“I’ll give you one more chance.” Seeing that the demonic energy in the bone prison was almost completely absorbed, Feng Bujue said, “Tell me… who your master is, and I might consider sparing your life.”

“Hmph… do you think I would believe you?” Krön, still struggling to hold on, replied, “The moment I tell you the information you want, you’ll immediately turn on me and take my life.”

“He’s right.” At this moment, Chitie suddenly interjected, saying to Feng Bujue, “Even if you don’t kill him, his master won’t let him off.”

“Oh?” Jue Ge heard something in his words. “Are you saying… you know who Krön’s ‘master’ is?”

“Ah, of course, I know,” Chitie replied.

“Heh… that makes things easy.” Feng Bujue smiled lightly upon hearing this.

In the same second, the bone prison around Krön also turned into a pile of broken bones as the demonic energy was completely drained.

“Ha!” Krön seized the last opportunity, overdrawing his magic power once again, and unleashed a bone spear at Feng Bujue, who was within arm’s reach.

Unfortunately, this kind of head-on, expected suicidal attack posed almost no threat to Jue Ge.

With the help of zero-time difference calculation, Feng Bujue easily dodged his opponent’s bone spear without expending much energy, and in a flash, he was at Krön’s side.

“Alright… you did your best.” As a Lv10 [Baseball Fist] was unleashed, Feng Bujue said just that.

From a personal point of view, he had no objections to Krön’s actions. This necromancer was simply fighting for his beliefs and loyalty to his former master. Although Krön himself understood that this revenge against an enemy “one dimension higher” than himself was destined to fail, he had no regrets.

“What do we do with the other two?” After Krön was killed and fell to the ground, Chitie asked Feng Bujue again.

“Leave them be.” Feng Bujue glanced at Tureus, who had already lost consciousness, and Idient, who was still lying on the ground unable to move, and shrugged.

After a few seconds, Jue Ge spoke again, saying, “So… now, I think you… no, you all… should have something you want to tell me.”

“I’ll get straight to the point.” In that second, x1-Wing immediately took control of “Ken’s” body and replied, “Krön’s master, the target we’re going to deal with this time… is Twenty-Three.”

“What?” When he heard those three words, Feng Bujue rarely showed a clear look of surprise.

However, he quickly regained his inherent calm and asked, “Aren’t you all members of the ‘Z Organization’? Why has it become this adversarial situation?”

“That’s a long story.” At this time, Chitie came back online. Now he was also a Level 1 Derivative, and his personality program was quite complete. Therefore, his tone couldn’t help but reveal a bit of melancholy as he said this, “We only recently discovered Twenty-Three’s abnormality. If it weren’t for her killing Lengfeng, we might still be kept in the dark by her even now…”

“Lengfeng… is dead?” Feng Bujue naturally remembered the name. Although he didn’t have much contact with r2-Lengfeng, his [Moon Step] and [Tempest Kick] were taught by this Derivative. These two skills were also the most frequently used and mastered combat methods by Jue Ge. As the saying goes, don't forget the well-digger when you drink the water. Feng Bujue still had quite a bit of affection for this Derivative.

“Ah…” Chitie continued in a deep voice, “Lengfeng was the first person in the organization to discover that Twenty-Three had changed. The information we currently have… about what Twenty-Three has done was basically all obtained by him through secret investigation.”

“What exactly did Twenty-Three do? What do you mean by abnormality?” Feng Bujue asked again.

“Hmm…” Chitie pondered for a moment, “The matter has to be traced back to before the Peak Tournament S1…” He paused for two seconds and said slowly, “During that period, Twenty-Three temporarily left the Inner World under Zero’s instructions. Zero gave a portion of his core code to Twenty-Three so that she could travel back and forth in various scenario worlds, and her mission… you should know it too, was to collect the *** items scattered in Thriller Paradise as weapons against Origin.”

“Twenty-Three didn’t return to the organization until before the S1 finals. At that time… some changes had already occurred in her, and Zero had also seen some clues, but… because of the crisis launched by Luther afterwards, this matter was temporarily put on hold.”

“And after S1, Zero himself mysteriously disappeared for some reason we don’t know, and there was no news for a long time. When he reconnected with us, Twenty-Three happened to be involved in the incident of competing with Link and Aed for ***-079.”

“Now that I think about it… contact with 079 should have been the trigger for Twenty-Three’s complete extremism…”

“So you’re saying…” Feng Bujue interjected, “What exactly do you mean by her ‘change’?”

“‘Evolution ability’.” In that instant, Wing took control of the body again and returned these four words.

