Lackey's Seducing Survival Odyssey

Chapter 1759: Are you sure about this?

While Young Aether was struggling through a truly ‘Life Threatening’ situation, far away near the Delta-Beta Border, another hunt had already reached a dead end.

After an extensive search for the mysterious young boy wearing the oversized hat, the Unit Five Leader had arrived at the border and remained stationed there for the past two days.

With almost no physical evidence to work with, the Unit Five Leader had no choice but to sit before the holographic investigation console, manually reviewing every visual record that had passed through the border.

Since he had personally seen Young Aether’s face, it remained his only reliable clue. If the boy had crossed through this border, then somewhere within these endless streams of data, his face had to exist.

He had even searched for the name ‘Jack Sparrow,’ the ridiculous alias the boy had casually thrown at him before disappearing.

Naturally, every result led to completely different individuals.

Just as he had expected…

The boy had lied about his name as well.

Now, the only remaining hope rested on the footage of everyone who had entered Delta City’s border.

And yet…

“Fuck! After all this… there’s still nothing!” the Leader cursed, slamming a fist against the edge of the metallic console.

The holographic displays rippled from the impact before stabilizing once more, continuing to cycle through thousands upon thousands of personal records belonging to every individual who had crossed the border during the past week.

No matter how many times he replayed the footage or adjusted the facial recognition parameters, there wasn’t a single person whose appearance resembled the young man he had encountered that day.

Standing a few steps behind him, the border’s operator cautiously broke the silence.

“Sir… you’ve gone through every log from the past week. There’s nothing. Could it be… the person you’re searching for never came through this border?”

The Unit Five Leader slowly shook his head.

“The last CCTV footage clearly captured him running along this highway,” he replied.

“This highway has only one destination… this border. And yet… there isn’t a single frame… not even one damn recording showing him crossing. Arrgh!”

The operator folded his arms, tilting his head as he searched through his memory.

“Hmm… did he have any distinctive physical features? A scar… a mole… unusual eye colour…?”

The Leader let out a long sigh before rubbing his forehead.

“Well…” he muttered. “He’s probably the most handsome boy I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“Huh?”

The operator blinked twice before awkwardly scratching his cheek.

“That’s… surprisingly unhelpful.”

The Leader merely groaned in annoyance.

“But… hmm…” the operator suddenly muttered, narrowing his eyes. “Now that you mention it… I think I do remember someone whose inspection results were… strange.”

The Leader immediately spun around.

“You do?”

His sharp gaze locked onto the operator.

“Then why the hell didn’t you report that earlier?”

The operator instinctively raised both hands in surrender.

“Because you ordered me to search every log from the past week.”

The Unit Five Leader’s lips twitched.

“If I remember correctly…” the operator continued while opening another holographic database. His fingers danced across floating virtual keys as rows of encrypted records flashed before his eyes.

“His name was something like… Lucy… or Luc… something…”

“Lackey?” the Unit Five Leader interrupted immediately.

“Huh… Yeah!”

The operator snapped his fingers.

“That’s it. Lackey.”

Without wasting another second, he entered the name.

Then…

[NO DATA!]

The operator frowned.

“Hmm…? That’s impossible.”

He immediately searched again.

[NO DATA!]

His expression slowly stiffened.

“What…?”

A third search.

[NO DATA!]

The Operator frowned. He was certain something unusual had happened that day. Perhaps it had been a technical glitch, or perhaps the system had briefly malfunctioned, but he distinctly remembered that handsome young man standing before the scanner.

“Maybe… the name is different?”

He immediately began trying different combinations.

Lucy.

Yuki.

Lazy.

Lacky.

Yet every search ended with the exact same response.

[NO DATA!]

The Unit Five Leader glanced at him with narrowed eyes.

“Still no data?”

The Operator’s brows knitted together.

“That doesn’t make any sense…” he muttered while replaying the logs once more.

He enlarged the archived surveillance footage.

“I didn’t get a perfect scan of his face…” he continued, dragging frame after frame through the timeline. “…but I’m certain he was here. I remember him because… well… he was ridiculously handsome. Someone with a face like that doesn’t simply disappear from my memory.”

The Leader silently stared at the floating displays before letting out a slow breath.

The Operator hummed thoughtfully.

“Maybe… I should send an incident report to Delta Tower,” he muttered. “If this is a database synchronisation error, their central archive should still have a backup.”

The Unit Five Leader nodded before turning toward the exit.

“Thanks.”

He paused at the doorway and looked back over his shoulder.

