"Captain, Shen-kun's condition looks really bad!"
Nadeshiko's anxious voice seemed to come from far away, muffled as if she were underwater. She was supporting Shen Kai, whose body was swaying uncontrollably.
He could feel a pure, warm, emerald green energy approaching him. It was Nadeshiko, attempting to use her core's power to soothe him mentally. However, the moment the peaceful energy, representing protection and healing, touched the chaotic, storm-like energy field surrounding Shen Kai, it was instantly vaporized and devoured without a trace, like a drop of water falling into molten lava.
"What the hell is wrong with this guy now?"
Ryan's voice was filled with tension and confusion.
"Don't tell me he's been possessed by some invisible 'filth'?"
Gestalt's voice, firm as steel, cut through the chaos:
"Nadeshiko, activate the scanner's maximum power."
"Force an energy probe of that rock wall!"
"I need to know what's hiding there!"
But Shen Kai could no longer hear them.
His consciousness felt as though an invisible giant hand were dragging it into a boundless, cold ocean composed of pure malice and venomous hatred.
The "Core Whispers," which had once been mere background noise, were no longer indistinct murmurs. They transformed into crystal-clear voices filled with a fatal allure, whispering directly into the deepest part of his soul:
"...Join us..."
"Feel this truly free and powerful strength."
"Abandon your pathetic, fragile humanity."
"Embrace this eternal, tranquil darkness."
"You and us, we are of the same kind."
"Return to your rightful place."
"No! I am not!"
Shen Kai roared in his mind, desperately resisting these spell-like whispers with the last of his strength and all his remaining willpower.
Nadeshiko's clear, worried eyes. Ryan's arrogant smirk, which, though annoying, wasn't so bad in a crisis. Captain Gestalt's back was as solid and dependable as a mountain.
These warm, real images of "humanity" flashed through his consciousness like a candle flickering in the wind just before being devoured by darkness.
"I can't fall here!"
"I cannot be controlled by these things from the abyss!"
Suddenly, he remembered the manual, Basic Training for Special Energy Conduction and Advanced Mental Stability, and the meditation techniques it described for constructing a "mental barrier" to resist core contamination.
"Barrier... protection... will..."
Barely audible, broken syllables escaped his chapped lips.
All his willpower and mental energy were squeezed to their absolute limits in that moment. Within the surging ocean of his consciousness, which was on the verge of being submerged by darkness, he painstakingly began to construct an invisible yet transparent mental barrier brick by brick that embodied his will to survive.
It was far more difficult than any simulated training he had ever experienced.
Malevolent whispers from an unknown existence crashed against the fragile mental barrier he had just begun to build like the most violent abyssal tide with an all-destroying will.
Cracks continuously appeared and spread across his barrier.
Just as his mental barrier was on the verge of total collapse, at the moment when he felt his consciousness was about to be completely assimilated by that irresistible, terrifying malice—
"Captain! The scanner's readings are completely off the charts!"
"Directly in front of us, behind that rock wall, there's a super-high concentration of energy of an unknown nature."
"Its power reaction level exceeds 'Sigma-7'!"
"Its energy signature is climbing exponentially!"
Nadeshiko's shriek, sharp and almost off-key from shock and fear, was like the loudest alarm, a bolt of lightning tearing through the darkness.
It exploded right next to his ear, which was about to be submerged in darkness.
It violently jolted him awake, pulling him back from the brink of total conscious collapse.