Saiyan stowaways on the Ark

"It seems so. Judging from the flags at the village entrance, it should be a small village in the territory of the Ursus nobles. Although I don't know why, Talulah should be here."

Amiya went into the village first, walking step by step along the muddy path where the snow had not yet melted.

The entire village was unusually quiet. Although you could see poorly dressed Ursus villagers standing near some houses, most of them were just blurry figures whose faces were indistinct.

"If you can't see their faces, does that mean these people aren't memorable to Talulah and are just there to make up the numbers?"

As Thomas passed by a figure, he deliberately touched the person, who then fell to the ground like a puppet and disappeared, only to reappear as a blurry figure in the same spot.

"Yes, that's how the spiritual world is. The level of detail depends on the depth of the impression. Look at these houses."

Amiya explained as she opened a door to the side. Inside, there were no normal furnishings, just a blurry space in black and white.

"Because Talulah doesn't know what's in the room, she only has a general memory of the house's shape. In other words, if we find a place with rich details or someone we can talk to, we're not far from Talulah."

Ultimately, the two set their sights on a low-rise house that looked unremarkable.

Dried grains hanging in front of the door, old clothes on the clothesline, holes in the window, and broken stone steps in front of the door.

And the wisps of smoke and the aroma of food.

This little house, however, has many ordinary yet incongruous details that make it stand out from its surroundings.

This is it...

Amiya arrived at the door, with Tomat standing behind her, watching her knock on the door that would soon reveal the mystery.

[Main Text] Chernobog, Amidst Ruins: Chapter Twenty-Six - The Tale of the Dragon

But surprisingly, the person who opened the creaking door and stood behind it was not Talulah as expected.

Instead, they were two gaunt, hunched-over elderly men from Ursus.

They looked like an elderly couple.

The other party also seemed somewhat flustered by the appearance of two strangely dressed foreigners in front of their house.

"Is something the matter? Who...who are you looking for?"

The old woman from Ursus asked hesitantly.

Amiya and Tomat exchanged glances, and then Amiya asked, "Is there someone here named Talulah?"

"Talulah?"

Upon hearing the name, the elderly couple visibly trembled, then avoided their gaze and immediately replied:

"No, you should look elsewhere!"

The door slammed shut, shaking the snow off the eaves.

Amiya and Tomat were left standing in front of the door, exhaling puffs of white breath.

“The reaction is so realistic, which means Talulah has a deep impression of these two old men.” Tomat walked to the window and looked out, but the window was directly covered from the inside by the old man with a tattered curtain. “But if it weren’t for the fact that you can’t sense auras in this space, I would have dragged that guy out long ago.”

“In the general spiritual world, people created by the creator can at most mechanically repeat a thing or repeat certain words. Only when they are very familiar with something or have a very deep impression of it can they create a phantom that is close to the real person based on the creator’s memory.”

Having confirmed that the two old men could bring them clues about Talulah, Amiya's rabbit ears also picked up the voices coming from inside the hut.

Even though his voice was kept very low, Custer's hearing did not disappoint his large ears, a racial trait.

"Alina, Alina, go find Little Tower and tell her not to come back. She needs to go hide for a while! Someone specifically asked for her!"

Footsteps came from behind the house. Although they were very light, the sound of their footsteps on the fallen snow was still very clear to the two of them.

The person who was responsible for stopping the man who slipped out of the back door of the house was Tomat, who flashed in front of him.

Running out from behind the house was a silver-haired Elafia girl whose clothes could hardly be described as tattered.

However, her body trembling like a leaf was clearly not due to the weather, but rather to terror—just like a real, frightened girl, not a mere phantom.

However, before she could utter a single word, the elderly couple inside seemed to notice the footsteps outside the door abruptly stop and hurriedly went to the back door.

Upon seeing the girl being stopped by Tomat, the couple quickly grabbed her, shielding her behind them, and said gently:

"Sir, what are you doing...? Our entire village are farmers who pay their taxes according to the regulations, we really didn't..."

"Where is Talulah?" But Tomat clearly had no intention of listening to what the "acquaintances" in Talulah's spiritual world had to say, so he asked directly again, "Playing house in the spiritual world?"

"Mr. Thomas, please do not overstimulate the environment or people in this space, otherwise, if it affects their mental state, who knows what uncontrollable things might happen!"

But by the time Amiya tried to stop it, it was too late.

As she said, the original spiritual world was a mental space belonging only to Talulah, and it was generally stable.

But now there's an object here that can affect this space.

Although Talulah has not yet shown herself, the interference that the two have caused here is still a real issue.

The next instant, Tomat and Amiya's clothes changed.

Thomas might not be able to tell what the thick leather clothing that had suddenly appeared on him was all about, but Amiya could recognize its style immediately.

—This is the old-fashioned uniform of the Ursus infected picket team.

The surrounding environment suddenly distorted, and they were transported from the front of the house to the entrance of the village. The two men, dressed in patrol uniforms, were surrounded by villagers whose faces were blurred.

But among them, there was one person with clearly defined features who stood in front of Tomat.

It was an old man with his upper body bare, revealing the Originium crystals on his skin.

He was now leaning weakly against Tomat, who was also dressed in a disciplinary squad uniform, with an Ursus knife stained with blood that was steaming in the freezing weather sticking out of his chest.

The smell of blood was incredibly realistic.

This is a scene that Talulah once experienced.

