Cyber Era Witch-Chapter 36 - 24 Purification

36: Chapter 24 Purification

36 -24 Purification

Everything within Xu Yang’s field of vision belonged to corporations: floor tiles, windows, walls, domes, lighting fixtures, billboards, containers, vehicles, and of course, merchandise.

In the past, he had wondered whether the bodies of corporate employees belonged to the company.

After consulting the employee handbook, Xu Yang confirmed that bodies were indeed corporate property, usually used for experiments.

It was all written in the thick employment agreements.

If there was a second choice, no one would want to sign, but people must work.

A witch named Sharon Brown, who studied social morphology in New Taixi State, pointed out that the world had entered an era of corporations after the Witch Era, lacking an important “nation-state era” that should have happened in the normal course of historical evolution.

In the historical model she constructed, if there were no witches and corporations had not preemptively landed in New Taixi State, the world would naturally be divided into countless nations along ethnic cleavages.

In the corporate era, ethnic boundaries dissolved, and all the population had become equal labor.

Sharon spoke highly of the corporate system.

Under its guidance, the meaningless internal conflicts of humanity ended, and humans could finally set aside their civil war differences and loyally serve the expansion of capital.

At the same time, she strongly criticized the increasingly intense ethnic rights movements of the present, opposed corporations establishing specialized departments based on ethnicity, and was against people reconstructing the historical concepts of ethnic groups, nations, and states, a trend that has been rising in the past decade.

In the propaganda of today’s network, the era dominated by witches, when the world was made up of feudal or slave-owning nations, appeared especially idyllic.

In contrast, modern corporatism is a social system based on the corporate entity.

In this social form, what is most valued is corporations and their legal personhood.

Disasters relief, distribution, and welfare services of the Corporate Alliance are all based on corporations as units.

Every corporation built towering skyscrapers that reached into the clouds within their respective corporate jurisdictions.

Therefore, a great deal of underground construction had to be built beneath the ground to support their weight.

Each underground city provided not only quality labor for the above but also absorbed inferior populations and served as the foundation for the ground metropolises.

This also caused trouble for the movements of underground residents.

After leaving the square, Xu Yang and his group’s path was blocked by a gigantic underground structure.

These structures were made of high-strength concrete, each side clearly marked with identifiers such as “Townlands Construction Company” and “Property of Yuefeng Association,” accompanied by a multitude of fluorescent identification codes.

Scanning them would take one to the company’s homepage to learn about their illustrious history.

At the same time, these marks also gave a clear warning, indicating that these structures belonged to Anjiu City and strictly forbade residents of Aizu City from approaching.

Some people died near these structures.

“Why did these people die here?” Farosa saw that their deaths varied, some with their heads shattered and bleeding, others scorched black from electrocution.

“Maybe they accidentally triggered the automatic defense systems…” Xu Yang said, then contradicted himself after a moment, “That’s not possible, these things are too conspicuous.”

“To get the corporations’ attention,” Kanako said, turning her head away, not wanting to look at the bodies.

“Intentionally causing trouble…” Xu Yang felt a chill in his heart.

“Yes,” Kanako replied, “such things have happened before.”

Only by deliberately damaging corporate property could one attract corporate personnel to come down and investigate the situation, who, if one pleaded with all their assets and begged for mercy, might take them away.

However, they encountered automatic defense facilities, as Xu Yang scanned the discharge devices embedded in the wall.

These corpses in the above thermal sensing systems would only show up as spots that no longer moved, and after the body temperature cooled, everything would return to normal.

Hearing a rustling noise, Xu Yang turned to see a few scrawny grey-haired ratmen sitting in the distance, waiting for Xu Yang and his companions to move away so they could drag away the bodies.

Their stance was alert, ready to tuck and hide at any of Xu Yang’s movements.

Unable to deal with this, Xu Yang could only press on.

Hugging the walls, they maneuvered through the cold, metallic, suffocating darkness of the underground city.

Xu Yang reminisced about the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the grey overcast sky, and the torrential rain, which had never seemed so desirable.

Their workstation was on the 24th floor; jumping from there would result in being caught by safety nets and a deduction of one day’s performance.

“Lots of smashing and rowdy sounds,” Farosa remarked, listening to the commotion echoing from the darkness.

“They are fighting with the ratmen.

The Underground City of Aizu has at least a population of three hundred thousand,” Xu Yang said, “Even as Anjiu City’s ‘underground dump,’ there are many people here.

In Katagi District, probably around a hundred thousand.”

“Three hundred thousand people!” Farosa exclaimed, “That is a massive metropolis!

The largest city on the Taixi Continent, Constantinian, has only about that many inhabitants.”

“There are many people,” he said, “but under these circumstances, it’s difficult to fight the ratmen.”

Katagi District was like a complex web of pipes; aside from the previously visited plaza which was relatively open, everywhere else provided severely limited visibility, and the segmentation of people was especially pronounced.

Particularly in the absence of electricity, once one became lost, it would be hard to find each other again, blind and deaf, no match for the ratmen who relied on pheromones and their noses to move nimbly.

