Chapter 105

Chapter 105: Certain Death Within Three Days

Death in this game plunged the victim into blackness. Then came the attack—a faint energy probing the brain, striking when defenses were weakest during sleep. Most never stood a chance.  

By sheer willpower, Okulet tore himself awake and purged the invasive force.  

Something else had tried to steal his in-game memories upon waking—subtler than the attack, nearly undetectable. He erased that too.  

The memories remained, though not crystal clear. Like vivid dreams—hazy yet traceable.  

Like the kid who’d bashed his skull in without hesitation. 

(Admittedly, Okulet had asked for it.)  

No flinch. No remorse. That red name wasn’t an accident. The boy was rotten to the core.  

Inside the game, his powers were locked. Erasing the digital world would require finding its “server”—but his Level 3 intuition stayed silent on its location.  

—  

“Pardon me.” Barrett sat beside him, tense. “Could you look into my eyes?”  

Her own request, yet when Okulet’s orange irises pinned her, she flinched. It wasn’t just his reputation. Those eyes carried weight—like staring into oblivion itself. One wrong move, and she might vanish without a trace.  

She endured three suffocating minutes before he finally glanced away.  

[Barrett’s Ability: LV2 Memory Retrospection]

– Reads six hours of memory via retinal scan.

– Projects recollections onto any screen.  

– Flaws: Cannot access forgotten or misremembered segments.  

What earned this minor a spot in the Supernatural Police? She could extract memories from fresh corpses.  

The “tablet” in her hands was a shell—a precaution against the game’s creator detecting their countermeasures.  

For the first time, they glimpsed the enemy’s playbook. Maybe not a federal first, but at least Fanzui City’s police weren’t blind anymore.  

Okulet’s averted gaze cut the playback short—conveniently omitting his red name hunt. 

“Did you go after a red name player?” Officer Chen asked.  

“Take a guess,” Okulet replied flatly, his expression unreadable.  

He was no longer with the Supernatural Police. There was no obligation to share every detail—and even if he withheld information, no one would dare question him.  

They had helped him, in return, he would keep quiet about the red name. Simple as that.  

Once, he had been a Supernatural Police officer who upheld justice above all else. But since resigning years ago, that sense of righteousness had all but eroded.  

Compared to that unremarkable red name boy, he was far more interested in the other one—the girl disguised as a boy.  

Okulet had seen Yiwen’s records—a vigilante from Fanzui City, not particularly famous.  

But her father… had been his bunkmate at the police academy. The man had always been a joker, slapping Okulet’s ass every time he climbed up to his bunk with some ridiculous comment. 

A total goofball, but undeniably straight—just the kind of guy who horsed around with his buddies.  

(Now, if someone reacted with disgust after getting their ass slapped? That was when things got suspicious.)  

Officer Chen wouldn’t press further.  

Even without their years of camaraderie, Okulet was an LV5—someone who could level a city in an instant.  

He instructed Barrett to secure the tablet and hand it off to psychometric specialists in other precincts, allowing them to analyze the game’s structure.  

“Can you log out all the victims in Fanzui City at once?” Officer Chen asked.  

“One by one, yes. All at once? No.” Okulet adjusted his collar, still slightly rumpled from sleep. “My ability requires line of sight. If someone’s not in my view, the only way to ‘log them out’ is to erase them entirely—along with the anomalous electromagnetic waves affecting them.”  

“However,” he added, “I can work with your tech team to develop devices that preserve memories in-game while blocking the kill switch. Mass production and distribution will be your problem.”  

“That’s more than enough,” Officer Chen nodded.  

—  

Meanwhile, they weren’t the only ones taking action.  

As previously noted, the crisis had begun affecting the entire world.  

Naturally, the Night Hawk had mobilized as well. Their boss hadn’t issued any directives yet, but while the emperor might remain calm, his subjects were panicking.  

Psychometric abilities—on paper, they seemed like dime-a-dozen support skills. And for the most part, that was true. But truly versatile ones were rare.  

Sister Hermit’s ability happened to be one of the most comprehensive. Though rated LV3, its utility neared LV4—capable of both tracking targets and extracting digital files.  

Reading a game’s data? Child’s play.  

Yet as she stared at the images in her hands, Sister Hermit frowned.  

“Is that… the Little Demon King?”  

She watched in disbelief as their eccentric mascot—a girl in bizarre attire—bludgeoned the infamous Okulet Lasvedo to death with a single strike.  

“Well… I guess that settles last time’s grudge?”  

Night Hawk’s custom phones hadn’t auto-downloaded the game—proof their tech division was on top of things.  

“Leave it be? Understood.” Wei Shi hung up the phone, swiveling in his chair.  

“What did the Prophet say?” Hermit asked.  

“Three days,” Wei Shi lit a cigarette. “The mastermind dies—by his own hand.”  

