CH 47.1

“I Am Not an Extraordinary”

It goes quiet. Even the one initiating the conversation——Magician, is silent. It is growing unbearable.

This sure means trouble.

Magician runs his hand through his hair for a moment, while taking a peek at Gatekeeper.

Gatekeeper remains stoic, as usual. Perhaps nothing will ever make him break from quietly observing Jiang Yiyi.

Worse, his superior has a permanent poker face stuck on.

Magician keeps his sighs to himself, and also, that fear emerging because of Jiang Yiyi’s simple remarks——Simple, but the implications are worrying enough.

That file the Coordinators wrote and summarised marks its presence once more in Magician’s mind——Normal people may be weak, but sometimes, they can achieve miracles beyond their wildest dreams, or being extremely on point with their jabbing remarks.

【“Do not contact with him. If absolutely necessary, end it as soon as possible.”

“Isolate him from everyone else in the very beginning.”

“Do not stare into the abyss.”】

The three warnings, treated as gospel, makes it remarkably clear how best to handle Jiang Yiyi without further context.

An Extraordinary, immensely dangerous simply to get into contact.

An Extraordinary, with his own code of conduct, which they have yet struggled to assemble.

Here, Magician finds his head aching already. What does it mean when these two aspects combine?

It means complete powerlessness of all the Coordinators from the first to the last floor. It means they have taken over a great source of trouble. It means…

Magician sighs.

Every prison officer in contact with Jiang Yiyi will be putting their life on the line——Most severely, him.

Because he is the one assigned to Jiang Yiyi’s evaluation.

He is in charge of making contact, evaluating, analysing, and reporting on Jiang Yiyi this floor, the same thing all Extraordinaries receive on the fifth floor, and also one of the reason for its existence.

The evaluators are assigned mostly based on the Extraordinary’s perceived strength.

Magician, Jiang Yiyi’s evaluator, being a direct subordinate of Gatekeeper, and judged as a Peril by the system, is also quite the somebody.

Quite the somebody assigned, after giving Jiang Yiyi a wide margin of error, by assuming Jiang Yiyi is a few notches more dangerous than they thought him to be.

Now, it seems, their overestimation is a vast underestimation.

“Let’s go.” Jiang Yiyi stops looking at the second floor now, and breaks the silence, “are we not going to the cell?”

Magician comes back to, and glances at Gatekeeper.

Gatekeeper has made his decision, “to 1-002.”

Magician would be in shock at the decision, but he’s been through too many surprises recently to react more dramatically than giving a noncommittal ‘oh’ at the assignment of room 1-002.

Magician gets his bearings, then starts leading them to Block One.

Block One is the dead centre of the fifth floor, surrounded by buildings all around. As they approach Block One, more peculiar objects start to appear around the road, like small metallic spheres hanging under the surveillance cameras, or circular pieces of metal poking out of tree branches, and nearly unnoticeable patches of paint on the ground.

It is difficult to ascertain their uses here, but the frequency of their appearance makes it quite clear that they are not merely decoration.

As they approach Block One, they frequent these mysterious objects more and more. Around the Block, they are ubiquitous, surrounding the centremost building alongside the other buildings.

Jiang Yiyi stops, and everyone else follows suit immediately.

This building has a more stylistic architecture than the other intentionally nondescript buildings of Stargaol. It is quite expressive.

The vibrant blue is truly eye-catching among the greyish nothings. Unlike the flat, orderly style of all the other buildings, it is more difficult to describe this building’s style in more exact terms.

Windows are large, and opens wide. Walls extrude outwards and skywards, up until the edge of the clouds, giving it the vague shape of a sword. It is sharp enough to sever the depressing aura permeating Stargaol.

Jiang Yiyi says, “the design of this building… is truly interesting.”

Lunatic, not having looked away from Jiang Yiyi for a moment, has no comment on the style of the building.

Lin Yi furrows his brow. The sharp presence of the building makes him feel targeted. He finds himself subconsciously tensing up, wary of possible danger.

Jian Si is in simple agreement with Jiang Yiyi regarding the building.

Magician notes their reactions, and explains, “this was designed by the first Warden himself.”

Jiang Yiyi looks at him, asking, “the one founding Stargaol?”

“Exactly. We still tell legends of him here.” The very first person to identify Extraordinaries as Extraordinary, and set the scene for the current situation to come. He singlehandedly created the system for the containment of Extraordinaries.

As a pioneer, he was truly ahead of his time. All he did was a full step ahead in vision compared to everyone else; a real genius.

Jiang Yiyi observes Magician, and has gleaned what he needed from his expression.

“You adore the first Warden.” Jiang Yiyi’s gaze often makes one feel like they are being analysed, like right now. The momentary emotional display is immediately suppressed, and Magician leaves behind only the dramatic, superficial elements on himself.

“So what is it that he must have done?”

Jiang Yiyi is not expecting a response, answering himself thus, “I can reasonably conclude this has to do with the secrets of the bottom floors, what the fourth floor storm that dragged everyone in was about. They knew it was a trap, but it was too enticing not to fall for.”

Magician keeps his eyes steadily pointed to the front, wondering if it is possible to force them in right now——Talking with Doctor is not only mentally exhausting, unrewarding, and risky. When not ordered to do so, he would rather not talk to Jiang Yiyi at all.

Considering the consequences that might follow an enraged Jiang Yiyi, Magician can only give up on the idea.

“In other words, this secret is what Stargaol was founded for.”

Jiang Yiyi decides to purposefully go check his memories. Just as he expects, he gains a new recollection related to his ‘childhood friend’——He is sure this is not his own memory.

A familiar room, a familiar desk, a familiar silhouette with his back to him playing games——Looking closely, it looks almost like a laughably bad job of Photoshop, enough for one to be sure of its falsity.