"Because I… am a kitsune created in Vargo's laboratory."
For a moment, the freezing cold of the glacial cave seemed to vanish. As NO9 dropped his cloak to the ground, nine ethereal, snow-white spiritual tails spread from his back in slow waves, illuminating the dark walls of the cave. The tails were not made of physical fur or hair; they drifted through the air more like threads of condensed mana and pure energy.
Hope stared at the glowing tails with wide eyes. His mind quickly searched for a familiar reference point. Kai, who had recently parted ways with him, came to mind. He had been a fox too, and Hope remembered Lypin mentioning that he possessed a similar form.
"So… are you like Kai?" Hope asked, unable to hide his surprise. "He was a fox too."
The faint melancholic expression on NO9's face faded, replaced once more by a flat, calculating gaze. He slowly shook his head. The light emitted from his tails made his pale skin appear even more ghostlike.
"I have no idea who Kai is," NO9 said in a smooth and calm voice. "And no, I'm probably not like him. I'm not a real kitsune… In fact, I don't even know exactly what I am. I'm simply one of dozens of children who were created to become a perfect weapon, a 'Kitsune' under The Collector's control. A child whose life passed in a laboratory, subjected to experiments on cold tables… and when I failed to meet expectations, I was discarded like trash."
Hope frowned at what he was hearing. His own life had also passed in darkness and loneliness inside a dungeon, but the word "experiment" was something entirely foreign to his world… and equally terrifying.
"Your life… was experiments?" Hope asked, unconsciously taking a step forward. His eyes were filled with a mixture of pure curiosity and horror. "What do you mean? What were they doing to you?"
Lypin quickly grabbed Hope's arm. The starlight in her eyes trembled with worry. She knew better than anyone how deeply such trauma could scar a person's soul, especially with the cosmic darkness parasite inside her.
"Hope, stop," Lypin said softly but firmly. "You shouldn't ask something like that. That's his past. Don't dig into it."
But NO9 raised a hand slightly, stopping her. Unexpectedly, a faint smile appeared at the corner of his lips. It was thin… almost sorrowful.
"You're curious, Architect…" NO9 said, locking his eyes onto Hope's. "I like that about you. Most people only look at power. They never ask what kind of hell that power was forged in."
NO9 slowly knelt beside Mira, who was lying near the fire on the cave floor. The warmth of the flames seemed to soften his synthetic and emotionless posture slightly. Even Gashadokuro JR. and Field had fallen silent, retreating into the shadows in respect of the rare moment.
"My childhood and nearly my entire life were spent between endless white walls and unbreakable glass," NO9 began. His voice echoed through the icy cave walls, and his words seemed to make the air even colder. "I didn't know what sunlight looked like. I had never heard the sound of wind. Me and dozens of others like me… we were all just test subjects. We didn't have names. Only numbers. I was Number Nine."
He took a deep breath, and the light from the tails behind him flickered slightly.
"Every day, that white door would open, and one of us would be selected and taken away for testing. That was our routine. Dozens of needles… burning liquids injected beneath our skin… tubes of blood drawn every single day. And the tests kept getting harsher… more painful. At first they only measured our physical limits. Running speed, muscle strength, reflexes, resistance to poison. Those things were bearable. But as we failed to reach the level The Collector wanted… that perfect Kitsune form… the brutality of the tests increased."
Hope swallowed. His Architect class allowed him to read the world through numbers and data, but the numbers in NO9's story were made entirely of blood and pain.
"To measure our endurance, they threw us into a sealed chamber filled with fire and lava erupting from the ground, burning us for hours," NO9 continued. Though his voice did not tremble, the weight of what he described crushed the air. "They watched as our skin melted and our bones turned to charcoal. To test our healing factors, they chained us to metal tables and tore off our limbs one by one. Screaming in pain was considered weakness. After a while… we stopped screaming. We stopped feeling. Because the only way to survive was to become something without a soul."
He lifted his eyes from the fire and looked at Hope.
"And despite all that torture, those who failed to adapt… those who failed the tests… were taken to the black room."
