“Did you see anyone else?” Tenshi asked.
The Bangboo in front of her was trembling—it was the exact one that had been hiding in the corner and was rescued by Tenshi and Aria.
At this moment, Tenshi and Aria were inside an abandoned office in the Ballet Twins Building.
The chandelier flickered on and off, creating an oppressive atmosphere reminiscent of an interrogation room or a haunted place.
“Mm-na! (Bombs!) Mm-ne! (Ethereals!) Mm-na-na! (So many bombs! So many Ethereals!)”
The little Bangboo’s logical processing center clearly hadn’t recovered from the chain of explosions just now, and its round body was trembling wildly in place.
“Little guy, don’t be afraid.” Aria squatted down in front of the Bangboo, stroked its head, and asked, “Your name is A-Cai, right?”
The Bangboo shuddered all over, suddenly raised its head, and looked at the two young girls standing before it.
Aria wore an endearing smile on her face, while Tenshi stood to the side, expressionlessly chewing gum on the sly.
“Mm-ne? (How, how do you guys know my name?)” A-Cai asked.
“We received a commission from your master to take you out of the Hollow,” Aria said.
“Mm-ne! (Leave the Hollow!) Mm-ne-ne! (Great! Master sent someone to save me!)” A-Cai started dancing excitedly.
“Don’t celebrate too early; you haven’t answered my question yet,” Tenshi looked at A-Cai and asked.
“Mm-ne-ne. (Yes, I saw other people!)” A-Cai nodded vigorously.
Tenshi had taught herself Bangboo-speak, so it wasn’t difficult for her to understand A-Cai.
As an intelligent construct, Aria only needed to download a plugin to do the same.
Hearing A-Cai say this, Tenshi and Aria exchanged a glance, their eyes showing expressions of pleasant surprise.
They had seen other people; that was wonderful.
It was very likely Nangong and Sunna.
However, if A-Cai had seen them, why hadn’t they brought A-Cai back with them?
Even though the two of them were very close, they surely wouldn’t abandon their commission target just to live in their own little world inside the Hollow.
“What did the people you saw look like specifically?” Tenshi continued to ask.
“Mm-ne, mm-ne-ne! (At first, when I was hiding over there in a place with lots of Ethereals, two little girls came!)”
A-Cai immediately began to recount while waving its hands:
“Mm-ne-ne. Mm-ne! (It was a girl with hair like a blooming sausage and a girl with tea-green hair! The tea-green-haired girl was also carrying the same backpack as you, though the wings on your backpacks looked a little different.)”
Hair like a blooming sausage, tea-green hair, and Tenshi’s matching backpack, all together.
With these four elements appearing simultaneously, Tenshi and Aria immediately confirmed their identities.
“It’s Nangong and Sunna,” the two said in unison.
“You saw them?” Aria looked at A-Cai and asked, “But they’re our friends, and they came here specifically to look for you, why…”
“Mm-ne-ne! Mm-ne! (Besides them, there were other people! A group of fully armed humans holding weapons!)”
A-Cai hurriedly continued at this moment:
“Mm-ne-ne. (Those two were captured by those people! Those people were saying something about not letting outsiders come here recently.)”
“Do you know where they were taken?” Tenshi stepped forward and asked somewhat anxiously.
A-Cai shook its head: “Mm-ne-ne. (I don’t know. Those people didn’t say anything, and I didn’t dare follow them.)”
Tenshi pressed her lips together and placed a hand on A-Cai’s head: “It’s okay.”
“What should we do now? Even though we know where Nangong and Sunna went, we completely lack any other clues now,” Aria said in a panic.
Tenshi instinctively clenched her fists, but she had no leads at the moment either.
Just as the two girls were at their wits’ end, Aria suddenly took out her phone and opened an interface.
Hesitating for a moment, driven by something akin to instinct or a certain habit, Aria typed out her question.
“Wishing Fairy, Wishing Fairy.
“My friends were captured by strangers inside the Hollow of the Ballet Twins Building.
“We’re also inside the Hollow right now, but we completely failed to find any other clues about them. What should we do?”
“…”
After waiting for a few seconds, the Wishing Fairy still hadn’t replied.
Whenever Aria asked it questions in the past, it would reply in seconds.
Tenshi leaned over and took a glance.
“Can your Wishing Fairy even do this kind of thing?”
But after waiting for a while with no reply, Tenshi took a deep breath and sat down.
She opened her backpack, preparing to take out all the Withering Heart Attack units packed inside.
“Come to think of it, there’s no other way.
“Even though we’re in the Hollow, in order to find Nangong and Sunna…”
“Wait, wait a minute, Tenshi!”
Though Tenshi hadn’t finished her sentence, Aria was so frightened that she hurriedly stopped her.
They had already witnessed the power of these little Blastcrawlers earlier, and Aria was genuinely terrified that Tenshi would blow the place up at the slightest disagreement.
If that happened, even if they found Nangong and Sunna, what state they’d be in when found was anyone’s guess.
“I-If worst comes to worst, we’ll just have to leave first and post a commission on the Inter-Knot. Please don’t do anything rash!”
[Aria suspects you want to blow up the Ballet Twins Building. Shock +189.]
[Fairy suspects you want to blow up the Ballet Twins Building. Shock +139.]
