Chapter 216
Residual reinforcement points: 2
Specialization point remnant: 6-6=0
Points: 0
Overall rating: Transcendental Grade I
Player: Hiyori (Dungeons experienced: Demon Hospital, Forest Sea Labyrinth, Battle on the Raging Seas, Calamity of Blood)
Faction: None
Physical Strength: Human (Excellent) → Extraordinary
Storage space: 4 cubic meters
Ego Trait: [Reality Reading] LV.3
Chaos Item: Comfort Pills (Chaos Level), Void Puppet (Transcendental Grade Level) → Arcane Grade Level
Transcendental Grade Skill: Future Deduction (Excellent)
Residual reinforcement points: 4-4=0
Specialization point remnant: 5-5=0
Points: 0
Overall rating: Extraordinary III
Player: Moon Bow (Experienced dungeons: Gold Panning in Filth, the Bystander Is Blind, Battle on the Raging Seas, Calamity of Blood)
Faction: None
Physical Strength: Human (Limit) → Extraordinary
Storage space: 4 cubic meters
Ego Trait: True Shot, Sure Hit LV3 Equipment: Deep-Sea Longbow (Transcendental Grade, 3-time Forging)
Item: Iron Thumb Ring (Chaos Level, increases the range of projectile weapons by 50%)
Transcendental Grade Skill: Ice Enchantment (Excellent)
Residual reinforcement points: 2-2=0
Specialization point remnant: 4-4=0
Points: 0
Overall rating: Extraordinary III
Chapter Three: Outpost (5K)
"Is everything ready?"
Five people stood in front of the lonely door, each with a different expression.
Whether filled with tension, anticipation, or gloom, they had spent a full half-day in this pure white space, completely certain that they would not return to reality as before.
There's nothing more to say. Open this door and go out to see the scenery.
Yuki glanced at everyone, then stepped forward and slowly drew his sword, looking as if he were facing a formidable enemy.
Nobody knows what's outside the door; perhaps something terrifying will crawl in if you open it.
Clatter
Hayasaka Ai turned the hammer of the Death Knell, Kaguya Shinomiya nocked an arrow, Shiina Hiyori activated her puppet, ready to send it out to scout ahead after opening the door.
Yuki gripped the sword in his left hand and placed his right hand on the brass handle, feeling the cool touch of his palm. He then turned around and saw that everyone's muscles were tense before slowly turning the sword.
Click.
The door lock clicked, just like opening a door in real life. Yuki a half step back and, with the gentlest force he had ever used, slowly opened the door.
At first it was just a crack, but it silenced all breathing, and the Death Knell was pointed directly at the doorway.
A dim white light emanated from the crack, somewhat resembling the pure white space, while Yuki, behind the door, opened it and listened intently.
Silent?
Based on his guess, there should be those legendary next-stage players outside, so he turned his head with some doubt and saw Hayasaka lower his gun.
Everyone stared wide-eyed, looking bewildered and shocked, leaving Yuki completely baffled.
He opened the door faster, holding the knife, and stuck his head out from behind the door. In that one glance, Yuki was stunned.
Like seeing a leopard through a tube, or a frog at the bottom of a well, there was indeed something outside the door, but it was completely different from what I had imagined.
A red carpet, mottled walls, and you can see the wall lamp on the opposite wall, with dust floating in its light.
Am I doing something wrong?
Yuki blinked; he was indeed shocked, so shocked that all his fantasies became a joke.
If there are terrifying monsters guarding the door, or a majestic fortress or something, it can at least broaden everyone's horizons. At the very least, it would be nice to have a few obviously powerful players waiting at the door, ready to show off.
But there was nothing there. Looking out from inside the door, all that could be seen was a corridor. If we were to do a reading comprehension exercise, based solely on the visual image, Yuki could only glean a sense of the vicissitudes of time and decay.
"Everyone be careful, something's definitely wrong with this." Yuki didn't let his guard down and immediately looked at Hiyori. The girl understood and immediately sent out the Void Puppet.
The puppets were used for scouting. If there was any danger, Yuki would immediately close the door, and everyone would stand at the door and wait. After a few seconds, they all looked at Shiina Hiyori.
The girl's face flushed red instantly, and she pointed towards the door. "I sent it, but the puppet disappeared."
Disappearance? A spatial barrier?
Everyone here is a veteran player, and they immediately thought of many possibilities. So Yuki looked at Kaguya again, and the latter immediately released the bowstring.
Call out.
The arrow grazed past Yuki's ear, and the whistling sound seemed to be deliberately cut off, disappearing without a trace, leaving the people staring outside the door momentarily bewildered.
The arrow didn't stick to the opposite wall; it simply vanished.
"What a strange place. Neither the Void Puppet nor the arrows are effective?" Yuki simply stood in front of the door, but even then, he couldn't see the illusion in the corridor outside.
"How about I give it a try?" Mai Sakurajima volunteered.
"Don't always think of yourself as a human detective." Yuki refused without hesitation, called Hiyori over, and the two continued circling the door.
It was indeed strange, because he didn't arrive in the normal way, and the game didn't give him any hints. He wouldn't risk testing it out; what if he had guessed wrong all along?
After observing for a few minutes, Yuki suddenly had a bright idea. He took off his shoes and threw them out the door.
Clatter
The leather shoes landed steadily on the corridor floor. Yuki quickly changed his angle to observe the situation several times before finally letting out a sigh of relief.
"I understand. Chaos Item can't be used outside the door, just like in reality."
This explanation made sense. Then, he gathered his soul energy into an arrow and shot it out the door, but in an instant, the crimson arrow vanished without a trace.
"I saw it. The energy annihilated the instant it passed through the door." Hiyori's eyes gleamed, having already activated her special ability. "It seems that apart from Chaos Item, even Transcendental Grade skills can't be used?"
