With the slime ball floating above his head, constantly radiating his passionate love, Ye Lan walked into another corridor and soon arrived at the containment chamber for another anomaly that had been newly contained that day.
O-01-64, Greedy Queen.
Ye Lan could still vaguely remember that this girl preferred instinct and communication work, so he picked up the items needed for communication work from the shelf next to him and walked into the automatically opening door.
In the main hall of the containment chamber stood a golden, egg-shaped container covered in patterns. Stripes, squares, and egg-shaped designs were piled up haphazardly and indiscriminately on the container. When Ye Lan first saw it, she was immediately given goosebumps by its unsettling messiness.
"Ha, as expected, the real Greed Queen's outer shell is far more unsettling than the one in the game."
Ye Lan muttered a complaint under his breath, trying to distract himself from the container's appearance. However, even though he deliberately lowered his voice, the girl inside the egg-shaped container still caught it.
In front of the oval container was a diamond-shaped, semi-transparent window. Through the window, a dark-skinned girl with long white hair could be seen floating inside. The girl was wearing a dress with a bright gold checkered pattern and was looking at Ye Lan with curiosity.
The first bar on the energy counter lit up.
Ye Lan gently patted the oval container with a large mouth at the top and said to the girl inside who was staring at him, "Ah, I tried to keep my voice down, but it seems I still disturbed you."
Some might think she was trapped inside this golden, egg-shaped container, but Ye Lan, who knew all the information about the anomalies that had appeared in the game, knew that she had sealed herself inside the container herself.
All this was to prevent her, who had already devoured the entire world, from devouring any more.
The smiling girl didn't speak to Ye Lan, but simply continued to look at him. Seeing that the girl in the container didn't seem inclined to talk to him, Ye Lan didn't press the issue. He arranged his work items in their proper places, then sat down in front of the container with his notepad, facing the girl through the window.
"It seems you don't really want to talk to me, so I'll just talk to myself."
The girl's expression remained unchanged, but her lake-green eyes shifted, conveying her curiosity to him.
"It's the story of a little girl, and also the story of a heroic girl. At first, she was just a girl, longing for happiness, and then she got the boxing gloves that gave her strength."
The energy counter suddenly spiked by one level.
"etc..."
The girl inside the container seemed to realize something, her beautiful eyes widening in alarm. Her hurried words were muffled by the container, as if the girl encased in amber was speaking in barely audible whispers.
Ye Lan knew what she was talking about. This wasn't his first encounter with the Greedy Queen. In countless cycles, he had completed the final observation of the anomaly before him and gained her complete trust time and again.
However, with each cycle, his relationship with the anomalies returns to zero.
The one who already knew everything ignored the queen's pleas and continued, "The girl who gained power used it to protect others, and through her efforts, countless people found their happiness. At that moment, the ordinary girl disappeared, and a girl known as a hero was born."
The counter spiked again.
The girl in the container clung to the diamond-shaped window in terror, two lines of tears streaming down her lake-green eyes before disappearing down her cheeks, as if even tears were greedily swallowed within this container.
"Stop talking, don't let me hear that ending..."
Ye Lan cruelly and ruthlessly ignored her again and continued her story: "But, seeing the happy expressions on people's faces, the heroine herself gradually felt hungry. 'Why can they smile happily? What is my happiness?' The girl couldn't stop thinking, and the increasingly unbearable hunger tormented her."
The twenty-two-segment energy counter instantly filled up, and an "Excellent" evaluation report was ejected from the machine beside him. The work items Ye Lan had arranged in the containment chamber all fell to the ground, as if everything was urging him not to reveal the girl's fate.
"The first seed of desire originated from a pure, yearning for happiness. Hunger eventually consumed the girl; power, money, glory, and all sorts of other pleasures—she devoured everything she could find. The greed for happiness ultimately destroyed everything; endless desire brought eternal despair. In the very end, the girl who had devoured everything devoured herself."
"You are that girl who devoured herself."
Finally, Ye Lan revealed the truth to the powerless girl floating in the container. That egg-shaped container was the terrifying monster that the girl had transformed into in her greed.
It and the girl within it are both part of her.
"The story is over, and my work is finished." Ye Lan gently patted the container and said goodbye to the girl inside: "Goodbye. I hope that next time I see you, you will be willing to talk to me."
Gritting his teeth, Ye Lan abandoned the still-crying Greed Queen and strode out of the containment chamber. A feeling stirred within him: the next time he saw the Greed Queen, he would be able to conduct his [Final Observation].
[Final Observation], a setting that only exists in Lagecy's version of Lobotomy Corporation, became a perk for him after he transmigrated, though it wasn't exactly a cheat code.
This cheat system seemed to have no other use besides unlocking all the information about the corresponding anomaly after successfully completing the final observation. But after countless cycles, Ye Lan finally discovered its true, hidden power.
Experience everything about the otherworldly entities, understand their distortions, become one with their distortions, and ultimately, transcend their distortions to achieve your true self.
Just like the ego equipment he wore, which came from the Smiling Corpse Mountain, although it was just an artificial ego created by them using energy extracted from the aliens, he could make this ego equipment merge into one at any time, turning it into a twisted form, or even a divine weapon, if he wanted to.
Before the Seed of Light was launched, only Geburah could do this in her lifetime. After her death, when she was turned into the box spirit Sephirah, this power only appeared briefly when she was in a state of collapse and undergoing core suppression.
As Ye Lan left the containment chamber, alarms blared in his ears. Suddenly, his vision blurred, and a line of text appeared before him like a phantom:
[The towering light known as the "Library" rose from the ground, and that secret realm, bearing witness to life and death, naturally attracted the attention of the "Closing-Ups."]
