Doomsday Wonderland

New fact: Puppeteer was not a man who could quickly adapt to a new situation.

Lin Sanjiu tripped and rolled on the ground right after she escaped another assault from a jellyfish. She raised her eyes, and her heart skipped a beat at what she saw. With every motion of his hand, Puppeteer summoned school after school of jellyfish, raising them from the sea and into the sky.

“Wait! Listen to me!” Lin Sanjiu conjured a vortex and sent it towards an incoming jellyfish. The jellyfish jiggled then dissipated, but Lin Sanjiu knew full well that reducing their numbers by one or two would not affect the tide of the battle in any sense.

“What do you want to say?” Puppeteer pierced her with a gloomy stare. He walked forward, his boots creaking against the ground.

The school of jellyfish bobbed along with him as if they were his loyal servants; their long, translucent tentacles swayed like drooping vines in a forest. A single touch of their tentacles could cause you so much pain that you wished you were dead.

Sighing, Lin Sanjiu waved her hand as she got back to her feet. “L-listen to me. I didn’t set a trap for you. I’m innocent…”

Puppeteer let out a cold laugh before snapping his fingers once more, causing Lin Sanjiu to curse inwardly. She turned around and ran.

Lin Sanjiu had regained her physical body. However, after she returned to her senses, she realized she wasn’t the only one to be thrown on the concrete floor, as there was a man dressed in a black leather suit standing not far away from her, hiding amidst the fog.

Puppeteer stood in a daze for a few seconds, and then, as expected, he snapped.

Lin Sanjiu tried to explain herself as she guarded against the hail of attacks, but it had little effect.

“Veda? A code writing ability that can create anything?” The man’s face was grim. He strode behind the swarm of jellyfish, moving along with them as he spoke. “Do I look like a doofus to you?”

The area did not provide much room for her to run in the first place, not to mention that it was now colonized by a swarm of jellyfish. No matter how agile Lin Sanjiu was, she still got stung by them a few times, and the pain was something she did not want to experience anymore. Puppeteer wasn’t going to take her life, but he did not intend to go easy on her either. It seemed that the only use for these jellyfish was to torment their victim; it would not cause any real damage, only inflicting some intense pain.

“I know this is hard to understand,” Lin Sanjiu said, as pain crept through every cell in her body, “Facing a situation such as this, you’re like a gorilla, and it’s understandable that you don’t get it…”

“Who did you say is a gorilla?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant! Dammit!” Lin Sanjiu felt so exasperated she wanted to hit her head with a brick. But it wasn’t the time to wallow in her mistake, as Puppeteer’s fury was clearly mounting with every step he took and every movement he made. The speed of the jellyfish increased by leaps and bounds, looming over her in the twinkle of an eye. Even though the stinging pain had ebbed away relatively quick, Lin Sanjiu still shuddered at the sight.

It was also at this moment that she saw through the bloom of jellyfish. Her eyes glowed and she shouted, “Look behind you! I didn’t lie to you!”

Puppeteer looked over in the direction where Lin Sanjiu pointed, gesturing with his hand for the advancement of the bloom of jellyfish to stop.

The fog was lifting, revealing a major part of the concrete ground. Earlier on, the thick fog had blocked most of their vision, so they were not aware that they were actually inside a car park. The white stripes used to separate the parking spots were emerging quickly one after another. The car park looked so much similar to a real one, as there were even “no parking” and “handicapped parking” signages around.

Both of them could vaguely see that there was a door to some building behind the thick fog. But the fog had not entirely lifted yet, so they couldn’t see very clearly.

“So?” Puppeteer harrumphed as he swept a gaze across the car park, standing completely still.

“This is what I was telling you about! The code writing ability! Those Veda created all of this!” Lin Sanjiu explained. “Look, the more reality they write, the more we can see…”

While they were talking, the fog had faded, and they could finally see the real face of the building. It was a single-story building with a brown, almost chocolate-colored rooftop. There was a “Kwik-E-Mart” sign written in exuberant color on top of a glass door. Looking past the door, they could see a cashier and the corners of a few gondola racks. It seemed like a convenience store.

It appeared that the convenience store was the last thing the Veda had finished coding. In the blink of an eye, the fog dissipated without a trace, and a clear blue sky hung on top of them. The sunlight pierced through the jellyfishes’ translucent bodies, forming a prism of colors on the ground.

“It’s too real.” Lin Sanjiu looked at the scene before her eyes, falling into a trance. If she did not know about the ‘code writing technology’, she might have thought this was the reality. She could even feel the flow of the wind when she used her “Hypersensory”. It was completely different from the simple wooden hut the Veda had demonstrated to her.

“Do you believe me now?”

Puppeteer tilted his head, the greyish-green glitter powder around his eyes scintillating. He did not speak, as he was uncertain of how far he should trust Lin Sanjiu.

“Since you planted a tracking device on me, you should’ve seen everything I saw… So what makes you think that this is a trap set by me?”

“The device was functioning perfectly well until you broke the wall. After that, I could not see or hear anything,” Puppeteer replied softly.

‘That means he saw everything that happened before I broke the wall?’

Lin Sanjiu shuddered at the thought. ‘Thank goodness I decided to stay behind with Soulsqn and did not go to find the grand prize or react to the towel.’

When the face of her grand prize appeared in her head, Lin Sanjiu sighed, and the desire to leave this place got even stronger. She looked at the convenience store with a frown. “Their objective is to force us to surrender our information to them so that they can analyze our data… But I don’t understand why they created this store. Can this store help them get the data they wanted?”

