Sexroid
"So, once we arrived at the tollgate where the ECPD and Zyrec had set up their blockade—"
"Draco."
Draco's eyebrows twitched at the interruption.
Even when gathered with Philip and Lewis, no one ever cut Draco off. The employees of Legia were no different.
Granted, the former did so out of respect for his position, while the latter refrained because he was their boss. The reasons differed, but the result was the same.
In any case, Draco was not used to being interrupted, which explained his current look of discomfort.
Swoo, however, didn't care in the slightest.
Whether she was pretending not to notice or was genuinely oblivious was something Draco, meeting her for the first time, couldn't quite figure out.
"...Is there something urgent you need to say?"
"Skip the details and just give me the summary."
"And why is that?"
"Because I think I already get the vibe of Legia, the personalities of your two friends, and what you're like."
"Still, I believe hearing the details would be far more beneficial for executing the commission."
"I'll be fine."
If Salvador Ortega's name hadn't been attached to this, Draco would have ended the meeting right then and there. Had he been a little younger, he might have thrown a punch first.
"...Very well."
But right now, he was powerless.
Behind these two mercenaries stood Salvador, and the current Draco had far too much to lose.
"The moment we reached the tollgate, Lewis suggested we abandon the job. Philip hesitated, torn between giving up and pushing forward."
"And you?"
"As I said, I wanted to see this commission through, no matter what."
"Did you shoot your way through?"
Swoo extended her thumb and index finger, mimicking a gun, and flicked her wrist. Draco shook his head.
"Even for us, charging in openly was out of the question. If it had been just one faction, we might have tried something, but facing both was suicide."
He made it sound as if dealing with just the ECPD or Zyrec alone wouldn't have been an issue.
Was it arrogance, or genuine confidence?
Swoo leaned toward the latter.
Though they had met less than three hours ago, listening to him speak, he didn't seem like someone prone to empty bluster.
"So, what did you do?"
"Lewis Alonso. He was... once a rather promising researcher. Though that reputation was mostly confined to the mercenary underworld, he was highly skilled at crafting the gear we needed to get jobs done."
This was also information Swoo already knew.
Before accepting the request and seeking Draco out, Angela and Swoo had thoroughly reviewed the profiles of everyone in Legia, including Draco himself.
Naturally, Lewis Alonso's file was among them, detailing his illustrious past.
"And?"
"We planned to slip past the tollgate using Lewis's gear. The cargo was in our vehicle, and the torrential rain provided excellent cover."
Draco reached under the desk and pulled out a cube, placing it on the surface. It was quite large, forcing him to hold it tightly with both hands—a detail he clearly found frustrating.
He was likely remembering when he was a man and could have easily held it in one hand. Draco's original body had been massive, much like Tybalt's, whom Swoo had encountered in the past.
"It's a camouflage skin."
"...That's a camouflage skin?"
Angela's eyes widened.
A camouflage skin was, as the name implied, a device designed to disguise an object's appearance.
Standard camouflage skins blended with the environment, making the target look semi-transparent. However, the device Draco had produced looked vastly different from those common models.
"Yes. It's a custom build by Lewis, never released to the public. A proprietary piece of tech used exclusively by us here in Eden."
"If you were planning to pass the tollgate, does that mean this camouflage skin can alter the vehicle's entire exterior?"
"Exactly. It requires registering the target data beforehand, but Eden is practically crawling with ECPD cruisers. We intended to disguise our vehicle as an ECPD cruiser to cruise right through."
As soon as he finished speaking, Draco pressed a sequence of buttons on the cube. A moment later, the plain, boring desk transformed, its design shifting into something sleek and stylish.
"It might not fool high-end cameras or top-tier ocular implants, but unless they're using absolute state-of-the-art gear, it will deceive almost anything."
A deep sense of pride resonated in Draco's voice. The fact that he boasted so highly of something he hadn't even built himself showed just how much he cherished his crew.
"Anyway, we sent the other employees' vehicles back and completed the disguise. We even changed into ECPD uniforms we kept on hand for just such an emergency."
"Even with a perfect disguise, you would've been caught eventually."
"It didn't matter. The payout was massive enough to justify risking everything on this single run."
He spoke lightly of the risk, but with his extensive background in secure logistics, he was confident in his ability to shake off any ECPD pursuit.
Thus, approaching the tollgate hadn't felt like an insurmountable hurdle.
"And so, we arrived at the tollgate. And there..."
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, his body trembling violently. It was a shudder born of a complex tangle of rage, hatred, dread, and sheer terror.
"...We ran into Kaiser Hinz."
"Ah..."
"Oh..."
Angela let out a soft groan, while Swoo uttered a quiet exclamation.
Kaiser Hinz.
The personal bodyguard of Vinson Zyrec, the CEO of Zyrec Tech, and a man widely considered the strongest combatant in all of Eden.
Given the legend of him single-handedly wiping out seven Talos squads, their reactions were only natural.
Swoo, of course, was surprised for a different reason.
She found it astonishing that they had deployed Kaiser just to track down Thomson.
And not even for a patrol inside Eastheim, but to guard a tollgate.
It meant they were absolutely certain Thomson was outside Eastheim, and that capturing him would inevitably involve a heavy firefight.
