Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu never expected that she would hear Horst's voice again at this moment. Since they left the room with the elephant game, the group had gone their separate ways, and what happened to them afterward had been cast out of her minds, left to fate.

"I... I thought I was really done for this time." Horst was panting, his hands gripping the iron bars, leaning on them to barely sit upright. "When the game disappeared, I found that my legs were gone too. It's my fault. I couldn't help screaming out of fright... I was discovered by other players. Seeing that I couldn't move, they took everything from me."

Since discovering that she had met an acquaintance, Lin Sanjiu temporarily wrote out a "camera view" using text to project the scene on the ground in real time. Now, on the blank document in front of her, a few lines of text conjured a cinematic scene—Horst sitting behind the iron bars, Lily standing in front, neither able to move, leaving one to wonder who was really imprisoned.

Lily seemed not to hear or care about Horst's account, standing there in a daze. Perhaps she had no energy left to worry about others. Her confinement to one spot had not yet begun, but her face looked as though she had been trapped for many years.

"Please." Horst pressed his forehead to the bars, his eyes scanning over the camera before dropping again. A sturdy man, he now appeared to have shrunk, despite his muscles and frame remaining the same. Clearly, the posthumans had done more than just rob him. He said shakily, "Open the g-game again... Give me a ch-chance... to get my l-legs back from the claw machine."

"The claw machine?" Lin Sanjiu asked.

"Yes... Whatever part of your body is most important to your abilities ends up in the claw machine, and you have to win it back," Horst explained dully, not looking at the camera. "I'm not even the worst off... Some people's hands went in, and they had to use their mouths or feet to win them back. Others' eyes went in, and I don't even know how they managed."

"I'll try to find this game," Lin Sanjiu said, wiping the sweat from her palms and cutting off the second half of her sentence. She didn't dare to promise too much, as raising false hope in Horst would be dangerous. After all, she didn't know which of the deleted rooms had created the game, nor how many other people were in Horst's situation. She could only hope that Nüwa's privileges would allow her to access the game's history. If the game text still existed, it would be easy to modify it and help Horst recover his legs effortlessly.

"However, you both will need to give me some time," she said firmly. "I was about to set up a mechanism to find my two friends. Now, I have an idea I want to try."

Lily's text-based projection, equivalent to an indefinite confinement, couldn't be used as a reward. If Lin Sanjiu removed the process of finding a person through posthumans, she wouldn't have to worry about rewards. Was there a way to make Silvan and Marcie come to her voluntarily?

It seemed there was.

Recalling Silvan's appearance, Lin Sanjiu tried to write a couple of dry descriptions on the document. "Golden hair, green eyes... Uh, a high nose..."

She stopped. A projection of a person did appear in the camera view, indeed with golden hair, green eyes, and a high nose. However, the golden hairline was a few centimeters above the eyebrows, the green eyes were huge and unblinking, and the high nose was slightly off. The whole figure looked like a giant doll trapped in the uncanny valley. It didn't even remotely resemble Silvan and even managed to scare Lily into screaming.

Lin Sanjiu rubbed her temples. She had originally wanted to describe Silvan and Marcie's appearances and project them out, setting up huge images of the two throughout the world—one every kilometer. How could they miss them? She was initially worried about spreading the text wide enough, but she didn't expect to falter at the very first step of recreating their appearances.

Facing this distorted figure, Horst surprisingly recognized who it was supposed to be and mumbled, "You're... you're looking for Silvan, aren't you? Who's the other one? Ji Shanqing?"

"No, a woman named Marcie, whom you don't know." Lin Sanjiu deleted the description in frustration, and the projection on the paper disappeared as well.

Horst's mouth hung open, and he stared blankly for a moment. As she was deep in thought, he suddenly asked hoarsely, "It wouldn't be... a redhead, would it?"

Lin Sanjiu's head shot up. "How did you know she has red hair? Do you know her?"

"Before I entered this game, a redhead woman approached me," Horst answered hastily—he clearly realized that the more he could help Lin Sanjiu, the greater his chance of retrieving his legs. "Her combat level was very high. I didn't realize she was there until she appeared before me. She asked if I had participated in the elephant game in a room and who was there. I didn't know you knew her at the time... so I didn't answer immediately since she was rude."

He coughed and said, "She wiped out my ability... After I answered, she took out an item, like a hood, and put it on my head."

Lin Sanjiu leaned forward in front of the document. "Then what?"

"I asked her what it was for, and she told me." Horst evidently hid his change in attitude—considering their situation, if he hadn't humbled himself, Marcie probably wouldn't have explained. "It was a device to find people by tracking those who have had contact with them. She finds someone who have interacted with the target person, puts the hood on them, and it gives her directions to the next person who has had contact with the target. Like playing a game of pass-the-parcel, she gets closer and closer to the target... However, although she explained it, she didn't tell me who the target was in the game, so I only just found out that you two are connected."

He paused and added, "In fact, she didn't even tell me her name. It was only when she put away the hood and restored my ability that she received a communication. I overheard someone warning her, 'Marcie, be careful, the Munitions Factory might have discovered your whereabouts.' That's when I knew her name was Marcie."

Lin Sanjiu finally had an answer as to why Marcie could accurately locate her vicinity in such a vast world. It seemed that Marcie discovered Lin Sanjiu's entrance into the Munitions Factory broadcast around the same time Lin Sanjiu heard Marcie's arrest warrant from the communicator. If what Horst said was correct, and that item truly could lead Marcie from one contact to the next...

Then she must have met Advaita by now.

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