[Initiate Enkephalin absorption for Points recycling?]
Not even a full second had passed before the chat group was already urging her with that desperate prompt.
In the same instant, Carmen came to her senses — she didn't have much time.
"Yes."
She answered without a moment's hesitation. And in an instant, an enormous pressure descended on her from above.
Looking upward through her nervous system's field of vision, she saw that the Enkephalin level above her was… dropping?
Oh. So it's draining the Enkephalin in here.
Understanding clicked into place.
She'd been wondering. Why was the recycling just happening on its own, without her doing anything?
So that was why.
Carmen already knew that her nervous system had been repurposed into a bucket. If anything, she'd watched Ein do it with her own eyes.
Afterward, she'd been submerged in Enkephalin. Perhaps because her nervous system had been preserved completely intact — the moment she'd returned to life, her consciousness had immediately latched back onto it.
And then, because she was completely immersed in Enkephalin, the strangest thing had happened: the system had classified all of this Enkephalin as her personal property.
The logic behind how that code was running, she had no idea. But it ran. And it worked.
"But I can't recycle too much of it…"
Watching the liquid level plummet at alarming speed, Carmen felt a dull throb of concern.
Honestly, part of her wanted to drain the entire tank. The more she recycled, the more Points she'd earn — and the better her odds of coming back to life.
But the problem was, she was acutely aware of something: her resurrection would almost certainly depend, in large part, on her nervous system remaining intact.
She couldn't let it sustain damage. And right now, as the Enkephalin level fell, Carmen could already feel a faint, creeping sensation — like her nervous system was beginning to contract…
If she was going to set a safety threshold, then this was it. Stop here.
In an instant, with the flicker of that single thought, a mental watermark was drawn — and the chat group's recycling ceased abruptly.
Beep-doot! — Beep-doot! —
A piercing alarm screamed through the laboratory. As Carmen felt her consciousness beginning to peel away from her nervous system, she let out a quiet, satisfied laugh.
"Looks like I timed that just right."
The next moment, she was ejected from her nervous system entirely. She gave a calm, knowing nod.
Time's up.
But this trip had been more than worth it.
Eyes on the numbers now appearing in the chat group, Carmen smiled — and forwarded the screenshot to Anthony.
[AAA City Female Ghost: [Screenshot]]
[AAA City Female Ghost: Grand total: 1,764 Points. @Lord of the White Holy Throne — we're RICH, baby!]
......
The alarm tore through the institute without warning.
At his desk, Ein's head snapped up, his eyes flickering with sharp attention.
"That's… coming from the bucket's room?"
Without a moment's hesitation, he pulled up the security feed — and at the same time, reached for his intercom and gave an order:
"Get Cali. There may be some kind of incident — I'm checking now…"
But then his voice cut off.
He was staring at the monitor. Completely still. Not a single word.
"Ein?"
From the other end of the intercom came Daniel's puzzled voice.
"Never mind."
Ein exhaled slowly — a long, measured breath — and then, all at once, changed course:
"Forget Cali. I'll handle this myself."
"Ah? Okay, understood."
The intercom clicked off. Ein lifted his gaze — those brilliant golden eyes — and fixed them on the security footage before him.
His knuckles tapped lightly against the console. Once. Twice. Slowly, methodically, he rewound the recording.
He watched it again and again — the roughly five minutes of footage surrounding the moment the alarm had triggered.
About ten seconds before the alarm sounded, the Enkephalin inside the tank on the feed had begun dropping rapidly. A steep, sudden plunge — and then, the moment the alarm went off, the level stopped falling. Just like that.
This made no sense.
Ein pulled the room's access log for that period. Over the course of three full days, the room had not been opened a single time. The last person to enter had been Ein himself, conducting a personal inspection.
There was absolutely no way anyone had tampered with anything during that window.
And yet — faced with this impossible anomaly — how could no one have tampered with it?
For just an instant, Ein's throat moved.
The fingers tapping on the desk went still. He lifted his head.
