Chapter 354

Everything was under control, and he didn't have any extraneous thoughts. Only a moment later did he slap his forehead in frustration.

"Tsk, I forgot to leave him a complete corpse."

Chapter 5 Future Diary (4K)

The head rolled, creating ripples.

In half an hour, all 78 players were wiped out, and a thriving organization was uprooted.

There were no fated rivals, no possibility of luck, and the whole process was devoid of any romantic notion of Destiny, filled only with the coldest rationality:

Identify the problem, find the problem, and solve the problem.

It's just these three steps, and the outcome was already predetermined. It's not even an experiment, a self-test.

"First, ordinary level 5 items don't pose much of a threat. As for Transcendental Grade skills below the master level, it depends on the type. Skills of the same level can be different in terms of threat. For example, armor-piercing projectiles are much weaker than space-based, time-based, or causal-based skills."

"Secondly, players below the monster level are almost helpless against me. For those above, it depends on whether their skills complement each other and whether they cooperate well. Hmm, we can be a little more lenient with Thorny Rose, Witch God's Soul Crystal can't suppress its characteristics."

"Third, because of their versatility, players rarely concentrate their points on a single skill. Hayasaka and her group, on the other hand, are specialists. If they coordinate well, they pose a greater threat."

Yuki made a few brief summaries. Overall, the 'Daytime' event went quite well. To be on the safe side, he opened the Night Furnace for the remaining players, which was a gracious decision.

He felt no regret whatsoever. Just as he had thought before, he believed that outwitting ambitious people and winning their hearts was too troublesome. What level was Shinomiya Oko Hiromitsu? Did he even deserve to outwit him?

For him, the experiment went fairly well.

It's confirmed that the Witch God's Soul Crystal, like the Doomsday Golden Pen, cannot be placed into a domain; this likely originates from the Lost Ones.

It's confirmed: Soul Infection and the Night Furnace are a perfect match.

The former is nothing strange, but the latter is quite interesting.

"Contaminizing living people is ten times more difficult than contaminizing corpses, and this contamination requires long-term parasitism. In other words, on a battlefield that has just ended, I can't control zombies like a necromancer."

Soul Corruption is not the resurrection of the dead at all; it is more like an invisible bacterium that slowly erodes 'living beings.' This bacterium originates from the splitting of one's own soul.

"Summoning skills are more like cultivating zombies, stored in a specific container and then taken out for use in battle. Nothing is more suitable than the Night Furnace."

Yuki gazed at the mountain of corpses before him. There were only a few hundred real corpses in it; the rest looked more like a maze used for special effects.

"It's a kind of waste utilization, better than having it sitting here smelly, but the limitations of LV1 Soul Infection are quite significant."

With a rumbling footstep, the headless Asura Witch Spirit brought back the two corpses. After activating its domain, the Modifier and the Crimson Bull had no chance of survival; the Witch Spirit's corpse tore them apart.

"First, the infected corpses cannot be too badly damaged, at least not when they died."

Yuki circled around the Witch Spirit, noticing that its charred wounds were beginning to heal, but its severed head wouldn't grow back.

"Secondly, only a portion of their strength will be retained, at least two to three levels lower, but they will also retain some of their characteristics from their previous life."

The Asura Witch Spirit is now at Monster I level, which is indeed two levels lower, and it is extremely ferocious, wildly hacking and slashing with its axe.

"Third, the stronger the infected corpse, the more fragmented souls it will generate. For example, the cost-effectiveness of Asura Witch Spirit is very low. Fortunately, Soul Crystal can be used as a substitute."

Yuki's current energy source is the Demon Heart, but even at its fullest, it can't withstand several uses.

Demon Possession is needed, and Soul Infection is also needed; the total amount is limited. Yuki doesn't want to become a half-baked summoner because the contents of the Night Furnace can't be taken out, and it also has drawbacks such as a small stripping range of 20 meters and a short duration of one hour.

Fortunately, after the previous experiment, Yuki discovered that Soul Crystal could be used.

For example, the Asura Witch Spirit has Asura Soul Crystal installed on her chest, so she doesn't need to split her soul herself. But the problem is that there are too few Soul Crystal, and she has to leave them for her seniors to use as mana potions.

Therefore, Yuki only conducted a small-scale experiment, and the split soul only infected a few noble tower explorers. Considering the losses, it would have been better to just take up arms and kill people himself.

"The future looks promising. Anyway, once the Demon Heart reaches its full potential, it can't be upgraded any further. Using the extra soul energy to create puppets wouldn't be bad." Yuki looked at the silver-haired girl not far away, remembering that she was the daughter of a certain duke on the Red Earth Continent.

Dull-witted, listless, with his right hand blown off by a hunting rifle and a bloody hole in his chest, he might be barely acceptable to someone starving.

"Let's leave it at that for now and conduct experiments on living people in real life next time."