"Get out here! I'm not in the mood to listen to your story!"

As Tomat pushed away the phantom of the old man who had fallen on him, everything around him began to crumble.

In the end, only that little house remained.

The door to the cabin was ajar, but both Tomat and Amiya could see a slightly younger, familiar face behind the half-open door, apart from the Elafia girl.

That's Talulah.

The two unleashed their illusions and rushed toward the slowly disappearing hut, but they failed to reach the door just before it vanished, thus failing to pull out Talulah, who was hiding behind it.

"She ran pretty fast! What is she trying to do? Is she going to tell us her tragic story?"

"Wait, the surroundings are starting to stabilize again, and a new scene is appearing!"

This time, it was still the Ursus Icefield with snow falling everywhere, but this time there were no buildings in sight, just a small grove of trees that were almost completely withered.

Tomat and Amiya's clothes have changed again, but Amiya doesn't recognize them now because they look like they're just wearing simple winter clothes with some protective plates attached.

The bushes in front of them, covered in snow and obscuring the view on the other side, began to sway, and then a little boy with white hair emerged from them.

He opened his clear eyes wide and spoke to Tomat and Amiya in a hoarse voice that contrasted sharply with his appearance:

"Thank you... thank you for sharing your food with us. Sasha was just worried about running into bad people, that's why she seemed rude. I know you are all good people, just like Sasha."

"Hey! Ino! Come back here, don't talk to them!"

The white-haired boy seemed to want to continue speaking, but soon another boy of the same age with bluish-gray skin and scattered scales on his face ran out of the bushes, holding a simple wooden bow, and looked at Tomat and Amiya with hostility.

When the white-haired boy saw the other person appear, he said thank you again, ran back to that person, and then disappeared into the grove.

"Who?"

"...They appear to be two Reunion Movement executives who went missing in the sewers during the Lungmen Reunion Movement riots, although this is based solely on their appearance and race."

Amiya and Tomat still haven't found Talulah, but the constantly changing scenery in this space is gradually revealing what Talulah has seen and heard during that time to the two of them.

[Main Text] Chernobog, Amidst the Ruins: Chapter Twenty-Seven "Your Actions"

"So Patriots used to be able to speak fluently, huh? So how long ago was that?"

"It's probably the early evolution of the Integration Movement, not too far in the past."

This time, Tomat and Amiya wore armor that looked more robust than before, and they also had Reunion symbols on their bodies.

They also realized that although the scenes in Talulah's mental world were not completely continuous, they were basically the normal progression of time.

From the initial village, to wandering across the ice fields providing aid and integrating infected individuals, and then to contacting and cooperating with other powerful forces.

Although they didn't know Talulah's purpose in having these scenes played continuously in her mental world, they did gain a lot of information.

“Generally speaking, a person’s mental world is a relatively stable environment, even if it is a psychological shadow with a harmful nature. It will repeat the event or scene that made the person feel scared.” Amiya analyzed the current situation based on her own experience. “In other words, Talulah intentionally showed us these things, otherwise it wouldn’t have such a huge span as it does now.”

“What’s strange is that Talulah, who was clearly very hostile and aggressive towards us as a dragon before, hasn’t attacked or driven us away now that we’ve entered her mental world.” Amiya also expressed her confusion about the relatively stable situation, “It’s getting more and more unpredictable.”

Although there was no need to worry about Talulah being able to cause them any harm, the fact that she was so honest in wanting to explain the whole story of how she became who she is now still made them feel a little suspicious.

"Once we first glimpsed that guy from behind the door, we never saw him appear in any subsequent scenes. Since it's her memory, he should at least make a cameo appearance."

Tomat looked around at the phantoms, scenes of Patriot forces merging with the early Reunion Movement.

Everyone sat in front of the fire: Frostnova, Yeti, Patriot, Shieldbearer, Ursus Infected, and even the girl named Alina whom they had met at the beginning were all there, but Talulah was nowhere to be seen.

“If she comes out, Mr. Thomas will definitely make her tell everything directly, instead of looking at these things.”

Amiya, however, seemed to understand why Talulah had appeared, and because Amiya herself was genuinely interested in these matters on some level, she complained far less than Tomat.

“But she wouldn’t even give me popcorn or cola, and then she made me watch her long, tedious history of how she rose to power, or rather, how she fell.” Tomat casually found a seat in this mental world, and although he had no interest in it, he still had to watch everything, trying to find Talulah’s trace. “I don’t know how many times I’ve seen something like this.”

The history of the Reunion Movement—that is, Talulah's experience—continues in this world.

As bystanders, the two gradually realized that things were slowly starting to change.

At least for now, Tomat and Amiya's view of the whole process remains at the level of "a young girl who felt indignant for the infected and gradually gathered a force that spoke out for the infected."

From this perspective, the Reunion Movement is not much different from most infected organizations. Their violent actions are basically limited to self-defense when they are harmed, such as when they encounter Ursus pickets or military personnel who want to exterminate them.

Until they took over an abandoned mobile city.

Some members of the Reunion Movement intend to retain the city themselves and break away from the organization.

This was also the first major disagreement between the Reunion Movement and the Patriots Guerrilla Forces.

However, since Talulah did not appear directly, Amiya and Tomat only knew that the riot ultimately came to nothing.

The city was left in the hands of the detached members, and the Reunion Movement continued its nomadic existence.