Shirou, brimming with malice, calculated how many coins Shinji would need before he could break into the third floor.
"Shinji's second attempt at clearing it—ready, go!"
With cola and sunflower seeds in hand, Shirou watched Shinji's impressive performance.
He would get spotted before entering the second-floor maze, then sprint frantically to the second floor, only to be chased down by the hostile programs the moment he entered. Forced to GG and restart the game—or he would get halfway through and discover that the hostile programs had surrounded him.
Shirou laughed until his stomach hurt.
"Shirou, just you wait." Shinji glared angrily at Shirou, who looked like he wanted to laugh but was trying hard to hold it in. "These enemies have some skill, okay? There's nothing shameful about getting spotted! Why don't you try it?"
"It's not like I haven't tried. Back then, I perfectly infiltrated the maze with Hakuno, okay?"
"You call that infiltration? That was obviously a one-man rampage."
"Aren't infiltration and a one-man rampage synonyms?" Shirou replied righteously.
"Fine, Shirou. You're ruthless."
Shinji shed tears of humiliation. What else could he do when he was so bad at it? The digital world did not believe in tears.
The nth-plus-one attempt to infiltrate the maze began.
If this had been back on Earth, playing Mario, Shinji would have spent several hundred coins by now.
"Shinji, do you want to know an easy way to infiltrate past these hostile programs?" Shirou truly could not stand Shinji's ridiculous appearance anymore and decided to reveal a bit of information.
"W-what?"
"Well, the hostile programs' detection range is only twenty meters. You just need to go around them. Their movement pattern is a counterclockwise square, with sides ten meters long."
Shinji's face turned green.
"Shirou, you set me up!"
Shirou finally could