I am better today but can’t update more chapters sadly, When I get well I will try to update the remaining ones.
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The scavenger gang leader, who had turned into a lump of meat sauce and burst open on the ground, was obviously beyond saving. The good thing about Dream Zero is that the corpses don’t linger for long. Even the most tragic death scenes will soon turn entirely into grains of sand and dust, drifting away with the wind.
Scavengers, often wandering in the wilderness, are a good source of information. Renji had planned to interrogate the female leader first, but her previous behavior, especially the way she looked at him, led to a minor mistake by 86.
Renji certainly felt a bit of regret about this, but mostly he was helpless.
He really wanted to correct the maid’s perception, as he is not some indiscriminate bulldozer. For those with such unattractive avatars, there’s no transforming enemies into friends or whitewashing. The maid doesn’t need to worry about that.
Meanwhile, at another location, on the square where scavenger thugs were crowding out others, seeing their usually ferocious and brutal burly leader being toyed with by Renji’s mechanical arm, even directly squashed, had already scared them out of their wits.
The thugs scattered in all directions.
Scavengers who can wander in the wilderness might not have other skills, but their ability to flee is definitely top-notch.
Regarding these people, 86 had asked whether she should transform again and deploy small drones to pursue and annihilate them. However, Renji, after looking at the direction in which the thugs were fleeing, which was the same as the one where the ant-beast swarm he had encountered near the gathering place was coming from, shook his head, indicating it was not worth wasting time on this.
The thugs were driven away, but the survivors in the gathering place still had not let down their guard. They looked at Renji, and the terrifying weapon in his hand that could change form, with fearful eyes.
Among these villagers, the first to speak was the same brave young man who had dared to resist the female leader earlier.
“Thank you, sir. We in Kano Village will always remember your kindness. But now, we have nothing left, and I’m afraid… afraid we can’t offer a reward that would satisfy you.”
“No need, I just happened to encounter an old man and accepted his request for help, which is why I came here.”
Hearing this from Renji, many villagers from Kano Village gasped in surprise. Their fear of Renji greatly decreased, and upon further inquiry, they found out that the old man was none other than the original village chief of Kano Village.
When the scavenger thugs invaded, the keeper of the fire in the village was tragically killed. The village chief, paying a great price, managed to lead a group of people from Kano Village to escape and preserve the last spark of hope.
But when Renji informed them that he had only seen the village chief alone and not any other villagers, and that even the village chief had died due to untreated wounds, all the people in the gathering place fell silent, engulfed in an atmosphere of sorrow and despair.
However, this heavy atmosphere didn’t last too long, or rather, they had seen too much and had become numb to it. Instead of grieving here, it was better to think about what they should do next, how to continue surviving in this hellish world.
As a result, many of the villagers cast hopeful glances towards Renji.
This was normal, given Renji’s display of strength in the recent battle. In such a survival-of-the-fittest apocalyptic world, the best way to stay alive was to seek the protection of the strong, otherwise, they would just repeat the fate of the scavenger thugs they had seen before.
Many survivors hoped that Renji would become the new chief of Kano Village, but there was one person who was still hesitant. .𝒎
“Sir, may I ask about the weapon in your hand?”
“Is it also from… the Mechanoids?”
The young man’s eyes were fixed on Renji’s mechanical arm. After becoming an Eclipse, his perception seemed to have greatly increased, so he could sense that the scavenger thugs were wrong. Renji’s own strength didn’t seem very formidable, and even the Miasma aura was very weak. Compared to an Eclipse, he seemed more like an ordinary person.
The reason for his display of such great combat power was entirely due to the unprecedented powerful weapon in his hand.
And in the young man’s understanding,
Only “Mechanical Maids ” could construct such formidable weapons.
“If I say it is, what would you do?” Renji asked with interest.
The young man immediately fell silent.
The reason was simple. From the previous thug leader, the young man had learned a cruel truth: there were greedy and shameless people who had set their sights on the Mechanical maids, exploiting their “principles” to backstab and obtain a large number of high-end weapons and equipment from them.
