"Enough."
Kuzan interrupted Abel's grand narrative about gods and containment.
He raised a hand to scratch the back of his head, his exhaled breath condensing into tiny ice crystals in the air.
"As for how many deities your Foundation has, or whether you can restart the universe, we can talk about that when there's a chance later."
Kuzan extended a finger, pointing at the red figure in the distance standing on a shattered iceberg, humming an unknown tune.
"The priority right now is how to deal with the trouble in front of us."
"Since your Foundation is responsible for containing monsters like this, then you, as the Captain, should have some specialized methods, right?"
Though Kuzan's voice was lazy, the pressure hidden beneath the ice did not dissipate.
As a Marine Admiral, he knew very well when to listen to stories and when to draw his blade.
Now was clearly not the time for stories.
The aura on that red-clothed freak was still climbing; after devouring three CP0 elites, his life energy fluctuation was like an active volcano about to erupt.
Abel remained silent for two seconds.
He turned his head, his eyes as deep as an ancient well scanning the surroundings.
The sea surface was frozen, but through the translucent ice, one could still see the mutated schools of fish frozen in the depths.
Though they couldn't move, those hideous eyeballs were still rolling, filled with madness and bloodlust.
"There is no way."
Abel gave an answer that made Kuzan's brow twitch violently.
"Huh?"
Kuzan's eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses.
"Are you playing with me, Task Force Captain?"
"This is the truth."
Abel's voice was as cold and hard as iron, without any hint of joking.
He raised his foot and stomped heavily on the ice.
Crack.
A fissure split the ice, revealing the deep black seawater below.
"Curly, you don't understand the essence of the Blacklight virus at all."
"Do you think that red-clothed Joker standing there is the main body?"
Abel sneered, pointing at the ice beneath his feet, and then at the frozen Marine zombies in the distance.
"The Blacklight virus possesses a hive mind."
"As long as a single cell survives, as long as a single drop of infected blood hasn't been burned to ash, he will never die."
"Look at this sea."
Abel's voice rose, carrying a coldness that sounded like a death sentence.
"All the mutated creatures in this sea area, all the zombies, even the microscopic organisms floating in the seawater you just froze..."
"They are all him."
"He is not one person; he is a collective, a plague, a rapidly expanding ecosystem."
Kuzan's expression finally changed.
Even as a Logia user, hearing about such a near-impossible survival mechanism couldn't help but make a chill run down his spine.
Unkillable.
Inextinguishable.
"In other words..."
Kuzan slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, the cold aura around him beginning to surge violently.
"Unless I wipe out this entire sea area along with every creature inside, there's nothing I can do to him?"
"Theoretically, yes."
Abel nodded, a trace of regret in his tone.
"If the Gotei 13 were here, they could resolve this at the soul level using Reiatsu."
"But unfortunately, I am just the Mobile Task Force; what I excel at is physical elimination."
On the ice field, the cold wind howled.
Kuzan exhaled a puff of white air, his gaze shifting back and forth between Abel and the red figure in the distance.
Though he didn't want to admit it, this strange man claiming to be from the Foundation was right.
If that guy really possessed a hive mind, then conventional physical destruction was indeed meaningless.
Kill one, and there were still millions.
As long as there was a single infected fish or shrimp in this sea, that red-clothed madman could regenerate indefinitely.
"Since physical elimination won't work."
Kuzan put his hands in his pockets, his tone lazy yet carrying an unquestionable pressure.
"Since your Foundation is responsible for containment, you should have some special means, right?"
"Don't tell me you crossed galaxies chasing a traitor just to come here and look at the scenery."
Abel snorted coldly.
He reached his hand into the void.
The void rippled like a stone being thrown into a calm water surface.
Abel's arm disappeared into that fluctuating space, his muscles tensing as if he were dragging something extremely heavy from another dimension.
Kuzan glanced sideways; even in such a tense confrontation, he remained highly curious about the methods of this so-called Foundation.
Something this arrogant Task Force Captain called a trump card was likely some extravagantly shaped ancient weapon radiating an aura of destruction.
Or perhaps some sealed stone tablet covered in runes?
However.
When Abel's palm reappeared in his sight, Kuzan's perennially lazy face stiffened for a rare moment.
It was a ball.
Only the size of a fist.
The top half was a vibrant red, the bottom half a pure white, with a black band in the middle and a circular button.
It looked smooth, rounded, and even had a bit of a cheap plastic texture.
The cold wind swept across the ice field, carrying a few ice shards that hit the small red and white ball with a crisp "ding."
The scene was momentarily very awkward.
The cigarette at the corner of Kuzan's mouth almost fell out.
He pointed at the small ball that looked like something sold for only 50 Berries in a Loguetown toy shop, his tone full of existential doubt.
"This is the... ultimate weapon you use to deal with world-ending disasters?"
"Task Force Captain, are you sure you didn't leave in such a hurry that you grabbed your son's toy by mistake?"
Abel was expressionless.
He held the red and white ball, his expression as solemn as if he were cradling a nuclear warhead about to detonate.
"Ignorant."
He coldly spat out the word, looking at Kuzan as if he were looking at a primitive who had never seen the world.
"This is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Foundation's Containment Research and Development Department the Dimensional Compression Sphere."
"Designation: SCP-8462."
"Its interior contains an independent sub-space. By locking onto the target's life magnetic field through quantum entanglement, it can forcibly strip the target's physical body along with their consciousness in an instant and seal them within the sub-space."
Abel talked nonsense with a straight face, not even blinking.
"For a viral collective like this that possesses a hive mind and cannot be completely eliminated through physical means, this is the only containment solution."
"Sever his connection with all external clones and imprison the 'main consciousness.'"
"Once the queen bee is caught, the remaining worker bees will naturally wither away from lack of command."
Kuzan was stunned.
Although he understood the words, when put together, they had a high-level feel that was impressively incomprehensible.
Quantum entanglement? Sub-space? Dimensional compression?
These terms were indeed beyond the scope of a native from the pirate world.
On the distant iceberg,Mordred almost couldn't hold back his laughter.
That was the consolation prize from his previous draw a Poké Ball!
And the most common red and white kind at that!
Mordred forcibly suppressed the smile at the corner of his mouth, controlling Abel's clone to continue the bluff.
"However, there is a problem."
Abel frowned, his thumb gently rubbing the button in the middle of the Poké Ball.
"This thing's locking system needs time to warm up."
"Especially when facing an individual with such enormous life energy, I need at least three minutes to analyze his life frequency and complete the lock."
After speaking, he turned to look at Kuzan.
His deep eyes were filled with a sense of 'it's only natural.'
"Curly, it's time for you to work."
"Go hold down that madman; don't let him run around."
"I'm going to start the sequence."
Kuzan: "..."
He took a deep breath, exhaling the stale air from his lungs along with the urge to complain.
"Three minutes, right?"
Kuzan reached up to scratch his fluffy hair, his originally lazy temperament vanishing in an instant.
Crack, crack, crack.
White cold air spread from beneath his feet, instantly covering the ice surface within a hundred-meter radius.
"Though it sounds ridiculous, since we're allies, I'll trust you this once."