EM CH46

Chapter 46: Volunteering to Deliver Himself to the Doorstep

So cold!

Light was gradually swallowed by the polar night as large snowflakes slapped against his cheeks. Hanging off the speeding train, Yu An scrambled onto the roof with every ounce of strength and flattened himself down, his hand gripping the Armor-Piercing Awl already numb from the cold and on the verge of losing all sensation.

This could never be an in-game stage. The Lost Town scenario appeared to bridge directly into reality, and this train was barreling straight toward the prototype it had been modeled after, the real Riyu Town.

According to Zhao Ran, Riyu Town spent half the year shrouded in sunless polar night, placing the town’s geographical location somewhere near the polar regions.

The temperature continued plunging at a rate of one degree Celsius every ten seconds, the windchill nearing minus forty. Frost coated Yu An from head to toe, even crusting over his eyelashes.

As the train roared across the boundary between day and night, the traveler’s cloak on Yu An underwent a transformation. The portion of coarse linen cloak passing across the dividing line vanished, leaving behind the Pure Black Hood he originally wore underneath. Once completely across the day-night divide, his in-game traveler’s attire reverted entirely to his real-world Pure Black Hood outfit.

Stuck to the inner lining of his jacket was a black, semicircular pocket-shaped sticker.

It was the Core Case Expansion newly purchased from the Midnight Merchant, capable of holding four Aberrant Cores. Bought fresh and never yet used, he had only tossed the newly acquired Reversed Fairy Tale core and the Tier 1 Blue core pried out of the mechanical wolf inside it at random.

Had he known beforehand, he would have stuffed a few actually useful cores in here!

Had he been disconnected from the link? Or had he fallen into a rift of warped space-time?

Yu An suddenly heard infantile babbling right behind the nape of his neck. Turning his head to look, he discovered the pixelated baby nestled inside his hood sucking its thumb. Its little face composed of square pixels had flushed red from the cold, with a tiny red square on each cheek.

The game Grey Crow: Dollhouse had already turned into a virtual Illusion Chamber on its own, and because the technical team had chosen the empty Illusion Chamber inside the abandoned circus for physical linking to preserve full mobility, layering one Illusion Chamber atop another overloaded the variables and glitched out.

Fortunately, the Pure Black Hood possessed thermal insulation and windproofing effects, drastically slowing down his rate of heat loss.

The pixelated baby still radiated a bit of warmth, feeling fairly cozy tucked behind his neck. That was the sole reason Yu An didn’t toss it out the instant he noticed it.

A layer of snow crystals blanketed the carriage roof. Frozen purple, Yu An’s hand slowly lost control, slipping free from the hilt of the Armor-Piercing Awl. Sliding backward across the train roof, his exhaled white breath froze into frost, ice crystals feeling as though they were solidifying straight through his nasal passages into his lungs. His vision swam, growing darker by the second.

What would happen if he froze to death alive here? Was his physical body still sitting back in Hongli City?

Yu An and Zhao Ran’s physical bodies remained covered in linking nodes, seated squarely within sight of the Security Technology and Mechanical Logistics teams.

“Team Leader Zhao’s emotional fluctuations just spiked violently. Did they encounter the target?”

Scrolling lines of code reflected rapidly in Yong Zheng’s pupils, his expression grave: “Something went wrong on Yu An’s end.”

Wearing his tool belt with maintenance instruments gripped at the ready, Ji Nian paced back and forth between Yu An and Zhao Ran.

“Yu An is burning up.” Noticing the vital signs on the data pad fluctuating wildly, Ji Nian crooked a finger to summon the emergency medical intern over.

Carrying her medical kit, Ruan Xiaoli from the Medical Emergency Team rushed over and knelt beside Yu An to check his condition.

“He’s running a high fever. His consciousness may have entered a sub-zero environment, prompting his brain to push heat production to the limit to keep him alive. We’ll administer emergency cooling first, but if this continues, his body won’t hold out for long, and mental collapse will only be a matter of time.”

“A sub-zero environment? I don’t recall that setting existing in the game.” Focusing intently on the cascading code streams, Yong Zheng suddenly watched a string of blizzard script roll into view.

“It actually exists… I deleted it.”

“Deleting code at a time like this?! You didn’t even build this game’s framework. Deleting too much will cause even worse bugs!” Ji Nian fetched a basin of cold water, wrung out a towel, and draped it across Yu An’s forehead.

“No big deal. I’ll just write new bugs, no, I mean write new code to patch it back in. It’ll definitely run anyway,” Yong Zheng declared confidently.

