"..."
A few minutes later, Gao Lanlan finished setting some parameters for player management and exchanges, then saved and archived the page before closing it.
Then, seeing that the Leader was still merely resting with her eyes closed, Gao Lanlan spoke again:
"Oh, right!"
"Leader, there's something..."
"I'm not sure whether I should tell you?"
For some reason, the crisp and decisive manner she usually had when reporting work had turned into something hesitant, as though she wanted to speak but held herself back?
Clearly, she was hesitating over whether or not to say it.
"..."
-
(゜-゜)
The next second, Annie opened her eyes and gave the other girl a casual glance.
"If you've got something to say, say it. If you've got to fart, let it out."
Then, still lying there leisurely with her arms beneath her head, she withdrew her gaze and stared at the lights on the bulkhead, muttering with a hint of dissatisfaction.
"!!"
"Here's the situation!"
Having received permission, Gao Lanlan did not waste any words. She immediately took a deep breath, rapidly swiped across the holographic screen a few times, and brought up several subpages under the player status monitoring system.
One of those pages displayed a long list. The IDs that should have been green to indicate normal status had all turned warning red, while each ID was followed by a gray "Offline" note.
Clicking on them would reveal that each red ID—the IDs of those offline players—also had several lines of small text appended after it:
"Status: Captured..."
"Location: Third underground level of the mining area..."
"Warning: This player is being tortured and sacrificed. Mental protection has been activated..."
"Look!"
As she spoke, Gao Lanlan separated the names of those players into a list of their own and shared it onto