By the time Cillin returned to the base, the five hunters were lying on the beds inside the sick bay already. In Shusag’s words, it was mission accomplished.
Cillin knew from the start that not many people would want to join the Eleventh Squad. In fact, he preferred it this way because excess members would only be detrimental to the squad’s growth. Five was a suitable number all things considered.
Right now, the blood of the Eleventh Squad was young and full of potential.
As promised, all five hunters had been dragged into the base while unconscious. Mao, Mogas and Pango; Kong Lujia and Phoebe. It didn’t matter what gender they were, everyone looked just as sorry as the other person by the time Shusag and Czedow were done with them.
There were a couple of reasons Cillin had arranged this “welcoming” procedure for the new recruits. One, he wanted to extinguish any misplaced arrogance they might hold toward his squad. Two, he wanted to check out their abilities. And three, it was a quick and dirty way to check if the new recruits really wanted to join the Eleventh Squad. If they did despite the absolute trouncing they received, then all was well. If they didn’t, it was no skin off the Eleventh Squad’s nose.
So far though, none of the five members had shown any indication of leaving.
When Cillin arrived at the sick bay, the awakened Mogas was chattering non-stop like he was high on drugs. He wasn’t depressed by the horrible loss at all.
“I knew it, I knew it! It’s not about the quantity but the quality, man! The Eleventh Squad might be small, but every single one of its crew members is an elite! Right? Right? Right? Right?”
Phoebe whipped the excessively excited man off his bed when he repeated “right” for the fourth time.
“So noisy.” Phoebe turned around before closing her eyes once more.
In fact, Mogas literally hadn’t stopped running his mouth since he woke up. Even Cary, one of the more chatty and sociable members in the Eleventh Squad couldn’t stand him after a brief conversation. The guy just wouldn’t stop talking about everything.
Cillin’s entrance immediately drew everyone’s attention. Phoebe still hadn’t opened her eyes, but she could tell that he was someone they hadn’t met so far. A couple of people had visited the sick bay since they woke up, but the young man was definitely a new face.
The five hunter knew little about the Eleventh Squad, nor have they heard much of its commander, Cillin. Even Mogas, the most gossipy and busybody of them all hadn’t seen Cillin’s true self before.
Those who were resting opened their eyes and looked in Cillin’s direction. Mogas was climbing to his feet when he shut up and looked as well. For a time, silence and the occasional beeps of machinery dominated the sick bay.
Even without looking at the instruments, Cillin knew immediately that none of the five hunters had suffered a particularly serious injury. They should also be back to full health with just a day’s sleep.
He examined them one by one before starting, “You all seem to be doing quite well.”
Too distracted now to climb back to his bed, Mogas sat back down on the floor, swayed his legs back and forth and asked, “Are you a member of the Eleventh Squad too, brother?”
“I am.”
There was a basket of sweets on a table made from the fruits planted by Sigma. The sweets were made by Tang Qiuqiu herself. Cillin ate one before pulling over a chair and sat down facing toward the hunters.
After Mogas introduced himself and the other four persons because why not, he continued, “We are the new members of the Eleventh Squad. From now on, let’s help each other, understand each other, love each other—”
Phoebe whipped him again before he could continue his prattle. “You can love yourself, you dumbass!”
Mogas rolled once on the ground before rising to his feet. After rubbing the sore spot Phoebe gave him, he jumped back onto his sick bed and asked, “So, who are you, brother? You haven’t introduced yourself yet.”
“I’m Cillin.”
Everyone: “...”
The sick bay fell silent again. This time, all five hunters looked Cillin up and down and up and down again like he was some sort of protected animal.
They had spoken to Cary, Shusag and a couple more Eleventh Squad members after they woke up, and Shusag had stated clearly that he was no match for their commander, Cillin. From what they gathered, Commander Cillin was an extraordinary man to be able to command this crew. However, not only did the young man look ridiculously young, he didn’t look like anything special at all. To put it bluntly, they wouldn’t be surprised if “Cillin” told them he was just joking, and that he was really the Eleventh Squad’s janitor.
“You mean Cillin, the commander of the Eleventh Squad?” Mogas asked tentatively.
Cillin nodded. “Yes, I am.”
Mogas scratched his head embarrassedly and chuckled. “Sorry for not recognizing you right away. It’s a good thing though, not standing out is a good trait for a hunter to have. So, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions since I’m new and everything?”
“Ask away.”
“Who is Czedow? Why isn’t uncle Shusag afraid of fire? Is the cat that literally slapped Pango unconscious really a cat? Is every animal in Eleventh Squad an untouchable? Is the Eleventh Squad…”
Mogas proceeded to drop an entire pile of questions that definitely wasn’t “a couple of questions”.
