Hunting the Consciousness Thief

"We did it! We finally did it!"

More than a thousand players had gathered atop a high mountain. As they looked down at the bottomless black hole below, relief showed on every face.

"Hey, I got the system's 10,000 Old World Coins reward. Did you guys get yours?"

"Got it, got it! I finally have enough to buy a wilderness motorcycle!"

"I got mine too, haha!"

"Man, we finally finished the main quest. What a lousy quest—such a weird hodgepodge! The game is clearly set in the apocalypse, so why did it have us install something so sci-fi?"

"It's a piece of junk. What even is this thing?"

"Didn't you read the quest description? It's a device for suppressing psionic energy. The game's setting is that the Holy Fusion Empire has psychics, but our player faction doesn't, so we're using this thing to suppress psionic energy across the whole world!"

"It's not just us. This is a main quest for the whole server. I checked the private forums of overseas guild alliances, and they'd gathered stats. More than three hundred teams are doing this quest, just in different locations!"

"And our quest is one of the easier ones. A lot of teams have to install reality anchors within the Holy Fusion Empire's territory. Each team there has tens of thousands of people, and they're fighting the Empire every day!"

"Is it really that intense?"

"Good grief, that's unbelievable!"

"Quick, look! It's lighting up inside the pit!"

"Did the device start up?"

"Get out of there..."

At dusk, Chen Chen stood in midair over the boundless Pacific, arms folded.

The setting sun was as red as blood, dyeing the endless sea crimson. Dozens of miles away, an island shrouded in mist was barely visible, its surface dotted with the remains