Cyberpunk, but urban

In the end, the evaluation of their appearance turned into an evaluation of their combat effectiveness, and it was obvious that these guys' combat effectiveness was completely incomparable to Ye Lan's.

"The main body of the toy factory should be in a storage room at the end of the corridor. Let's go look for it together."

After clearing out all the derivatives, Ye Lan and Luna began to search the corridor. There were not many storage rooms in the branch, and soon they found the main body of the toy factory in a storage room on the left.

In this toy factory that looked like an enlarged version of children's toys, Ye Lan and Luna found an operating device with multiple buttons.

Ye Lan looked at the note on the device that read "Do you love the city you live in?" and found the buttons with "Yes" and "No" below it.

"This place is exactly the same as in the game..."

Ye Lan quickly pressed [No] three times, and a notice of [Unconventional Clause No. 3, Termination of Facility Operation] was heard in the factory. Then, the assembly line made a harsh noise and stopped operating.

Soon, after Ye Lan and Luna walked out of the factory, the abnormal being that they had shut down turned into the appearance of an abnormality egg.

"There are eleven derivatives in total, including those upstairs and downstairs...even if there are any still alive, I estimate there won't be many."

Ye Lan calculated the number of employees he had seen transformed into derivatives so far, and then began the search without any hope.

However, it would not matter if he did not search. Once he searched, he could actually find a few living employees in the rooms of all sizes on this floor.

"You, you said you were a level 5 employee of the headquarters?!" "How is the company now?" "Are there any other people alive besides us?" "Are you here to rescue us?"

After finding all the survivors, Ye Lan took them to the branch's restaurant for a short chat. When the survivors heard that he was a level 5 employee of the headquarters, they immediately surrounded him and asked him a lot of questions.

"Hey, if you have any questions, come and ask them one by one..."

Ye Lan sighed and slowly told them everything they wanted to know. After hearing his words, these employees felt as if their spines had been pulled out and they immediately lost their energy.

Even though Ye Lan told them that he had an existing firm that he could invite them to join, the employees in this branch were not very interested in it.

However, when Ye Lan told them that Company J had dug a tunnel leading to the surface on the underground floor, these employees showed somewhat excited expressions.

Perhaps, rather than joining a firm and working their way up from the bottom, these employees from J Nest and the back alleys under its jurisdiction would rather enter the casinos within the J Nest and the back alleys and gamble with their remaining wages for a chance to get rich overnight.

Ye Lan looked at these people and thought to himself.

"So, any of you wanna come with me?"

Ye Lan asked, and the answer was pitiful silence... After confirming that there were no available employees in this branch, Ye Lan no longer planned to consider the safety of these people.

After sending them to the entrance of the tunnel dug by J Company, he left here on the Yellow Spring Train.

Chapter 174. To be honest, I feel that this maid is harder to defeat than the devil

"It's so difficult. The survivors of the entire branch are all cowardly wimps." On the Yellow Springs Train, Ye Lan complained to Luna.

Although the Lobotomy Corporation did not pay much attention to the personal qualities of its branch employees when arranging their arrangements, Ye Lan was still at a loss as to what to say when he saw the survivors in the J-03 nest wanting to return to their J nest and life in Alley 10 as soon as they escaped.

You know, as employees of Broken Wing, they are discriminated against everywhere in the city. But these employees are not worried at all that they will be arrested by J Company because they have clues about the Singularity Technology of the Lobotomy Company.

He even wanted to leave openly through the tunnel opened by J Company.

Regardless of whether the final fate of these mentally confused employees was to be arrested and tortured for information by J Company, or to lose everything in the casino, the Yellow Springs Train that Ye Lan and Luna were riding on had already stopped under the grand staircase of the library.

"We're here. It's much more convenient to have the Yellow Springs Train available."

Ye Lan sighed as he got out of the car, and climbed up the extremely long stairs again with Luna. This branch exploration reminded him that not all surviving employees would agree to join his firm, and not all employees would be able to maintain enough rationality and see things clearly after surviving.

Branch employees who come from different regions naturally have different cultural ethos, and their choices after escaping will also vary depending on their backgrounds.

Ye Lan wants employees who, if not necessarily those who have the heart to rebuild Lobelia Corporation, should at least be strong enough to start a new life in the city.

As for rebuilding the Lobotomy Corporation... To be honest, Ye Lan has no plans for this yet. An energy company can't change anything in the city. The location of the L wing, whether it is the Lobotomy Corporation or the Border Prison Corporation, will ultimately not be able to completely change the city's cycle.

But how to change it... He really didn't have a clear idea for the time being.

Putting aside all those messy things, he climbed up to the library exhausted and pushed open the door of the library with Luna on his back. But unlike usual, this time neither Angela nor the librarians came to greet him.

