Cyberpunk, but urban

The star-shaped magic bullets that the Queen of Hate scattered out with a wave of her hand drew a lovely arc in the air, and then slowly touched the gang members standing outside the inspection passage.

As the star magic bullets exploded with pink heart-shaped light effects on them, these people fell to the ground without even having time to make a sound.

"There are more in the passage, don't miss any." Ye Lan said, and he also went into one of the passages.

The members of these small gangs were not even as strong as Yuli in terms of combat power, and they were able to occupy this checkpoint only because no one was competing with them. Facing Ye Lan, who was wearing a set of Teth-level ego equipment, the few remaining small fish in the passage were dealt with one by one by Ye Lan and the Queen of Hate without any setbacks.

Afterwards, Ye Lan dismantled the inspection passage built by these gang members and let go all the residents who were still queuing inside the L Nest. Then he leaned against the van that previously held four or five relatively delicate-looking ladies who were tied up together and started to check the odds and ends looted from these gang members.

Most of these people have a handwritten recipe book with different handwritings, which shows that they must have written their own recipes.

From this point of view, it can be confirmed that they came from Lane 23.

Lane 23 is known as the Lane of Taste and the Lane of Food. The urbanites who live there are all good cooks, or... good meat.

As a back alley that pursues gourmet food to the extreme, there is absolutely no taboo against killing and cannibalism in this alley. Similarly, the chefs in this alley regard human flesh as the best ingredient. People living in this alley may become butchers who kill people for flesh at any time, or may also become ingredients to be eaten at any time.

"It looks like Alley 23 is starting to run out of food. This means the library will soon be hosting Pierre's big meat pie."

Ye Lan threw the recipes on how to eat people written by these gang members into the wildfire on the street and burned them all, then called the Queen of Hate to march towards the center of L Nest.

When they arrived here, there was a faint mist floating around Ye Lan and the others, and it became thicker as they went deeper.

Soon, Ye Lan's figure was swallowed up by the mist. Even the Queen of Hatred, who was an abnormality, had to get very close to see Ye Lan clearly.

But for Ye Lan, the mist had no effect except for leaving a thin white trace in front of his eyes. The ring in his hand emitted a faint glow, allowing him to perfectly adapt to the thick mist of other people's egos around him.

"Follow me closely, don't get lost."

Ye Lan reached out and grasped the delicate hand of the Queen of Hate, and walked towards the library standing in the center of the L Nest with a clear goal. The three Abnormality Eggs in his dimensional bag seemed to feel the heavy pressure from the library, and even their usual slight shaking completely stopped.

After walking for a while with the Queen of Hate, the sound of gunfire, so faint that it was almost imperceptible, came from a distance. The gunfire was spaced far apart, but there were many of them, and the most likely source of these gunfire should be members of Thumb's gang.

Ye Lan touched his chin, wondering whether he should go over to have a look at the excitement. However, in the short time he was thinking, the gunshots came closer to him.

"Woo woo, there seems to be a bad guy?"

The Hateful Queen, who was unable to run around because Ye Lan was holding her hand, tilted her head and asked Ye Lan. In this thick fog, even the abnormality's perception of the surroundings was greatly weakened. The Hateful Queen could only vaguely feel that the two groups of bad guys seemed to be approaching them, but the closer they got, the fewer people there were.

"Well, it has nothing to do with us. Don't worry about them. They will die in this thick fog."

As Ye Lan spoke, he jumped onto the roof of a building nearby with the Queen of Hate, leaving the street completely to the Thumb Soldiers who were fleeing in this direction.

The people chasing them were a long-cloaked index finger agent and his many index finger ascetics. Although the original plot mentioned that the thumb and index finger had many frictions in the process of occupying the L nest ruins, and even eventually turned into a war between the fingers, Ye Lan did not expect that they would have fought at such an early point in the plot line.

Just as he was about to continue moving towards the library with the Queen of Hate, a gunshot was heard from the top floor of the building they were standing on.

A single bullet trailing a line of fire left a bright red streak in the air and hit the chest of the Index Finger Agent who was concentrating on chasing the fleeing Thumb Soldiers.

The exploding flames completely engulfed the agent. Before the sparks could completely dissipate, gunshots rang out from several surrounding buildings. The fleeing thumb soldiers all turned their guns around and fired the bullets they had loaded during their escape at the index finger members.

Without any chance to put up any resistance, all the Index Finger members were engulfed in the smoke from the explosions of various bullets.