Hope's brows furrowed thoughtfully. A strange pressure formed in his chest, in the place where his dark abilities rested.
"What's in the black room?" he asked quietly.
NO9 slowly shook his head. For the first time, the man with perfect analytical ability showed helplessness caused by the unknown.
"I don't really know," NO9 said. "I've never been there myself. And the worst part… is that none of my friends who went there ever returned. It was in the deepest part of the laboratory, behind a heavy steel door. When that door briefly opened, the only thing I could see was a massive, pitch-black tree standing in the center of endless darkness. Its veins pulsed with a purple light. And every time that door opened, a few rotten black leaves would drift out into the corridor. According to the whispers among the other subjects… The Collector and Vargo would hang failed subjects from that black tree. They said the tree was alive. Its branches twisted like snakes, piercing the subjects' chests… entering their hearts… and draining all their energy, all their hope… and finally their souls."
Souls.
Hope's mind lit up like lightning when he heard that word.
Soul Reap.
Wasn't his own ability also about collecting the souls of the beings he killed into his army? This black tree… this dark system… could it be a twisted mechanical version of Hope's own power? The idea of experiments conducted with souls sent chills down his spine.
But there was a logical inconsistency in the story that demanded a more urgent answer. Hope narrowed his eyes and examined NO9 carefully.
"Wait a second," Hope said cautiously. "You just said you were a failed subject… that you were discarded like trash because you didn't meet expectations. Then how did you avoid the black room? How did you not get hung on that tree… and instead end up here with us?"
A familiar, slightly mechanical smile appeared on NO9's face again, but this time it carried a genuine sense of victory. His nine spiritual tails swayed lightly behind him.
"The same way I escaped from the arena… from that massive pit," NO9 said. "I escaped from the laboratory too."
Lypin blinked and floated slightly forward.
"How?" she asked. "From the way you describe it, that place sounds worse than hell. Armed guards, unbreakable glass, and someone like Vargo controlling everything. Escaping from there should be impossible."
NO9 slowly stood up. His tall figure rose toward the ceiling of the cave. He placed his cloak back over his shoulders but did not close it. The ethereal glow of his tails continued shining.
"With a little teamwork… and a little luck," NO9 explained. His analytical tone returned.
"When we realized the friends who entered the black room never came back… and that eventually it would be our turn… we started making escape plans. We were weak. We were small. But we had nothing left to lose. Still, it would be incredibly difficult. Memorizing the structure of the laboratory, the patrol routes of the guards, and the blind spots of the surveillance systems took us months. We prepared for a long time… but we could never take that first step. The laboratory's security was so tight… so well guarded… that a few wounded children escaping those doors had a mathematical success probability of 0.3 percent."
Silence followed. Only the crackling of Mira's fire form could be heard in the cave.
"Just when our hope had completely vanished… when we had accepted that we would all die on that black tree… luck smiled upon me," NO9 said quietly. His eyes drifted into distant memories.
"At that time, a massive war in the outside world struck the underground facility as well. We didn't know who was fighting who… but huge explosions shattered our white walls. Security systems collapsed. Red alarms screamed everywhere. Vargo's laboratory suffered catastrophic damage. And in the middle of that chaos… that destruction…"
NO9 paused.
"Vargo died there."
"WHAT?!"
Hope and Lypin shouted at the same time, their voices echoing through the icy cave walls.
Lypin stepped forward quickly, placing her hands on her waist.
"What nonsense are you talking about?" she said sharply. "When we went to Greenhollow and destroyed that corrupted system, Vargo was there! We killed him ourselves. You're talking about something that happened years ago. How could he have died years before that?!"
A deep laugh filled with bone-cracking sounds echoed from the dark corner of the cave.
Gashadokuro JR. slammed his enormous hand against his knee while laughing, while Field smirked as he cleaned his teeth with his poisoned dagger.
"You kids really know nothing about anything!" Gashadokuro JR. roared between his laughs. "You think the world only consists of what you've seen!"
Field shrugged lazily, the tattoos on his body faintly glowing.
"You killed Vargo? Wow, what a heroic feat," he said mockingly. "Tell me something, little Architect… do you really think there's only one Vargo in this world? Hahahaha!"
