Eerie Counting

Meme—the term originally came from The Selfish Gene, written by the famous British scientist Richard Dawkins.

It referred to things that played a role in the transmission of language, ideas, beliefs, behavioral patterns, and so on, similar to the role genes played in biological evolution. Or rather, it could be seen as a basic unit of information that, like genes, possessed heredity, variation, and selectivity.

In real life, memes were actually quite common. Things like Chicken You Too, Wo↗ Wo↗ Tou↗, Pan-Ga Friendship... these widely spread pieces of information could all be categorized as memes.

But in reality, those memes were not particularly harmful.

The memes Players truly referred to in the broader sense were transmissions of information with anomalous properties. With modern networks providing such highly developed means of information transmission, a single meme destroying an entire world was no problem at all.

And this meme Bai Zhi had personally named [Footsteps] was even more relentless toward those it infected. As long as there had been physical contact, one would be infected by it. If an infected person returned to the Real World, they could easily destroy several cities.

"Meme... so the main thing is the footsteps?"

After hearing Bai Zhi's explanation, the Player fell silent for quite a while.

"That's right."

Standing some distance away with her arms folded, SpiritMist answered in Bai Zhi's stead, her tone calm.

"Those footsteps will keep chasing you until you are completely reduced to ash. And as long as you have any physical contact with someone else, they will also become entangled by the footsteps. Meme transmission has never made any sense."

"...I understand."

With a quiet sigh, the Player turned around and supported himself against the wall as he staggered into the darkness.

"Ever since I became a Player, I knew