An Escape Room Crushed by a Higher-Dimensional Assault

The arcade owner rubbed his eyes and leaned closer to the screen. The string of golden nines, 999999, was still flashing.

Owner: (;°Д°)

"A, a new record."

His tongue tied in knots as he pointed at the number on the screen, then turned to stare at the antique machine, which was even older than he was.

"Impossible. That's the maximum score on this machine. I've been open for eight years, and no one's ever even reached half of it."

Linnai threw an arm around Dania's shoulders.

Linnai: (✧▽✧)

"What do you mean, impossible? Our Yaya is the chosen one. She's number one at eating and number one at games."

"How can you say that? How am I supposed to keep my business open?"

The owner's face alternated between green and white. He took three deep breaths, forcing the corners of his mouth up as he composed himself.

"What's so impressive about beating an ancient game like that?"

He puffed out his chest and pointed at the metallic door at the very back of the arcade.

"If you've got the guts, try the S-rank immersive escape room I just ordered from Huanglong."

"An escape room?"

Linnai's eyes lit up.

"That's right. The theme is the Abandoned Defense Line."

The owner braced both hands on the counter, his knuckles cracking.

"They say no one can clear it within an hour. A retired New Federation battlefield designer was hired to create the mechanisms and puzzles inside."

"So far, not a single group of customers has made it to the third room."

Sigelica's right eyelid twitched.

"I'm not going."

She tightened her grip on the self-criticism report in her hand.

"My self-criticism is still three thousand words short. I need to go back and study."

"Come on, come on. Think of it as a practical exercise."

Linnai tugged and shook her arm.

"Look, the theme even matches your internship report."

"That's exactly why I don't want to go!"

"Yaya, what do you say?"

Linnai left the decision to Dania.

Dania was licking nonexistent block crumbs off her fingers in little licks. Hearing the question, she raised her head.

"An escape room... is there anything to eat inside?"

"There will be if we clear it."

Zhou Yu answered for the owner and patted Dania on the head.

"Think of it as a little exercise to help digest your meal."

"Deal."

Dania immediately nodded.

Sigelica: (lll￢￢)

She knew it would turn out like this.

Ten minutes later, the group put on thick blindfolds and were led by a staff member through a winding passage.

The temperature dropped, and the air was filled with the smell of rust and dust.

Dania reached out in the darkness and groped around a couple of times. Her little hand touched a warm wrist, and she immediately gripped it tightly.

Zhou Yu said nothing. He turned his hand and enclosed her fingers in his palm.

"All right, adventurers, the game has officially begun."

The staff member's voice came from a distance, followed immediately by the heavy sound of a metal door closing.

Sigelica was the first to pull off her blindfold.

Emergency backup lights flickered overhead. The walls were made of mottled concrete, decorated with mock bullet holes and claw marks, while a piercing alarm sounded intermittently.

"Th-that's the Fractsidus raid alarm."

Sigelica's throat tightened.

Dania's little face paled, and she gripped Zhou Yu's hand even harder.

Dania: (•́ω•̀;)

Zhou Yu pulled a high-powered flashlight bigger than his palm from his workwear pocket and switched it on with a click.

A beam of white light illuminated every detail of the room, instantly ruining the carefully crafted atmosphere of horror.

Ignoring the others, he walked over to the wall and rapped on it several times with the butt of the flashlight.

Zhou Yu: (﹁"﹁)

"The load-bearing wall is made of hollow bricks, the soundproofing cotton hasn't been packed in properly, and the fire exit indicator lights aren't bright enough."

He glanced back at the surveillance camera on the ceiling.

"Who signed off on this construction? They cut a few too many corners."

Linnai laughed and slapped her thigh.

"Mr. Zhou, are you here to play an escape room or issue a notice to fix violations?"

"An occupational habit from the Logistics Department. Whenever I see something that isn't up to code, my hands start itching."

In the monitoring room, the owner spat a mouthful of water onto the screen.

