Chapter 5: The Chip’s Ability
The sheriff himself had come over to supervise the situation because of the explosion, and every day the people living around the explosion area would be questioned. The people were worried, and there were plenty of shops in town that did not open for business, which was why no one would notice even if Cillin did not go to the bar. Moreover, the place Cillin lived in was the poorest region in the area, so the sheriffs simply made a few superficial inquiries before leaving the place. Cillin was not among the questioned.
He went back to the streets in town again, but Cillin did not plan to reopen the shop and continue the business. Instead he contacted old Devon. After all, he should communicate with the boss about the matter of his shop.
Old Devon was currently hot in love, and his face glowed with a ruddy color. Just he had dreamed old Devon found a suitably aged E rank genotype woman for himself and was currently planning for life after marriage. When he heard that Cillin was ready to venture out to the world, he had thought that Cillin was simply trying his luck in the downtown area. As his elder Old Devon had lent Cillin some advice, but he did not say anything more than that. Young people have all the energy in the world, and it is good to have something to strive for. After all, Cillin was only seventeen years old.
Old Devon himself did not plan to come back, and he gifted the little shop to Cillin. The geography of the bar was bad in the first place, and even if he managed to sell it it wouldn’t sell for much money. Old Devon also did not know anyone in the city region and he could not help Cillin in terms of contacts, so he planned to give Cillin some money instead. But Cillin turned down his offer.
After turning down old Devon, Cillin told him to take care of himself before ending the conversation. His savings were far more than old Devon could ever have imagined. Cillin did not plan to sell the bar immediately, and instead rented it to a person who lived in the poverty area as well. He was fine as long as they did not neglect to deposit their rent to his card every year.
He went back to his poor little room and packed up his stuff. On the same night Cillin went back to Genya’s place again, and unlike last time’s open visit he made sure to keep this trip well hidden due to a very critical matter. Plus, Genya’s place had excellent security, and the effects of its defensive shield’s internal and external signal were very good. It added another layer of security.
Inside the room, Cillin first relaxed his body before he began to channel the changes inside his body. Since the chips that were integrated into Cillin genes had seeped into his every cell through replication of the host body and blood transportation, Cillin’s current aim was to make the chips to undergo selective expression. Of course, since the chips did not reach a hundred percent during its initial activation, any selective expression it underwent would be limited.
The order was sent down from his brain, and the information from the central nervous system was relayed to every chip inside the cell. The chips began to express selectively, and even the genome’s expression were disrupted and underwent a transformation. The most obvious one was Cillin’s appearances.
His facial bones began to change. His hair, eyes and skin color were changing, and even his skeletal frame had undergone a transformation. This was neither short term coloring nor plastic surgery; it was a transformation that happened in his very DNA. It could not be detected even by an advanced instrument because it was a control and change at the very source of his being. This was Cillin’s real trump card.
According to the data and information left behind by Horay, the host body could theoretically cause the original DNA of his cells to undergo recombination, fragmentation, deletion or mutation through control of the chip.
For example, if someone tried to examine Cillin’s DNA information, then Cillin could control the cells of his body fluid, his hair or other parts of his body to undergo a change prior to its departure from the body, thus resulting in the other’s party failure to examine Cillin’s true DNA information.
But because the chips had not been completely activated, every time he underwent a massive transformation there needed to be a period of stabilization and easing before he could control and change from the source again.
Once the sounds of bones cracking stopped, and Cillin sensed that the rest of the transformation was complete, he was left somewhat speechless staring at the person inside the mirror.
The black haired, black-eyed, dark skinned and healthy sunshine boy from before was transformed into someone with light gray-hair, dark blue eyes, pale white skin and an even thinner frame. No matter how you looked at it he looked like one of those rich kids from the cities. His face wasn’t exactly extraordinarily handsome, but it was definitely shapely. Overall he didn’t look as imposing as he was before.
Cillin frowned. He wasn’t too impressed with his new look, but because the chip wasn’t activated perfectly he had no way of dealing with some of the superficial changes. Never mind; let’s just leave it like this and use it for the moment.
Genya once said that there were two only two kinds of people who could change the world. One of them is God, and the other one a madman. Cillin thought that the old man Horay belonged to the second category. As for whether or not it could really reach the level of ‘Glory’ and ‘Honor’ that remained to be seen, but he had to admit that Horay was a devil of a genius. To think that he could create something this insane with just this level of equipment and mostly manual operations.
Cillin had spent a large amount of money to purchase a blank identification card from the black market. Both its serial number and magnetic print were verifiable by the officials. Cillin first entered his name and photo and other forged information into the ID card. Then he swiped it across the card slot of an instrument. The screen immediately displayed Cillin’s current personal identity information. As long as the officials did not dig deep, this ID card would not draw suspicion from the inspectors.
Other than the ID card, Cillin had also purchased a galaxy wide debit card form the black market, and after a series of complicated but careful operations, Cillin deposited the rest of his money into the card.
In order to obtain these two cards, Cillin had spent over a few million Star currency. He had barely a tenth of his savings left. Moreover, without a proper channel it was impossible to acquire these items through money alone. It was one of the benefits Cillin enjoyed having worked for three years as a Hunter.
The next day, the greatly changed Cillin dressed lightly and boarded the flight between X-C362 to X-C100. He did not encounter any problems with his ID card or the spaceport’s security inspection.
Cillin touched the curly leaf pattern on his left thumb as he sat on the spaceliner’s seat. The security check had failed to scan it at all. If this was just an average subspace object then there was no way it would have gone this smoothly; not the mention the guns and other dangerous articles stored inside it.
He pressed a button on his seat, and a screen appeared in front of him. It showed the scenery outside of the spaceship.
Cillin might have lived in that poor little town, but as a Shadow Hunter he had traveled to many places around the planet. But from this point of view it was yet another kind of feeling that people usually referred to as mixed emotions.
The towering skyscrapers; the bustling cities. Slowly they turned smaller and blurrier until the entire planet itself was presented before him. For the first time Xililn saw the true nature of the ‘Sky Eye’ – an array of satellites. They monitored everything on the ground and would take measures at first notice, just like how it had dropped down a protective light shield to control the area of destruction that night.
Cillin took out the pendant hanging below his neck so it could have a good look at this planet.
“Hena, master, we’re departing. I wonder when we’ll be able to come back.”