Puppeteer did not make any remarks. After a short while of silence, he asked, “Can those Veda create anything with their code writing ability?”

“Yes, they could. After they have analyzed our data,” Lin Sanjiu wiped her face. “At least that’s what they told me.”

She had trapped two sets of data with her Higher Consciousness within different periods. The first time was longer than the second. The silver lining was that they hadn’t been able to finish analyzing her Higher Consciousness.

‘So can I assume that running an analysis needs a lot of time? Or is it because of something else?’

“The things they create… Will they last forever?”

“Probably… Unless they decided to delete them,” Lin Sanjiu added after recalling the experience she had in the wooden hut.

Puppeteer turned and looked at the convenience store for a while. Then, he spun his head back to Lin Sanjiu and said, “You go in and take a look.”

“Why me?”

“Because I don’t want to risk myself,” Puppeteer answered readily.

‘Well, that is one hell of an excuse.’ Lin Sanjiu looked at the jellyfish, which swayed closer to her, and nodded. Walking closer to the window, she peered into the Kwik-E-Mart.

At first glance, it seemed like an ordinary convenience store—a row of refrigerators that showcased a wide variety of drinks, beverages, and boxed ice creams. On her right was a cash register and a small shelf that was claimed by magazines, gum packs, and condoms as their colony.

This was a scene coded by the Veda, so they must be hiding somewhere to monitor the frequency of each data sets here. Once Lin Sanjiu used her Higher Consciousness, they would get her data. Since the Higher Consciousness was her trump card, Lin Sanjiu did not want to use it until the situation called for it.

Not only her, but even Puppeteer couldn’t use his Higher Consciousness as well. She tried to explain this to him, but what she got in return was his gloomy stare. She had no idea how far her words had reached him, but it wasn’t her problem anymore. She threw the thought away and walked into the mart.

“Welcome to Kwik-E-Mart!”

Before she even approached the glass door, a greeting in an Indian-accent suddenly popped out, giving Lin Sanjiu a fright. She raised her head and found a loudspeaker beside the surveillance camera.

“You’re standing on the spot reserved for the Clevelands. You must be Mrs. Cleveland!”

Lin Sanjiu lowered her head in shock and realized she was indeed standing in a parking spot.

“Move,” Puppeteer ordered coldly. “All hypocrites love to serve other people, so I assume you must love being the vanguard.”

Lin Sanjiu rolled her eyes, as she was too lazy to argue with Puppeteer, not that she was given the freedom to do so anyway, especially with that bloom of jellyfish that floated around Puppeteer. After the loudspeaker ceased speaking, she then slowly and cautiously walked towards the glass door. To her wonder, the loudspeaker did not say anything until she reached the front of the door.

She took off her shirt and wrapped it around her hand. Then, she pushed the door open and walked in.

The convenience store still looked the same. It wasn’t very hygienic, but looked passable. The mart was pretty large, and there were a few rows of gondola racks.

Lin Sanjiu stood at the entrance; the convenience store was quiet. She threw her top back on, and just when she put her hand on the handle to go back out, the Indian accent came again. “You can’t go out empty-handed, Mrs. Cleveland!”

Lin Sanjiu turned her body around, but she saw nobody in the convenience store.

‘Is that a bug? Have those Veda blown their fuses?’

With those two questions plaguing her mind, Lin Sanjiu pushed against the door. However, she realized that the door she was able to open effortlessly a few seconds ago could barely move.

She did not attempt to force her way out. Instead, she beckoned to Puppeteer, who was standing not far away from the door, and yelled from inside, “There’s nothing wrong here. Come in. There’s something I need to show you.”

The man clad in black leather dispersed his jellyfish with a wave of his hand. He glanced at her skeptically for a few seconds before walking forward. He avoided the spot Lin Sanjiu stepped in just now, but little did he expect that the voice would still come out of the loudspeaker. “Hello, Mr. Griffin! Everything going smooth today?”

Puppeteer was stunned for a few seconds, and his doubts began to build up once more. He measured Lin Sanjiu, but he saw nothing wrong with her. At last, he pushed the door open and went into the convenience store.

“What do you want to show me—” Before he could finish his sentence, Lin Sanjiu held the door and tried to squeeze her way out. As the voice rang out— “Mrs. Cleveland, you cannot leave without buying anything!”— the glass door was suddenly slammed shut by something and threw both of them inside.

Before Lin Sanjiu got up, she rolled along the floor. In that spot, there was a jellyfish.

Puppeteer’s countenance was even darker than the black leather he was wearing. “You can’t go out once you’re inside?”

“It seems like we need to buy something first.” Lin Sanjiu rubbed her temples as she tried to crack a joke. “I guess you don’t have any pennies on you, right?”

A dozen of jellyfish jiggled out of the air and charged at her. “Are you dumb?! The hell is that code writing ability? Can’t you see that this is a Pocket Dimension?”

Stunned on the ground, Lin Sanjiu did not even try to evade the incoming jellyfish.

‘Pocket dimension?’

She seemed to see the light of what the Potato Brothers were trying to do in the Serial Killer Simulation.

“These Veda are analyzing the Pocket Dimension in Salvation of God!”

This “Kwik-E-Mart” must be one of the Pocket Dimensions they were done analyzing. They coded it to trap both of them here.

‘No, it’s fine if this is just another Pocket Dimension.’ Lin Sanjiu swept a glance across the convenience store.

What she feared was that the Veda had coded something new into the Pocket Dimension.