"That's weird, where did everyone go?"

Ye Lan was a little confused, but didn't take it to heart. In the library, apart from the influence of the cyber ghost Carmen, Angela was the boss. Even if they encountered an enemy they couldn't defeat, it wouldn't be difficult to make them get lost in the library forever.

Putting Luna down from his back, Ye Lan led her towards the director's office. As they approached the director's office, Ye Lan heard the anxious voices of Malkuth and Hod.

"This is bad. Even Roland and Angelica are in a tough fight... Why did the library suddenly attract such an enemy?"

“What can we do…Abnormalities, can those awakened abnormalities help us?”

Listening to the voices in the house, Ye Lan couldn't help but blink. The current threat level of the library is still an urban legend. At this point in time, what could cause Roland and Angelica, two couples with super-first-level combat power and tacit cooperation, to be in a difficult battle?

I'm very confused and can't figure it out.

So Ye Lan pushed open the door of the director's office and walked straight in.

"What's going on? What kind of guests did that couple encounter that are so difficult to receive?" Ye Lan asked.

"Ye Lan!"

When Hod saw Ye Lan coming in, a surprised smile appeared on his face, as if he had seen a savior.

"It's a group of blood demons...but, these blood demons feel very strange." Malkuth said to Ye Lan while pulling him to the light curtain of the director's office.

Looking down from the light curtain, a dozen blood demons covered with blood vessels were besieging Roland and Angelica. Unlike ordinary blood demons, each of them did not look like a human. It was obvious that they had been distorted before turning into blood demons.

"hiss--"

Ye Lan took a breath of cold air. If he guessed correctly...

"Where did these blood demons come from... that Warp Train?"

"Correct."

Snapped!

Ye Lan slapped himself in the face. These guests were obviously the passengers who were contaminated when Ye Lan himself fell into the erosion state.

At that time, he just left all the passengers in the car for the sake of convenience, thinking that when W Company sent people to collect them, he could use their "status quo restoration" singularity to restore these people to their original state.

But he didn't expect that Elena, a member of the Remnant Orchestra, would give him a big one. No one knew what method she used, but she twisted them into a new type of blood demon, and then sent them all to the library.

"Where's Angela? Let me take care of them..."

Ye Lan sighed. If he had known this would happen, he would have spent more time in the Warp train to beat these people back to their original state and take them away.

Malkuth sighed and said to Ye Lan, "Angela should be outside the reception room... Roland and the others have already tried to receive her once, and she will probably restart the time inside the reception room in a while."

"Ah... Speaking of which, where are Yesod and Netzach? Are they buried in there?"

"Pad?" Hod tilted her head and was stunned for a moment, but she quickly understood the Internet slang Ye Lan was talking about: "Oh, you mean they are already dead in there, right?"

"Correct."

“Indeed…” Hod said, and suddenly shouted, “Ah ...

"In a sense, it's really no big deal..." Ye Lan comforted Hod, who felt that his attitude towards death had changed a little because of the library. "After all, even the guests who turned into books didn't die."

"Eh?"

Now even Malkuth turned his puzzled look towards him.

"Didn't Angela tell you? The Book of Truth only needs the guests' memories and the light in their hearts. It doesn't need to actually kill them or take their lives... Angela, that silly girl, has actually been secretly placing the guests on the bookshelf all along."

While the two of them were still digesting this information, Ye Lan left the director's office alone and found Angela waiting in front of the reception room.

"It seems that even Roland and Angelica have a hard time dealing with distortion..."

"Are those also 'distortions'? I thought the distortions were the same as Finn's back then." Angela turned her gaze to Ye Lan and said to him, "Roland and his men have already been defeated once. Some of those distortions seem to be unable to be dealt with by physical attacks... but the library doesn't have the egos we used in the past, so we lack the means to fight them."

Chapter 175. Fate is hard to go against

"Let's prepare to reset the reception...let Roland and Angelica come out and rest for a while."

Ye Lan said to Angela.

In the reception room, Roland and Angelica were helpless in the face of physical damage, or according to the Lobotomy Corporation, a part of the twisted blood demons that were completely ineffective in red damage. After knocking them down in vain for countless times, the two of them felt tired for the first time in a long time.

"Angelica, why don't you go to the back and rest for a while? I can handle it here by myself."

Roland had already replaced Durandal with a lance produced by Angelica's Arras workshop. The five-fold acceleration capability allowed this weapon to inflict sufficient physical damage to these blood demons without consuming too much physical strength.

Although it can't cause any harm, it can at least make these monsters temporarily lose their ability to resist.

"No need... I'm stronger than you, Roland."

