—Restarting the day—
With the lessons learned and the intelligence gathered from last time, today's management of O-06-20 went remarkably smoothly.
Before long, as the number of independent box collected increased, the Abnormality's mysterious and dangerous identity was finally revealed—
"Nothing There" — ID O-06-20, ALEPH-class.
Damage Type: RED (physical), with work-related damage fluctuating between 6–9.
It favors communication work the most, followed by instinct work, and strongly dislikes insight and repression work.
Inverse Qliphoth Counter maximum: 1.
Damage resistances: All unknown.
There were a full seven special notes:
The lower an employee's Courage level, the lower the success rate when working with Nothing There.If an employee with a Justice level below 4 completes work on Nothing There, it will immediately breach containment.If an employee working with Nothing There dies inside the containment unit due to its damage, Nothing There will wear that employee's skin and take on their appearance.
Note: After confirmation, if an employee working with Nothing There falls into panic under these conditions, they will also become a "skin" for Nothing There.When the work result is Bad, Nothing There will kill the employee and wear their skin.After Nothing There has put on human skin, do not assign employees with Courage below level 4 to its containment unit, or they will immediately panic.After donning human skin, Nothing There will kill all employees who see its appearance and fall into panic, then wear their skins and breach containment.When Nothing There breaches containment while wearing an employee's skin, the Manager has 10 seconds to locate it based on the victim's appearance and execute it. (Additional Clause)
—
Judging from this information alone, as long as the employees assigned to it were of sufficiently high quality, Nothing There was unlikely to cause killings or breaches.
Some Abnormalities required special handling methods—such as the Snow Queen's duels, the marksman's requests and seventh bullet, or having to close one's eyes during work with Schadenfreude.
By comparison, Nothing There was almost simple.
As long as an employee's Courage, Justice, and Temperance were high enough, it would obediently remain in its containment unit, becoming a well-behaved and extremely efficient producer of Enkephalin.
At present, however, there were only two employees in the entire company who could reliably work with Nothing There:
Justin (Level 5, armor RED resistance 0.7)Audrey (Level 5, armor RED resistance 0.8)
Everyone else either lacked sufficient Courage, had Justice levels that were too low, or failed to meet the required quality and speed standards.
And if the number of work sessions increased too much, there was still the risk of Inverse Qliphoth energy overload lowering success rates.
Even so, despite all these problems, this ALEPH-class Abnormality could finally be considered stable.
Before long, the ALEPH-class E.G.O extracted from it would push the company's overall combat strength to an entirely new level.
—
"Employee Justin, please proceed to Training Department Containment Unit No. 2 to perform insight work on Judgement Bird."
"Employee Audrey, please proceed to Training Department Containment Unit No. 2 to perform insight work on Judgement Bird."
"Employee Harumoto, please proceed to Training Department Containment Unit No. 2 to perform instinct work on Judgement Bird."
"Employee Justin, please proceed to Training Department Containment Unit No. 3 to perform communication work on Nothing There…"
—
Today's energy quota had already been exceeded, yet X unusually did not dismiss the employees. He continued issuing work orders, directing his staff without pause.
The incident with Nothing There had taught X a harsh lesson.
This time, the Research Department had left behind an emergency round that could counter it—but what about next time?
What if it breached containment directly in its original form?
What if even more difficult Abnormalities with stranger rules appeared in the future?
Because of that, before today's work ended, he had to extract the full ALEPH-class "Arbiter of Justice" E.G.O set from Judgement Bird.
Letting elite employees carry high-tier E.G.O in preparation was never a bad thing.
—
"Whew… good lord…"
Justin leaned against the cold wall of the Control Department, rolling her sore shoulders and straightening her back, which had nearly been bent crooked by the workload.
"Finally off work… what was going on with the company today?"
"How many times did the Inverse Qliphoth meltdown alarm go off…? Don't tell me it's because other Wings placed a massive order…"
"As if you'd know."
X i, who had just stood up from the neighboring seat, stretched lazily.
She pursed her lips, but curiosity got the better of her, and she added,
"Why can't it be our dear Manager trying to curry favor with upper management by squeezing us dry, just to show how dedicated and responsible he is?"
"Use your brain for a second."
Justin shot X i a glance but still explained patiently,
"The Manager always lets us off after hitting the energy quota and doing a bit of refinement."
There was a faint, hard-to-notice air of seniority in her tone.
"For someone whose working style has always been like that to suddenly change the workload this drastically—do you really think it's his personal whim, or some external factor we don't know about?"
Beep—beep.
Almost simultaneously, notification sounds rang out from both of their pagers.
They each picked up their devices and looked down at the message.
It was a private message from Manager X . The contents read:
—Hey, Justin / X i. You worked hard today.
—Managing something as terrifying as Nothing There must've been exhausting. Would you like to grab a meal together after work tonight?
—Consider it a chance for me, as your Manager, to reward our contributors.
—I'm treating. Order whatever you like—even items from the Manager-exclusive menu are fine.
—No pressure. This is simply recognition for your efforts. Please reply to let me know if you're available.
—Manager, X .
"..."
"..."
An oddly delicate silence fell between the two of them.
"Well, this is interesting…"
Justin looked at the message with clear amusement.
"Did the sun rise in the west? Our Manager usually complains about being tired, turns down our invitations, and goes straight back to his room…"
"And now he's the one inviting us out to eat."
"Maybe he's got his eye on you?"
X i immediately leaned in, nudging Justin with her elbow and waggling her eyebrows.
"Oooh—Manager and subordinate, a forbidden yet romantic love within a Wing! Justin, you're about to skyrocket!"
"What are you even thinking?"
Justin rolled her eyes.
"I think you've watched too many trashy primetime romance dramas and fried your brain."
She paused, her tone returning to its usual steadiness.
"We're not in the same social class as the Manager, and… honestly, he's a good person. He's probably just checking in on us."
Then Justin shook her pager slightly, a knowing look on her face.
"Besides, I doubt we're the only ones who got this message."
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