After being dragged along with Edge, Da Dong, and Ashu, and forced to run to the stage of a huge ballroom hung with red curtains, Annie quickly spotted a large crowd of strange dancers. They were following a classical tune as they floated and danced gracefully across a dance floor that looked like a cliffside void.
Obviously, just like the evil spirits, transformed zombies, and super-healing "long-haired beauties" she'd run into outside, these dancers were all zombies. They wore formal attire, but their bodies were completely decayed and rotting, covered in sores and maggots, and giving off waves of nauseating stench!
For the first time, Annie felt a little disgusted by how realistic this backward VR game was. Of course, perhaps she shouldn't have used gaming equipment with all-around touch and smell sensors and feedback that was many times more advanced than the "X1 tactile suit"?
"Is this the place?"
(￢д￢.)
"But where's the key? Where is it? Don't tell me we have to kill those zombies again and wait for it to drop?!"
?(Д≡д)!
Annie glanced at the strange dance floor, all green and glowing with eerie green smoke, where the zombies danced suspended in midair. Then she asked the nonconformist-haired Artemis, who had arrived earlier, in puzzlement.
"We don't know about the key yet, but we've found the key person!"
"It's her!"
"See? The only normal 'woman' among all those zombies—Kira!"
"If I'm not mistaken, this is the zombie circle from Haunted Mansion, one of the earliest games Halliday developed! 'The Shining' is only a small part of this place, so don't let it fool you!"
"So I can say with near certainty that the key to solving the second clue is on the only woman who looks normal!"
Artemis watched the zombies swoop and dance across the