[Fury: Muscle Strength +20, Reflex +19, Brain Cell Strength +17. Special ability: Killer instinct, the ability to perceive the location of the heart with any of the five senses.]
He didn’t expect to enter <Fury> right here.
Jiang Chen coldly scanned the bodies without red dots, ignoring the pairs of lifeless eyes staring at him, and finally stopping his sight on Yao Tingting.
Zhao Peng lying in the pool of blood, the teacher struggling on the ground beneath the soldiers, the students, even the soldiers…
No heart.
Everyone was a sham, as though they were nothing but an empty shell.
Including Yao Tingting.
“Oh? How did you figure it out?” Yao Tingting paused for a moment before a smile erupted on her face and stood up naked.
It was a peculiar sight—a smiling girl standing while naked. Beside her was the monster with a ferocious expression about to bring her down to the ground, but the monster was cemented in mid-air.
He looked into Yao Tingting’s eyes dispassionately and said, “Because I have an annoying ability, and you happen to have no heart.”
Yao Tingting was momentarily stunned before revealing her signature smile again. She then raised her delicate finger and drew in the air, and a holographic screen appeared out of thin air beside her body.
“Hmmm… so that’s how it is. Increase in three body stats and a skill that can “see” the heart? This isn’t a friendly bug.” A peculiar smile curved on her mouth as she examined the stats on the panel.
“Hehe, although I had formed a variety of conjectures, never would I have thought that..this is a game, right?” Jiang Chen gazed at the beautiful yet pure face as he squeezed the words out of his mouth, “The secret teller, huh?”
Just now, he finally understood the question that had been plaguing him. The effect of Brain Cell Strength +17 as the result of <Fury> was not an increase in intelligence but rather to break through the barrier in his memory and regained his consciousness.
“Oh, almost but not quite. I am the secret protector. Perhaps it’s time for the next round?” Yao Tingting clapped her hands in delight.
The secret protector? There were actually two “people”?
The occasional explosion in the sky suddenly stopped, and the war outside came to a halt with the sound of the clap.
The colors of the world began to fade starting from the corner of the stadium as bits and pieces dissipated gradually.
“Do you intend to continue this boring game?” Jiang Chen sneered as he said with disdain.
“Why not?”
The silvery laughter sounded disturbing.
“I am looking forward to your next round of performance.” After looking at Jiang Chen one last time, Yao Tingting faded along with everything in that world.
Really?
He looked at the interdimensional bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet’s ability was not copied into this world, so there was no way to return to the modern world in the game.
[I just have to rely on other means to break through the game…]
The floor was already disintegrating as Jiang Chen silently watched his body along with the fragments dissipate into the abyss…
–
11 June 2171, summer
The diary only had dates in it, and no other texts had been written in it.
He felt a slight dizziness as though he had just taken a nap, and everything that just happened was like a reverie.
Dropping down the pen, Jiang Chen looked around the “familiar” room.
“Fury is still in effect.”
“Could it be because of the increase in Brain Cell Strength that my memory was not erased?” He faintly closed his eyes as he searched for the clues in his memory.
Memory before entering the game was retained, the N cycle memory was saved, and the N-1 cycle memory was missing.
When he opened his eyes, his line of sight caught the diary to the electronic clock on the table.
<7:37 pm>
“So, this is the starting point of the game. Then, all previous memories should be false.”
In reality, it didn’t feel good to negate the realistic memory one by one. It’s as if you’re living a great life, then one night you had a nightmare, a mysterious figure told you that the world in the dream was the reality, and when you woke up you’d go into a virtual world.
“Yao Tingting is the secret protector. No, to be more accurate, she should have been replaced by a secret at some point…” That book was a clue, and Jiang Chen desperately searched for the details in his memory. [It appears that when I shared the “spoiler,” the secret guardian noticed the discrepancy. It was just a sense of déjà vu, but it had thought that I “recovered my memory”?]
It seemed that from that point on, the book in Yao Tingting’s hands disappeared.
That person had been replaced since then.
[So if this is the case, it suspected that I woke up from the hypnotism, so it replaced Yao Tingting’s identity and joined the game as a participant?]
Therefore, anyone could be the secret protector.
[Wait, what’s the point of this game?]
Frowning, he sat quietly on the desk as he recalled the diary in the activity room on the second floor of the library.
<I was escorted into an underground survival base or a research facility?>
<So what, I have memorized everything!>
<They are crazy. Do they think they can create XXX like this? (Scratched out)>
And Yao Tingting’s words:
“I know. I have been paying attention to you.”
The identity of the Informant and the secret protector…
All the clues strung together like a key and opened the lock in his heart.
The corner of his mouth slighting raised up as he leaned back on the chair.
[That diary should be the key to breakthrough the game. No wonder the Secret Guardian always tried to keep me away from the library. Whenever I approach the library, it would see all kinds of method to stop me.]