Angelica was still using her hammer spear at this time. The heavy Beech Workshop weapon easily knocked down all the twisted blood demons that rushed towards her, temporarily making them lose the ability to attack.

Just as the two were about to say something else, a large section of memory flooded into their minds. Roland and Angelica covered their heads, looked at Yesod and Netzach, and realized that they were back in the director's office.

"Hiss, it seems that our reception has failed..."

The feeling of having the sealed memories poured into the mind is not very pleasant, Roland said to the others while rubbing his forehead.

"But if we're all here, who went in? Malkuth and Hod? I can't imagine them fighting..."

Netzach sighed and subconsciously looked in the direction of the light curtain.

"...Netzach, even we can gain combat knowledge in an instant with the help of books."

Under the light curtain, Malkuth and Hod looked at Netzach unhappily.

"You guys are here... who went in then? It couldn't have been Angela who did it herself, right?"

Netzach joked as he glanced at the light curtain. Soon, he saw the figure of Ye Lan in thin nightgown on the light curtain.

"Ye Lan is back... With Ego in hand, he will surely be able to deal with those blood demons... Okay, I'm going to go back to my art floor and rest."

After seeing clearly who the figure on the light screen was, Netzach collapsed in an instant and staggered towards the stairwell.

The librarians in the director's office had no idea that when Roland and his team failed in their first reception, Netzach had volunteered to test the guests' weaknesses at the cost of his own life.

"Forget it, let him be lazy today." Yesod shook his head and returned his gaze to the light curtain.

And on the other side of the light curtain...

Ye Lan, who had already displayed the ego equipment [Thin Dusk] of the Doombird, brandished the greatsword and shuttled among the blood-demonized twisters. The greatsword, which could cause four types of damage at the same time, went back and forth among them, dragging out trails of blood one after another.

Although their twisted nature gave them different damage resistances, and they could even be immune to one or two types of damage, facing Bo Ming, these twisters who had little combat skills and relied entirely on instinct were really easy to deal with.

"Didn't the awakened Abnormality lend them any power?"

Ye Lan quickly dealt with the twisters while thinking to himself. Logically speaking, using the pages of the Abnormality Book, even Malkuth and Hod, who are the least skilled in combat, should be able to deal with these guests.

And this doubt was answered when Ye Lan chopped down the last two blood demon-like distortions.

From the two entangled bodies with blurry and distorted faces, Ye Lan could barely recognize their identities—they were the young couple who should have turned into Tang Mali in Zaixian's hands.

The two of them merged into each other and eroded each other. Although Xian did not perform surgery on them this time, Tommy and Mary, the young couple, still merged their flesh and blood and turned into twisted monsters.

And these two twisted and entangled together, forming a rare situation where they only accept soul damage.

"Ha, soul damage... the abnormality that can cause soul damage really hasn't woken up yet."

Ye Lan smiled, but he didn't stop swinging his weapon. Bo Ming inserted it into the twisted joints of Tommy and Mary. The other three types of damage were ignored by the two, but Bo Ming relied on the damage type that directly hit the soul to separate them.

The moment the two twisted bodies were separated, they let out a deafening wail. They struggled to merge again, but were mercilessly killed by Ye Lan.

"I hope you will have a chance to get rid of your distortion and live again as a human being..."

Picking up their books and those of other Warp train passengers, Ye Lan shook off the mist on his body and left the reception room. Angela was waiting outside. These blood demon distortions brought her many questions.

"Ye Lan, can distortion also remember love?"

"Maybe. Distortion is the extreme form of self-love. Love for oneself causes them to deny their own hearts and push all their sins onto the world."

"But if their love for each other exceeds their love for themselves, they might actually remember to love each other after being twisted."

Walking with Angela on the way to put books, Ye Lan answered Angela's questions with his own ideas.

"Then...if you were twisted one day, what would you become?"

"Who knows? Maybe I will become a more powerful monster than the Doomsday Bird and the White Night, and destroy the entire city."

Ye Lan said as he handed the books in his arms to Angela, who put them into the corresponding bookshelf in the library.

"By that time, will there be a powerful warrior who will put all the people of the city's hopes on the line to kill you?"

Angela followed Ye Lan's words and made a joke. She no longer needed to rely on the program in this regard.

Ye Lan quickly responded to Angela with a joke: "If that day really comes, I will wait for you as a brave man to kill me~"

However, Angela didn't seem to take this as a joke: "I know."

"…Angela, I was just kidding."

Ye Lan sighed.

After putting all the books into the bookshelf for safekeeping, Ye Lan and Angela returned to the director's office. Except for Netzach who had returned to the art floor with peace of mind, everyone else was still gathered here.