Six o’clock in the morning in the Outer Ring of New Eridu.
The air still carried a slight chill.
Russell stood by the edge of a second-floor window in a three-story old building, the tips of his fingers still holding half a piece of white chalk.
On the windowsill in front of him lay a hand-drawn map.
The edges of the paper looked extremely old, with fine, sparse fraying.
But the lines on the map were as precise as if they were printed—
Black naturally represented the edge of the Hollow, red was the danger zone, green was the safe zone, and yellow was the low-risk zone.
The complex and numerous lines in the middle were winding yet exquisite.
But even though this map looked quite extraordinary, compared to the methods of other Proxies, it was a bit too…
retro.
After all, in this day and age, who didn’t use an electronic map!
The fact that someone was still using such an ancient map meant Russell was often looked at strangely by his partners, which also indirectly affected some of his business.
And the only reason this current business fell into his hands was simply because of the location.
H-037.
This was a Companion Hollow of Hollow Zero, officially announced as sealed off three years ago.
The vast majority of Companion Hollows in New Eridu were low-risk, but there were also a small number like H-037, places that even veteran Hollow Raiders wouldn’t dare enter easily.
Generally speaking, the number of Ethereals inside a Hollow is proportional to the size of the Hollow.
A Companion Hollow like this, whose coverage didn’t exceed two factory parks, shouldn’t have any particularly formidable guys inside.
However, according to the urban legends on Inter-Knot, H-037 was a place that had a Manganese-level Ethereal.
A Hollow with an Ethereal of this level, even if handed over to the Defense Force, was not somewhere people would dare charge into without a well-equipped elite squad.
Not to mention that the content of the mission was just the most common Hollow Recovery, retrieving an old item that wasn’t very valuable.
The client’s offering price wasn’t high either.
Typically, a mission like this could hang on Inter-Knot for a year without anyone paying attention to it.
It was just that the client this time was an old customer of Russell.
An old man in his seventies, experiencing the tragedy of a white-haired person burying black-haired people in his later years.
His children, who were Investigators, both perished in the H-037 Hollow, not even their corpses recovered.
The old man lived by recycling scrap and frequently visited Russell’s junk shop.
After getting familiar with each other over time, Russell learned that the commission on Inter-Knot was posted by him.
“Recovering the Relics of the Missing Investigators from H-037”.
This commission had been hanging for 3 years without anyone taking it, so it was somewhat famous.
After all, posting a commission on Inter-Knot wasn’t free.
With a commission like this that had a low reward yet was persistently posted, everyone would more or less realize that there might be a story behind it.
It’s just that there were too many stories like this in New Eridu, to the point where it almost felt not worth mentioning.
Anyway, to improve his reputation on Inter-Knot so he could get more orders, and also to do his old customer a favor, Russell decided to take on this commission.
In this regard, it was relatively convenient for Russell.
Because he was both a Proxy and a Hollow Raider.
Unlike the Phaethon siblings, who were full-time Proxies that needed to find Agents, Russell basically did everything himself if he could.
As for how Russell knew that Phaethon were siblings…
naturally, it was because he used to be a player of Zenless Zone Zero.
It was just that an accident two months ago led to his current situation, and he could only take things as they come.
Stuffing the map into his bag, Russell went downstairs and walked to a bus stop to wait for the bus.
His shop in the Outer Ring was still some distance away from the location of H-037.
Moreover, there was no guarantee he would be back by nightfall on this trip, so he decided to take public transportation.
The time was roughly just past seven when the bus stopped at the last station on the edge of the Outer Ring.
When Russell got off, he noticed the subtle look the driver shot him.
Even without making eye contact, Russell knew what that look meant.
The end of this stop was either Hollow Zero or a military base in the Defense Zone.
A young man with neither the uniform of the Defense Force nor the equipment bag of an Investigator; among the bus passengers in New Eridu, this situation had only one possibility.
A Hollow Raider.
But the driver wouldn’t be a busybody.
After all, the other party might be some sort of desperado.
A bus driver with a secure job wasn’t going to take such a risk just for the empty title of a good citizen of New Eridu.
Therefore, Russell ignored that gaze.
He just pulled at the collar of his jacket and walked along the dirt road behind the bus stop sign toward a more remote area.
Walking further and further away alone, the asphalt road rebuilt by the municipal government after the disaster ended 500 meters behind Russell, replaced by scattered rubble and cracked, dry earth.
The buildings on both sides of the road transitioned from an old residential area to abandoned factory buildings.
Most of the glass in the factories was shattered, and the walls were covered with yellowish-brown vines—this unhealthy color might be malnutrition caused by struggling to grow in the crevices of this reinforced concrete jungle, or it could simply be the result of being affected by leaking Ether Energy.
Russell stopped under a tree and pulled the map out of his hoodie pocket.
If a second person were to see this map, they would be surprised to find that the lines on it had changed.
The boundary line of H-037 had shifted further south than its original position on the map, entirely encompassing the area marked with the old factory symbol on the southeast side—this was the entry passage he had originally marked.
It seemed that the changes in the Hollow over these past few days meant he had to choose a new entry point.
Of course, those in the know would understand at a glance.
This was a Magical Real-time Refreshing Map.
The area it displayed was the vicinity around the H-037 Hollow, but only when the map was brought back to the location it recorded would it re-enter all the information of that area.
However, if it were an electronic map, it wouldn’t be considered too strange.
But no matter how one looked at it, this map was made of paper, which made it a bit bizarre.
But as its owner, Russell was already accustomed to it.
Having briefly confirmed the new entrance location, he put the map away and continued walking forward.
Approaching the black area with its strange halo step by step, the texture of the air changed subtly.
That was the aura of Ether leaking from the Hollow area.
Between the area swallowed by the Hollow and normal space, there was a visually blurred zone.
But it was different from the giant black hole seen from afar; stepping closer, one would find that the light here just bent slightly, as if looking through a layer of uneven glass.
However, once inside, a sense of stagnation entirely different from the outside world would rush over you.
Russell felt that he was gradually getting used to this feeling.
Two months ago, when he first stood at the edge of a Hollow, this sense of stagnation made him feel suffocated, even oppressed.
Yet he soon realized that what Ether brought wasn’t just a suffocating pressure, but also peculiar abilities.
At the very moment he entered the Hollow, that feeling of inner fullness and omnipotence returned…
It was probably because he hadn’t chosen his entrance very well.
Before Russell could carefully savor this feeling, the angry hisses of disturbed Ethereals rang in his ears.
The fast ones were already lunging at him.
Obviously, it was too late to apologize now.
The young man, however, didn’t panic.
He simply reached out his hand, and a cyan sword made of pixelated Blocks suddenly appeared in his grasp.
It looked like a toy, yet with a single strike, it severed the arm blade swung by the Ethereal.