Whether it was the so-called ghost in the library or the furious guard.
What the secret protector didn’t know, however, was that the more it tried to cover up something, the more suspicious he became. It can be said that its constant attempt to stop him actually pushed him to where the truth was located.
Even it wiped the memory in his head, it can’t wipe the strong feeling of déjà vu.
[Where did I see this before? Did I seem to be here before? I have experienced this before…]
Whether it was the drama airing or the opened activity room, everything had the feeling of déjà vu. Perhaps he was there N-x week ago, but because there was no memory retention; therefore, it ignorantly entered into the next cycle.
<Force Restart> could perhaps seal the memory and remove the clues, but it cannot remove the constant feeling of déjà vu, in the end, this feeling led to finding the evidence he searched for in the previous cycle.
And then because the N’s cycle led him into <Fury>, all the evidence was saved to the N+1 week.
If he didn’t manage to jump out of the loop, the game would probably go on and on.
“Hehe, what kind of game is this, this is absolutely insane.”
[A game designed for the purpose of an experiment. It inhumanely put people into the game like a lab rat. Then simulate the plot, collect data, therefore, allowing the intermediate artificial intelligence to evolve into advanced artificial intelligence? Is this the experiment that the Colonel mentioned in his diary?]
Jiang Chen thought calmly.
[There was still a lot of suspicions. For example, the secret protector is the absolute controller of the game, then I wouldn’t be able to beat it at any rate.
But the peculiar cleaning robots, the opened activity room, the diary left as a clue, these obvious bugs are not removed after countless amount of cycles but had been completely preserved. The secret protector even had to interfere with my actions by actively intervening with the plot to prevent me from getting close to the library.]
In conclusion, the secret protector’s power in the game is similar to that of a Game Master, but it cannot change the game itself.
Also, if the purpose of the game was to allow it to evolve into an advanced AI by observing humans and collecting data, it wouldn’t make sense if it was granted the power to change the game. A good analogy would be: if the measuring data is “unattractive,” and someone manually added one or two zeroes in an experiment, then it wouldn’t be considered as an experiment anymore.
Its power was limited and not invincible.
Jiang Chen picked up its pen, drew three circles in the diary, and labeled it separately:
Safe Zone, Neutral Zone, and Danger Zone.
“If I perform “illogical” action, then everyone would look at me like I’m a “robot,” because of the confused thinking, which will automatically trigger the “Uncanny Valley” effect. The intermediate artificial intelligence may have analysis ability, but too much calculation will result in “lag”? Or “confusion”? On the contrary, basic AI can only respond logically and can’t t think, so it does not produce “confusion” and the like. So, NPC should be made up of low-level AI’s?” Jiang Chen mumbled to himself as he labeled the school as Danger Zone.
The activity room on the second floor of the library should be the Safe Zone because Yao Tingting couldn’t enter it. Jiang Chen wrote it in the Safe Zone.
[Should NATO invasion be considered as an event? Also, to collect data, the Secret Guardian should be in control of the “switch” to advance the plot, otherwise, repeating the same cycle would just result in similar data.] It was an important point, so Jiang Chen jotted it down in his diary.
He pulled out the drawer and saw two movie tickets. A smile appeared on Jiang Chen’s face. “If there is no irregularity, then the plot should be: asking her out, confession, watching a movie, possible sex, NATO invasion. It simulated the first love to completed devastation. In this case, any of the scene that could trigger the plot should belong to Danger Zone under the absolute control of the Secret Guardian .”
Yao Tingting’s home and the movie theater he has yet to visit were categorized under the Danger Zone.
Because of the incomplete plot in the last cycle, a lot of clues became available Jiang Chen scanned the room and wrote “Protagonist’s Home” under the Safe Zone area.
“The street should be a Neutral Zone, whereby it lacks the ability to trigger plot.” He flipped his pen and wrote street under the Neutral Zone before he lifted his eyes to look at the digital clock.
<8:07 pm>
It already exceeded the maximum duration of half an hour limit, but <Fury> has yet to be deactivated. Therefore, the passage of time in the game is unequal to the passage of time in real world. In terms of efficiency, the longer the user experienced in the game, the shorter the time passed in reality so the data gathered in the real world time frame will be more…
[Perhaps that I already experienced N cycles, but it may only be a few seconds in reality? With the processing speed of the advanced computer, that is absolutely a possibility; however, it would put a lot of strain on the mind.]
Thinking of this, Jiang Chen let out a breath of relief. The time he agreed on with Sun Jiao was two hours, and if he had been here for a month or two already, he was afraid that it would be then too late to return to the ground.]
[Speaking of that, by letting me activate<Fury>, that talkative thing still expects itself to win?]
The tip of his lips curled up on his mouth.
That’s right, in a game that relied on hypnotism, Brain Cell Strength was a huge bug.
Hypnotism would no longer be effective on him.
[From here on in, the “game” officially begins.]