Doomsday Wonderland

‘Healthy nutrients…

‘Ah, so this is how a healthy and nutritious brain without parasites tastes like…’

While the two of them were still stunned on the spot, the queen’s vast and heavy exclaims pressed against their brains.

Lin Sanjiu turned around to look at Silvan, and realized his face was pale and bitter. Everyone who was attracted to Shambhala was driven by the parasite in their brain. Meme was the first person without a parasite in his brain, yet he still fell victim to the queen.

The queen’s voice sounded a bit too loud. Lin Sanjiu’s mind was buzzing, and she could not hear her own voice from the recordings anymore.

‘First time, the first time absorbing a brain without parasites…’

‘Great, this is great. I’ve gotten a lot stronger so soon.’

Right after the voice subsided, the queen stopped talking and the voice in their minds stopped. The dead silence in the underground empty space was frightening.

The playback from the recorder did not play as Lin Sanjiu expected.

The two of them were both shocked at almost the exact same time. Every single movement that they performed from here on forth would have to go through a tedious fight with themselves. Lin Sanjiu paused for a while before covering the corner of her eyes with her hand to prevent any accidental glimpse of the queen. She quickly turned around for a peek; the struggle from before had thrown the recorder further away. She caught a glimpse of the tape inside the recorder, and it seemed like it had stopped spinning.

“Why isn’t it making any sounds?” Silvan asked. He seemed to not know about the recorder.

“It seems like the tape is rewinding. Can you summon Caster as an alarm?”

“I can’t, she’s not reliable. She might be useful for a while, but as time goes on, she might start to speak gibberish that no one understands.”

“Then I will have to retrieve the recorder,” Lin Sanjiu answered in a hurry. As she spoke, she felt that her memories were starting to fade. She realized the two of them were forced into a desperate situation.

“It can’t work anymore?” Silvan pressed his temples and asked with a slight tilt of his head.

“Almost there. I don’t know if it is the parasite in my brain affecting my activities, but I think the duration of my memories is getting shorter and shorter. I have to—” she said with a sigh.

“No, hold on for a second,” Silvan whispered to stop her. He looked at the artist before signalling to Lin Sanjiu. She immediately understood his sign and nodded at the artist. The humanoid Special Item quickly sat down and took a blank canvas from his arms. He sat slightly off center and allowed the two of them to see what he was drawing on the canvas in real-time.

When the brush started to stroke across the canvas, Lin Sanjiu suddenly gasped. The man with the golden hair asked in a whisper, “What’s wrong? Are you starting to forget again?”

He did not get an answer. A few seconds later, Lin Sanjiu looked up slowly, her gaze seeming disorderly. She opened her mouth, but before the words could escape, Silvan interrupted her. “Don’t move, listen to me!”

She forcefully stopped her twisting neck and looked at his furrowed brows.

Silvan’s voice was clear and heavy as he explained the situation at hand to her in the briefest way possible.

“Got it? Great.” He pointed at the tape recorder further away. “When you go and retrieve your recorder, pay attention to the movement of the queen on the canvas. I will start to jog your memories.”

What if he himself forgot in the process of reminding her?

It was obviously not the best time to discuss that. Lin Sanjiu suppressed her doubts, fixed her gaze on the canvas, and dashed towards the tape recorder. On the canvas, the drawing with the most paint was the queen. Its brain occupied more than half of the empty space, but its dark maroon-colored flesh was still expanding with the artist’s strokes. It was almost touching the two little figures in front of it.

She had been through a lot of doomsday worlds but it was the first time she encountered a situation where she could not even look at her enemy, form any thoughts of attacking or battles, or even launch a tornado behind her. The queen’s body was too big for the [Unfinished Painting] to suck it away. Silvan’s Special Item required him to pay a price with his own body for it to be used. The most constraining problem, however, was that her memories would fade at any moment.

Nevertheless, the situation was not the worst, for at least the queen did not release those purplish-black worms and suck the two of them into the crevice of its shell.