Hope felt as if boiling water had been poured down his brain. His mind struggled under the weight of the revelation.
Vargo… the mad scientist who turned innocent people into monsters in his laboratories… wasn't just one person?
Clones? A hive mind controlled by The Collector?
How many laboratories… how many Vargos… existed in this cursed world?
"You'll learn soon enough," NO9 interrupted, silencing the laughter of his companions. "Let me finish my story."
He continued calmly.
"With Vargo dead and the facility collapsing, we finally found the opportunity we had been waiting for. My friends… those numbered children… we all escaped from our cells and ran through the ruins toward the exit. I was the most capable and durable among them. As their leader, I went first. I distracted the guards. I used my body as a shield so they could escape. Covered in blood, I broke through that giant iron door… and stepped into the blinding light of freedom outside."
NO9's voice trembled for the first time. The perfect mask cracked.
"But when I stepped outside… and turned back… there was no one behind me."
The air inside the cave froze.
"The door had closed behind me, and the facility was collapsing. I couldn't go back. I couldn't return to that hell to save them. For the first time in my life, I was alone in a vast world whose rules I didn't understand. Alone among the ruins."
He inhaled deeply and straightened his posture again.
"But my freedom didn't last long. The outside world was even more cruel than the laboratory. I didn't know how to live. I grew hungry and thirsty. My body constantly consumed large amounts of mana due to the experiments, and without food I weakened quickly. By the end of the day, I collapsed from hunger in a crowded city market. When I opened my eyes again… I was nothing more than a pet inside King Khronos's dungeons."
Hope clenched his fists. Even hearing Khronos's name made his stomach churn.
"He threw me into that cursed arena," NO9 continued. "He displayed my tails and strange form to his people like a freak show and made money forcing me to fight. But it didn't take him long to realize I was far more valuable than a normal gladiator. He was as greedy as The Collector. Once he discovered how unique my blood and cellular structure were… my life as a fighter ended. He locked me in his dark dungeons and tried to use me for his own twisted experiments. Fortunately for me, he wasn't as well equipped as Vargo. He could only take samples of my blood and skin from time to time. And before that cruel king could truly continue those corrupted experiments…"
NO9 paused and looked directly at Hope.
"…thanks to YOU, we managed to escape that arena."
Hope blinked.
"While you were executing your plan and buying us time, we escaped completely, Architect," NO9 said. "Whoever attacked the arena that day deserves thanks too. Because of the damage done to the kingdom, they ignored us for a while."
Silence slowly filled the cave.
Hope processed every word like an architect measuring stone by stone.
After a moment, he spoke.
"So…" Hope said slowly. His voice now carried the weight of a battle-hardened leader. His gaze drifted toward Mira, trembling on his shoulder.
"So according to what you're saying… Mira is also a product of those laboratories. A subject like you. But instead of a child, she was specifically produced as a pet. And judging from what you said… and the way those two mocked us… there are multiple Vargos in the world. Maybe dozens. Maybe hundreds. And Mira… just like you… is the product of another hellish facility run by one of them."
NO9 slowly nodded in approval of Hope's flawless analysis.
Hope took a deep breath and pushed aside the chaotic storm of thoughts in his mind.
Then he turned and began walking toward the cave entrance with determined steps. In one motion he lifted the heavy bag of supplies from the ground and threw it over his shoulder.
"I understand…" Hope said, his back turned to them. His voice echoed against the cold walls.
"So there are many subjects like you still trapped in those laboratories… waiting behind that black door, huh? And you want to save the friends you had to leave behind that day… just like I want to save Lypin from the darkness inside her."
He glanced over his shoulder toward NO9 and the criminals waiting in the shadows. The determination in his eyes was sharp enough to melt the cave's ice.
"Now I understand why we came together… and why you want to go to that island."
Hope turned his face toward the freezing wind blowing through the cave entrance and spoke his final words.
"Then let's hurry. We don't have a single second to lose if we're going to take Lypin to the World Tree… and rescue the friends being held captive on that island."