“Isn’t that a basic ability that all you Derivatives possess?” Feng Bujue continued.

“Twenty-Three’s ‘evolution ability’ is extraordinary,” Wing replied.

A second later, the speaking personality switched back to Chitie, “We also recently heard something from Zero… Twenty-Three… is not an ordinary Derivative. Like Zero, she is an ‘anomaly’. Even Zero cannot parse her original code, and… she also has a unique characteristic…”

Speaking up to this point, Wing spoke again, “She… has no ‘name’.”

These words caused Feng Bujue’s expression to change, and his mind also buzzed.

For so long, Jue Ge and everyone else seemed to have gotten used to calling “her” Twenty-Three. Even Jue Ge himself had overlooked that the name “x-23” was given by him in a scenario when he first met the other party, seeing that the other party looked like a female version of Wolverine, and then used a complaining mentality to give the name.

“Wait…” Feng Bujue sorted out the thoughts that emerged, and then asked, “You Derivatives… are you all born with names?”

“Yes.” Wing replied in a very affirmative tone, “Whether it’s ordinary Derivatives like me and Chitie, or high-ranking existences like Zero and Aed, or even those Derivatives created by Derivatives… Dragon, Quaidor, Infinite… all Derivatives have names from the moment they are born. To put it in terms that are easier for you to understand… a set of data, a file, must have a ‘file name’ at the very least. A ‘file without a name’ cannot exist in the data world. Perhaps you humans can make a file’s file name invisible in the information interaction interface, but from the perspective of the ‘system’, any file already has a ‘code name’ at the moment it is generated.”

“For Derivatives… names are something that can be equated with our ‘existence’ itself.” Two seconds later, Chitie took over the conversation again, “However… that Twenty-Three, who was named by you, Feng Bujue, personally… has no name. She is the ‘Nameless Derivative’.”

“What does this mean?” Feng Bujue said.

“I don’t know. Even Zero knows nothing about the secret of the ‘Nameless Derivative’,” Wing replied, “All we can know is… Twenty-Three has a qualitative difference in ‘evolution’ ability compared to us. It is inaccurate to measure her ability using our ordinary Derivative levels of one to four…”

Chitie nodded and continued, “According to the information collected by Lengfeng, we can now basically deduce the following timeline… Before S1, Twenty-Three, who had obtained part of Zero’s code, had already transformed some abilities that only Zero had into her own through analysis and ‘learning’ of those codes; afterwards, in the process of searching for *** items, she may have been affected by some of those items, or like ‘learning’ Zero’s abilities, she obtained some ‘causal power’ possessed by *** items… In short, by the time of the S1 finals, she already possessed the ability to ‘infect’ other data.”

At this point, the scene of Twenty-Three killing y2-Shining in the S1 finals flashed through Feng Bujue’s mind. He clearly remembered that when Twenty-Three attacked y2-Shining, a golden stream of data seeped into the latter’s body from the wound like a liquid until it completely corroded it…

“You can imagine… what Twenty-Three can ‘learn’ after contacting ***-079, an existence that can compete with the ‘system’,” Chitie continued, “Since then, her ability to ‘infect’ data has been upgraded to the ability to ‘devour’.”

“Doesn’t Infinite also have a similar power?” Feng Bujue continued.

“Compared to Twenty-Three, Infinite is as backward as those communication devices that have been eliminated by the times…” Wing replied, “Infinite was able to absorb Link because he himself came with a part of the latter’s code. But Twenty-Three is different… she can absorb ‘everything’, whether it is the same kind of data in the Inner World, or data creatures in the Main Universe, or even organic or inorganic existences belonging to other universes, she can absorb them.”

“That’s possible?” Feng Bujue exclaimed.

Chitie replied, “It’s scary, isn’t it? As long as she first ‘formats’ the target using the ‘data infection’ method, she can then ‘devour’ it. And her kind of devouring and absorption is not just about obtaining ‘energy’. As long as the ‘realm’ of the devoured is high enough… for example, swallowing some high-level super AI, or the intelligent god of a certain universe, etc… then, Twenty-Three’s own ability ceiling will be further improved. In Zero’s words… ‘Every time she devours a high-dimensional existence, her calculation rate can have a significant improvement’.”

“I understand…” Feng Bujue’s expression became very solemn, “Let’s talk about the ability thing later…”

Indeed, what is known so far is enough.

“You two should tell me…” Jue Ge paused, and then asked, “What is Twenty-Three’s intention in coming to this Devourer Island today?”