Ratmen could muster en masse, while humans remained suspicious of each other.

“There are ten billion people in the world,” Kanako said.

“Ten billion?

Then just the food you eat every day would swallow a few hundred mountains, and the garbage you create each day would be as much as a few hundred mountains too.

How do you survive?

No, you must be lying to me, ten billion people?”

“Everything has changed—careful!” Xu Yang stopped abruptly.

Around the corner ahead, a prosthetics clinic with a sign that read “Old Cui’s Prosthetic Clinic” was situated on the ground floor of a shabby apartment building that seemed already overrun.

Several ratmen poked their heads out from the high windows, sitting on the metal balconies munching on living humans.

A woman they had grabbed by the hands and feet screamed hoarsely as they cut off her fingers, internal organs, and eyes to eat, pulling out the circuits and parts from her body.

The ratmen were overjoyed, hacking off one of her pale thighs with force and throwing it down to their clamoring companions below; soon, the woman’s final screams also ceased.

Thump, thump!

Below in the building, ratmen with rudimentary homemade spears, steel pipes, and stones ferociously battered the iron door of the prosthetics clinic.

With every effort, the door shook ominously, and the handle was already deformed.

The Ratmen wore crude clothing, baseball caps, T-shirts, jackets, worn-out coats, cargo pants, jeans, sneakers, leather shoes, sports shoes — human clothes draped on Ratmen, which sent chills down Xu Yang’s spine.

They must have picked up these clothes from a garbage dump.

The clothes were filthy yet so commonplace that it made him feel the Ratmen were frighteningly similar to humans.

“Ah yi — Keep it up!”

“Break it open, break it open now!”

The Ratmen were even speaking human languages, which made Xu Yang even more uncomfortable.

The rumored subterranean nightmare-like humanoid race, now alive before his eyes, swarming in groups, thousands upon thousands.

What a nightmarish scene.

From the street above, a strong and bulky Black Ratman leapt down from the ventilation pipe in the dome, covered in thick black fur, holding a handgun.

“Hurry up and do it — smash it!” it commanded loudly.

The Black Ratman seemed to hold a higher status than the scrawnier Ratmen below in their shabby clothes, as it was treated with extra reverence upon its appearance.

“Boss, yeah!”

“Make way!” they shouted in a commotion.

Bang!

The Black Ratman fired at the doorknob, the bullet piercing through the iron door’s chain, and Xu Yang faintly heard panicked male shouting from inside the Prosthetics Clinic. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

“Kill them,” Xu Yang said as he raised his submachine gun, aiming for the Ratmen’s heads.

Farosa’s expression was indifferent as she raised her right hand, and Xu Yang noticed a flash of grey light on it.

“Life Annihilation,” Farosa whispered.

— Death arrived in an instant.

“Gua gaga —”

“Ergh!”

The Grey Light flashed past, stripping the Ratmen of their lives with an irrevocable decree, sweeping them away like dust.

Following that, their heads exploded one after another!

Then their bodies, their limbs, quickly disintegrated into pieces.

A Ratman noticed its companion’s sudden death, panicking.

The next second, its own head burst into fragments, shocking the surrounding Ratmen.

The Ratmen dropped what was in their hands and scattered in all directions on all fours, but none could escape the fate of death.

One by one, including those smug Ratmen above and the big Black Ratman, all were reduced to pieces.

Blood splattered, flesh flew everywhere.

As she watched them being destroyed by Magic Power one by one, Farosa lowered her head and covered her mouth, laughing.

Xu Yang heard the sounds of Ratmen’s innards tearing, bones breaking, limbs snapping.

Soon death enveloped the entire apartment complex.

Xu Yang held his breath, it took him a long while to accept the reality before him.

Not one Ratman survived.

Her power was far from restored to its heyday.

Xu Yang slowly turned his head to see that the grey sigil on her right hand had significantly dimmed, merely killing these Ratmen in front of him had exhausted most of her power.

If what Farosa said was true, she had the ability to eradicate the entire world’s population.

Even though there were ten billion people in the world, to her, it would just take more time to kill.

Living with such a Witch, Xu Yang felt everything was absurd, but he had tried his hardest to adapt.

Kanako, on the other hand, was dumbstruck, her steel pipe suddenly superfluous.

“What are you spacing out for?” Farosa turned to Kanako, “I killed the Rats; you should be happy about that.

Let’s get moving.”

“…I…” Kanako was at a loss, “I…”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Farosa said as she looked to the side, “After all, this is the attitude everyone has towards me.”

“Kanako is no coward,” Xu Yang said.

“Hah…

yes,” Kanako wiped the sweat from her brow, “it’s just Magic Power, after all.”

“I like friends,” Farosa smiled, “but being my friend requires courage.

Ah, waking up from a long slumber, nobody recognizes me.

I was planning on making more friends with this opportunity, Kanako, what do you think?”

Kanako nervously looked at the scattered remains of the Rats, and steeled herself to walk forward.

Perhaps if Kanako joined our oath, she wouldn’t be so tense.

Xu Yang led them towards the Prosthetics Clinic and pushed the damaged iron door open.