When the chatty hunter was finally done, Cillin answered with a small smile on his face, “That is up to all of you to discover. Also, you’ll get to enjoy our crew benefits if you remain in the Eleventh Squad and successfully become a full member.”
He walked to the exit after saying that, leaving the five hunters to stare blankly at his back.
“How is it?” Eudy asked. He was waiting outside the sick bay.
“I think they’re fine. I don’t see a problem with them. What did Dias say?”
“Dias is very satisfied.”
“Then all is well. Dias’ intuition is always trustworthy, and all five of them are rare talents.”
Eudy agreed. Technically speaking, all five of them had been knocked out and dragged into the base unceremoniously. However, despite the humiliating defeat, they never revealed their trump cards from the start until the end. There was nothing more important to a hunter than their trump cards, and a wise and excellent hunter wouldn’t reveal them to a stranger unless the situation truly demanded it.
Pango had to be more capable than he showed. Mogas’ hidden weapons had to be better than they appeared as well. The same applied to the remaining three hunters. Cillin knew this for certain because he gleaned many things just by observing their breathing patterns, and he had reviewed the battle footage already.
“That was a full day meeting, so I’m going to take a break. Please don’t disturb me if it isn’t something important.”
“No problem.”
Cillin returned to his room after a brief conversation with Eudy. He didn’t worry for the five new recruits because someone would tell them about their rules and background eventually, and his presence was mostly unnecessary regarding everything else.
The moment Cillin returned to his room, he closed the door, took out his microcomputer, and typed out a series of symbols and characters.
More specifically, he was typing out the code he decrypted after receiving the original code from the communicator of the stranger who jogged past him earlier.
The stranger had intended to identify Cillin by examining his body movement for any decryption behavior. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know several things about the hunter. First, Cillin possessed an excellent memory. Two, he didn’t need to carry out the usual decryption procedure—that was moving his fingers in a certain manner—to decrypt it. His mind was like a mini computer, and he could perform the decryption purely in his head if he wanted to, which he did.
After Cillin typed out the decrypted code, he began working on it immediately. The reason he valued the data so highly wasn’t because he was curious about the stranger, but because these symbols and characters were something only an engineer could identify. Not only that, it was something only a very small number of engineers could identify. The code had been arranged according to a certain person’s habit, and those who knew it would know what to do and be able to decrypt it the correct way. Those who didn’t would only end up with a bunch of useless characters.
Cillin had identified the arrangement of the code as Mo Heng’s immediately. He knew his master’s style too well not to know that it was a message from him. He didn’t think that the person who purposely leaked it to him had done it out of the kindness of his heart though.
Regardless, he should know what this all meant after he figured out the contents of this message.
Cillin’s fingers darted across the holoscreen at high speed. A certain combination of character would make a certain kind of meaning like how a couple of parts put together would form a machine. Right now, Cillin’s job was to figure out the right way to assemble these “parts”. Another way to describe this code would be the Xi Family’s Link of Gypsophila.
Finding the right way to arrange these characters and assemble them accordingly wasn’t the only requirement either. The code also demanded that the final product to have an overall accuracy rating of 99.98% or higher. In other words, even if everything was correct, the decryption would fail if the overall accuracy rating of the pseudo-assembly was 99.98% or lower.
Curiously, the final product of this pseudo-code assembly was very similar to the first machine he ever assembled at Seven Lights’ engineering research institute after he skipped class and was caught by Mo Heng.
Thankfully, as someone who could assemble almost anything with a stable 99.99% overall accuracy, this wasn’t a difficult code to crack.
The code was decrypted two minutes later. However, a second decoding image appeared instead of the message he expected.
Multiple decoding? Double encryption?
The message must be very important, or Sir Mo wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to set up all of this.
The second decoding image was a weapon. There were even characters arranged into text information here and there in the image. At the center of the weapon image was the text: Project Dream Tapir!
Cillin didn’t care if Mo Heng was working on the project. Dream Tapir was a military project, and Mo Heng’s son was working for the military. That there existed a relationship between the two didn’t surprise him in the slightest.
There was something strange about the decoding image, however. The weapon was pretty destructive, and the text information littered here and there were Mo Heng’s criticisms of it. However, knowing his master, he wouldn’t have coded these unnecessary blurbs into his message.
What is he trying to say?
Cillin stared at the rotating characters on the holoscreen as he pondered Mo Heng’s intentions. He replayed all his memories with the old man until it stopped at a certain scene.
Is that it?
Cillin began arranging the characters once more.