As Bart continued to invoke Negary's name, the golden shadow gradually became more and more solid; he wanted to stop himself from reciting but found that he was now unable to control his own body.
Some memories then suddenly appeared in his mind, causing him to become disoriented.
How long have I been here?
Bart was visibly confused, had he only been here for one week?
Then what's going on with the 2 months' worth of memories that just appeared in my head?
His last memory of every month had been to follow orders to enter the same containment chamber and saw a white flash of light. Afterwards, he would wake up with his previous month of memory completely gone.
Damn it damn it DAMN IT!
As he became accustomed to the memories, Bart slowly realized the promised 'freedom' after one month of service had been a sham all along.
〖 It seems you've understood 〗Negary casually spoke: 〖 I am the only one who can save you now. Otherwise, even if you manage to survive for three more weeks, the only thing waiting for you at the end is another memory wipe 〗
I was a fool; I shouldn't have killed that harlot and that black man.
Bart was immensely regretful, but more than anything else, he was hateful of the other people. According to the law of his country, if a person was 'emotionally stimulated enough after being provoked into conducting impulsive and uncontrollable acts of violence', he would have only been charged with manslaughter.
He saw with his own eyes how his wife and the black man were naked in bed with one another; this stimulation was the true reason for his actions. He had no previous intent of killing the two of them, but his mind that was blinded by rage couldn't think that far ahead, leading to him assaulting and ending up accidentally committing murder.
A charge of manslaughter would have only ended with him in prison for no less than 1 year, but no longer than 10 years. Even if he had killed two people as well as a fetus in the woman's belly, the worst he should have gotten was a sentence of life in prison, not execution.
However, the feminist movement argued that he was disrespectful of a woman's freedom to love, while the black rights committee argued that if the third wheel was a white man, Bart wouldn't have committed murder, turning it into a racial hate crime. In the end, all these factors gave Bart a sentence to death.
…
〖 Do you want to obtain true freedom? To take your revenge upon the people who caused you to fall into your current state? 〗
Every region and time period had different rulings for punishments, whether or not Bart was wrongly sentenced had nothing to do with Negary, but he could use this as a point of breakthrough, thus turning Bart into his subject and aid Negary in accomplishing his goals.
Borrowing Bart's invocation of his true name, Negary managed to partially transmigrate. Even if he had borrowed a unique connection, it wasn't too easy to accomplish, as sending this portion of his body was already the limit of this transmigration method.
Negary could still sense himself in the faraway Moon Tree world, and reality had proven that the soul virus connection Negary had devised was extremely powerful, being able to maintain his connection despite being two worlds apart; even if the maintained signal wasn't too strong.
Naturally, as Negary continues to grow stronger and further modifies the soul virus, this connection would become increasingly stronger, eventually allowing him to be everywhere at once.
〖 I can help you obtain all of that! 〗Negary grinned.
Bart, who was completely in despair, would naturally not reject this offer, and under his active reception, Negary easily infected his soul.
At the same time, a part of Negary's soul virus had silently permeated into the containment chamber. A C2-class containment chamber, even if it was equipped with several preventive measures, wasn't able to observe Negary, let alone stop him.
A portion of Negary's virus infected Bart, while the other infected the containment chamber itself. Another portion had entered the other aspects of this world as soon as he found them, spread outside and began to infect this world.
Bart silently returned to his body, once again taking over control of it. He felt an unprecedented sense of clarity: the current state of his body, the identification chip implanted into his scalp, the serum secretion implant near his heart, all of these was quickly recognized, and he easily managed to control everything about himself.
He had his body maintain normalcy, followed the orders to stop reciting the name, put the journal back down, then left the containment chamber for decontamination and psychological evaluation.
During the psychological evaluation, a lot of relevant knowledge appeared in his mind, allowing him to perfectly control his emotions. He displayed the emotions he should be displaying and acted how he should be acting, in fact, his knowledge of psychology might even surpass the psychologist who was evaluating him.
Having passed such a tough hurdle so easily, Bart almost felt like he was now a god. If he had maintained this level of control over himself, he wouldn't have fallen this low in the first place.
〖 Bart, I've modified your soul and granted you knowledge, but my aid to you shall not be endless and all-encompassing; you will have to rely on none other than yourself for what comes next 〗Negary spoke from inside his head: 〖 I believe everyone has their own potential, and I will give you the opportunity to exert yours. However, if you cannot grasp that opportunity, your outcome shall not be any better than your previous state 〗
Negary certainly could thoroughly infect Bart, directly turning him into one of his clones. With the same state of soul and access to the same knowledge, Negary would have been able to do several times better than Bart, as this was the plain difference between willpower and thinking process.
For example, during the psychological evaluation, he could have planted a sense of curiosity about the name 'Negary' in the mind of the psychologist who had seen the reports with statements that would leave no real traces, burying that curiosity deep into his mind and eventually turn him into a chess piece in Negary's hand.
However, Negary was merciful. He would grant opportunities for those who pledged themselves to him. As his subordinates continued to improve themselves, so would Negary; otherwise, if everything was done by Negary himself, he might fall into a predicament of becoming a frog in a well without realizing it.
It would only be after Bart had completely failed to grasp the opportunity that Negary granted him would Negary erase his will and turn him into his own clone.
"I understand, Lord Negary" Bart naturally wasn't a complete idiot. Having lived to his third month after becoming a D-class personnel of the SCR Foundation, there was surely a certain factor of luck, but that didn't definitively mean that there wasn't anything else.
〖 I shall be observing your performance, do not disappoint me 〗after declaring so, Negary stopped talking altogether, leaving everything that followed for Bart to deal with by himself.
Every world had its own uniqueness, like the Flame world's misfortune characteristics, or the Moon Tree world's moving trajectory, but every world also had similarities.
When Negary infected the outermost layer of the Moon Tree world, he extracted the information and compiled the general Principles of every world. Using this, even though Negary had only sent a portion of his soul virus to this world, he could still quickly infect the entire world, then exert overwhelming power.
...
While Negary began to further infect the world, at a certain unknown location, in a containment chamber that required constant monitoring, an alarm began to ring.
S-2-3: Phenomenon Precaution Device. Whenever a certain predetermined phenomenon occurred, this device would immediately sound its alarm. And the 'phenomenon' that the SCR Foundation had chosen as the trigger was a 'containment breach'; to be specific, 'a containment breach that would cause a disaster of great influence'.
Regardless of whether it was an anomaly that had already been contained in a lab or was still on the field, as soon as an issue occurred that would cause a containment breach, S-2-3 would be able to sense it, then sound alarms of varying levels by how serious the influence of the containment breach might be, helping the SCR Foundation choose an appropriate countermeasure.