Yu An awakened from his brief unconsciousness. Perhaps due to paradoxical undressing triggered by hypothermia, he didn’t feel nearly as freezing as before.

Stirring stiffly, a thick blanket of snow covering his back sloughed off. Looking closely, what lay piled upon him wasn’t actual snow at all, but thick layers of white Chinese characters spelling out “Blizzard.”

What drifted down from the sky had also turned into clumps of white characters for “Blizzard.” Pelting against his face, they weren’t cold, yet they hurt intensely, because the sharp strokes of the character “Snow” (雪) poked right into his skin.

Braving the falling “Blizzards,” Yu An crawled slowly forward and reclaimed his grip on the Armor-Piercing Awl to keep from sliding off the train roof.

The train whistle blew, its speed tapering off before grinding to a halt at a platform.

Having finally recovered a bit of stamina, Yu An hopped down from the roof and peered cautiously through the open train doors. The aroma of self-heating meal boxes lingered inside the carriage. Luggage packed the overhead racks, blankets lay draped across several seats, and half-eaten meals sat on small folding tables. Yet the carriage was dead silent and completely deserted. Nobody disembarked; the passengers seemed to have vanished into thin air, or perhaps had never existed at all.

Yu An noted the train’s designation number, K88M88. The station it had stopped at was named Riyu Town, and the next stop was Annular Town.

Shrouded in dim gloom, the distant town lay blanketed in snow and ice. Clusters of cottages glowed with warm yellow light behind their windows, bronze oil braziers hanging outside doorways so open flames could drive back the bitter chill.

Brushing snow off a cottage window to peer inside, Yu An found the interior empty. Nobody was home. Left with no choice, he followed the winding, twisting lanes deeper into the town, wandering aimlessly. He had lost all interest in the mission’s target Aberrant. His mind was occupied solely by Zhao Ran.

Yu An interpreted Zhao Ran’s abnormal demeanor as reluctance to let him approach Riyu Town, coupled with the fact that the man never spoke of his past, clearly hiding something.

The more the interviewer didn’t want him doing something, the more determined Yu An became to do it. This was the finest opportunity to uncover Riyu Town’s secrets, and to prevent the interviewer from meddling, Yu An had to seize this chance to act separately from him.

There was definitely something fishy about those hands. Even if his left hand was inlaid with an Aberrated Species core as he claimed, that still couldn’t explain the entire house full of little hands waiting on him hand and foot.

“Could all those hands have been stolen from the residents of Riyu Town? Did the interviewer go to such lengths to get close to me and train me to behave just so he could harvest my arms?”

Serving tea and water to the interviewer for the rest of his life while playing video games with his new boyfriends? Recalling all the chores he had ordered those little hands to perform, Yu An suddenly felt a lump of stifled frustration in his chest, his liver aching slightly.

Better to strike first while he held the advantage: chop off both his hands, pry out the Aberrant Cores embedded in them, tie the interviewer up and haul him home, and do whatever he wanted with him.

That counted as self-defense.

He simply hadn’t expected to tumble onto this mysterious train and be carried so far away. For now, finding an exit came first. Aside from native residents, ordinary humans couldn’t last long in polar temperatures.

Laced mid-calf boots crunching softly in the snow, Yu An severed the ropes and wooden barriers blocking outsiders, creeping swiftly inward under the cover of darkness.

Firelight flickered in the distance. The townsfolk were gathered around a broad public square, all kneeling in the snow wrapped in thick animal pelts against the cold, bowing their heads in devout prayer. A roaring bonfire blazed at the center of the plaza, surrounded by bronze platters bearing offerings of varying sizes.

Resting upon the bronze platters were freshly butchered slabs of meat not yet frozen solid and choice fresh fish. Beside every meat offering stood a transparent vessel of identical height.

Closest to the bonfire, three bronze platters were arranged in a triangle, each cradling a sleeping infant. Likewise, a transparent vessel sat beside each baby.

Suspended above the bonfire was an enormous drum. A shamaness danced barefoot in the center of the drumhead, holding a bronze ruler that she shook and tapped in steady rhythm.

Watching and piecing things together, Yu An roughly deduced the rules of the offering ritual: likely every household contributed an offering placed on separate bronze platters, followed by an overnight vigil of prayer. At dawn, the shamaness would use the bronze ruler to measure the snow depth inside each transparent vessel. Whichever accumulated the deepest snow signified the offering chosen by their deity, to be gathered and transported to their god.

The three bronze platters holding the infants actually formed a three-way balance scale calibrated beforehand to each baby’s weight. Throughout the coming night, they merely awaited the judgment of the snowstorm. The weight of accumulated snow would decide which infant was sent away.