“If you find anything… anything at all… contact me immediately.”

“You have my word.”

As the Unit Five Leader stepped out of the control room, three of his subordinates were already waiting outside.

“Sir… did you find him?”

The Leader silently shook his head.

“No.”

The three soldiers exchanged uneasy glances.

“Then… what do we do now?”

“Should we report this directly to the Commander?”

“Or… maybe he crossed through another border?”

Their voices overlapped as they began discussing different possibilities.

The Unit Five Leader remained silent.

His gaze slowly drifted upward toward the distant skyline of Delta City.

For some reason…

His instincts refused to let it go.

Something deep inside him kept whispering… He’s here.

Somewhere inside Delta City…

The person he had been searching for was here.

It wasn’t evidence or logic.

It was simply an overwhelming gut feeling that refused to disappear.

Meanwhile, back inside the control room, the Operator finished compiling the incident report, attaching the corrupted search logs, missing registry records, and authentication failures before transmitting them through the Delta Tower’s secured quantum communication network.

Click!

“And… send.”

He leaned back in his chair with a relieved sigh.

“Now let’s see whether this is just a server error… or something much stranger.”

The transmission left the border station as a condensed pulse of energy, invisible to ordinary civilians.

It raced through the atmosphere at incredible speed, weaving between countless communication streams as it headed directly toward Delta Tower’s central network.

Just as the encrypted signal was about to enter Delta City’s communication grid…

Another pulse appeared.

A far denser wave of energy erupted from empty space itself and slammed directly into the transmission.

Ssshh~

The two signals collided in complete silence.

The border station’s encrypted wave simply… ceased to exist.

As though the message had been erased from reality before it had ever reached its destination.

****

Soon, the sky brightened.

Young Aether lay there as if he had never stirred at all, while Sasha, still half-lost in the remnants of sleep, blinked and slowly came back to herself.

She had been drooling over his crotch in her sleep.

For a brief moment, she stared at him with drowsy confusion, then her gaze drifted down to realise she was completely naked, her bare body displayed without shame.

Yet she did not seem particularly bothered by that. What caught her attention instead was the strange sight beside her.

Maiuri’s gown was damp, clinging to her as though it had been brushed through a mist of spilled water or some other liquid caught in the heat of the night. She was holding Young Aether’s hand and rubbing it in a strange, absent manner, as if she had been doing it for far too long and had only just realised what she was touching.

Maiuri stiffened at once.

Her face twisted in disgust and embarrassment, and before another second could pass, she snapped back to herself, shoved his hand away, and hurried off as if the floor itself had suddenly burned beneath her feet.

Sasha let out a soft giggle, still unbothered, still amused by the whole mess. She rose and followed after her with lazy, almost playful energy.

“Wait for me~”

Meanwhile, Young Aether slowly opened his eyes.

His hand was sticky, covered in a wet transparent liquid, and his pants were soaked through with drool. For a second, he simply stared.

Then he exhaled sharply.

‘Fuck!’

A surge of relief ran through him like electricity.

He had managed to calm the demon inside him at the exact right moment. If he had been even a little slower, he did not know what kind of nightmare would have unfolded in that room.

The dark voice had been pressing against him the entire time, whispering, needling, twisting thought into temptation with those sweet, venomous words.

He had almost yielded~

All because of Jonathan’s words, he had held himself together. Otherwise, two broken bodies might have been left on the floor like discarded remains in some dead machine’s chamber.

“Oh please, bitch. Don’t act like you’re some loyal cunt. You’re a fucking slut.”

The dark voice spoke with a tone that carried both irritation and disappointment, as if it were leaning back in some invisible throne and rolling its eyes at him.

Young Aether’s lips twitched.

‘Slut? The fuck are you talking about…? My love is the purest form ever to exist in the wor—’

“Like lusting after Penelope’s mother?”

Young Aether froze.

‘… I-I don’t know what you’re talking about?’ he said, his brows knitting together in confusion.

“Oi, oi, don’t act like I don’t know. I know. You know. We all know who you are, even before you were forced to follow the mission. You lusted after Penelope’s mother… You loyal cunt~ Hahahah~”

For a moment, Young Aether said nothing.

Then he spoke with a low and dangerous tone.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and frankly, I don’t care. Yes, I loved Penelope’s mother, but it was never the same love I carried for Penelope. What I felt for her was never born from lust, desire, or any selfish longing.

I respected her because she was the first person who treated me with genuine kindness when my own mother looked at me with nothing but disgust.