If Renji’s weapon really came from the Mechanical maids, it meant that this person who saved Kano Village was actually a villain who backstabbed the Mechanical maids.
“Alright, the reason I accepted your village chief’s request for help is that he told me I could find the answer I was looking for here.”
“So, can you tell me what the Mechanical maids, witches, and… prophecies are?”
As Renji spoke, the mechanical arm in his hand began to transform again, and this time, what appeared before the villagers at the gathering place was not a weapon, but… a person.
To be precise, an android dressed in a maid’s outfit.
“Mecha… Mechanical maid?!” The young man, who had just clenched his fists, gaped and cried out in astonishment upon seeing 86’s appearance.
And then, following that, the villagers also erupted into a tumultuous uproar, their expressions mirroring the shock and disbelief of the old man Renji had initially encountered.
“Why would a Mechanical maid appear here?”
“Wait a minute, does that mean the Mechanical maid… were his weapon just now!?”
“No wonder it was so powerful.” .𝘤𝘰𝑚
“Impossible, how could the Mechanical maid do such a thing? They should never get involved in our conflicts.”
“No, no, no, you all forgot, the prophecy, that prophecy!”
After a good deal of discussion, it was the young man who took the lead to quiet the restless villagers.
Taking a deep breath, the young man, now looking at Renji who was still waiting for an answer, had lost his initial wariness and hesitation, and was looking respectful, even somewhat fervent.
“Come with me please” The young man immediately walked towards a certain house after speaking.
This was the village chief’s house. After opening a mechanism in the wall, revealing a secret room resembling a cellar, the young man leading Renji downstairs finally stopped in front of several murals.
“These have been passed down from my great-great-great-
grandfather, documenting three stories about the world.”
“Three stories?”
“Yes, perhaps this is the answer my grandfather said he would give you.”
Renji looked at the first mural, which depicted a continent divided into five parts, each part having its own evil being similar to a lord.
Renji recognized one of them, which was the Witch’s Domain marked on the old man’s map, the Witch.
“The legend says that the Tainted Miasma of this world chooses beings to act as its vessels of will, using them to continuously produce Miasma, consuming the world until our civilization’s era comes to an end. These beings chosen by the Tainted Miasma, known as the Miasma Master”
“There is a total of four Miasma Master in the world: the Witch of the North, the Evil Dragon of the South, the Fairy of the Forest, and the Witch of the Ancient Tower. Each resides at one edge of the continent, releasing vast amounts of Tainted Miasma. It’s because of their radiation that the world is forever shrouded in pollution, giving birth to countless Tainted Corpses. Only by defeating these four Miasma Master can the world be saved.”
“However, after many years, many have attempted to challenge the four Miasma Masters, but without exception, all have failed. Instead, the pollution triggered by the Miasma Masters has become more intense, continually expanding until it swallows the entire world.”
This first story ends here, telling the origin of this world. According to this development, the world should have already been destroyed. The reason why the world still struggles to survive under the four powerful Miasma Masters is explained in the second story.
When the young man led Renji to the second mural, it depicted not other, but…
“The Blood Sun in the sky, all beings in torment, chaos, flames, death. The world on the brink of collapse, and even more despairingly, at this time, the consciousness of the Tainted Miasma gave birth to the fifth Miasma Master — the Maid.”
“Everyone thought this would be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, the end of our world. But unexpectedly, perhaps even the Tainted Miasma itself did not anticipate, it chose the most cold-hearted mechanical kind as the Miasma Master, but it didn’t foresee that the ‘Maid’ and her ‘Master’ had already established a deep bond, a forbidden love across species, which blossomed and bore fruit on them.”
“So, when the Tainted Miasma tried to control the Maid to fulfill the will of destroying the world, the Maid, with her love for her master, obtained a heart, a heart never before possessed by machinery. It was this heart that turned the Maid, as the fifth Miasma Master, into the first one to resist the Tainted Miasma, instead choosing to fight for her master’s world!”
.