Preparation: Vortex, Attraction, Readiness

"Snail Statue?" Xia Lun asked.

At Xia Lun's question, the information broker White Line nodded. He slapped one of the packages onto the table. "Yes. What I'm selling is called a Snail Statue. It might be a little disgusting, so I suggest you brace yourself."

As he spoke, he hooked a finger under the string binding the package. With a deft flick of his index finger, he undid it like the wrapping around a rice dumpling.

Xia Lun leaned forward to look inside. Before he could make out what was there, a wave of indescribable stench rushed into his nose.

The smell was so awful that it felt as though someone had punched him in the face. His nose stung and swelled.

He forced down his discomfort and took a quick glance inside.

Within the brown cardstock wrapping lay a mass of flesh-colored soft tissue, topped by a pale spiral shell.

"Is it a mutated snail?" Xia Lun looked up at White Line and asked quietly.

White Line chuckled and shook his head. "Of course it isn't a snail. Look closer."

Xia Lun narrowed his eyes and studied it. A moment later, he frowned.

The soft tissue was not a single mass at all. It was one thin strand, twisted and coiled into a heap—and its texture looked disturbingly like human skin.

The next moment, streams of Cobalt Blue information emerged from the strange object.

[Item name: Snail Statue]

[Item type: Paradox Item]

[Item description: In one world's legends of the apocalypse, everything would collapse back into a single point. Spirals and rings were therefore seen as omens of misfortune. But when the end truly drew near, those who had cut themselves off from every spiral pattern discovered, to their horror, that snail-like spirals had appeared on their backs.

In the end, the spirals stretched their flesh into strips and twisted them around until their remains resembled snails. Perhaps, by refusing to face the final spiral, they had taken on the very nature of a snail that hid from danger.]

[Item effect: By burning a "Snail Statue," you can designate a category of objects with a specific purpose and greatly increase your Attraction to them, making you more likely to enter a Scenario where such objects appear. The more Snail Statues you burn, the stronger the Attraction, up to a maximum of four.]

"Worked out what it is?" White Line asked from across the table, amusement in his voice.

Without looking up, Xia Lun said, "It used to be a human corpse."

"No wonder you have Mastery-level marksmanship. Your perception is sharp." White Line picked up his coffee. He did not seem surprised that Xia Lun had figured it out. After a small sip, he said, "You started playing the game to cure your Lung Disease, right?"

Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Well, here's your chance. Just set these Snail Statues alight and recite your wish to cure your Lung Disease three times in a row as they burn. Then, in the next Scenario, you'll have a chance of finding something that can cure it.

"You can only use these after becoming a Player. In other words, you must have cleared at least one Scenario. That's why I didn't bring the Snail Statues last time."

Xia Lun nodded to show he understood. "Are there any restrictions or rules for the 'wish'?"

"Of course." White Line gave a soft laugh. "First, the wish has to be reasonable. At the very least, it can't contain a formal logical contradiction. If you wish for something strange like 'fresh blood from the dead,' 'an earthworm's eyeball,' or 'black white snow,' that wish will be hard to fulfill.

"Second, the easier a wish is to fulfill, the more likely a relevant item is to appear in the next Scenario. Obviously, a wish to 'eat a full meal' is much easier to fulfill than one to 'live forever.'"

"So the wording matters?" Xia Lun asked.

"Yes," White Line said simply. "There are many paths to the same goal. Choosing the right one gives your wish the best chance of succeeding. For example, 'I want to eat my fill' is more likely to succeed than 'I want to eat my fill of bread.'

"Likewise, 'slow the progression of my Lung Disease' has a better chance than 'cure my Lung Disease.'

"One last rule: the more Snail Statues you burn, the greater your chance of success. Burn four, and you're guaranteed to find a way to cure your Lung Disease in the next Scenario. But the more you burn, the harder the Scenario becomes. You'll have to weigh that trade-off yourself."

Xia Lun tapped the table lightly with his knuckles. "How much?"