That’s not lust… That’s care.

I cared for her.

Do not trample our relationship with your disgusting words again… I won’t take it nicely next time.’

His eyes darkened, becoming deep and cold, like black glass reflecting no light.

“…”

The dark voice fell silent.

Young Aether drew in a breath and frowned. Why had the dark voice suddenly started speaking to him like this?

Especially about Penelope’s mother.

Just the thought of Penelope made his chest tighten, as though something inside him had been pressed by an unseen hand.

‘Penelope… ah?’

A thin ache stirred in his heart.

‘I wonder… if she’s alive or… even m…’

He cut the thought off and shook his head. That was not why he was here. That was not the path he had chosen to follow.

And yet, somewhere deep in the chambers of his heart, he knew the truth.

He was searching for her too.

He had simply never asked Jonathan about her because the answer terrified him.

Either way, his heart clenched at the thought.

“Still thinking about a woman? Haha… even after she left you when she found out your dick is fucking useless. How much of a simp can one be?”

The dark voice chuckled, the sound wicked and sharp.

Young Aether stared blankly at the floor, not even angry now. He only let out a low hum and asked,

‘Just get to the point… What do you want?’

After all, this voice never spoke without a reason.

For a moment, it remained silent.

Then it answered at last…

“I have been watching and waiting…”

‘For what?’

“Why haven’t you updated your Null-Return point?”

‘…’

“What? Hahah…” The dark voice let out a mocking laugh that echoed like rusted steel scraping across machinery.

“Don’t tell me you actually think you’re going to regret everything you’ve done, all the lives you’ve taken, and then conveniently return after death as if none of it ever happened. What a pathetic loser!!

You can’t even accept reality for what it is, and now you’re standing there ready to cry all over again?”

Young Aether frowned slightly, preparing to dismiss the accusation because the thought had honestly never crossed his mind. He had never intentionally ignored that matter, nor had he secretly wished to erase his past. The truth was much simpler than that.

He had simply forgotten.

Before he could even explain himself, however, an overwhelming roar exploded inside his consciousness.

“WE… ‘AETHER’… DO NOT REGRET! OUR LIFE, OUR CHOICES, OUR CONSEQUENCES… WHATEVER THEY MAY BE, WE HAVE NEVER… EVER… REGRETTED A SINGLE ONE OF THEM!”

It was not merely a voice. It was as though countless invisible hands carved those words directly into his mind, engraving them into every corner of his consciousness with unbearable force.

The dark voice became quiet again, almost amused.

“So tell me… why haven’t you updated your Null-Return Point?”

Young Aether remained silent.

Did he regret what he had done?

Of course not.

There was nothing to regret.

Everything he had done was necessary. Every decision, every sacrifice, every life taken… they had all served a purpose.

Whether the world accepted it or not meant nothing to him.

There was no road worth returning to anymore.

He had simply forgotten to update his Null-Return Point.

That was all.

“Activate Null-Return,” Lackey muttered quietly.

Tik~

The sound was soft, almost insignificant.

Yet the instant it echoed through the air, reality itself obeyed.

Everything stopped.

!~Ding~!

[❗Notice: Do you wish to use this Space-Time as your New Null-Return Point?]

“Y…”

Just as the answer reached his lips, his left eye suddenly flickered.

Wisps of white mist seeped from the iris, swirling gently like celestial clouds. The world around him seemed to brighten, and the violent noise within his mind faded into an impossible calm.

Then another voice emerged.

Unlike the dark one, it carried neither hatred nor mockery.

It was gentle.

Almost ethereal~

“Are you certain, Child?” the voice asked softly. “Do you truly wish for this to become your new beginning… and your end?”

For the briefest fraction of a second, clarity returned to Young Aether’s mind.

His thoughts became astonishingly clear, as though every emotion, every memory, every impulse had been filtered.

But only for a moment.

“What are you doing?” the dark voice suddenly roared, “This isn’t what we agreed upon! He is not a child! He made his choice long ago. Didn’t you, No.28?”

A twisted chuckle followed.

“Hehe~”

The white mist surrounding Young Aether’s left eye shattered like scattered particles of light before dissolving into nothingness. Darkness swallowed the momentary clarity almost instantly.

His expression returned to absolute calm.

“Yes.”

[⚠️Warning: New Null-Return Point has been successfully created and saved.]

Tok~

In the next instant, reality resumed.

Young Aether stood motionless.

There was no hesitation in his eyes.

No regret.