Chapter 110. It’s a rare opportunity to enter the library from the main entrance

The members of the Index Finger who were caught off guard by the Thumb's ambush had no time to dodge. In that short moment, all they could do was to use their swords to try their best to block the special bullets shot from both sides of the street. Apart from that, all they could do was hope that the reinforced fiber clothes on their bodies could completely block those bullets.

However, the bullets fired from the muskets that were specially developed for these special bullets in the Thumb's workshop could not be defended against by the fibers used in the standard uniforms of the Index Finger Ascetics.

The bullets only paused for a moment on their clothes before penetrating their bodies. Although there are classics such as "Smoke Without Wounds" in various literary works, these ascetics under Ye Lan's eyes were unable to experience this literary plot twist like the lucky ones in those works.

"... Thumb has won this battle, but... the agent below should be able to take a lot of soldiers with him before he dies."

Ye Lan made an assessment of the battlefield between the two sides under his feet, and then left with the Queen of Hate.

Behind the two who left, on the battlefield of the thumb and index finger, the index finger agent, who had survived the bullets of the thumb soldiers by virtue of his higher-level uniform and cloak, whispered the order given to him by the messenger and released his sword.

Deep blue petals like the clear sky fell from his blade, and the entire sword emitted a brilliant blue light after the agent unleashed the blade.

None of the thumb soldiers present could see clearly what he did, but when he fell to his knees due to his injuries, all the thumb soldiers left on the street as bait stopped moving.

Under the gaze of the thumb soldiers in the building on the street, the upper bodies of their companions who were still downstairs began to slowly move horizontally, and finally fell to the ground with gravity, making a dull sound.

boom!

While these inexperienced soldiers were still in a daze, on the top floor of the building where Ye Lan had stood before, an armor-piercing bullet was fired from the window facing the street and pierced through the skull of the Index Finger Walker who was unable to dodge.

A commander of the thumb threw aside the nearly scrapped musket in his hand, his face not looking very good. In this battle, they not only used bait tactics, but also prepared such a deadly trap for the people of the index finger in advance.

But in the end, the soldiers used as bait were replaced by the index finger agent. For the thumb commander, the result of this battle could be said to be a miserable victory.

Ye Lan, who left the battlefield of the thumb and index finger, soon got completely away from them. He was able to see clearly the fog surrounding the collapsed L nest, so he easily passed through the many distortions wandering in this area and approached the core area of ​​the L nest smoothly.

When we got here, the fog dissipated contrary to its usual practice, and in its place was a library emitting warm light, standing on the ruins of the Lobotomy Corporation.

Ye Lan and the Queen of Hate walked closer and saw the long staircase of the library leading all the way to their feet from a distance. A rough count showed that there were more than ten thousand steps.

"Wow, this is some climbing."

Ye Lan sighed, and the moment he and the Queen of Hate approached the steps of the library, the ego equipment he had been wearing all the way turned into points of light and dissipated, and the ring on his hand also dimmed.

The staff that had been floating behind the Queen of Hate fell to the ground with a clang the moment she stepped onto the stairs, turning into an ordinary toy without any special features.

The abnormality was startled by the sudden loss of power, but soon became happy again. On this staircase, she could really be considered an ordinary little girl without the power of the abnormality.

Ye Lan helplessly looked at the Hateful Queen jumping in front of him, shook his head, and walked towards the main entrance of the library. With only the strength of an ordinary person left, he and the Hateful Queen spent more than an hour on this staircase before finally standing at the entrance of the library panting and having time to catch their breath.

This level of exercise was something Ye Lan had never experienced since joining the Lobotomy Corporation, and for the Queen of Hatred, it was an experience she had only in her memory.

After Ye Lan and the Queen of Hate calmed down their breathing, Ye Lan gently knocked on the door of the library. The door was locked and could only be opened from inside the library without a key.

It’s just… Although Angela is the director of the library, and this library is her ego, Angela at this moment doesn’t have a complete understanding of herself or what she wants, so she cannot fully control this library.

She couldn't even open the main door of the library, which she should have been able to open easily.

However, her inability to open it does not mean that the library itself cannot open itself. After Ye Lan walked up the long steps like a well-behaved guest and knocked on the door of the library, the library opened its door without Angela's knowledge and took Ye Lan and the Queen of Hate into it.

This whole scene was seen by Malkuth who happened to pass by.

"Ye, Ye Lan?!"

After watching this scene, Malkuth didn't even notice that the history book in his hand had fallen to the ground. He simply jumped over the railing on the second floor of the hall and jumped down.

