Aozaki Aoko [614-615] (Patreon)

Chapter 614: Bethany Base

"You really like saying philosophical things, Yui-senpai," Touko blinked, propping her chin in her hand as she looked at her. "I've agreed to your earlier invitation, but as for joining AEL, that'll have to wait until after I graduate."

"And if you could send me an offer ahead of time, even better. After all, landing a job early would definitely be a nice line on my résumé," Touko added.

"No problem," Yui replied with a squinting smile. "I still have that level of authority—and Professor Fuyutsuki will also write you a letter of recommendation, you know?"

"This is… I don't even know how to thank you, Yui-senpai," Touko's expression froze for a beat, then she spoke to Yui with a sighing, heartfelt tone. "To be honest, before I met you, I was more or less doing research with a near self-defeating attitude—thinking I might just end up a freeloader at Aoko's place for life."

"If a beautiful genius like Miss Touko ended up a freeloader, society really would be in a sorry state," Yui said with that same smiling squint. "That you accepted my invitation so quickly was, in a sense, beyond my expectations. I thought I'd have to work harder. Making a job offer on the first meeting does make me feel like a bad aunt trying to lure a youngster away~"

"Yui-senpai is not a bad aunt!" Mari, at the side, got a little flustered and raised her voice in Yui's defense—then immediately realized she'd overstepped. "Ah, sorry…"

"You two really have a great rapport," Aoko observed, then sighed. "If this rascal Touko can find a reliable job, I—her 'guardian' who foots the bills—can finally breathe easier. By the way, she used to love buying all sorts of odd antiques, and once she bought them, she lost interest fast. I've always worried she'd eat me out of house and home sooner or later. Yui-senpai, please help me keep an eye on her…"

"Shut up! You're so annoying, Aoko!" Touko snapped, genuinely flustered and angry—no acting involved, pure emotion. "Huh? Miss Touko has this side to her too? Truly, appearances can be deceiving…" Yui was surprised by Touko's peculiar hobby; after all, very few STEM types are into antiques.

"Alas, the follies of youth…" Touko slumped back on the sofa with a world-weary sigh. "When the patina and forms are that beautiful, who can resist the temptation?"

You don't look that old—why do you sound like such an old soul?

That was the honest thought of both Yui and Mari. But geniuses having quirks is hardly rare; spending money to collect antiques is among the most harmless of them—no big deal!

…

The next day, Yui brought her precious son Shinji over for a visit. Aoko had prepared a variety of exquisite and delicious desserts for everyone. The future little shut-in, who at this stage knew mostly how to eat, was dazzled by the spread and in no time lost himself completely to sweets.

Since they were guests in someone else's home, Yui found herself torn: she worried her son would get cavities from too many sweets, yet felt it would be rude to stop him from eating the treats Aoko had prepared with such care.

Fortunately, Mari Makinami was a fellow sweet tooth and succumbed even earlier than Shinji, unknowingly eating quite a lot of the snacks by herself, thereby limiting Shinji's share. Yui silently marveled that taking care of this underclassman hadn't been for nothing.

Alice Kuonji, once an ex–shut-in girl, watched the lively scene and calmly sipped her tea—long since unfazed. Maybe in the past she would have shown disgust at such a situation, but ever since she met Aoko, things had been this noisy every day. She got used to it. Human adaptability really is terrifying—would she one day turn into someone like Aoko?

Alice shuddered without realizing it. Surely not… right?

—Section break—

Happy times are always short. Yui and company eventually left Paris, but before she went, she had already secured an offer from the Institute of Artificial Evolution for Touko, giving Touko a renewed respect for this world's administrative efficiency.

"How is it?" Aoko looked at Touko with a half-smile. "Which organization did SEELE invite you to join?"

"The Institute of Artificial Evolution… the Bethany Base branch," Touko said, a bit surprised. "Isn't that institute based in Japan?"

"It's probably just a shell company," Aoko said. "SEELE swaps the nameplates of its subsidiaries whenever it likes. Maybe they think placing you at that base for now will better let you exploit your talents?"

"Where exactly is this base located?" Touko frowned. "Is there any mention of it in the Golgotha Object?"

"Should be in the Arctic Ocean," Aoko recalled. "In the Golgotha Object, Bethany Base is surrounded by freezing wind, snow, and seawater. You may be headed to a very isolated place for a while, Touko."

"Won't I just work by day and have you bring me home to sleep at night?" Touko shot Aoko a look. "Do you have those scrolls with the fixed spatial spell ready?"

"Ta-da Miss Aoko Aozaki's wondrous gadget: the perpetual teleportation-circle scroll" Aoko, imitating a certain chubby blue guy's tone, pulled a massive scroll from imaginary space that looked a bit like a rolled-up carpet. "You can use it three times a day. The catch is that the endpoints are fixed in matched pairs, okay? As for the other one, I left it over in the Land of Sapphire Flowers~"

"Hmph. That Yui really talked AEL up to the heavens, and then they shipped me off to the Arctic. Saying one thing and doing another," Touko grumbled as she took the scroll from Aoko.

"She probably didn't know either—and they are paying you very well," Aoko guessed. "SEELE's internal units keep strict secrets from one another. It's common that the recruiters and the people assigning posts don't communicate much. And from the intel, AEL is likely just a SEELE alias. Yui and Gendō, it seems, are actually with another division called 'GEHIRN'."

"Bethany… the Arctic Ocean… could it be near the Kara Sea?" Touko speculated.

"If it's that far, have they arranged how you'll get there?" Aoko asked. "They're not going to hide the address and make you go at your own expense, right?"

