Chapter 117: Scrap Robot

The atmosphere in the room was extremely depressing.

Deep down, everyone knew that it was going to be next to impossible to recover the footage from Oni-faced Dragon.

Firstly, Oni-faced Dragon was the leader of a criminal organization, and if it were that easy to capture him, then he would've already been detained 1,000 times.

Secondly, an adapter of his caliber definitely possessed extremely powerful telegnosis that would allow him to detect any danger well in advance. In order to target him, at least several adapters just as powerful as he was would have to be deployed, and even then, the chances of success were quite slim.

The northern congress may not have had any adapters of such a lofty caliber. Even if they did, there was no guarantee that they would agree to take on such a task, and even if they did, there was no guarantee that they would succeed.

Thus, chances were that they were going to have to stay in Shadow City for a very, very long time.

This was the consensus that everyone had arrived at, and the more they discussed their situation, the more hopeless everything seemed. In the end, Shae's agitation got the better of her.

"Screw it, I'm going to take a shower and go to bed. I'm exhausted from the trip here, and this place stinks like shit!"

Shae tossed away her jacket in a frustrated manner, then stormed out of the room. Everyone else exchanged a glance, then also called it a night and each went to a different corner of the room.

The room was too small for all of them to stay in, so Adam could only depart with a resigned expression. "It's too cramped in here. I'll sleep outside."

Adam arrived in the storefront before taking a look around, and in the end, he could only find a spot under the counter, where he slowly fell asleep against a pile of parts on the ground.

He was utterly exhausted after such a long day.

First, he became a wanted fugitive. Then, he was brought to this criminal's paradise, the Area 101 of Sandrise City that he had never even heard of before. After that, he witnessed a battle between artificial anomalies, and finally, it dawned on him that he was most likely going to have to stay here for a very, very long time.

All of these events had dealt him a massive psychological blow, and after these repeated blows, he was feeling utterly exhausted, even though he was an adapter who was already accustomed to pain.

Adam laid down on the hard ground and slowly dozed off as he thought about his future...

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

After sleeping for some time, he suddenly felt something nudging him.

"Wake up... Wake up..."

Even though he was exhausted, he was also extremely on edge, and he instantly opened his eyes in an alarmed manner, upon which he discovered that he was being nudged by a robot.

In reality, the object was more like a children's science project assembled from scrap metal rather than a robot.

Its main body was a communicator complete with some USB ports, and there was a circuit chip glued to its forehead. It had no legs, only a palm-sized arm, and it was slowly crawling out from a pile of parts like a miniature mechanical zombie.

What the hell is that? Did a broken robot in here suddenly start working again?

Adam was somewhat relieved to see the scrap robot. There were so many broken parts in here, so it wasn't all that surprising to see a broken toy robot around.

However, right as he was about to turn over and continue sleeping, he suddenly heard the robot calling his name, much to his shock and alarm.

"Adam, do you still remember me?"

Adam instantly sat up, but he did so too quickly, and his head banged into the underside of the counter with a dull thump.

A broken toy had crawled over to him like a zombie, then called out his name.

Adam's first reaction to this was that he had been dragged by someone into the psychic world.

He hurriedly activated his telegnosis after he sat up, then attempted to invoke his anomalies, but no matter how hard he tried, his efforts proved to be futile.

His telegnosis was telling him that this was reality, and he couldn't establish any connection with his anomalies, either.

"This is the real world." The scrap robot began speaking once again. "Don't be afraid, I'm here to help you."

"Who are you?" Adam picked up the robot and carefully inspected it, only to find that it really was just a completely unremarkable amalgamation of scrap parts.

"Do you still remember what happened back in the Witch Pub in the Metaverse?"

"The Witch Pub..." Of course Adam still recalled that place. That was the first time that he had gone to the Sex Planet, and it had been an extremely memorable experience. The memory that stuck out the most to him from that trip was the giant witch, which had stuffed him straight into her body, and the peculiar dream-like sequences of events that followed were also clear in his memory.

He recalled that he had just had his first time with a female performer dressed up as an office worker, but the performer then suddenly transformed into that giant valkyrie outside before issuing him a warning about psychic mutants.

That was the first time that he had received news about psychic mutants, and it had arrived even before the resistance army and the pawn shop had gotten into contact with him.

Even to this day, he still didn't know who it was that had sent him that message, but it appeared that the same person was behind this.

"You're the one who warned me about psychic mutants that time?"

"That's right, it was me." It was very clear that this robot wasn't conversing with him using canned phrases from a program. Instead, it was merely a mouthpiece serving to deliver a message from someone on the other side.

"Who are you?" This was a question that had been weighing on Adam's mind for many days and nights.

"I don't want to tell you for now," the scrap robot replied in a direct and straightforward manner without any attempt to deceive or placate Adam. "It won't benefit you in any way to know who I am."

"Are you here to help me again?"

"That's right. I have a very important piece of information that can help you resolve your current predicament." As the robot was speaking, its voice began to become intermingled with the sound of crackling electricity, and it seemed to be on the verge of falling apart.

"Why are you helping me?" Instead of asking for what information the robot had, this was the question that Adam wanted answered the most.

He had thought that the robot would tell him that it was doing this for their mutual benefit. He had heard that narrative far too many times before. As a set of examples, both Cowboy and May were motivated by self-interest.

However, the response from the robot came as quite a surprise to Adam.

"Because the world is too boring and depressing. I want to liberate the entire human race."

"..."

Such a grand and lofty objective reminded Adam of some people in the Dataist Union. "Alright, what information can you provide to me, and what do you need me to do?"

"That piece of footage hasn't actually fallen into the hands of Oni-faced Dragon."

"If it's not with him, then where is it?"

"It's here in Shadow City. I don't know exactly where it is in Shadow City, so you'll need to search for it on your own. If you don't believe me, you can verify my claim yourself. That's all I can tell you. Remember to be more brave!"

As soon as the robot's voice trailed off, it fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, leaving just as abruptly as it had arrived.

There were still many questions that Adam wanted to ask, but the person on the other side had essentially hung up on him, and the robot remained unresponsive no matter what Adam said or did.

Thus, the conversation concluded just like that, and the robot's final words were encouraging Adam to be more brave, which Adam recalled was something that he had been told last time as well.

How does being brave have anything to do with the situation that I'm in? Do I have to be more aggressive in my approach? Or is there a really tight timeframe that I'm working with?

Adam couldn't decipher the meaning behind those words, but after pondering that interaction for a while, his mood became a little more buoyant. At the very least, there was now a glimmer of hope for him and his friends to leave this place.