The first challenge appeared.

On the console in the center of the room, a complex six-pointed star combination lock lit up, surrounded by densely engraved characters in the Ancient Solaris Language.

Something in Chisaki's DNA stirred.

Chisaki: (._.?)

She immediately crouched on the floor, pulled out a stylus, and began working out the solution on the smooth surface.

"The six vertices correspond to six variables. Based on the grammatical structure of the runes, we can construct a system of six linear equations with six unknowns. The theoretical solution requires..."

"No need to go to all that trouble."

Zhou Yu interrupted her academic livestream.

He walked up to the console, switched the flashlight to side-lighting mode, and slowly swept it across the surface of the keypad at close range.

Fingerprints of varying depths showed up clearly on several keys.

"The deeper the fingerprint, the more times the key was pressed. The most worn one was pressed last."

He reached out and leisurely tapped the keys.

8, 4, 2, 7, 1.

Beep.

The green light came on, and the six-pointed star keypad popped open. With a creak, the iron door to the next room slid apart.

Chisaki crouched on the floor, her stylus suspended in midair. The three and a half lines of calculations on the floor were only one step short of completion.

Chisaki: (Σ(°△°|||))

"...My system of equations."

"You can publish a paper when you finish solving it. The two don't conflict."

Zhou Yu had already stepped over the threshold.

"Y-you could at least take a look at how I worked it out!"

Chisaki jumped up and chased after him, not even bothering to straighten her crooked glasses.

Sigelica covered her face.

"I should have known. You aren't here to play a game at all. You're here to demolish the place, aren't you?!"

In the monitoring room, the owner clutched at his already thinning hair, his fingernails digging into his scalp.

"The first challenge took only two minutes, two minutes! I spent three hundred thousand on the design!"

The second room.

A long, narrow corridor was filled with a dense web of crisscrossing red lasers, leaving no gaps.

"An infrared sensor array."

Aimis whistled and loosened her wrists and ankles.

"A little thing like this? Watch me."

She stepped back twice, took a graceful running start, and leaned backward, bending her supple waist as she prepared to pass through the gap beneath the lowest laser.

"Hey, wait."

Zhou Yu stopped her.

He pulled something else from his pocket.

A small makeup mirror.

He crouched at the corridor entrance, adjusted its angle against the laser emitter, and wedged the little mirror into a groove in the corner of the wall.

The red laser reflected off the mirror and shone straight back onto the receiver beside it.

The entire web of lasers in the corridor went out at once.

The door at the far end unlocked.

Aimis remained frozen halfway through her backbend, the expression on her face shifting from confidence to bewilderment.

"...Couldn't you have let me finish looking cool before stepping in?"

"Efficiency comes first. The Logistics Department doesn't encourage overtime."

Zhou Yu brushed the dust off his hands and led the still-dazed Dania across the corridor.

"Come on, next one."

Dania walked through the corridor, where the lasers were now gone. She looked back, then looked at Zhou Yu's pocket.

"What else do you have in your pocket?"

"Trade secret."

In the monitoring room, the owner stared at the little mirror on the screen. Beside him lay the purchase order for the three-million-credit infrared security system.

His teeth ground together as he rose from his chair and reached for the bright red emergency button on the far right of the console, which had never been used before.

Two words were written on it: Restart.

"A three-million-credit system, and you beat it with a ten-credit mirror."

He pressed his thumb against the button, his thumbnail turning white.

"Damn it, I'm going all out against you!"

He slammed the button all the way down.

The instant Zhou Yu and the others stepped into the third room, all the lights went out.

An alarm more piercing than any before it rang throughout the underground space.

A cold electronic voice poured from speakers on all sides.

[Warning, warning.]

[Unknown rule intrusion detected. System integrity compromised.]

[Initiating highest-level physical elimination protocol.]

In the darkness, Dania's hand found Zhou Yu's cuff, and her five fingers curled around it one by one.

[Protocol initiated.]