of the wall several meters wide and swatted it at her like a fly swatter!

At this moment, Xilin deeply regretted that when she was creating her character, she had equipped herself with a small pistol instead of heavy firepower capable of blasting a hole in the ground. Just as she helplessly covered her head with her hands, preparing to receive the heavy blow that would cripple her current character, an unfamiliar male voice rang out from afar.

"Hey! Big guy, look this way!"

A flash of light and the sound of buzzing filled Sirin's vision—the wall had still smashed into her.

Section 18. Decisiveness, and No Effortless Action

Celine felt her body flying backward involuntarily, probably crashing into something, then smashing something, then crashing into something else, and smashing something else again. When she finally came to her senses 'according to her character,' she found that she had successfully destroyed a window and a door, and her whole body was in excruciating pain.

For a reincarnator who has experienced several bloody battles and unlocked multiple levels of genetic locks, simple pain is merely a physical illusion, which can be easily suppressed by willpower. Unfortunately, however, Miss Sirin at this moment is just an ordinary, unenhanced FBI senior agent who has just unlocked the second level of genetic locks. So she could only struggle to stand up, while letting out a slightly painful groan from her nose.

"Well……"

A jumble of sounds came from beside my ear, but there was no sense of impending danger or whistling wind.

There was a hard sensation behind me, but it didn't cause any sharp contact or penetrating wounds.

Her hands hurt terribly, but she could still move them. The price for that mobility was the result of dispersing the impact of the concrete slab that hit her through her second-tier gene lock, transferring the force from her arms to her entire body. Internal bleeding and organ damage were severe, but better than losing her fighting arms at such a crucial moment—her vision returned to clear, and she could see the battle unfolding on the other side of the police station.

Someone helped her, a man. And even a fool could easily identify him. She saw the young policeman with the parted hair, and she also saw the shotgun he held in one hand, its muzzle pointed at the gray-blue giant who was stunned by the flashbang!

"Hey--!"

With a shout and a spray of iron sand, the gray-blue giant, caught off guard, stumbled from the side after being hit by a shot. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the officers nimbly dodged to the other side, avoiding a desk kicked out by the gray-blue giant in the direction of the sound, and simultaneously threw a black bag at Claire and Marvin!

This should be the main character of the story, the policeman named Leon.

[I need to think of a way to help him... Damn it, this crappy little gun I have can't even break through his defenses! What am I going to do?! Ugh, I really want to just hand-craft an Eden's Star and smash it right in this guy's face!]

[No way! That would completely ruin my character. Unless this body is destroyed or an NPC I know is about to die, flipping the table is absolutely out of the question... But how can I defeat this guy? My basic abilities aren't good enough. Even if I unlock the second stage of my gene lock and try to fight him head-on, I still won't win!]

The player, Sirin, devoted to her role-playing, thought raced through her mind, but her hands, feet, and body's instincts didn't falter. The second stage of her genetic lock activated, and a surge of specific hormones stimulated her body to unleash all the potential a mortal could possess. She twisted the stem of a lamp in half, then shaped the crack into a cone, which, when she hurled it with all her might, transformed into a sharp javelin!

'Thud—' The giant's left shoulder joint was injured, and his balance, which had just been restored from the shotgun attack, was disrupted once again. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the officers split up and raised their shotguns, firing a series of close-range shots at the giant's bald head, blasting him until blood splattered everywhere while maintaining a safe distance.

—He unlocked the first stage of the gene lock. After throwing the spear, Sirin could clearly see the bewilderment in the eyes of the parted-haired officer—this was obviously not because he was scared and at a loss—and when she saw the guy's eyes, she did not notice any abnormal swelling of the muscles on his body.

As expected, without enhancements and while armed, the difference between a Tier 1 and Tier 2 gene lock isn't actually that significant. The gene lock itself is merely a manifestation of a realm, an external mechanism, an amplifier. Its compatibility with almost all physical or mental enhancements is certainly an advantage of being a 'righteous path,' but it's also a weakness—it can only increase the unlocker's combat power according to a certain proportion based on their original abilities and qualities, unless the unlocked individual reaches Tier 4.

Sirin reached the fourth tier, but the problem was that according to her character design, she was only at the second tier. So even if she wanted to conjure up an Eden's Star or a Void Spear and slam it into his face, all she could do at this moment was activate and unleash the full power of her leg muscles. As her stamina drained, her muscles swelled dramatically. By the time the parted-headed officer's series of precise but useless shotgun shots ended, she had already closed in on the gray-blue giant's flank again, and before he could pull out the lamppost spear, she had already brutally ripped it out!