Beneath the bonfire, most people kept their heads bowed in prayer, save for three haggard couples with bloodshot eyes staring unblinkingly at the three-way scale. Every slight tremor of the bronze platters tugged directly at their heartstrings. They would spend this terrifying night steeped in sheer dread.

Did the deity they worshipped truly exist? In truth, he could hide in a corner, wait for tomorrow’s outcome, and slip aboard the vessel transporting the offerings to take a look around. At that point, bringing the sacrificial child back and using the baby as leverage to extract intel from its parents would be effortless.

Just as Yu An was mapping out his next steps internally, a loud, piercing wail right beside his ear nearly made him jump out of his skin.

Initially thinking one of the babies on the scale was crying, Yu An belatedly realized the pixelated infant tucked inside his hood had woken up.

Hearing the sudden commotion, the praying villagers on the ground snapped their eyes open. Grabbing harpoons and torches with startling agility, they roared as they charged toward Yu An, the uninvited intruder.

“Damned brat, why didn’t I toss you out earlier?” Surrounded on all sides, Yu An found the Armor-Piercing Awl’s blade too short despite its lethal sharpness. Facing a mob of frenzied villagers rushing in with weapons, he couldn’t hold them off alone.

The Armor-Piercing Awl cleanly sliced through an iron harpoon before a blazing torch jabbed into him from behind. The scalding firebrand slammed against his waist. Staggering off balance, Yu An was pinned to the ground beneath several crossed harpoons, completely immobilized.

Panting fiercely, Yu An regretted forgetting to have the interviewer draw the Arrogant Bat. Otherwise every single one of these people’s skulls would have been cracked open by now.

Suddenly, he snapped to full alertness, realizing in astonishment that all the young, able-bodied villagers here possessed completely intact hands, utterly unlike what he had imagined.

Had he wrongly suspected the interviewer, or had he missed a specific point in time?

Huddling together, the villagers whispered among themselves. Yu An could roughly decipher their meaning: encountering an outsider on the eve of the sacrifice was terribly inauspicious, so they were debating killing him and offering him to their deity alongside the other tributes.

Snowflakes drifted down silently as if trying to bury this tiny village. In one single second, the weightless snow abruptly seemed to gain mass. The three-way scale tipped, and one infant’s bronze platter sank downward.

The brief, incredulous silence was shattered by wails of grief. Two couples felt massive boulders lift from their chests, clinging to one another weeping as they escaped calamity, while the third couple looked struck by lightning, crushed by the sudden catastrophe and frozen in shock as tears brimmed over their bloodshot eyes.

The husband and wife crawled wretchedly to the shamaness’s feet, pleading desperately, yet the shamaness replied with solemn pity: “It is your sacrifice that brings light back to Riyu.”

Seeing everyone’s attention riveted on the bronze scale, Yu An seized the opening to struggle violently. Freeing one arm to prop himself halfway upright, he hoisted the pixelated baby high into the air and spoke coldly:

“Want to swap? I can carry him over myself.”

—

Worldbuilding Handbook 2 (Aberrant Growth Stages)

[Larval Stage]: The period when an internal Aberrant Core has formed, yet the body remains immature. Aberrants in this stage possess low intelligence and act purely on instinct, for example the goat-headed men.

[Growth Stage]: The Aberrant has matured in all aspects, with physique and intelligence largely finalized. Capable of recognizing its own species and gender, it begins developing reproductive instincts. Aberrants in this stage can secrete specialized hormones to imprint unique totem marks onto other species in preparation for subsequent parasitic bonding. The radiation emitted by a totem mark repels other Aberrants.

[Cocooning Stage]: After growing for a certain period, the Aberrant gradually feels its physical shell can no longer contain its surging internal energy, prompting it to weave a cocoon to await further evolution. Inside the cocoon, the Aberrant turns extraordinarily berserk, devouring all surrounding living creatures. Any living being may enter the cocoon shell, but only the creature bearing the matching totem mark can walk out of the cocoon alive.

[Eclosion Stage]: Advancing smoothly from the cocooning stage into the next phase triggers direct eclosion. At this point, the Aberrant’s strength reaches the absolute pinnacle of its lifespan, though it can survive for only six hours.

[Butterfly Transformation]: Slain during the cocooning stage by the creature bearing its totem mark, forging a binding pact. It gains a far longer lifespan, a tougher carapace, vastly greater destructive power, and unalterable loyalty toward its contractor. This is the qualitative metamorphosis brought upon an Aberrant through endless agony.

Note: Puppy-type Aberrants are highly unique. Regardless of growth stage, they invariably imprint a totem mark onto their very first owner.