With a wave of his hand, all the corpses instantly collapsed. The Night Furnace could still be used; it would come in handy sooner or later.

With one major issue resolved, Yuki began cleaning up the battlefield. Due to the existence of storage spaces, no players would wear their items, and with the added effect of deliberate destruction, the harvest wasn't as large as expected.

Fortunately, there were enough players, and before long, Yuki found a bunch of items in the Night Furnace and the Space Ruins.

There are more than twenty items in total, mostly at level 4 or 5, and their designs are incredibly diverse, including seals, weapons, and various clothes and armor.

"We definitely need to get an appraisal item; touching each one individually is exhausting. And why aren't these players getting any materials?"

Tiger Vanguard has already dropped demon cores, which can be used as materials to craft Chaos Item. Even if there's a probability involved, with so many players, surely they shouldn't be unable to get a single one.

Is it because human players can't get it? Or is it a unique characteristic of the Thorny Rose?

Yuki didn't know, so he simply explored them one by one, judging their value based on the clues. Some items cost more to repair than to sell, so he was too lazy to pick them up. But with so many Chaos Item piled up together, he was quite amazed.

Because of the nature of skirmishes, there are relatively few support items; most are combat equipment. And like the Phantom Twin Blades, most of these items are unremarkable and not worth investing a lot of points in.

"This Gravity Scepter is useful and doesn't have any special requirements; these other pieces of equipment have few side effects and are not picky about users, so I can give them to the senior students. Oh, and there's even a pretty good staff. Frieren has really struck gold."

Murder and Yuki seems to be buying a lot of items, sorting through the huge pile of props, putting the useful ones aside and preparing to pack up the useless ones for sale.

There are no Chaos Grade- level (Level 6) items. I guess I can just forget about it; items of this level have usage requirements, you can't just grab them and use them.

Yuki thumped his lower back and put the items back into his storage space. Just then, because all the players died, the space returned to its original state.

The annoying rubble disappeared, and the area shrank considerably. Some of the shards that had been buried in the ruins were revealed. He picked up a few more pieces, but paused as he walked toward the last one.

On the pure white floor was a prop that looked like a book. As far as I could remember, no player had ever used it. It just sat there all alone, with its pages open.

"Strange, why didn't I put it in the storage space?"

Yuki frowned. In fact, each player has a few Chaos Item, but those unrelated to combat are stored in their inventory and won't drop unless the Reincarnation Game intervenes.

He walked over, looked down, and was slightly stunned.

This isn't a book; it's more like a diary with a single sentence written on it.

[September 8th, Sunny]

[I, Shinomiya Oko, spoke a great deal to the Agent today. These explanations were logically perfect and unquestionable. The Agent pondered for a long time and chose to believe me, which is why I survived today.]

I knew today was strange.

Yuki never changes his mind. It was strange before that he was listening to Shinomiya Oko's verbal sparring today. Logically speaking, he should have already drawn his sword before Shinomiya could even begin to reason with him.

My heart is racing. This is definitely the most precious item in Zhou's possession. Perhaps it only works when placed in reality, which is why it wasn't put into his storage space?

Regardless of the reason, Yuki immediately placed his hand on it.

[Chaos Item: Future Diary (Locked)]

[The past records future events, and the future describes the past.]

The more specific the content, the more realistic and logical it is; the further back in time it is, the more directly it relates to the user, and the more likely it is to be realized. It is also influenced by factors such as the writer's ability and the writing tools used.

[Side effect: Specialization points are allocated based on the length of the content. If the desired effect is not achieved, the diary entry will be locked. The lock duration is determined by the error value.]

[Description: The future is the past, and the past is the future; only the strong have the right to control time.]

Good news! This is an extremely powerful script-based prop that incorporates elements of cause and effect, time, and more. Yuki can hardly imagine how this thing ended up in 'Day's' hands.

Based on experience, this type of item, which cannot be upgraded due to its lack of level, belongs to the same category as the Olden Golden Pen and the Witch God's Soul Crystal.

Wait, are the Olden Golden Pen and the Future Diary a matching set?

Yuki pulled out a gold pen he had never used before, looked it over, and then closed his eyes in anguish.

Bad news: this diary has a side effect. Because Shinomiya Oko lost the golden pen, the gap between his strength and that of his opponent is too great. Even though he used all his specialization points, he didn't complete a single task he was supposed to record.

Yuki neither believed him nor let him live to see today, so the diary was locked, and the margin of error must be quite large.

"But I can't just follow his script, can I? If this thing exists, I'd definitely kill him."

If there is a script in this world, the person who writes it must be themselves; everyone else must die.

Yuki felt regretful but not remorseful, and carefully studied the Future Diary.

Flipping through the pages, there seemed to be an endless supply of paper, unlike the Soil-Offering Contract which had a record limit; flipping further back, Yuki found dozens of diary entries, confirming that this item had been obtained by Shinomiya Oko before his ascension.