"No. The letter says that once I receive my doctorate, relevant personnel will come directly to escort me to the post." Touko flipped the letter over and carefully read the instructions on the back.

Chapter 615: An Unexpected Encounter

Time moved forward again, and in a blink the day arrived when Touko and Aoko received their doctorates and graduated. Since Touko had an offer from the Institute of Artificial Evolution in hand, the school had little to say. Aoko, for her part, received an invitation to stay on and serve as a lecturer for courses related to artificial intelligence.

Even so, Aoko's main role remained that of a researcher. Given her prior achievements in industry, if she wanted it, a tenured professorship at PSLU was only a matter of time.

Unfortunately, neither Touko nor Aoko came to this university with pure intentions. Touko left the university as planned; Aoko stayed in Paris, waiting for the right moment.

Thanks to various means of teleportation, Touko didn't bid farewell to Aoko or anyone else. They simply had a lavish lunch as usual, then the AEL Europe folks picked Touko up by car, and two hours later she was on a plane to Russia.

Touko's background check had long since been handled in secret. Whether it was because her abilities were too outstanding, or because the past they'd fabricated via suggestion magecraft was too convincing, SEELE showed no hesitation in bringing Touko onto the research team.

As predicted, Touko's plane flew straight to Siberia and ultimately landed on some artificial facility in the Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean. By the time she arrived it was already noon the next day, yet the sky remained very dim.

This facility was the Bethany Research Base mentioned in the offer. From the outside it looked like a vast disk ringed by strange cylindrical structures—obviously enormous, with a significant portion under the waterline and even underground.

After signing a stack of NDAs, Touko was assigned a private room of about 90 square meters, fully equipped with all amenities, and even with connectivity to the outside internet.

Of course, the internet ports in a place like this were completely monitored by the base's MAGI system. Even if a real spy tried to use it to send messages, a security team would be knocking at their door in no time.

During her time studying and researching at PSLU, Touko had already mastered this world's internet and computers. The first thing she did upon turning on the computer was reach Aoko and Alice through communication to let them know she was safe.

Her second move was to quietly pour a test tube of silvery liquid onto the floor, letting it seep into the cracks beneath the bed.

That silver liquid was Kayneth's Volumen Hydrargyrum—further upgraded and refitted by Aoko's crew into a magical alchemical computer, Volumen Hydrargyrum—Modified.

Under Touko's control, the Modified Volumen Hydrargyrum easily found all the surveillance cameras in her room and replaced their feeds with pre-recorded normal footage.

This wasn't because the Modified Volumen Hydrargyrum surpassed the base's conventional computers in raw compute; rather, their fundamental principles were completely different. The way it replaced the surveillance video was by using occult-side obscuration/substitution magecraft—effectively playing a recording in front of the camera.

The same applied to the listening mics and motion sensors. As long as Touko didn't stop supplying mana to her Modified Volumen Hydrargyrum, it could keep performing here indefinitely, leaving SEELE clueless about what she was actually doing in the room.

With these tedious matters settled, Touko leaned back in her chair and stretched, her lithe, shapely figure finally relaxing—a sign that only now had Touko truly let down her guard.

After a brief breather, she opened her suitcase and took out the blanket Aoko had given her—the perpetual teleportation scroll—and spread it flat on the floor.

Feeding it her mana signature as an unlock code, the entire teleportation array glowed faintly blue. After a quick glance around, Touko stepped onto the teleportation carpet.

The scene before her flickered, and in the next second Touko was back in their townhouse in Paris. Alice was lounging on the sofa reading an amusing collection of folklore. Aoko wasn't in the sitting room—who knew where she'd gone.

"Back already?" Alice glanced at Touko. "How is it over there?"

"About as expected," Touko said with a curl of her lip, then dropped onto the sofa near Alice. "The base is on the Arctic Ocean—massive. The room is packed with surveillance. I'm certain they've stashed something extraordinary at Bethany and hit a research bottleneck, because I found sealing formulas from the occult side all over the place. I haven't had time to analyze the specifics yet."

"A reasonable inference," Alice said after a sip of tea. "Otherwise it's hard to explain why SEELE accepted you so quickly— even the political screening was perfunctory. They're probably thinking, 'Even if she's a spy, bring her in first to help crack the research problem.'"

"By the way, where's Aoko?" Touko kneaded her stomach. "I came back expecting one of her big dinners. I haven't eaten a thing at Bethany!"

"She should be back soon." Alice took out a small pocket watch and checked the time. "She went out earlier to buy ingredients."

Touko was puzzled. "If it's ingredients, why not use what we had in storage?"

"Maybe she wants to try some local new dishes?" Alice tapped her chin with a finger and thought for a moment before answering.

—Section break—

Aoko had indeed gone out to buy ingredients. She'd noticed that even though this world had suffered species decline after Second Impact, French specialties hadn't changed much. She still managed to pick up quite a few items she hadn't stocked in her little pantry before—things like coq au vin, rosé, Camembert, and so on—planning to try French cuisine tonight.

But fate sometimes has a flair for drama. Just as Aoko left the shop and passed through a sparsely populated park, she saw an unexpected figure.

A little girl sat on a park bench. She had a head of orange-red hair, wore a nondescript set of winter clothes, and a similarly plain tanker's knit cap. The name tag around her neck had been tossed behind her in impatience. She sat there, sulking by herself.

Well, well—isn't that Asuka?

Aoko glanced around and saw no SEELE agents in sight—nor, for that matter, Asuka's parents or anyone like that.

Her eyes spun mischievously, and a string of mischievous ideas bubbled up in the young magus's mind. Humming to herself, she strolled right toward the completely unsuspecting Asuka.