After a while, the gunshots stopped, followed by a conversation coming from outside the door.
"Ethan, don't you think these cultists are crazy? The mission was to drive them away, but these people would rather die than run."
"Maybe these cultists want to protect something. We'll know once we go inside."
"You're right. Jassy, come over here, it's safe now."
Ethan, Jassy? It seems the invaders won. But were those Black Robed Men actually cultists?
Listening to the male and female voices outside the cabinet, Cipher fell into thought.
After thinking for a while, Cipher discovered a key point from their conversation.
They said those cultists were guarding something... but there's nothing in this room, is there?
Wait? Could the thing those cultists were guarding be me?
But I just arrived in this world, didn't I?
Cipher's eyes widened, feeling a bit incredulous.
"Hey, Jassy, come look, there's an altar here! This might be what those cultists were guarding. See if this thing is worth anything!"
"Coming."
Another unfamiliar voice.
The cat ears on top of Cipher's head twitched slightly, pulling her back from her thoughts.
"This altar... I can't make anything of it. And I just scanned it with my terminal; the altar's material is just ordinary stone, completely worthless."
"Ah... how can this be... Does this mean we over-completed the mission, but besides the original mission reward and some semi-automatic pistols, there's no other gain? But didn't the news say that cults like these are the richest?"
"Captain, it's already dark. Stop daydreaming. If we were facing the kind of cult that makes the news, we'd have been kicked to death long ago."
"Alright, then I'll see if there's anything else here..."
As Cipher finished listening to that sentence, she clearly felt footsteps approaching her wardrobe.
Seeing this, Cipher didn't plan to make any moves. Instead, she sat obediently in the cabinet, waiting for the person outside to open the cabinet door.
With a "creak," the cabinet door opened. Cipher immediately recognized the person who opened the door as the young girl who had been hiding behind the two-meter-tall burly man earlier.
Cipher looked up at the girl, and the girl, upon seeing her, seemed to fall into a daze, staring blankly back at her.
Just like that, after a few seconds of staring at each other, the girl finally reacted, her eyes becoming much clearer.
Just as Cipher expected the girl to immediately shout "There's someone in the cabinet!" to her teammates, or point a weapon at her cautiously.
The girl did something even she hadn't expected.
The girl mumbled, "I must have seen wrong, how could there be someone in the cabinet, and such a beautiful girl at that?" Then she abruptly... closed the cabinet door.
Yes, she closed the door!
"What's going on?"
Cipher expressed that it was her turn to be confused. Who, upon discovering a stranger in a cabinet at an enemy stronghold, would not react with vigilance or report it immediately, but instead think they saw wrong and close the door?!
Looking at the re-closed cabinet door, Cipher fell into deep thought.
Should I go out now, or not?
..."Captain, what happened?"
Hearing the commotion, Jasmine looked back in confusion, only to see her captain standing in front of a cabinet, a bewildered expression in her eyes.
"Um... Jassy, I think I saw someone in the cabinet..."
"What? Are there still enemies hiding here?"
Jasmine was a bit surprised. She had thought all those cultists were reckless, never expecting one to hide.
"Where are the enemies?"
Upon hearing the word "enemy," Ethan immediately looked fierce and began to look around.
"Wait, wait, wait!"
Seeing this, Lauren immediately knew her team members had misunderstood something and quickly spoke to stop them.
"It's not a cultist in the cabinet, but a very beautiful girl!"
"A girl? Why would there be a girl here? Could she have been kidnapped by those cultists?"
After hearing Lauren's description, Jasmine asked in confusion.
"It's true! Right here in this cabinet!"
Saying that, Lauren opened the cabinet again.
Now everyone saw what was in the cabinet.
It was a girl curled up, hugging her legs, wearing a black and gold tight-fitting suit, with a pair of golden high-heeled boots on her legs.
However, what drew their attention more were the pair of animal ears on the girl's head, clearly not human features, and a tail beside her... After some conversation, Cipher successfully learned their names and also found out that they were a mercenary team.
Their team, Spark Team, had come here on a mission to drive away the cultists occupying this area.
Cipher also told them her name, but regarding why she came here and what she did before, she claimed to know nothing, finally having to use the excuse that she couldn't remember anything.
After all, she had just arrived in this world; it would be strange if she knew these things!
So, Cipher used her ability to make her words more believable, and thus, Spark Team accepted Cipher's amnesia setting and began to fill in the blanks themselves.
At this moment, Cipher was sitting obediently in the house, while the Spark Team had gone outside and were discussing something among themselves.
That was whether or not to take Cipher into their team.
"But Cipher has amnesia! Such a beautiful girl, plus the amnesia, if we don't take her in, her fate will definitely be terrible. You all know how chaotic the Pit Bottom District is!"
Lauren was very worried, because in the Keng Di (Pit Bottom), where there was basically no order, letting a seemingly helpless girl with amnesia live alone in such a place would be no different from living in hell.
"But... Captain..." Jasmine hesitated, but after a while, she still brought up the current problem of their team, "Our funds are already low. It's already difficult to maintain the team's basic expenses. If we add another person, our team's financial stability might collapse directly."
"This..."
After listening to Jasmine, Lauren was at a loss for words for a moment, because what Jasmine said was their team's difficulty: a shortage of funds.
But soon, Lauren quickly cheered up again.
"So what! If worst comes to worst... we'll just take on more missions! Besides, the bulk of our expenses are on weapon replenishment and maintenance. Cipher doesn't need to fight, so if she joins, it'll just be buying two more energy bars a day, which won't cost many credit points."
"Captain... Sigh, alright."
Looking at her captain like this, Jasmine opened her mouth, but ultimately said nothing, instead reluctantly agreeing.
After the two finished discussing, they both turned to look at Ethan, who was sitting to the side.
"Don't all look at me, I don't have any opinions, I'll listen to you two."
Ethan felt uncomfortable being stared at by the two women, then quickly waved his hands and shouted.