The information broker did not answer at once. He lifted the coffee he had stolen, took a sip as though savoring fine tea, then leisurely named a price just within Xia Lun's limit.

It was steep. If Xia Lun paid it, he would not be able to throw money at Game Items for a while.

"I can't put together that much cash on short notice." Xia Lun shook his head and tried to bargain. "Would you accept assets as collateral?"

"No." White Line refused flatly. "Your remaining assets are either performing badly or entangled with too many people and complications. I won't take them. Same rules as always: cash."

Xia Lun fell silent and ran through the numbers. A moment later, he made his decision.

He looked up into the eyes behind White Line's black mask. "Do you need Manifestation Authority for the Evil Flesh Codex?"

"Of course. And since we've known each other for years, I can give you a little discount." The hard edge in White Line's voice softened. Then he froze mid-sentence. "Wait. What did you just say?!"

"Do you need Manifestation Authority for the Evil Flesh Codex?" Xia Lun repeated without expression.

"What?!" White Line was so stunned that words failed him. A brief burst of static even crackled through his synthesized voice.

He had been about to lecture Xia Lun, as a veteran, about not setting his sights too high and chasing advanced items like the Evil Flesh Codex. Then he remembered Xia Lun's absurd Mastery-level marksmanship and wisely kept his mouth shut.

The hand holding White Line's coffee cup trembled. He took a deep breath and barely steadied himself.

Maybe Xia Lun doesn't mean the Evil Flesh Codex that grants a Secret Art Specialty and Secret Art skills. Maybe he means something else?

"Before you can trade Manifestation Authority, you need to upgrade your Information Panel." He chose his words carefully, then drank some coffee to steady himself. "And the Memory Points needed for that upgrade aren't a small amount..."

"I've already upgraded it." As Xia Lun spoke, he raised a hand. Lines of Cobalt Blue information appeared above it.

[Memory Manifestation Authority—Prayerbook of the Drowned]

[Prayerbook of the Drowned: An Evil Spirit text made from paper rendered from the fat of those who drowned, its words written in the blood of corpses. To ordinary people, it is a blank book. But to those who have returned from the dead and to the mad, its pages are filled with blasphemous writing. Between the crooked lines lie records of bizarre, maddening Secret Arts.]

[Specific classification: Evil Flesh Codex]

[Memory Points required: 10,000]

[Note: Manifestation Authority holder: "Xia Lun"]

White Line's pupils contracted behind his mask. He sprang to his feet so abruptly that his chair toppled over. "You really have Manifestation Authority for the Evil Flesh Codex?!"

The shock also broke the Psychological Invisibility he had been maintaining.

Crash! The chair hit the floor, and everyone in the café turned to look.

A moment later, the waitress at the counter let out a piercing scream. "Who are you people?!"

White Line turned toward her in a daze. It took him a moment to realize that his surge of emotion had dispelled his Psychological Invisibility.

Embarrassment surged through him like boiling lava. He hurriedly snapped his fingers and reactivated Psychological Invisibility.

At the sharp snap, everyone in the café seemed to fall under a spell. They looked away and returned to what they had been doing, as though nothing had happened.

"That skill of yours is impressively powerful," Xia Lun said from across the table.

White Line righted his chair and sat down. Xia Lun's faintly amused expression only made the heat of his embarrassment worse.

And I was lecturing him like some seasoned expert, telling him not to aim too high!

Even behind his mask, White Line felt his face burn.

"Will you take Manifestation Authority for the Evil Flesh Codex in trade?" Xia Lun tapped the table, drawing him back to the matter at hand. "Is that enough?"

White Line took a deep breath. "What exactly did you do in that Scenario? How did you get Manifestation Authority for something like this?!"

"Nothing much," Xia Lun said calmly. "First I used the terrain to badly injure Abyssal Hand. Then I beat up the pirates who were fighting him, used a few tricks to take control of their group, and finally joined forces with them to kill Abyssal Hand. That's all."