The pale white handwriting announced the arrival of a trial, but this trial was not at noon; it was the more dangerous trial of dusk.
Ye Lan hadn't yet confirmed whether he had spent too much time in the containment chamber, causing him to miss the tests of dawn and noon, or whether his existence had become some kind of randomness, causing the pale dusk to arrive at the company early, when a bell interrupted his thoughts. Supervisor A's voice came from the loudspeaker in the corridor:
"Your premonition has come true; today's test is indeed extraordinary. Be careful, all four test derivatives have appeared in your department. Please try your best to hold on. I have already notified employees from other departments to come and provide support."
"Don't!"
Upon hearing Supervisor A's words, Ye Lan immediately refused the support he was offered. The slime ball on his head was already continuously spraying slime around him. If other colleagues came to help, they would soon be infected with the slime and transform into D-03-109-2. At that time, even he would be killed along with them, and there would be no chance for the test to take action.
"Yes... I understand. Support has been returned to the relevant departments. You will have to face this challenge alone. Do you need anything?"
"Bring Bo Ming over."
"Keep going, we can't afford to fail."
Ye Lan tightened her grip on the smiley face and took a deep breath.
A fully cybernetically enhanced finisher with only one crimson-glowing eye appeared at the end of the corridor he was facing. At almost the same time, at the end of the corridor behind him, a finisher with a halo above his head, wearing armor with angel reliefs, predominantly white with blue and gold decorations, and suspended in mid-air, also appeared.
"Ha, the red finisher and the white finisher, I'm really lucky."
Ye Lan chuckled twice. The weapon in his hand could only inflict erosion damage, which was simply called "black damage" in the game. Coincidentally, neither of the two Trial Derivatives surrounding him was immune to erosion damage, and in fact, erosion damage was the weakness of the Red Finisher.
Ignoring the white finisher behind him who removed the halo from his head and started shooting at him, Ye Lan quickly rushed towards the red finisher facing him.
The fully cybernetically enhanced Reaper raised its hand cannon and fired at Ye Lan, attempting to block her charge. Relying on the Smiling Nightmare's great resistance to physical attacks, Ye Lan withstood the impact of the bullets and quickly approached the red Reaper.
The giant hammer in his hand swept in an arc from his feet, striking the red-clad finisher's chin from below. The impact caused the brain, encased in metal, to shake violently, instantly bringing the red-clad finisher to a standstill.
Using inertia to lift the giant hammer above his head, Ye Lan mercilessly smashed the side of the hammer with the large mouth onto the mechanical head of the tailer. As the large mouth on the hammer tore and bit, both the red and white tailers found that their movements were slowed down by half.
"Do you like the Nightmare's special ability? Oh right, I almost forgot, you're just phantoms pulled from a well, you can't communicate with me at all."
While spouting nonsense, Ye Lan dodged the lasers simultaneously released by the two finishers in front of and behind him. The lasers he dodged pierced through the two finishers who were also undergoing the test, leaving visible burn wounds on their bodies.
Taking advantage of the moment when the two were injured and their movements were slowed down, Ye Lan slid through the side of the red finisher and delivered a vicious blow from behind with a smile, sending the red finisher, who was forcibly turning around and swinging his knife, flying and landing in the mist left by the laser released by the white finisher.
"snort!"
The silvery-white mist clearly had the effect of harming others. The red-clad finisher who was thrown in let out a muffled groan, and then tried to escape from the mist. However, Ye Lan, who was passing by, smashed him to the ground again with the giant hammer in his hand.
Ye Lan bypassed the red-clad finisher and headed straight for the white-clad finisher. In a few quick steps, Ye Lan stomped her foot on the ground, using the recoil to leap up and smash her hammer into the white finisher's face. Instantly, the hammer's massive jaws left four gnawing marks on the finisher's face, and the hammer itself seemed to grow larger.
Forced to his knees by Ye Lan's seemingly slow but actually swift and continuous attacks, the white-clad finisher remained in that position and suddenly began to pray.
This is the special ability of the white-tailed man. During the prayer process, any damage that attacks him will be returned to the attacker. Knowing this, Ye Lan turned around and continued to fight the red-tailed man. Under Ye Lan's conscious luring, the two gradually moved closer to the white-tailed man.
When the red finisher unleashed his strongest move, the Spinning Slash, his attack range had already encompassed the white finisher as well.
In an instant, three slashes struck the white-clad finisher in prayer, severing all four limbs of the red finisher. Ye Lan delivered the final blow, and the white-clad finisher ended his prayer and stood up.
Passing over the corpse of the red finisher, Ye Lan slapped the white finisher back in front of the corpse. The dead corpse began to execute its death speech ability, shooting a laser beam into the sky, followed by a 240° slash in the direction it was facing. The white finisher, which was in the direction of the slash, was instantly engulfed by the laser.
His weapon fell to the ground, engulfing the white-clad finisher's corpse and releasing a large amount of mist that could cause mental damage.
A shield against mental barriers appeared on Ye Lan's body, and A's voice sounded at the same time: "Bo Ming has been sent to the main rest room. There are still two tests left, and it all depends on you."
Without a reply, Ye Lan relied on the shield on her body to rush into the rest room through the fog. The regeneration reactor and the mental pollution neutralizing gas immediately began to work, restoring Ye Lan's physical and mental damage.
Ye Lan removed the Smiling Nightmare suit from her body and put on the Bo Ming suit, which had been placed on the sofa by someone. The proof of defeating the End Bird—Dawn—was a single wing that spread from Ye Lan's right back, covered with dim yellow eyes.
Picking up the weapon of the Twilight Set—a greatsword—Ye Lan turned and rushed towards another corridor, where the other two Trial Derivatives, the Black Finisher and the Blue Finisher, were wandering.