"That should be it. Hold my hand, I'll go out and take a look." Yuki suddenly felt more confident and leaned half of his body out.
There was nothing strange about it; it was just like walking through a large door, stepping onto a red carpet with my left foot, and my mind racing.
There are corridors on both sides, and several doors of the same design opposite. However, there is a gap not far away, which, judging from the trace evidence, must have been blasted out by something.
Without any effort from Hiyori, Yuki stepped back into the doorway with his left foot, without any hindrance.
"No problem, it's just a dilapidated corridor outside, there's no one there." Yuki relaxed, but his mind was full of questions.
This shouldn't be happening. Didn't Ayanokoji Kiyotaka say that some players had already arrived? Could it be that I came to a different place?
"Is there any danger?" Kaguya asked cautiously, still somewhat uneasy.
"We can't use Chaos Item or Transcendental Grade Skills. As long as they're not targeted at us, any danger can be controlled." Yuki, with a look of 'you're teachable,' waved his hand. "Everyone, get out of here. We'll do a few tests in the corridor first, and then slowly explore further out."
Two hours later.
Yuki sat on the edge of the dilapidated eaves, staring blankly at the street scene before him.
The world was a grayish-white color, with wide streets and densely packed high-rise buildings stretching to the horizon. Apart from being too monotonous, it also contained a lot of ruins, just like a real city.
No, there are still some differences. In reality, no city exists only in shades of gray and white, nor is any city this vast. Here, there are skyscrapers over thirty stories high, densely packed together, like a steel forest.
The pure white room from before is in this building. Don't worry about getting lost; you can automatically return to it with just a thought.
"Once bound to a private room, each 'room' has an infinitely large area. Wouldn't this 'forest' be able to accommodate hundreds of millions of players?"
Yuki slowly raised his head and realized that he had made an impossible assumption; at least in his field of vision, there was not a single person, no, not a single living creature.
Monotonous and lifeless, a slight twitch of the nose reveals the dust in the air, which, after years of sedimentation, has become the thick layer of snow.
The 'snow' kept falling, and Yuki had been sitting there for over an hour, his shoulders already covered in a thick layer of snow.
It smells like the ashes of something.
Without the proper tools, Yuki couldn't reconstruct the ashes, so he shook them off and gazed once more at the desolate city.
At first glance, it looks quite magnificent, after all, hundreds of high-rise buildings are densely packed together, creating a strong visual impact. However, the large amount of rubble has ruined this spectacle.
Some high-rise buildings were cut in half, some were crushed into rubble, some had a hole tens of meters in diameter blasted into the middle, and some were simply twisted into pretzel shapes.
The wide roads were riddled with craters, looking like the surface of the moon from above. Further away, the Yuki was no longer visible because the ruins were even more dense, and many buildings were reduced to mere foundations.
A vast cemetery, where every building is a tombstone, and no one has come to pay their respects for a long time.
"This is the Outpost? This is the next stage Adam has been dreaming of? Isn't it just a giant the Jail?"
Yuki suddenly felt a pang of irony, gazing at the gray sky. There was no sun, no clouds, only swirling eddies.
Like stars surrounding the moon, the central cluster was enormous, radiating a dazzling purplish-red light, and slowly rotating. The surrounding vortexes, on the other hand, seemed to have been paused, and were all grayish-white in color.
Yuki looked around and saw that there was only one thing that still had some color, and it was rotating at a slower frequency.
What is that thing?
Yuki had been filled with confusion ever since arriving at this Outpost. Standing on the rooftop, gazing out for a long time, he could only discern roughly two features:
First, this place was once quite prosperous; otherwise, there would have been no need to build such a large-scale project.
Secondly, battles have taken place here, and many buildings have been riddled with holes or cut in half.
Yuki picked up a piece of gravel and placed it in his palm. He used all his Transcendental Grade strength to crush it.
The building materials, far exceeding human technology, could cause this kind of destruction, which is beyond my reach. Could it be that this place was once quite prosperous, and then declined due to a battle?
That doesn't make sense. What kind of battle would wipe everyone out completely, leaving not a single hair behind?
Let alone people, the senior students have searched for so long and haven't found even a trace of life. This can't be explained by a battle or massacre.
As if tangled in a mess, Yuki couldn't find his way, and his thoughts were all jumbled up. Aside from confusion, all that remained was frustration, and a kind of inexplicable anger was stuck in his heart, unable to be vented.
Just as she was getting annoyed, Hayasaka Ai crawled out of the hole and leaped onto the roof in a few quick movements.
"I walked east for two hours and finally found the city's boundary."
"What does it look like?"
"A completely white space, somewhat like where we just arrived, but we still don't see a single person," Hayasaka said slowly. At her speed, this was already several times the size of Tokyo.
"Yes, I see." Yuki slightly, suppressing his agitation, and reassured himself, "At least it's safe enough here; we don't need to worry about survival."
They had already tested it in the corridor.
Items, skills, and traits are all unusable; all that's left is physical attributes. However, players cannot attack each other, let alone trigger random dungeons.
"This doesn't make sense. Wu Raian's existence proves there are other players. Could it be a 'faction' issue? Are they not here?" Yuki scratched his head. He had imagined many scenarios, but none of them involved going to jail.
"Don't worry, there might be results from Hiyori- kun's side."
Hayasaka leads outwards, Hiyori leads downwards. Each floor has more than a dozen rooms, but the doors are all tightly closed and cannot be opened, suggesting that, like the pure white space they came from, it is a player's exclusive domain.
Everything was monotonous, right up to the very bottom of the building.
That was the foyer, with an even larger black door standing in the middle. Hiyori didn't dare touch it and ran to other buildings to find similar landmarks.