"Huh?" White Line blinked blankly. Then he repeated in disbelief, "You killed Abyssal Hand!?"

Xia Lun's claim was so outrageous that White Line instinctively wanted to argue. But as the veteran Player opened his mouth, he remembered how thoroughly he had just been proven wrong...

Could Xia Lun really have killed Abyssal Hand?

"To be precise, I didn't kill Abyssal Hand alone. The pirates and I worked together," Xia Lun corrected him calmly. "He was intelligent and had plenty of supernatural abilities. He was extremely hard to deal with."

From a veteran Player's perspective, Xia Lun's account was absurd. By any ordinary measure, even an experienced Investigator with a dozen or more Scenarios behind him would struggle to fight back against Abyssal Hand. Yet White Line somehow felt that Xia Lun was telling the truth...

"..." White Line fell completely silent. For an instant, he even felt strangely alienated. Xia Lun's casual words struck like a falling hammer, shaking the understanding of the game he had built over more than twenty years.

Could someone really kill a terrifying Evil Spirit on Abyssal Hand's level in his very first Scenario?

His mind seemed to buzz. Almost without thinking, White Line looked up at Xia Lun across the table.

"So, do you accept?" Xia Lun asked with a smile. "Manifestation Authority for the Evil Flesh Codex in exchange for your four Snail Statues."

"You'd be getting the worse end of that deal." White Line took another deep breath and struggled to regain his composure. "I'll add some cash to the four Snail Statues. I don't have any suitable Game Items to offer right now."

"No need." Xia Lun transferred the Manifestation Authority and put the four Snail Statues into his bag, then raised a hand to stop him. "Consider the difference your commission."

"Commission?" White Line did not follow. "For what?"

"I want you to investigate a secret organization for me." Xia Lun glanced toward the canal outside the window. Several bruised corpses drifted in and out of sight amid the churning, murky foam.

After watching for a while and finding no familiar faces among the bodies, Xia Lun looked away.

White Line followed his gaze to the canal, then nodded. "No problem. Who do you want me to investigate?"

"The Foresight Club."

"The Foresight Club?" White Line repeated, disbelief creeping into his voice. "Isn't that an organization conspiracy theorists made up? Xia Lun, you and I both know a handful of secret conspirators couldn't push through political reform in the Grand Alliance. You don't actually believe that nonsense, do you?"

Instead of answering, Xia Lun took several photographs bearing the Foresight Club's emblem from his bag. "I found their emblem in an abandoned factory near where I nearly drowned."

"Could that be a coincidence?" White Line asked.

"I doubt it." Xia Lun shook his head. "Check the emblem with your Information Panel."

White Line lowered his head. A moment later, he grabbed his coffee and took a long gulp, as if to calm his nerves. "That emblem is a Secret Art Ritual? The conspiracy theory... is real?"

Xia Lun picked up a croissant and took a bite. Its soft, wheaty aroma was delightful. "There's a good chance they caused my illness. And I'm not their only target—they're plotting against Bird of Jade Pharmaceuticals too. If that's any indication, they must be targeting plenty of other people. I think that gives us a place to start investigating."

White Line considered this, then set the photographs down. "Xia Lun, if that's true, treating the illness probably won't make it go away. From what little Knowledge I have, you may have been cursed by a Secret Art."

"Do you have a Game Item that can remove curses?"

White Line shook his head without hesitation. "Bad news: I don't. Good news: you can definitely find an item that removes curses in the next Scenario by burning Snail Statues. You just need to choose the right words when you make your wish."

"All right." Xia Lun nodded, stood, and picked up his leather bag from the table. "That's everything on my end. I'll leave the investigation of the Foresight Club to you."

Jingle.

Xia Lun pushed open the door and left the café.

White Line sat there in a daze for quite some time. At last, he gave a rueful laugh.

"I never thought someone could really clear a Scenario through combat alone."