Chapter 171: Pandemonium
Kai York had a look of utter despair. "What do I do? Am I really going to be like this for three months?"
He then glared at Hugh Finch, grinding his teeth. "This is all your fault. You have to take responsibility for me."
"Then how about I marry you?" Hugh Finch shot back reflexively.
By the time he realized what he’d said, Kai York was already lunging at him, flailing wildly.
"Hugh Finch, I’m gonna kill you today!"
As he spoke, Kai York took out a Space Button, and a swarm of purple flying insects buzzed out.
Seeing this, Moira Lynch and Shane Rhodes quickly backed away to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
Two minutes later, Hugh Finch reappeared, sporting a limited-edition purple skin.
"PFFT, HAHAHAHA!!"
Moira Lynch let out an unapologetic burst of laughter, followed by Shane Rhodes’s equally unrestrained guffaws.
"Oh man, I can’t take it. My stomach hurts."
After several solid minutes of laughing, Moira Lynch was clutching her stomach and groaning. Shane Rhodes was in a similar state.
Hugh Finch looked at his own limited-edition skin, then at Moira Lynch and Shane Rhodes, who were practically convulsing with laughter. His mouth twitched. "You two, knock it off. Be careful, or I’ll give you both this limited-edition skin."
He looked at his now-purple hands. "You know, when I did my divination this morning, it said my lucky color for the day was purple."
After she’d had her fill of laughing at them, Moira Lynch offered two solutions. The first was to use Dye-Bugs of a different color to dye their skin back.
Dye-Bugs came in a wide variety of colors. If they could find some that were close to a natural skin tone, the result would at least be better than their current state.
However, Dye-Bugs with skin-tone colors were extremely rare.
The second solution was a friendly donation from Moira: a box of unopened bandages and liquid foundation.
They wore clothes, which would cover most of it. There wasn’t much exposed skin left. They had shoes for their feet, they could wear gloves on their hands, wrap their necks with bandages, and as for their faces... they could just slather on some foundation.
Just endure it for three months until the color faded.
’I just don’t know if the foundation I stocked up on will be enough.’
She had originally planned to be a sophisticated lady even in the apocalypse, so she’d hoarded a lot of skincare and makeup. As it turned out, it was all just sitting around, completely unused.
Hugh Finch took the foundation, looked it over, and then glanced up. "Do you have this in a lighter shade?"
Moira Lynch: ...
"Nope, that’s the lightest one. If it’s not enough for you, go find some white Dye-Bugs. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied with the results."
Just then, Shane Rhodes walked out holding a camera. "Hey, we’ve known each other for so long and we’ve never taken a picture together. There’s no time like the present. Let’s do it today."
The smile on Shane Rhodes’s face all but screamed, "I’m doing this on purpose."
Seeing Shane’s eager expression, Kai York and Hugh Finch shook their heads in perfect unison, took a few steps back, and prepared to flee.
Suddenly, there were a few loud CLICKS.
The group looked toward the sound and saw that Moira Lynch had just finished shutting and locking all the doors and windows, including the ones to their own rooms.
After doing all this, Moira looked at Kai and Hugh with an innocent expression. "Aren’t we taking a picture? It’s perfect, I just washed my hair this morning."
’If you’d just hide that gleam in your eye, we might actually believe you,’ Kai York and Hugh Finch thought in unison.
It seemed there was no escaping their fate today. Kai York and Hugh Finch decided to temporarily set aside their grievances and form a united front.
"Hugh, in a second, I’ll hold back the boss. You grab the keys!"
"Okay." Hugh Finch nodded with a grave expression.
"Hey! I heard that! Plotting right in front of me... are you two underestimating me that much?"
Moira Lynch huffed. How dare those two underestimate her.
Moira Lynch and Shane Rhodes versus Kai York and Hugh Finch.
The four of them launched into a wild chase scene inside the villa.
They ran, they were chased, but for them, escape was impossible.
The four of them gave a live demonstration of what it meant to scale walls and leap from rooftops.
They didn’t actually make it onto the roof, though, because the main door was locked.
But they were still effortlessly leaping several meters into the air, aided by various gadgets. All in all, the house instantly became the stage for a grand aerial trapeze act.
Outside, the patrol guards for Sector A were passing by the villa. Hearing the commotion inside, they couldn’t help but look confused.
’This villa is usually the quietest one. What’s going on today? Why is it so lively?’
However, they had all received notices from their superiors: the people living in this house were extremely important and were not to be disturbed under any circumstances.
You could say that as long as Moira Lynch and her friends didn’t commit treason, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted in Cathaya.
Because of Moira’s advice, every base had collected massive quantities of Insect-attracting Grass Seeds at top speed. After diluting them with water, they used fighter jets to spray them on a regular schedule.
So, although most of Caelus was still plagued by the insect disaster, Cathaya had already solved seventy percent of its bug problem.
The reason it was only seventy percent was because the Insect Attracting Grass was still growing.
As long as the Insect Attracting Grass existed, a steady stream of bugs would appear. And to eliminate the bugs, they needed the seeds of the grass, which meant they couldn’t harvest the plants before they matured.
To get the Insect-attracting Grass Seeds, they had to wait for the grass to mature. Mature grass attracted and bred huge numbers of bugs. And to eliminate those bugs, they needed the seeds.
It was a vicious cycle, one with no solution unless the scientists could develop an insecticide more effective than the Insect-attracting Grass Seeds.
Meanwhile, back in the room, Shane Rhodes had successfully captured Hugh Finch, while Moira Lynch had taken Kai York’s pet, Pip, as a feline hostage, forcing him to surrender.
Shane Rhodes looked at the photos on his camera with satisfaction. "Not bad, not bad. Everyone’s very photogenic."
Moira also remembered she had important business to attend to and couldn’t waste any more time here. She returned Pip to Kai York and headed for the second floor.
In an instant, the living room, which had been buzzing with activity just moments before, fell strangely quiet.
Moira returned to her room. After the recent bout of fun, she wasn’t as nervous as before.
"This is my first time participating in an auction."
Before, she’d only ever read about them in novels or seen them on video apps.
It was just that auctions in novels were completely different from auctions in real life.
In novels, you always attended the auction in person, but in reality, you didn’t have to; you could just bid by phone.
This was probably related to the law. After all, the real world was a society governed by laws; if something was stolen, you could call the police. In novels, it was the law of the jungle, where protagonists murdering people and looting their goods was commonplace, to say nothing of entrusting someone else to bid at an auction.