Chapter 790: This Land! Dr. Kal'tsit, Your Image Has Completely Crumbled
Realizing that Ren hadn't actually agreed to lift a finger for them yet, Amiya forced herself to rein in her surging emotions. She gripped the hem of her jacket, her knuckles turning white.
"Mr. Ren," she began, her voice trembling slightly with nervous anticipation. "How... how can we obtain the method to cure Oripathy from you?"
She didn't try to naively use the grand, righteous cause of saving Terra to persuade him. She had seen enough to know that wouldn't work on a man like him. Instead, she grounded her request in pure, transactional reality.
Ren simply swirled the drink in his hand and shook his head.
Amiya's long rabbit ears drooped instantly. "Is... is it not possible?" she murmured, lowering her head as a heavy wave of disappointment washed over her.
"I didn't say it was impossible," Ren replied, his tone lazy and matter-of-fact. "I said my method isn't something you people can use."
Amiya's head snapped back up. She blinked her clear, watery eyes in pure confusion. "Can't use?"
"Let me show you the simplest way to explain it." Ren shifted his gaze toward the periphery of the room. He casually called out, "Blaze. Gravel."
Blaze's feline ears twitched violently. She pointed a finger at her own face. "Huh? You... you know me?"
Beside her, Gravel tilted her head, her expression equally puzzled. Why was this mysterious, god-like entity suddenly calling out their names right now?
Ren didn't bother explaining. He just leaned back into his seat and dropped a bombshell. "Your Oripathy has already been cured."
The room went dead silent.
Blaze and Gravel froze, utterly stunned. Amiya and Ascalon exchanged bewildered glances.
It was the Doctor who reacted first. Her sharp mind immediately caught the implication. She shot up from her chair, her coat swishing as she rushed up behind the two operators.
"Where are the Originium crystals on your bodies?" the Doctor demanded, her voice tight with urgency.
"They're right on my..." Blaze trailed off as she pulled back her collar, while Gravel hurriedly checked her own afflicted areas.
The dark, jagged Originium lesions that had scarred their flesh for years were gone. Completely vanished. Only smooth, unblemished skin remained.
"What... what the hell happened?" Blaze stammered, frantically looking left and right. She patted her own shoulder and ribs. She knew exactly where those cursed crystals used to be. They had been a part of her daily agony. Now, there was nothing.
"Let me see!" Ascalon's figure blurred, instantly appearing right in front of them. Her sharp, predatory eyes scanned their skin with careful precision.
A heavy silence stretched over the room for a long moment.
Finally, Ascalon looked up at Amiya, her usual stoic composure cracking. "The Originium crystals... they really are gone."
The Doctor adjusted her hood, her mind racing at a million miles an hour. She stared at the laid-back man on the couch. "Ren... you just spoke a single sentence, and they completely recovered?!"
"To be precise, for me, such a thing only takes a single thought," Ren corrected, waving his hand dismissively. "And the exact same logic applies to making all the Oripathy across your entire continent of Terra disappear."
He spoke as if he were discussing what to have for dinner. A trivial, everyday matter.
But in the minds of Gravel, Blaze, and the rest of the Rhodes Island operators, his words struck like a deafening gong. Could such a terrifying, absolute power truly exist? Changing the fundamental laws of a world with a mere sentence?
Whether it was the True Dragon of Great Yan, the Sarkaz King, the Emperor of Ursus, or even the legendary Witch King of Leithanien—none of those supreme rulers could ever dream of achieving such an impossible feat.
Yet, right in front of their eyes, Ren had casually erased Blaze and Gravel's Oripathy. Even though they hadn't undergone a complete medical examination in the medbay yet, the physical proof was obvious. The operators themselves felt a sudden, bizarre lightness in their bodies, an absence of the chronic, burning ache they had grown so used to. And considering the sheer scale of the power Ren had already displayed, there was absolutely no reason for him to play a cheap parlor trick on them.
W stood frozen, her trademark mocking smirk completely wiped from her face. "Just who exactly are you?" she breathed out, her crimson eyes locked onto him.
Her chaotic mind was now entirely consumed by Ren's earlier promise—the promise that he could let her meet Theresa again. If this man could casually rewrite reality and erase an incurable disease with a thought, did that mean his promise to bring back the person she cared about most was actually real?
"You can just think of me as someone from outside of Terra," Ren offered, giving the most straightforward, lazy explanation possible. "I only dropped by this world because a friend invited me over to play."
"Someone from outside of Terra?!"
The room erupted into a chorus of shock. Aside from Skadi and Kal'tsit, every single person present felt their worldview shatter.
Skadi, being a privileged member of the Doomsday Chat Group, already knew exactly what he meant. She just sat there quietly, entirely unfazed.
Kal'tsit, on the other hand, had formed her own logical, albeit deeply flawed, misunderstanding. Based on the cosmic horrors and vast celestial concepts Ren had forcefully shoved into her mind earlier, the ancient feline had categorized him as a supreme entity from a highly advanced, extraterrestrial civilization lurking in the deep universe beyond Terra's sky.
Amiya practically leaped out of her seat. She was so overwhelmed by the sheer, blinding hope of it all that she completely forgot her usual cautious diplomacy.
"Mr. Ren! If that's the case, doesn't that mean you can save all of Terra from its suffering?!"
