Chapter 100: Roundup!

"It's barely nine o'clock. Are these guys behaving so obediently today? Resting already with the lights out?"

The branch president squinted at the darkened mansion not far away, looking at the gate.

Unfortunately, without any lights, the entire mansion appeared pitch black, making it impossible to see anything.

"This is perfect. It saves the newbies from seeing these dolls and saves us from hiding it from them," the vice president remarked, glancing back at the T-Dolls they had just wrested from the Griffin commander.

"That poor guy is probably going to cry. Hey! The mental override virus Poryoshkin gave us is really effective!"

"Exactly! Let's continue like this. No matter how many T-Dolls Griffin sends here, we can easily capture them without much effort! It's like we're blessed by the god of wealth!"

Several senior members of the Doll Rights Protection Association, dressed like mercenaries, joked as they walked, armed with a variety of weapons, clearly not taking G&K seriously.

"Don't daydream. Not every Griffin commander is as stupid as the current one. And why haven't you thrown away your gun after you shot the commander?" The man called Poryushkin by the others, wasn't as old as literary works depicted him; he was a young man who looked to be in his twenties.

"Why? It's just a shot. Besides, that Griffin commander didn't see who shot him. He might be dead by now, so what's there to fear!"

Clearly, this senior member not only didn't take Griffin's commanders seriously but also looked down on Poryushkin, the tech-savvy guy.

Among the members of the Doll Rights Protection Association, there were indeed some wealthy members and some naive young men who had joined the organization, but they were the minority.

More often, they were like this senior member, relying on the Doll Rights Protection Association for a living.

And the salary was just a small part of it. The real money came from the various Dolls they "rescued." Unknown dolls were simply made to disappear, while those with fame or connections were returned as they were or sent to charitable organizations to show off.

When those dolls were gradually forgotten or nearing their theoretical lifespan, they were declared to have malfunctioned or reached the end of their neural core's lifespan, and were easily disposed of.

Apart from them, no one really cared about the survival status of dolls. After all, they were initially created by humans to replace various low-end labor workforce.

Of course, the intention was good, but these dolls were soon noticed by capitalists who only cared about money. Wasn't there cheaper labor than this? They wouldn't complain about wages, they wouldn't complain about poor working conditions, and even if they died, there wouldn't be a bunch of relatives coming after you for compensation.

They were simply the perfect objects for labor exploitation!

The Doll Rights Protection Association was thus born, because in this era, there weren't so many kinds of animals for them to protect.

Dolls, which were very similar to humans and had a precarious survival status, naturally became the perfect targets for these guys.

Moreover, the business of Dolls was even better than that of animals. These Dolls, who looked like cute girls, easily aroused the sympathy of the general public, and fundraising was simply too easy.

Seeing the miraculous thinking of these guys and their unwarranted self-confidence, Poryushkin raised his eyebrows and decided not to say more to these guys. If it weren't for their usefulness, he wouldn't have cooperated with them in the first place.

"I'll leave this communicator to you. Whatever you manage to get has nothing to do with me. Tomorrow, I'll take these two low-level dolls and the high-level one from the mansion."

Poryushkin glanced at the three humanoids walking ahead of him—two low-level ones left by the Griffin commander, and the high-level one bought by a wealthy merchant in the rich district.

The wealthy merchant's doll was of no use to him; he only needed the Griffin T-Dolls.

The information transmission system used by IOP's tactical dolls for Griffin and the ones sold to these wealthy merchants were not quite the same. It was necessary to obtain more samples to help him upgrade his neural override virus against Griffin's T-Dolls communication modules.

The previous version of the virus was still somewhat unreliable. The MK23 at Base 939 could even resist the virus's override effect for a while, even when the virus was already active. If there were more high-level T-Dolls...

If the virus failed to take effect, he...

"Wait a minute! Stop!" Just as he was thinking, the group had already walked to the wall not far from the mansion.

Poryushkin, who had been working in his mind, looked up and saw the broken windows on the second floor of the mansion!

The reflections on the broken glass were extremely dazzling in his eyes, but these guys in front of him didn't notice at all!?

"What? Why..."

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Three dull sounds of grenade launchers suddenly rang out from behind the wall, and three grenades landed directly at the feet of several people in the next moment.

"Grenades!?"

Hearing the sound of the grenades landing, Poryuhskin immediately turned and dove to the ground, clutching his head!

But the next moment, three more dull sounds came from under their feet, accompanied by the glaring light and the close-range explosion. The Doll Rights Protection Association members, who had little combat experience, immediately collapsed to the ground, dizzy.

"Stop the enemy!" Poryushkin, who had climbed up from the ground, only had time to give orders to the three T-dolls in front of him when he saw the scene that shattered his soul!

Boom!

The wall surrounding the Doll Rights Protection Association was directly shattered by a group of figures, each of them at least two meters tall!

With the heavy footsteps of those big figures trampling on the ground, the bricks flew in all directions, surrounding him and the members of the Doll Rights Protection Association in the middle!

These are!? The military... No, are they the guys from the west!?