She said she was waiting to die, but after lying on the ground for a while, with truly nothing else to do, Ivette obediently climbed back up and began exploring the other floors, hoping to dig up something like canned food with a long enough shelf life to keep herself alive a little longer.
During the process, using the various written records left behind on each floor and combining them with what she had learned in her dreams, she figured out the function of every level.
First were Basement Levels Ten and Nine.
In the dream, the project responsible for treating the genetic diseases of orphanage children like Ivette was called the "Metamorphosis Project," while the medicine they took was provisionally named "Metamorphosis Potion Type II."
Basement Levels Ten and Nine were respectively the experimental floor for the Metamorphosis Project and the living quarters for related personnel.
Next were Basement Levels Eight and Seven, known as the "Active Rune Laboratory."
Ivette's understanding of the so-called Active Rune Group was limited to AI's descriptions.
According to the information it provided, the Active Rune Group was not only Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' core business, but also the fundamental reason it had become one of the eight super-corporations.
As long as users injected Rune Elixir into their bodies, they could become powerful spellcasters in just a few minutes. Their magic power would soar, and they could instantly cast the spells preloaded into the Rune Elixir—a proper shortcut to becoming superhuman.
Even when introducing the Meditation Method to Ivette, AI had used the Active Rune Group as a comparison—the level that took over seven years to reach through the Meditation Method could be achieved by the lowest-grade Active Rune Group in just 4.6 minutes. The gap was absurdly huge.
However...
After so many years, even if there were still traces of Active Rune Group agents left in the laboratories on Basement Levels Seven and Eight, they had surely long passed their expiration dates.
So although it sounded tempting, apart from a small amount of readable paper documentation, it provided Ivette with no tangible gains.
Then came Basement Levels Six, Five, and Four.
Basement Level Six was another living area like Basement Level Nine. There was nothing special about it, and the warehouse that had stored daily supplies was completely empty, leaving Ivette disappointed.
Basement Levels Five and Four were Rune Elixir laboratories.
This kind of medicine was similar to the genetic enhancement serums in science fiction novels. Its effects included, but were not limited to, Eternal Youth, increased strength, optimized metabolism, hair regrowth for baldness... It was Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' second most important business.
As for the medicine produced by the Metamorphosis Project, it was neither an Active Rune Group nor Rune Elixir. It belonged to the "potion" category, which was precisely the category that counted as medicine in the traditional sense.
She continued upward.
Basement Level Three was the experimental animal breeding floor;
Basement Level Two was the living quarters for ordinary staff;
Basement Level One was the inspection floor, where the qualifications of those entering and leaving were verified.
So after spending nearly ten hours painstakingly inspecting every floor, Ivette had no choice but to face the fact that she had gained absolutely nothing. All she had picked up was some scrap metal that had once been high-end magical equipment.
Of course, she had also tried prying open the metal grating over the ventilation ducts to see whether she could crawl out. But the grating had been welded shut too firmly. With the strength of a five- or six-year-old girl, she could not possibly budge it and could only give up.
In the end, exhausted, Ivette lay amid the Magic Light Vine covering the floor. Feeling the hunger in her stomach, she let out a long, despairing sigh.
In her dreams, she had already made a great many efforts. Besides actively learning about this other world's language and information, she had also told AI about her situation and asked it to come up with solutions for her.
But inadequate conditions were still inadequate conditions.
Inside this enormous metal cage, aside from the Magic Light Vine that fed on magical elements, no second kind of living creature could survive. The only way out was to fish at the Water Platform, but there were Fish Monsters in the lake...
Every path was a dead end.
Thinking of this, Ivette despondently closed her eyes and decided to sleep first.
This time, she was truly prepared to die.
She had no idea how long she slept.
After waking, Ivette looked at the luminous ceiling formed by Magic Light Vine and silently calculated how much time had passed since she had transmigrated.
Six months of real dreams had not starved her to death, and her hair had not grown longer, which meant very little time had passed in reality.
But even excluding that period, more than twenty-four hours had surely passed since she transmigrated.
Yet after such a long time, she did not feel weak or drained at all. She was still full of vitality and energy, at most a little hungry...
Was this the resilience of a young body? Such strong recovery—wouldn't it be unbeatable for gig delivery work?
She muttered inwardly, then got to her feet. Driven by her survival instinct, she began a second investigation of the Ruined Base.
The result did not change. It was still a dead end.
But something was different: Ivette sensed something unusual about herself.
By then, at least thirty-six hours should have passed since she transmigrated.
Under normal circumstances, as a child still growing, after going without food for thirty-six hours, she might have felt dizzy and shaky from low blood sugar, parched from dehydration, sleepy, sluggish, or lacking in energy. At the very least, she should have been ravenous, so hungry her stomach was sticking to her back.
But her current condition was that she was still in good spirits, her strength had recovered fully, and her hunger was only the ordinary kind of "a little hungry."
Why was that?
Was the original owner some ultimate hunger-resistant monster?
After noticing this abnormality, a faint spark suddenly ignited deep within Ivette's numb heart. But she did not immediately pop champagne in celebration. Instead, she waited anxiously, constantly sensing the changes in her body.
During that torment, an unknown amount of time passed—perhaps twenty or thirty hours, perhaps several days.
But unbelievably, Ivette discovered that her bodily functions were still completely normal!
Her energy was normal. She was not dizzy, not dehydrated, and aside from a slight sense of hunger, she was otherwise—
Full of life!
At last, she could be ninety-nine percent certain: the original owner really was not ordinary. The reason she had awakened from the bed in the form of a child three hundred years after everyone else had turned to dry bones was not because of Ivette's transmigration, but because she had always been different!
"This is even more outrageous than I expected..." Ivette muttered. In her estimation, the original owner's most likely identity had been that of a cryosleeper, someone who had used some equipment here to survive the apocalypse, then awakened not long before Ivette took over her body.
But now, it seemed the original owner might indeed have been in hibernation, yet she had not needed any external equipment at all. She had endured three hundred years with her body alone and lasted until after the apocalypse...
Who exactly was she?