Of course, she had heard from Angela before that the door of the library was closed and it was impossible to leave. Naturally, she tried to push open the door that stood in the front hall of the library out of disbelief.

However, even if she tried her best, and even dragged Roland and Angelica to join in the fun, the combined strength of the three of them could not shake the door even a little bit.

"How could you walk in through that door?!"

Before Ye Lan could get away from the strange scene of Malkuth falling from the sky, Malkuth had already grabbed his shoulders with both hands and shook him excitedly.

"Stop, stop, stop, Makuku, you're making me dizzy." Ye Lan was dizzy from her shaking and had to pat her hands on his shoulders to signal her to let go.

The Queen of Hate on the side looked at this scene at a loss. After entering the library, her strength returned to normal, but in her view, the sister who was shaking Ye Lan in front of her was not a bad guy. Whether Ye Lan needed her help became a dilemma she could not avoid at the moment.

Chapter 111. Suddenly I don’t know what title to give it

"Alright, alright, Malkuth, let me go first." Ye Lan patted Malkuth's hands that were pressing on his shoulders, pointed in the direction of the Hateful Queen and said, "If you don't let go, this girl will get stressed."

Malkuth looked in the direction Ye Lan pointed, and only then did she realize that the little girl who had been silent since following Ye Lan in was not a human, but the Queen of Hate who was supposed to be sleeping in the library.

She let go of her hands that were holding Ye Lan, hugged them to her chest and asked Ye Lan, "How did you get her out of the library?"

"I don't know." Ye Lan looked at the Queen of Hate helplessly, and then continued to say to Malkuth: "I called on her power, which should have summoned a shadow of her to strike me. However, she followed the power of the call and teleported to my side."

"Wait a minute, what is the power that calls her? Ye Lan, what are you talking about?"

Ye Lan said a lot of things with a lot of information in one breath, and Malkuth was quite confused by the vague messages in his words.

"Uh...why don't you accompany me to settle them down first, and then we can talk about this?"

Ye Lan blinked and looked at Malkuth with an innocent expression. But the three Abnormality Eggs he took out from his dimensional bag completely broke the disguise on his face.

"Ye! Lan!"

Ye Lan's series of behavior since he came in made Malkuth very angry. She shouted Ye Lan's name loudly, glared at him fiercely, then picked up the three abnormal eggs that Ye Lan had placed on the ground and rushed out of the hall.

These three abnormalities that returned to the library in the form of eggs all needed to be properly taken care of, and she needed to hand them over to Angela as soon as possible.

While running towards the director's office, Malkuth recalled the bad things that happened between him and Ye Lan. It seemed that since his first day at work, this guy was very good at making him angry.

Whether it was calling her Makuku or popping out from strange places to make weird jokes, these were things that wouldn't bother her if someone else did them, but when Ye Lan's face, which always had a fake smile, was used, it became irritating.

"It seems that our lovely Miss Librarian designated for the History Division is temporarily too busy to take care of us two."

Ye Lan said to the Hateful Queen who was still confused about the relationship between him and Malkuth, and then took her up the wooden stairs in the hall to the second floor and picked up all the books that Malkuth had dropped on the ground.

"Come with me, we'll go to the history floor and put them all away, then I'll take you to find Angela and have her arrange a place for you to live."

The Queen of Hate did not have a big reaction to what Ye Lan said about her residence. Although she looked like a human, she was still an abnormality after all. She did not need to eat or sleep, and she had no concept of residence. Even when she was in the Lobotomy Corporation and her enkephalin was extracted by the Reverse Kabbalah Tree of Life System, she did not feel much.

Ye Lan didn't care about the Queen's attitude towards residence. To him, finding a place for people around him to live was an instinct brought over from his previous life. It was purely the thought that he always had to have a home.

It didn't take me long to return the books on the history floor, but I spent more time chatting with my colleagues who had become librarians on the history floor.

These colleagues who had previously worked with him on the Seed of Light Project at the Lobotomy Corporation headquarters obtained new bodies in the library. Although they are not as strong as the bodies of level five employees for the time being, being able to walk freely in the library is enough for Ye Lan's colleagues for the time being.

After all, Angela promised that once her plan was accomplished, she would return their bodies to them, and all contracts with Lobotomy Corporation and the library would end at that moment. At that time, it would be entirely up to them to decide whether to stay or go.

"So what are your plans now?" Ye Lan asked curiously.

"To be honest, I haven't thought about it yet. As for you, you will definitely stay in the library with Miss Angela and the Sephirahs... After all, only you dare to harass Angela and Sephirah every other day without being executed by the supervisor." A history-level librarian said to Ye Lan, with a hint of envy in his eyes that he himself did not realize.