—  

Elsewhere in the Game  

“Why the hell did you kill him?! He told you to hit him, so you just did?!”  

Yiwen drilled her fists into Mi Xiaoliu’s temples like a pair of rotary saws. No HP was lost, but it hurt.  

After forehead flicks and feather-duster spankings, Mi Xiaoliu had a new entry on her list of “Things I Hate.”  

To be fair, the man had been polite. He’d explained upfront—said he was with the Foboler, investigating the game. Told Mi Xiaoliu to go ahead and kill him, that he’d take full responsibility.  

He hadn’t even asked how Mi Xiaoliu got his red name.  

On the surface, it seemed reasonable—but the more Yiwen thought about it, the more something felt off.  

If you’re dead, how the hell is it “on you”?!  

Whatever that man’s deal was, one thing was clear: 

Mi Xiaoliu’s player-kill count had just been updated to “2”.  

This was bad. One kill could be written off as self-defense. Two? Well… two self-defenses, then.  

Yiwen’s cop instincts screamed at her. Shouldn’t I be arresting Mi Xiaoliu right now?  

She turned to look at him. He was crouched on the ground, rubbing his temples, watching her with wary eyes—afraid she’d get angry again.  

But once they woke up, they’d remember nothing. She couldn’t even convince Mi Xiaoliu to turn himself in. If the memories were truly gone, maybe it wouldn’t matter. They could pretend it never happened—write it off as that woman attacking first.  

Unless that man wasn’t actually dead.  

Unless he remembered the red named Mi Xiaoliu.  

And what would happen to red names in the end?  

Before she could spiral further, Mi Xiaoliu suddenly looked up—not at the lurking Amari Yota this time, but at a new system-wide announcement flashing across the sky:  

[Game Update: Player Tracking]  

– Search for any player by IRL name or online ID.  

– Teleport to their nearest in-game town.  

– Red names hidden nightly (10 PM – 8 AM).  

The player base erupted.  

This bastard was encouraging real-world vendettas.  

Yiwen gritted her teeth—then everything went black.  

Old Gao was shaking them awake. “Go wash your faces.”  

Normally, he didn’t care if students slept in class. But since the game appeared, schools nationwide had banned napping—not for discipline, but to keep kids from dying at their desks.  

Statistics showed daytime dreamers died ten times more often than nighttime players. At night, the servers were crowded—killers couldn’t run rampant. Most murderers were nocturnal, dodging retaliation.  

“Got it.” Yiwen scanned the room. Her classmates looked like zombies. She dragged Mi Xiaoliu to the boys’ bathroom to splash water on their faces.  

Still no memories of the dream.  

During break, Jim—one of the few uninfected thanks to his ancient flip phone—scrolled lazily on his device. Yiwen, meanwhile, checked news feeds for updates:  

“Devices Hacked: Do We Have Privacy Left?”  

“Mysterious Cyber Attacks Herald Age of Ultron?”  

“Teen Wakes from Dream Game, Discovers Wet Sheets”  

Yiwen frowned.  

Come to think of it, federal officials had speculated days ago—given the hacker’s unprecedented capabilities, couldn’t he potentially manipulate real-world weapons systems…  

But when Yiwen opened the article, it wasn’t what she expected.  

A reporter’s voice—one she instantly recognized and loathed—played through her phone.  

“Classmate, you’re saying your father’s research robot suddenly went rogue and attacked him?”  

The interview subject appeared to be a researcher’s son.  

“Yes. My father is extremely meticulous—this couldn’t have been an accident—” The student’s voice trembled.  

“But how can you be certain? Couldn’t it have been human error? The casualty count is quite high…”  

The implication was clear: blame the researcher for faulty programming. The reporter was baiting him.  

“Shut up! My father isn’t a murderer!” The boy snapped.  

“Please calm down. No one said that.”  

On the surface, it seemed like a tactless rookie journalist stumbling into sensitive territory. But Yiwen remembered.  

A year ago.  

When she’d tried to sue the online mob defaming her, this same reporter had ambushed her:  

“Forgive me, but your defense sounds like excuse-making. Miss Yiwen, will your family assist legally? I hear your father works in Public Security.”  

She’d known the answer beforehand. The question was designed to provoke—to manufacture drama.  

Seeing history repeat itself left a bitter taste. Yiwen’s fist clenched.  

Then—a small head leaned into her periphery.  

“Pen.” Mi Xiaoliu reached for the borrowed stationery.  

“Here.” Yiwen teased, pulling it back as his fingers grazed it. She repeated the gesture twice more.  

Mi Xiaoliu blinked at her, uncomprehending but unbothered.  

Pens weren’t lollipops.  

Yiwen wasn’t Gloria.  

He simply stepped closer and retrieved it properly from Yiwen.  

Somehow, the childish exchange lifted Yiwen’s mood.