Chapter 151
by Need_More_SleepChapter 151: Return To The Dream Game
“White hair, bronze skin? I don’t know about that, but alternating between blinking and wearing a leather jacket in summer?” The liaison’s voice turned odd. “Did he also have a habit of carrying a camera?”
“Yeah, you know him?” Yiwen asked, puzzled.
“Oh, I definitely know him. That’s the signature of ‘Destiny’… No, wait, now he goes by the name Red Prince now. Where did you run into him? Did he attack you? Why would he go after someone your age?”
“He attacked Xiaoliu—pushed him straight off the third floor.” Yiwen’s foot tapped restlessly against the stool.
“Is he okay?” The liaison knew how close Yiwen was to that kid, the one suspected of being the Black-Clothed One (Girl in Black).
“No life-threatening injuries, but his arm was completely shattered. Even with a cast, he won’t be able to move it for at least a few days.”
“Uh, speaking of which—since you’re closest to the Black-Clothed One, have you noticed anything… off about her? Like, is there a chance she’s actually a cross-dressing guy?”
“Closest?” Yiwen bristled at the phrasing. “Where the hell did that idea come from? No way. Unless she chopped off her own little dick beforehand.”
“How can you be so sure?” The liaison sounded astonished. “You two… Damn, that’s criminal. Dias would cry if he found out.”
“Shut up. I just accidentally ripped her clothes off once.” The memory still pissed Yiwen off.
That little bitch really lived up to the name—wearing nothing but underwear under that trench coat. What kind of degenerate does that at her age?
“Sinful, sinful.” The liaison mentally filed that away.
So, the accounts from the Salamander and White Whale contradict each other. That rules out Mi Xiaoliu as a suspect—their investigation into the Black-Clothed One is back to square one.
“Wait, don’t change the subject. Tell me more about this Red Prince.” Yiwen was impatient, especially since these people had already withheld information about her father before.
“Right. The Red Prince targets wealthy children under fourteen. Your little ‘boyfriend’ doesn’t seem to fit the profile…”
“His foster mom owns an entire building—over ten stories tall.” Yiwen clarified.
“Oh. Never mind, then. But leave this to the Little Demon King. It’s practically a personal grudge between them. Sending anyone else would be way too dangerous—even the Little Demon King might not catch him.”
“He’s that strong? I thought he just manipulated probabilities.” Yiwen pressed down slightly, crushing the wooden stool beneath her foot.
“Born in the slums of the Fallen City. His exact childhood isn’t in Federation records, but… well, you know how the Fallen City’s underbelly is. From ages twenty-three to twenty-six, he worked as a pilot there. Last recorded ability level: LV4. His power, ‘Fifty-Fifty,’ is ridiculously broken.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because he’s the only one in history with it. The kind of ability that’d be so wordy in a card game, people would skip reading it.” The liaison sighed.
“Basically, he can arbitrarily set the probability of anything around him to fifty percent. Like, if he’s buying a lottery ticket, he can turn the near-zero chance of winning the jackpot into a coin flip. But if the lottery never had a jackpot to begin with—a true zero-probability event—he can’t change that. As long as there’s even a sliver of possibility, though, he can force it to fifty percent. Each thing or event can only be modified once per day, though.”
He also couldn’t affect events far away—like seeing a plane about to crash on TV and trying to make survival odds fifty percent through the screen.
Hell, he could even set the probability of being ambushed today to fifty percent. Then, if someone does ambush him, he could set their chance of success to fifty percent. If they do succeed, he could set his chance of injury to fifty percent. If he is injured, how severe it is could also be a coin toss…
Do the math, and his actual survival rate ends up way higher than fifty percent. That’s why he’s considered impossibly lucky.
He stands zero chance of beating the Little Demon King in a fight—but he can make the odds of them even meeting astronomically low.
The flip side? If he wants to use his ability to kill someone, he has to go through layers of probability. For example, if he wants someone hit by a car, he first needs a fifty percent chance the car will hit them, then a fifty percent chance the impact is fatal.
That’s why catching him once took everything we had—and then some bastard let him go, wasting all that effort… Though even that might’ve been part of his ability. Some effects linger even after he’s cuffed.
“Don’t even think about going after him. The Little Demon King wants to skin him alive, and he’s still running around free.”
The world’s so unfair. Giving a manchild like Amari Yota the strongest electronic abilities, then handing a demon like this the power to toy with fate. No wonder normies hate ability-users—so many of us get strong and decide the rules of Earth, OL don’t apply to us.
“I get it. But if he keeps evading the Little Demon King and causing havoc, do we just let him?” Yiwen’s anger had cooled to resignation.
The liaison didn’t answer.
Yiwen hung up.
If that guy’s chain of probability manipulations had succeeded back then… would Mi Xiaoliu have landed headfirst?