I should have spared his life and asked him where he got it from.

Yuki cursed silently. Seeing that these diaries were very short and the dates were uncertain, he guessed it was related to the side effects, which had consumed a considerable amount of specialization points.

He wasn't interested in the script written by Shinomiya Oko, which mostly described how he used the Future Diary to conquer enemies, such as writing about how Mr. Robert was accidentally killed by him in an epic mission, and how his subordinates didn't blame him.

"Is it about actively realizing the script's content? Then the role of the diary is to create coincidences subtly. If he wrote that Mr. Robert committed suicide on the spot and then entrusted his children to others on his deathbed, it would definitely be difficult to realize."

Yuki gradually understood how to use the diary, and continued flipping back to find content related to himself.

[On July 15th, I had Xin Zhen activate the Causal Prophecy to search for clues about that young man. The result isn't actually important; getting some keywords will suffice.]

[On July 25th, that young man was actually connected to 'Taiyi' and entered the instance. Cause and effect have already located his four possible instances. I sent Adam out to choose one of the four. They will most likely be able to enter the real instance.]

Yuki thought about it and realized that this was probably the timeline of the 'Calamity of Blood'. No wonder he encountered Adam; it turned out that someone was writing the script behind the scenes. With four choices, the probability was already quite high.

After sorting out the logic of many things that were hard to understand, Yuki realized that if he looked back any further, it wouldn't be relevant to him anymore. After all, this wasn't a real diary, Shinomiya Oko wouldn't have written down where he got it from. Judging from the time alone, it was probably about two years ago.

Two years ago? When the Reincarnation Game on Earth had just begun.

He had previously estimated the timeline of player appearances, so Shinomiya Oko belonged to the first batch of players? What kind of protagonist halo is this, getting a divine artifact just from a beginner's quest?

Isn't the Shinomiya Clan just a bankrupt conglomerate? What makes him so special?

Yuki became increasingly puzzled as he read on, so he simply closed the entire diary, intending to start from the first page to see what the previous users had written, but he froze when he saw the brown cover.

Why does it look so familiar?

The Future Diary had no fancy decorations; it was no different from those hardcover diaries in stationery stores. He instinctively swallowed, turned to the first page, and was slightly stunned.

Black.

The entire sheet of paper was covered in black ink, not even a single punctuation mark was visible; it was clearly deliberately erased.

Page two, page three, page four—all black pages. Yuki flipped through them faster and faster, until finally, a little impatient, he picked up the diary and smeared it. With a rustling sound, he finally saw a patch of pure white amidst the black pages.

It was sandwiched in the middle, very obvious. Yuki was overjoyed, but when he opened it, he was stunned.

His pupils constricted, his breathing became rapid, and sweat began to bead on his forehead.

Stunned, bewildered, fearful, shaken, incredulous—he had never displayed such a complex range of expressions, even when facing the Witch God directly.

Yuki stood there like a statue; were it not for his trembling cheeks and twitching eyebrows, he would have looked as if he had died on the spot. It was unclear how much time had passed before his arms fell to his sides.

"How could this be? How is this possible? This doesn't make sense. No, no, no, I can't keep thinking about this, or I'll end up like someone caught up in the Bystander Is Blind, being seduced by an evil god."

He muttered to himself rather nervously, and on the open sheet of paper, there was a line of large, blood-red characters written in simplified Chinese:

[Survive!!!]

Click.

The door opened, and Mai Sakurajima was kneeling in front of the table watching TV, turned her head.

"Why are you so late? I've reheated the food several times already," she called out casually, with a hint of complaint. "Come watch some TV, I just saw Waka. The little girl really forgot about me."

Players cannot interfere with reality, yet they can overlook their hometown—it's a very strange feeling.

"Ah, there was a slight mishap, but it's resolved. I need to think about something; I'm not hungry yet."

Yuki forced a smile, pushed open the door and went inside, leaving only Mai Sakurajima looking completely bewildered and Hayasaka Ai peeking out of her room.

Hungry? Who among them eats because they're hungry these days?

The two exchanged a glance, finding it strange. What was even stranger was that Yuki's mood seemed off; they had never seen him so down before.

"Just because he killed Shinomiya Oko?"

"Impossible. If Miss can accept it, Yuki won't even cause a ripple."

"That's strange. Murder is something that's commonplace for him, so what could be wrong?" Mai Sakurajima tilted her head, unable to figure it out. "I'll go ask him later; it's not good to keep it to myself."

"Should I bring him a cup of coffee now?" Hayasaka suggested, her mind racing.

"Don't disturb him yet. We can't help with problems that stump him. We need to give him some time to process things, and besides—" Mai Sakurajima calmly, her tone leaving no room for negotiation:

"This time, I have to do it."

Chapter Six: Senior's Comfort (6K)

The familiar ceiling—I'm not dreaming.