Which implied Thomson had a private army of his own.
Had he planned to establish a private military corporation using the embezzled credits and Zyrec equipment?
No way.
An idiot like Thomson could never have orchestrated something like that. The only person capable of planning and preparing such a scheme was his uncle, Hugo Arcardo.
In that case, why did Hugo build a private military force? And right under Zyrec's nose, no less?
There was no need to overthink it.
Rebellion.
Hugo was preparing a coup.
But the activation of the IEP must have exposed a portion of his plans.
Would Hugo pin the treason on Thomson then? It was hard to say. Whether he could wash his hands of it so easily remained to be seen.
One thing was certain: there were still elements within Zyrec who sympathized with Hugo's rebellion. And now, hiding behind the erratic antics of Thomson, they were waiting for Eden's landscape to shift.
So that's why Thomson died so suddenly in the game.
Had he been used as a meat shield for the rebel faction and killed?
Swoo had assumed Elyse had played a hand in it, but it seemed he was destined to die before she could even make a move.
Swoo let out a faint, enigmatic smile and pulled her thoughts back to the present. While a major shift was undoubtedly on the horizon, Draco's commission took priority right now.
"You got caught, didn't you?"
"...Yes. Kaiser saw right through the camouflage skin."
"Then how did you survive?"
"I suppose we weren't his primary targets, so he didn't execute us on the spot. But there was no escaping a search."
Even a normal vehicle would have been searched, but since they had disguised themselves as the ECPD, the scrutiny was on a completely different level.
Fighting back was impossible. Fleeing was equally out of the question. In desperation, Lewis recalled the drone they had stationed in the sky. Even if all three of them ended up in prison, they were determined to secure the cargo and deliver it to their employees.
"But... it seems he found the cargo we were transporting suspicious."
Whether it was due to some absurdly advanced ocular implant, Kaiser seemed to recognize what was inside the trunk and the shard container.
He must have.
Because from that exact moment, his demeanor shifted entirely.
His attitude, which had been as dismissive as if looking at a passing bug, hardened into that of a man facing his mortal enemy. Kaiser marched straight toward Draco's vehicle.
"It was a desperate situation. Even if the drone came down, Kaiser would have shot it out of the sky, and running would only get us caught in seconds... It was an absolute nightmare. That's when Philip spoke up. He said we had to save the shard first, regardless of what happened to the trunk."
It sounded as if Philip already knew what was inside. In hindsight, it was incredibly suspicious, but at the time, Draco was too panicked to question it and agreed.
Even Lewis, who always opposed Philip's ideas, agreed without a single objection.
"We decided to copy the contents of the shard."
"Who did?"
"I did, as the leader. And... that's exactly what I did."
Without a moment's hesitation, Draco slotted the shard in to read the data.
Up to that point, everything went smoothly. There were no viruses, and the integrity verification was completed flawlessly.
All that was left was to copy the data, but then...
"Suddenly, all the data inside the shard began to evaporate. And simultaneously... the information stored in my own head started vanishing too. Naturally, the implants in my body began to shut down one by one."
Angela's body gave a slight shudder.
Draco didn't notice her reaction. Huddled inward as if reliving the nightmare, he continued his explanation.
"...I felt death closing in. It sounds ridiculous that slotting a single shard could do that, but it was the reality. My body, ravaged by past injuries, couldn't even breathe without active implants."
Just as Draco was slowly slipping away, Lewis plugged a cable into the back of his neck.
He had no idea where the other end was connected. Having lost not only his hearing but his sight as well, Draco could only assume Lewis was desperately trying to do something.
"When I finally opened my eyes, I was in a junkyard."
A junkyard located in the northwestern district of Eastheim.
That was where Draco had woken up.
"In this body, with both legs broken... I was discarded in the trash."
It was no longer his former, robust body. It was a fragile, small, soft sexroid body.
But he couldn't afford to succumb to shock and fear.
Draco had to find a way out of this mess. As the head of Legia, as their leader...
He forced himself to stay focused and think.
He had no idea how his consciousness had been transferred. The only certainty was that Lewis had built something, and that device was the reason he was in this state.
Draco chose to trust his comrades.
"I wondered if the two of them had hidden me and fled. I wondered what had happened to my original body, thinking that if it was still intact, I might be able to go back... And just as those thoughts crossed my mind, a notification chimed in my head."
> Data copy complete.
Having reached that point in his story, Draco's lips parted and closed repeatedly.
Rather than debating whether he should share the next part, his hesitant gaze suggested he was worried about whether the two people sitting before him would even believe him.
"Is it the identity of the client?"
"Yes, but..."
"Who was it?"
"...Even if I tell you, you won't believe it."
"I'll believe it anyway. You're our client, Draco. That's how it works between mercenaries and clients."
Draco looked at Swoo in surprise and let out a soft laugh. He had intended it to be a self-deprecating chuckle, but the sexroid body translated it into a cute, delicate giggle.
Flustered by his own voice, Draco quickly composed himself and spoke.
"An entity that remains a common ghost story in Eden... one that most people dismiss as a myth or an illusion."
Angela gasped.
"The Phantom Protocol."
Swoo's eyes gleamed.
"The one who gave us the commission was a ghost from the Phantom Protocol."