“How do you mean?”
Don’t get the wrong idea — it wasn’t that Saito was questioning the Administrator’s judgment.
He was simply, purely, curious — curious as to how the Administrator had managed to arrive at that conclusion from these traces.
“Do you still remember what I told you a while back about the Infected?”
“Mm.”
Saito nodded.
The girl had once mentioned the Infected in passing when they’d been on the subject of Originium, but at the time she’d only brushed past it briefly, without going any deeper into the topic.
After all, up on Talos II, the kind of enemies they had to face were far more brutal — and on top of that, Oripathy-suppressing pharmaceuticals had already made breakthrough progress.
While Oripathy still couldn’t be outright cured, keeping it under control was actually fairly straightforward.
But the precondition there, again, was — that was up on Talos II.
Down here on the land of Terra, conflicts between person and person, between nation and nation, were forever the topic that simply would not die.
Even though Rhodes Island had already developed medication cheap enough for mass distribution, it was still extremely difficult to roll it out everywhere on a short timescale.
The Administrator wasn’t clear on what the current political situation of the various nations was, but going by the state of this mining site in front of her, it seemed to be no different from the Ursus she remembered.
Was it that, after all these years, nothing had really changed — or was it…
The Administrator gave her head a small shake, pressing certain speculations down to the bottom of her heart.
Now wasn’t the time to be considering things like that.
“Saito — what’s your current view on the Infected?”
“Just some ordinary people who’ve come down with a disease, I guess…
what’s this about?”
Saito was a little puzzled, not quite understanding why the Administrator was asking him this.
“Then suppose your neighbor had contracted Oripathy, and hadn’t been using suppressants on schedule.
Originium has already started surfacing across the surface of their body, and is advancing into the late stages at extreme speed.
What would you do?”
“…Try to stay as far away from them as possible?”
Saito remembered that the Administrator had once said: if Oripathy progressed into the late stages, the overwhelming majority of the patient’s internal organs would be replaced by Originium and would lose their original functions.
At that point, the patient was already step-by-step walking the road into death.
And if, at that point, the Originium were to unfortunately become active, the late-stage patient would burst open with a ‘pop’ like a firework.
And if anyone else were unlucky enough to get hit by the splattering Originium, the probability of contracting Oripathy was a flat one hundred percent.
“But didn’t you say before — as long as suppressants are used on schedule, even an Oripathy infection can be controlled, with daily life and lifespan no different from a normal person?”
“And isn’t the only transmission route for Oripathy active-state Originium entering the body?
Saito was still a little puzzled.
The society he’d lived in before clearly made it difficult for him to grasp the deeper implications behind the Administrator’s words.
“Then what if, in the country the patient lives in, suppressants are extremely expensive, ordinary people aren’t aware of how Oripathy is transmitted, and there are huge numbers of lower-class jobs that require close contact with Originium?”
“…”
Saito fell silent.
He wasn’t an idiot — if even with the Administrator spelling it out to him this clearly he still couldn’t grasp it, then all those years he’d spent reading books really would have been wasted.
The Administrator didn’t continue on any further.
In what remained of her memories, the filth of Ursus clearly went far beyond just this — the Infected on this land had no human rights to speak of whatsoever.
Only — she herself counted as half an amnesiac too, and didn’t have any deep grasp of how things currently stood in Terra or Ursus.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to pass too much commentary.
As for the current state of this land — better to let Saito go and see it for himself, with his own eyes, at some point down the road.
“To be capable of unleashing an Arts skill that powerful — that caster was, in all likelihood, one of the Infected, and the degree of infection was probably nothing shallow either.”
“Barring some special circumstance, after killing that many of the mining site’s overseers and guards, they almost certainly wouldn’t have come back.
The moment they ran into someone from the official Ursus apparatus, it would basically be no different from walking straight into death.”
The Administrator explained in a quiet voice — and Saito clearly had yet another question.
“So then we don’t need to worry about the officials either?”
“Do you remember that factory building you settled me into earlier?”
Saito nodded.
That one had counted as one of the relatively well-preserved buildings around here.
“While you still hadn’t come back yet, I took a small walk around the inside of that factory.”
A heavy layer of dust and frost had already piled up inside the factory — this mining site had clearly been abandoned for a long time.
And inside that factory, aside from some raw Originium ore and semi-finished products, the Administrator hadn’t discovered any finished products at all.
The tail end of the production line was completely empty.
In all likelihood, the Ursus military police had already paid the place a visit a long time ago and hauled off everything of value.
“That said, this is just my conjecture — let’s take another careful walk around the area in a bit and make a final confirmation.”
“No problem!”
Saito nodded.
As the sun in the sky gradually sank toward the west, Saito and the Administrator walked through the mining site once more.
Just as the Administrator had predicted, beyond those few houses still in decent shape and a handful of old, inconvenient-to-move machines, this mining site held almost nothing of any value at all.
Barring any surprises, the official Ursus forces had almost certainly already been here.
“Looks like we can head back and start getting ready to move?”
“Of course.”
The Administrator nodded with a small smile.
She’d just taken a brief tour around the outer perimeter of the mine shaft — as expected of an Ursus mining site, the underground had a rich variety of ore types, and the conditions were even better than she’d anticipated. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
An excited smile broke across Saito’s face as well.
All they had to do now was wait for the move to be finished, then finish refining the remaining Originium, and they’d be ready to take the most important first step!
The mining site in front of him might have been ramshackle and falling apart, but it seemed he could already catch a faint glimpse of the future to come.
…
…
Five days later, Saito and the Administrator had completed all of their preparations.
Just to be safe, they’d spent an extra two days putting together additional reserves of Originium and food.
When the two of them once again stood at the Ursus No.
7 Frozen Earth Mining Site, the area in front of them had already been cleaned up by their combined efforts — a large patch of open ground now organized, which should be plenty for deploying the Protocol Core.
[Deploying the Protocol Core will consume Refined Originium x500]
[Yes / No]
Saito glanced back at the black-haired girl in the face-mask.
At this moment she was standing not far behind him, arms folded across her chest, her expression serious and not saying a single word — clearly looking forward to what was about to happen.
Saito drew in a deep breath, then very imposingly stretched out his right hand.
‘Confirm deployment.’
…
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
One minute.
Several minutes had already passed since Saito pressed the confirm-deployment button, but there was still no reaction whatsoever.
If not for the system showing that 500 units of refined Originium had already been deducted, he would’ve thought he’d selected the wrong option.
Saito was still maintaining that ‘cool’ pose from before, but at this point all that remained in his heart was awkwardness.
His brain was racing — and just as he was about to try turning around to explain to the Administrator, he suddenly heard a thunderous roar coming from the vault of the heavens above!
He lifted his head and looked up — and saw a single shooting star wreathed in dazzling red radiance tearing through the clouds and descending from the sky.
Seeing that all of Saito’s attention had been pulled away by that shooting star, the Administrator standing behind him finally let herself relax, and wiped the bean-sized beads of sweat from her brow.
She had nearly been scared to death just now — half a day with no reaction at all, she’d thought the whole thing was about to crash and burn!!!
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Arknights Endfield: Picked Up a Gugugaga
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