Blaze pumped her fist, her fiery eyes lighting up. "Hell yes! This is a literal miracle. A power that can actually cure Oripathy!"
But the optimistic cheering died quickly. One by one, the older, more cynical members of the room adopted grim, heavy expressions.
W broke the silence with a harsh, mocking chuckle. "Heh. You naive little brats don't actually think that just because Oripathy gets cured, this rotten world will suddenly hold hands and sing in peace, do you?"
"Isn't that obvious?" Blaze retorted, glaring at the Sarkaz mercenary with deep displeasure. "It's the root of all our misery!"
But it wasn't just the chaotic mercenary shooting down the idea. Even FrostNova, who usually opposed W on principle, let out a soft, cold sigh and shook her head.
"I used to think the exact same way," the Yeti Squadron leader said quietly, her icy blue eyes reflecting a lifetime of bitter tragedy. "I thought Oripathy was the sole reason this land was plunged into hell. But I've lived long enough to see the truth. Oripathy is merely a single gear in the massive machine of suffering that grinds this land down."
FrostNova looked directly at the young Cautus leader. "Do you honestly believe that if the disease vanished tomorrow, the Infected would suddenly be welcomed back into society? That they could just return to normal lives?"
Blaze and Amiya both froze, the harsh reality of those words hitting them like a physical blow.
The room fell into a suffocating silence. They slowly realized the terrifying truth in FrostNova's logic. Even if the physical crystals were erased, the deep-rooted hatred, the systemic discrimination, and the centuries of ingrained prejudice wouldn't just magically vanish. The former Infected wouldn't be treated with sudden respect. They would be treated as ticking time bombs. The non-Infected would always find a reason to hate and fear them. They would claim the cure was a hoax, that the Infected might relapse at any moment, or that there was a hidden, highly contagious incubation period. Fear always found an excuse.
And there was an even more terrifying consequence to consider. If Ren truly used his absolute power to erase all Originium from the world with a single word, an entirely new, apocalyptic problem would arise.
The entire modern infrastructure of Terra—its mobile cities, its industries, its weapons, its very survival against the Catastrophes—was fundamentally built upon Originium Arts and Originium as a primary energy source.
Amiya felt a cold sweat break out on her back. She couldn't even begin to fathom the sheer scale of the global collapse. If Originium vanished overnight, billions would starve. Mobile cities would grind to a halt and be swallowed by storms. Society would tear itself apart in the ensuing dark age.
That wouldn't be saving Terra. That would simply be shoving Terra out of one bloody abyss and directly into another.
The Doctor, ever the master tactician, remained ruthlessly rational. She crossed her arms, her voice stern and measured. "Curing all of Terra's Oripathy in a single stroke would only plunge the entire continent into unmatched chaos. The economic and societal collapse would kill more people than the disease itself. If we are to use this miracle, it must be planned with absolute precision."
But Kal'tsit, who had been standing rigidly off to the side, finally spoke up. Her voice was as cold and sharp as a scalpel. "Before you all get ahead of yourselves planning the salvation of the world, why don't you consider the actual reality of the situation? What price do you think needs to be paid to make a being like Ren act on our behalf?"
The ancient lynx glared at the laid-back man on the couch. She didn't believe for a single second that a supreme, overpowered anomaly like him would play savior out of the goodness of his heart. She knew firsthand how dangerous he was. Just by attempting to probe his mind and understand his existence, she had ended up completely subjugated, her very life and dignity held in the palm of his hand.
"Ah, Kal'tsit. You really do understand me best," Ren chuckled, looking thoroughly pleased by her cynical assessment. He lazily patted the empty space on the couch right next to his thigh. "Come here. Let me give my good little kitty some rewards."
The heavy, philosophical tension in the room shattered instantly.
Every single pair of eyes in the room snapped toward Kal'tsit. Jaws dropped. A few operators openly gaped, genuinely wondering if they were suffering from auditory hallucinations.
Behind the couch, Specter's soft hands—which had been diligently massaging Ren's shoulders—suddenly stopped. The Abyssal Hunter narrowed her crimson eyes, glaring daggers at Kal'tsit with the intense, predatory hostility of a woman watching a stray cat try to steal her prized fish.
Kal'tsit herself went completely rigid. Her spine locked up, and her feline ears flattened against her head. She had mentally prepared herself for many things, but she never expected this shameless bastard to pull such a humiliating stunt in front of her entire organization.
But she had absolutely no choice. The power dynamic was absolute.
Gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached, Kal'tsit forced her legs to move. Maintaining a deadpan, expressionless mask to hide her burning humiliation, she walked stiffly over to the couch and knelt beside Ren.
And then, right in front of the stunned elites of Rhodes Island, the supreme, untouchable head of the medical department was subjected to a thorough, affectionate session of head pats and ear rubs. Ren scratched behind her fluffy ears, treating her exactly like a pampered house pet.
"Dr. Kal'tsit!!!" Amiya shrieked, her voice cracking an octave higher.
She stood closest to the scene, her eyes wide as saucers and her mouth hanging open in pure, unadulterated shock. In the span of a single, absurd instant, the stern, omniscient, and terrifyingly strict image of Kal'tsit that Amiya had respected for years completely and utterly crumbled into dust.
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