————————
Nighttime.
“What happened to your arm?” Sister Hermit asked anxiously, sitting beside Mi Xiaoliu.
Mi Xiaoliu hadn’t even worn her beginner combat suit this time—she’d taken the bus over.
Her left arm was bandaged and slung in a makeshift sling, immobilized like it was in a cast. The break had been too severe—it wasn’t as simple as just reassembling the “components.”
Wei Shi wasn’t around tonight, either. Since Sister Hermit hadn’t fully perfected the helmet yet, he’d gone to procure some hard-to-find materials.
“Did someone at school bully you? Tell me who, and I’ll have Hayato go… educate them.” But then she reconsidered—who could possibly bully her?
Mi Xiaoliu shook her head. “Fell by myself.”
Even if someone had deliberately frightened her, she seemed to believe it was just her own carelessness.
“Be more careful! This is what happens when you go jumping around skyscrapers all the time.” Sister Hermit poked Mi Xiaoliu’s arm lightly, her voice laced with concern.
She seemed to think it’d take at least a hundred-meter fall to break Mi Xiaoliu’s arm.
Nor was she surprised that Mi Xiaoliu could even get injured—the introductory letter Mi Xiaoliu had brought with her had detailed her physical condition extensively.
Parts of her that weren’t originally her own, even those requiring periodic replacement, naturally wouldn’t heal.
“Master, that was absolutely NOT your fault! Next time you see that bastard, just kill him!” Sasha hurriedly interjected.
Since his appearance was completely different, Sasha hadn’t recognized him from the group chat’s records at first.
“Who is he?” Mi Xiaoliu asked.
“Your enemy. The demon who killed you the first time.”
Mi Xiaoliu tilted her head blankly. Maybe because he looked different now, she didn’t feel the same visceral dread she had during the Easter incident.
“Sasha, why did he call me ‘Misha’?”
“Uh… Master, just wait for Papa Wei Shi to come back and tattle on him! Tell him the Red Prince bullied you, so he’ll go kill the Red Prince.” Sasha dodged the question entirely, shamelessly teaching Xiaoliu the art of getting adults to handle your problems.
“Mmm.” Mi Xiaoliu accepted this easily.
“Here, lie down and try this.” Sister Hermit produced a crude-looking helmet—so unfinished that some buttons weren’t even properly aligned, requiring a screwdriver to poke into tiny holes just to activate it.
Given the short time frame, the fact that she’d cobbled together even this much was a scientific miracle. Not even Dr. Agasa would pull something this absurd.
Of course, it was only possible because she’d built upon the existing server framework.
It’d hold up for a single short session, but repeated use would inevitably misalign components, so further refinements were still needed.
“The game’s programming is a bit of a mess—probably full of glitches. If anything feels off, exit immediately.” Sister Hermit helped Mi Xiaoliu out of her shoes and guided her onto the bed.
This server relied entirely on Amari Yota’s ability to sustain itself. Many aspects had nothing to do with conventional programming, so Sister Hermit couldn’t intervene too much.
She hadn’t installed any sleep aids, but Mi Xiaoliu dozed off in under a minute anyway—no trouble adjusting. It was nighttime, and she usually went to bed early. Plus, she had a habit of unintentionally falling asleep on Sister Hermit’s bed or lap.
————————
Entering the Dream Game.
Mi Xiaoliu’s memories of her previous playthrough hadn’t been restored.
Faced with the threat of deletion, Amari Yota had struggled desperately, pushing his ability to its limits in that brief minute—yet he’d never broken free of the mindset that “virtual items I create must be solvable through virtual means.”
In that single minute, the Dream Game had been left in shambles. Many features were irreparable—NPCs were gone, monsters no longer spawned.
Even player data and memory files had been corrupted. Now, all Mi Xiaoliu could see was her Level 1 status and an empty inventory.
Following Sasha’s instructions, Mi Xiaoliu ventured into the wild but found herself trapped in the starter village. The game’s mechanics required completing the tutorial questline to leave—but with no NPCs or monsters to trigger it, progression was impossible.
Fortunately, the village had plenty of gather-able resources, antidote herbs among them. Though not as abundant as in later stages, they could still be farmed by entering and exiting buildings to force respawns at randomized locations.
Only two or three spawned per reset, often scattered far apart—hardly efficient.
Perhaps out of laziness, Amari Yota had written the antidote herbs’ lore as a cure-all for diseases and poisons. There’d even been an early side quest where a villager’s father suffered from an incurable illness, requiring players to gather the herbs for treatment.
Amari Yota’s blurring of microbiological distinctions had, ironically, worked in Mi Xiaoliu’s favor.
[Translator’s Note: See the index page for this Novel if you want to see the Amazon Link for the eBooks.]
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