This envy is not about envy for Ye Lan being able to live with Angela and Sephirah, but envy for Ye Lan being able to find what he wants to do after the Seed of Light Project.

Snapped!

The sound of snapping fingers rang out, and Angela and Malkuth appeared in the history layer. Seeing the two of them, the librarians in the history layer all evacuated from the history layer in a few breaths. Only a few brave librarians were still at the stairs, secretly staring at Ye Lan and Angela.

"Ye Lan, why do you come to my history floor if you have nothing to do?" Malkuth had already calmed down with Angela, but when she saw the fake smile on Ye Lan's face, the feeling of annoyance came to her mind again.

"Hey, I'm just helping you put back the books that fell on the floor... Let's not talk about that for now, Angela, can you also help the Queen of Hate to get a room? She finally woke up, and it would be too inhumane to let her turn back into a book and fall asleep."

"Yeah, I'll help you do it later." Angela said, "But now, you should tell us how you got in."

"Then let's go to your director's office?" Ye Lan asked.

Angela nodded and snapped her fingers again. After a snap, the three of them returned to Angela's library director's office. The librarians who were looking around in the stairwell sighed with regret and went back to do their own things.

"Where should I start?" Ye Lan muttered as she found a chair in Angela's director's office and sat down. Malkuth also found a chair and sat down, but her position and sitting posture made her look like an interrogator.

"Do you remember that day? That was the day I wanted to test the ring in my hand." Ye Lan stretched out his hand and waved it in front of them so that they could both see the ring clearly.

"Ego?" Angela asked uncertainly.

"Probably. I'm not sure, actually." Ye Lan replied, "But it doesn't matter. What matters is that this ring allows me to summon the ego equipment of every Abnormality that I have ever communicated with."

Chapter 112. Chat among three people

"What are the ego equipment of all the abnormalities you have communicated with?" Malkuth asked.

It’s not that she didn’t believe what Ye Lan said, but this matter was really too outrageous. Even if she knew it was true, she had to ask one more question.

"Yes, during the reincarnations we spent together, I established a deep connection with every Abnormality contained in the headquarters, which I call the Final Observation."

As Ye Lan was talking, he looked at Angela. Attracted by his actions, Malkuth also looked at Angela.

"You guys, what are you looking at me for?"

Angela looked at the two of them and asked blankly.

"Makuku, you probably don't remember it, but after every final observation, Angela would whisper a few words about her opinions on those Abnormalities."

In an instant, Malkuth looked at Angela with a strange look in his eyes, "You would do such a thing secretly?" She found it hard to believe that this cold and ruthless AI would do such a thing behind her back.

"I am indeed a machine, but I am not completely heartless." Angela said indifferently. Then her eyes pierced Ye Lan like a sword, indicating that he had better not say anything more.

"Anyway, this part is not important. Let's talk about what happened before..." Ye Lan obediently changed the subject, "It was when we were at the D Nest Branch. In order to deal with the three Abnormalities you just collected, I tried to borrow power from the Queen of Hatred."

"However, unlike when I did this to other Abnormalities, it was not just a shadow of power, but the Queen of Hatred herself who suddenly teleported in front of me and calmly assisted me in recovering all three Abnormalities that were messing around in the branch facility."

Ye Lan briefly told the two of them what had happened to him in the D Nest branch before, and this story really lifted their spirits.

Malkuth sighed: "It turns out that there are still employees alive in the branch..."

Angela responded to her sigh and said, "In fact, Ayin's Seed of Light plan contains a very complete evacuation plan for each branch of the Lobotomy Corporation in the city."

"But judging from the intelligence Ye Lan provided me and the information I collected in the few days after the launch of the Seed of Light, the implementation of this evacuation plan was very poor."

"Eh? Doesn't that mean that a lot of employees have sacrificed their lives in vain?!" Upon hearing Angela's statement, Malkuth sat up straight.

"…After all, we can't leave this library. Searching and rescuing the employees of those branches is just a fantasy for us."

But just after she said what she had just thought, she sat back dejectedly.

"As for how I got in..." Ye Lan kept it a secret for a while, and then after enjoying Malkuth's punches and Angela's sharp eyes, he said to the two of them:

"I just walked up the stairs outside the library's main entrance under the library's physical suppression, and then knocked on the door of the library. If I'm not mistaken, those who come up according to its rules will be regarded as guests and have the right to enter and exit."