The system’s abrupt prompt made Tenshi pause for a moment.
What’s going on?
Did some strange thing sneak in?
Isn’t Fairy the AI on Phaethon’s side?
Having just gotten into Zenless Zone Zero shortly before crossing over, Tenshi, who had only played up to the Stars Fall, Thunder Strikes chapter, had no idea how this matter was related to Fairy.
But at this very moment, Aria’s Wishing Fairy suddenly started replying.
Wishing Fairy: “Generally speaking, for safety reasons, it is recommended to exit the Hollow immediately and post a missing person commission on the Inter-Knot.”
Wishing Fairy: “However, considering various ‘unstable factors’ in the current environment…”
Wishing Fairy: “Scanned multiple biological heat source reactions inside the current Ballet Twins Building structure, with a large number of heat source reactions gathered on the top platform, among which three individuals have not moved significantly for a long time.”
Wishing Fairy: “An action route has been planned for you.”
“Eh? This is…” Aria froze for a second.
Originally, since the Wishing Fairy hadn’t replied for so long, she was really about to give up.
But she didn’t expect that at this very moment, the Wishing Fairy would actually give such a specific answer.
In the past, its suggestions were clearly more inclined towards guiding heart-to-heart communication.
Tenshi, standing next to Aria, looked at the screen with sparkling eyes.
“Your Wishing Fairy friend can actually be used like this.”
“I, this is also my first time encountering this kind of situation,” Aria said.
“Regardless, we have a map now.”
Tenshi’s expression turned resolute as she reached out, grabbed A-Cai off the ground, and stuffed it into her backpack.
“Little guy, just stay in here for a bit. We’ll take you away immediately after we find our friends.”
“Mm-ne. (Okay.)”
A-Cai answered very seriously, but the next second, it shrieked in alarm again.
“Mm-na-na!? (So many! So many bombs! So many Blastcrawlers! I’m surrounded!)”
[A-Cai was frightened by the contents of your backpack. Shock +180.]
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. These are all mine and won’t explode,” Tenshi said.
“Aria, let’s go.”
“Mhm.”
The girls exchanged a glance and began heading toward the roof along the path guided by the Wishing Fairy.
Meanwhile…
The floor that Tenshi had blown up earlier.
The five Rebels who had gathered upon hearing the explosions were now lying flat on the ground in all directions.
Victoria Housekeeping’s Lycaon, Rina, Corin, Ellen, and Belle, who was remotely controlling Eous.
They originally came to the Ballet Twins Building because Nicole had commissioned Belle to investigate why her phone kept inexplicably receiving blank harassing messages.
But now, this operation had evolved into rescuing the hacker Rain.
Rain had been kidnapped by this group, and someone attempted to use Rain’s hacking abilities to hijack the airship transporting Perlman.
Perlman was the boss of Vision Corporation, which had contracted the renovation of the old subway line not long ago; their renovated route ignored the residents of Canvas Alley trapped inside the Hollow.
He was going to be sent to the defendant’s bench.
As the ones who rescued the residents of Canvas Alley, the members of the Cunning Hares would attend the hearing as witnesses to testify against him.
Billy Kid, who had previously found Tenshi for modifications, along with Nicole, Anby, and Nekomata whom he mentioned, were all currently members of the Cunning Hares.
“It’s all taken care of.”
Belle muttered, looking at the Rebels on the ground.
She had been bound to Fairy for some time now, and she had gradually grown accustomed to the existence of this super artificial intelligence.
Moreover, Fairy’s calculations and route planning were truly very useful.
It made one subconsciously grow a little dependent on it.
“Fairy, the next route…”
“…”
No response.
“Fairy? Fairy?” Belle called out twice more.
Still no response.
Belle: “?” Why did Fairy suddenly go silent!
Just as she was thinking this, Fairy suddenly returned and spoke up:
“Master, an incoming call from Billy has been received. Transferring for you now.”
Belle was stunned for a moment.
Before she had time to ask Fairy what it was doing just now, the communication channel had already been established by Fairy.
Billy’s anxious voice came from the other side, leaving Belle with no chance to speak at all.
“Hello hello, is that you, Manager?
“This is bad! Something major happened on the airship!”
“Billy, calm down. What happened on the airship?” Belle said soothingly.
“It’s like this: a dozen minutes ago, Perlman said he wanted to check the suits in the box, and the guards agreed.”
Billy paced back and forth on the airship and immediately explained:
“Who would have thought that as soon as the box was opened, a puff of smoke sprayed out from inside!
“Then everyone on board, including the pilots, fell unconscious.
“I didn’t get caught because the intake system malfunctioned.”
While speaking, Billy had already arrived at the airship’s cockpit.
The two pilots were sound asleep, slumped over the control panel.
He was genuinely feeling a bit grateful for the Cunning Hares’ poverty right now.
Of course, he should also thank Tenshi’s illness; during the previous modification, because she wasn’t feeling well, Tenshi hadn’t casually given Billy a routine checkup.
Although thanking someone else’s illness felt a bit strange.
Billy bent down, leaned close to the airship’s control panel, and looked at the screen on it.
“Right now, the airship is in autopilot mode.
“However, the airship’s scheduled automatic cruise route seems to have been tampered with. It won’t be long before we plunge headfirst into the Hollow!”