Shrouded Seascape

Chapter 771: Charles

Chapter 771. Charles

"We do not have much information about 001, but we paid a huge price and discovered a few things.

First of all, we discovered Its composition. We suspect that It's ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■

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Charles was upset to see a series of black boxes obscuring the words, but he quickly forgot that he was upset upon realizing that there was a problem—there was a big problem here.

001 was apparently part of a period in history a thousand years ago when the gods destroyed the surface world, but the entire thing suddenly became the Subterranean Sea.

The difference between the two was so massive that it wouldn't make sense for them to be the same thing. One file said that 001 was apparently a god from outer space, while another file said that 001 was a part of Earth's distant past.

Which one of the files depicted the truth?

Project Containment Procedure: 001 cannot be contained. There is absolutely only one Project 001.

The line didn't really stand out to Charles at first, but upon realizing that something was amiss with the two 001s, the line suddenly became incredibly important.

The line "there is absolutely only one Project 001" meant that one of the 001s was fake and the file had been tampered with. No, perhaps there were more 001s in the database of the central computer, and the real 001 was hidden among them!

With that in mind, Charles' spider legs moved, typing in some words into the search bar. Sure enough, there were other files containing the keyword "001."

He clicked on one of the files, wanting to read it, but the words "Insufficient Authority Level" written in the characters of the Subterranean Sea popped up in midair, bobbing up and down.

Among the projects that the Foundation had recorded so far, 001 was a project of the highest rank, so it wasn't strange that one needed a high enough clearance to access any information related to it.

The fact that he couldn't access other files containing 001 was strange when he could access the Subterranean Sea and Genesis of Chaos—both with the Project ID of 001.

Charles couldn't help but feel like everyone was deliberately given access to those two files as if they were meant to be seen by every Foundation personnel.

Insufficient authority level? That means those with higher clearance levels can access more files containing 001, right? Charles pondered. The next moment, tentacles sprouted out of the spider eye, and they swept across the virtual keyboard.

Charles typed in "002, "003" up to "100," but his search yielded the same result—he didn't have high enough clearance to view the files containing the keywords of his search.

The results were disappointing, but Charles' assumption was substantiated. He was right. Everyone was indeed given access to both the Subterranean Sea and Genesis of Chaos. In other words, there was definitely something wrong with these two 001s.

Charles took a moment to compose himself and decided to memorize every single word recorded in those files to verify them later.

Regardless of which of these 001s was the real 001, they were long gone and wouldn't affect the ongoing situation.

Moreover, they just had to defeat the Foundation, and he could make the latter spit out as much information as he wanted about 001.

Step!

A crisp footstep echoed from outside the window, and Charles was instantly nervous upon hearing it. He shrank and hid in a corner, but the ajar door remained unmoving even after a few seconds later.

With that, he jumped onto the virtual keyboard once again. He had to pick up the pace because he was running out of time. Charles immediately looked for more information related to their current operation.

First of all, he pulled up the entire map of this island named V14.

A few rooms on the bottommost floor of the facility were marked clearly with a skull and crossbones symbol. Charles was instantly invigorated upon seeing them. He had guessed correctly; the facility was containing something dangerous!

A containment breach was bound to cause a massive commotion, and the task forces inside this facility would be forced to make a move. By then, Charles would have an easier time doing whatever he wanted from behind the scenes.

Perhaps he could find a computer of a personnel with a high clearance level.

With that thought in mind, Charles crawled out of the room and sped across a corner of the ceiling toward the containment floor marked on the map. The most dangerous part of Charles' journey to the containment floor was the elevator trip.

The elevator was made out of wood, and an extremely bright flower was blooming in one corner of the elevator.

Charles had no idea why there was a flower inside an elevator; he didn't know whether it was there for surveillance purposes or something else, but his instincts were telling him that he couldn't underestimate the blooming flower.

He couldn't let the flower establish a line of sight on him, so he had no choice but to think about another way to use the elevator. In the end, he clung beneath a personnel's briefcase to avoid getting scanned by the blooming flower.

Charles moved here and there until he finally arrived at the containment floor.

As expected, the security throughout the containment was much stricter. Many different flowers and pitch-black thorny vines were everywhere; there was also an armed and dangerous mobile task force.

They were this facility's defense against a containment breach.

The security was so tight that there was no way Charles' weak spider form could slip in. However, Charles had a solution to this issue. He shot out white silk and rapidly drew a massive eyeball covered in an indescribable lump of tentacles.

The tentacled monster was none other than Sparkle, and Charles had just drawn a portrait of her on the ceiling.

Charles cast a nervous gaze at Sparkle sitting next to him inside the Governor's Mansion of Hope Island.

"Can you feel the portrait that I drew? Can you go over there?"

"Mmhm. I can feel it," Sparkle said, nodding. "I'll go over now and whisk away the doors of those containers."

"Wait," Charles immediately pulled her back. "Don't go there yourself. Just send one of your tentacles over there to do the job. It's the Foundation's territory, after all, so we must be prepared for everything."

Charles had always viewed the Foundation in a bad light, and he'd always assume the worst when it came to dealing with them.

Sparkle nodded. Her eyes with long lashes blinked, and she said, "Done."

Charles immediately switched to the spider's eyes and saw that the massive gates separating each project container from another had vanished. It looked like a train had run across every single container, obliterating their doors.

The doors to each project container had inexplicably disappeared as well.

The next moment, a fat hand with black fingers reached out from inside one of the project containers. Charles saw that and immediately got ready to leave.

"Daddy, wait!" Sparkle exclaimed.

Charles was stunned. The projects had breached containment, so what were they waiting for? Their death?

Just then, Sparkle's portrait on the ceiling came to life. The eyeballs all over Sparkle emitted a fluorescent green light.

More and more creatures crawled out of the containers, and they all had bizarre appearances. Some looked like rotting flesh stacked on top of each other to form a pyramid, while some had feminine features but with lizard-like eyes and engorged tumors on their backs.

Regardless of their appearances, they were staring straight at Sparkle.

Sparkle was staring at them as well, creating a strange, incomprehensible scene.

When a deformed figure with half of Charles' face crawled out of a distant container, a terrifying idea popped up in Charles' head. He disregarded the threat that the deformed creatures posed and rushed into the containment floor.

Charles soon found an office on the same floor. He charged into the office and found a tablet that contained the information he had been looking for—the information that would prove the truth of his mere assumption.

Project 96121: Sparkle Replication Program—Exploring the Possibility of Integrating Charles' Genes with Other Projects.

Shockingly, the grotesque and bizarre-looking monsters outside were his children.

The entire island was built by the Foundation to study Charles! The Foundation had not only been studying Charles as a person but had also been studying his genes as well.