A long silence passed before he spoke — barely above a murmur, the words coming out like someone half-lost in a dream:
"Could it be… is it really you? Carmen?"
He reached out, hand moving on instinct, fingers brushing the edge of the screen — but after a moment, he stopped himself. He drew a slow, deliberate breath.
His pupils drifted downward, unfocused. His breathing, despite himself, was becoming unsteady.
Carmen. The sight he had dreamed of — countless times over — now seemed to be right in front of him, like a miracle laid bare.
"…Are you still alive?"
He whispered it to himself, then pulled his gaze away. His thoughts were a tangled storm.
He lowered his head. Picked up the documents on his desk. Tried to work.
He lasted less than a minute before a fierce, restless energy overcame him — like a man trying to sit still on a bed of hot coals.
He couldn't take it. He slammed a palm on the desk, stood up, and walked straight out the door — heading directly to the laboratory where the tank was kept.
No. He had to go see for himself.
No matter what — he had to find a way to understand this.
That was the thought driving him forward.
He had never wanted this more than he did right now — for there to truly be something like a god in this city.
Because if there was — then this was the last chance that god was offering him. A chance to rethink everything. Sin. And what lay on the other side of it.
He quickened his pace.
......
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Holy — over seventeen hundred Points?! We're absolutely loaded!!]
Reading Carmen's message, Anthony's eyes went wide — and a grin broke across his face before he could stop it.
Yes. YES. This is like putting on a fresh pair of underwear on New Year's Day. This is exactly that good.
A quick mental calculation: adding this to whatever Points the other members still had on hand, they were only about a hundred short of hitting 2,000 total.
A hundred Points. Fish for a bit, everyone does one more check-in — that gap closes itself.
As for the remaining 1,000 after that… admittedly trickier. But Anthony already had a plan brewing.
[The Angler] was due for another upgrade soon. Once that happened, scraping together the last 1,000 might turn out to be a whole lot easier than it looked right now.
Things were looking up. Genuinely, tangibly looking up.
Anthony smacked his lips, typed with the barely-concealed yearning of a man who knows he's already won but still wants just a little more:
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: @AAA City Female Ghost — any chance we could squeeze a bit more out of you? Come on, be generous — can't you just cover the gap in one go?]
[AAA City Female Ghost: Oh, I'd love to. But there's only so much Enkephalin left that I can actually recycle — drain any more and things start going wrong on my end.]
[AAA City Female Ghost: After recycling that much, my nervous system's contracted a fair bit. I'll probably need some time before I can pull this again.]
A shame. Even the best sheep needs time to grow its wool back.
Anthony shook his head with a small, reluctant sigh — and then noticed a new notification from the group.
[AAA City Female Ghost has contributed 1,000 Points. Feature Unlocked · Resource Exchange]
[Group members may now transfer one item or object between each other by submitting a required logistics fee in Points.]
[AAA City Female Ghost: Unlocked this one first. World Traversal's useless right now — we're all souls, and most of us can't even perceive our surroundings. As for Ability Enhancement, that thing obviously burns Points like crazy, and we can't afford to play with it yet.]
[AAA City Female Ghost: This one actually looks useful. Didn't someone have something to pass along to Anthony? @Wordsmith of the Great Yan.]
[AAA City Female Ghost: That fishing rod that boosts his fishing ability — since his fishing is literally the core of how we operate and generate Points right now, getting Resource Exchange up first was clearly the most urgent call.]
[Wordsmith of the Great Yan: Mm, thank you. Let me see — it should work like this…]
[Wordsmith of the Great Yan: Ah — there we go.]
[Wordsmith of the Great Yan has submitted 10 Points and transferred Item · Taijun's Glass Fishing Rod to Lord of the White Holy Throne.]
[You have received: Taijun's Glass Fishing Rod.]
The next moment, Anthony looked down at the glass fishing rod that had materialized in his hands — and burst into tears.
He had it. He finally had it.
The dream rod of every angler who had ever lived.
____
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