"Don't worry. Brother Lux is like a prince on a white horse to me, you know. After all, he protected my chastity~ I will absolutely never betray everyone. Of course, I admit I do have a bit of selfishness—my chances of surviving are higher if I stick with you all."
Lianne said with a cheerful smile. This was where her cleverness lay: she stated her purpose outright, yet it wasn't something that would make others dislike her.
"Wait, wait. I believe that HK likes me, but UMP45? There's no way she likes me. She just wants to turn me into a more useful tool, so I can survive to the end and help her find her important sisters."
Lux suddenly felt that things were getting out of control. If UMP45 got involved too, the situation would probably spiral beyond saving.
"Who knows? But Brother Lux, no matter what, my proposal doesn't have any downsides for you, does it?"
Lianne's smile left Lux at a loss for words. It was as if he were seeing a crafty little fox again.
"Honestly… talking to smart people like you or UMP45 just gives me a headache. You've already calculated everything. It seems like following what you say is the most sensible option."
"But that woman UMP45 wants to turn me into someone who'd do anything just to survive… she wants to teach me to discard my humanity."
"Even though I can't see anything bad in your proposal, it still feels like you're setting a trap for me. Something that looks like a pie falling from the sky usually hides a pitfall behind it."
Lux said helplessly. He'd been screwed over by UMP45 before, to the point that he was starting to develop paranoia.
"Being naturally suspicious is a good habit. Then, Brother Lux, you can verify the answer yourself."
Lianne laughed nonchalantly.
---
Three hours later.
When Lux fell into deep sleep, the internal energy in his abdomen slowly began circulating through his body. As it passed by the wound, the injury beneath the bandages—caused by internal energy backlash—started regenerating with a strangely wriggling motion.
At the same time, intense itching and pain flooded Lux's brain.
---
"Good morning, Lux. You seemed to be having a nightmare. Are you okay?"
HK416 asked with concern.
"Morning. I didn't have a nightmare, but the wound is really itchy… hey, can I scratch it?"
"I don't recommend doing that. I'll handle the wound check. I'll be very careful not to hurt you."
HK416 said seriously, then gently began unwrapping the bandages.
"Honestly… it'd almost feel better if you did hurt me a bit. Compared to pain, this itchy feeling is way harder to endure."
Lux complained gloomily.
"Oh? Brother Lux, your thigh muscles are pretty well-developed."
Lianne leaned over beside HK416 and joked excitedly.
"Uh… they're okay, I guess."
Lux subconsciously tried to scratch the wound, but HK416 grabbed his hand.
"The wound is healing very well. It's already fully scabbed over. You absolutely can't pick off the scab now."
HK416 said sternly.
"But it's really itchy…"
Lux looked at HK416 with a somewhat aggrieved expression.
"D-Don't look at me with those pitiful eyes… even if you do, I won't—I won't give in!"
HK416 said, wavering slightly.
"Just a little bit of the scab. Or how about you disinfect it again with medical alcohol? If it gets infected with bacteria, that'd be bad, right? Please."
"Ugh, too cunning! Commander, that's cheating!"
Two peach-shaped hearts appeared in HK416's beautiful pupils.
"F-Fine, there's nothing I can do about you. J-Just this once, and no next time. If it hurts so much that you cry later, I won't care."
HK416 removed her gloves and, somewhat helplessly, reached toward the scab, carefully picking off a small piece.
Fresh, tender pink muscle tissue appeared before them. HK416 subconsciously swallowed. For some reason, seeing such soft pink flesh suddenly made her want to lick it.
"This wound… something about it feels a bit strange."
Lianne, who was watching from the side, said with some confusion.
"Huh? What's strange about it? Isn't it healing really well? Pink granulation tissue has already formed—it'll probably recover fully in less than a week."
Startled by Lianne's voice, HK416 immediately snapped back to her senses and asked worriedly.
This concerned Lux's body—she absolutely wouldn't allow herself even the slightest carelessness.
And Lianne's earlier behavior was very much in line with her genius-level IQ of 168. She might really have noticed something that HK416 had overlooked.
HK416 immediately began recalling how she had treated the wound the day before.
"No, Miss 416, the wound treatment itself was perfect."
"But can a gunshot wound heal this quickly? Yesterday, I saw that Brother Lux's wound had almost lost a small chunk of flesh, yet today it's already scabbed over… Normally, wound healing is divided into three stages: the cleansing phase, the granulation phase, and the epithelial phase. But it's only been one night, and it's already reached the second stage."
"With this level of recovery, Brother Lux's body might actually be slowly evolving."
"What the heck, you scared me to death. Isn't that a good thing?"
HK416 let out a sigh of relief.
"In theory, faster wound healing is naturally a good thing. But according to some materials I've read before, cells cultured outside the body can usually only divide fifty to sixty generations. If healing speed has increased this much, the cell division rate in Brother Lux's body has probably increased by several times at least."
"If evolution only affected wound healing speed, without changing the limit on the number of divisions, then it could potentially affect Brother Lux's lifespan."
"And genetic mutations in cells are extremely dangerous. The reason cancer cells form is because their genes go wrong, giving them the property of unlimited division."
Lianne said seriously.
"Ah? Is it really that serious?"
HK416 immediately panicked.
"Ah, this is just a personal hypothesis, not a fact. Please don't be so afraid. It's not like Brother Lux will suddenly lose ten or twenty years of his life because of this wound. But if this really is the worst-case scenario, then we'll have to avoid letting Brother Lux get injured again as much as possible."
"I'm just raising a precautionary hypothesis in advance. We'll still need some verification later."
Lianne spoke reassuringly.
Her words also frightened Lux. Getting cancer in the apocalypse was definitely no joke. He immediately started screaming at the system in his head.
'Holy shit, System, you didn't sell me a defective product, did you? According to what that girl Lianne said, isn't this basically drinking poison to quench thirst? Aren't we partners? You're not trying to kill me, are you?'
[Don't worry. The system would never use inferior products to scam customers. The gene modification serum was developed to strengthen certain valuable humans, so they wouldn't die so easily. Not only will your lifespan not be shortened because of it, the incidence rate of ordinary illnesses will also be greatly reduced.]
For once, the system spoke seriously, without mocking or scaring Lux, and explained things properly.