Was there really any way to win this?

She grabbed the tape recorder and tapped the rewind button before turning and dashing back. When Silvan strode to her and grabbed her by the arm, Lin Sanjiu looked at him absent-mindedly. “W-What’s wrong?”

“12 seconds.” Upon closer look, his forehead was covered with sweat, and several drops rolled down his golden hair, glistening lightly. This time around, Silvan was quick and anxious with his explanation, as if he was being chased by something. Right after his voice subsided, he covered his forehead and gasped with clenched teeth.

It was his turn to forget.

Every reminder left a faint impression in their minds, but the impression would get shallower and blurrier time after time. Compared to when Meme was still alive, Lin Sanjiu’s memories had deteriorated at a terrifying level.

The window for them to make a move was rapidly closing.

“12 seconds? I think it took you around 6 to 7 seconds to remind me,” Silvan said with a pant as he pressed his fingers against his forehead.

“It’s more or less that amount of time. We must remain definite on a tactic before the next recovery of our memories. Otherwise, if this exacerbates before we even finish listening to the recording, we might already forget about it.” Lin Sanjiu sighed with frustration, and because she was fighting with her own consciousness, she grew impatient.

Fortunately, the timing of them losing their memories was different, so they were able to watch each other’s backs and stop each other from looking backwards. When Lin Sanjiu was reminded of her memories again, the artist finally completed his drawing. A pile of mud flew up from underneath his feet and splashed on the canvas, filling the last part of the painting. The two of them glanced at the painting and were rendered speechless.

Outside the area of mud on the canvas, a giant maroon-colored brain with a suffocating presence was close behind them, and the dark crevice was facing them from the shadows. Nothing but a thin line was used to portray Meme’s slim body.

Judging from how vivid the painting was, they were only an arm’s length away from the crevice on the queen.

Despite being this close, they still did not have a single thought to harm it. The best they could do was run further away. The artist was frightened; he nervously rolled the easel up and carried the bucket before running away with them.

The two of them stopped in the shadows cast by the equipment box. Before they could even release a full breath, Lin Sanjiu lost her memories again.

The parasite in her brain seemed to be acting a lot more vicious after repeated resistance from her. This time, when she was in the absent-minded state, there was a moment where she thought she had just parted ways with Soulsqn and the grand prize, and had just come out of the Data Stream Library.

“…Can you remember?” a familiar voice asked in her ears.

Lin Sanjiu blinked blankly. She suddenly grabbed his arm. “I think I might have a way to fight the queen!”

“What?”

“Even if I remembered this method earlier, we couldn’t use it anyway… Give me all your weapons and I want you to repeat a single ability description back to me,” she said in a hurry.

Silvan did not hesitate as he took all the auction items from the Munitions Factory and placed them on the ground, almost amounting them to a man’s height.

“The situation is a little bit different, so I don’t know whether it will work or not, but we have to try!” Lin Sanjiu walked closer to Silvan, and before she lost her memories again, she told him everything he needed to know in one go. Silvan was obviously shocked. He looked at Lin Sanjiu, whose eyes slowly went out of focus. There were a few seconds of silence after that.

“So you know that person? You have the ability to transform dead bodies into puppets and make them attack… which is the early ability of Puppeteer,” he said grimly. Maybe because he realized what was going to happen, his voice shook.

Pygmalion Choker had a five minutes effective duration, which was already too long for Lin Sanjiu’s pitiful memory. Silvan touched her neck and paused a few seconds on the strap. He nodded and said, “You want to transform Meme’s headless body into a puppet, equip him with weapons, and attack the queen.”

When she realized the situation, a trembling mutter came from her throat, “Puppeteers never had headless puppets, so…”

“So all we can do is pray that it doesn’t work like a human, where it relies on the head to move.” Silvan chimed in, his voice hoarse like rough wind and sounded distant and blur.

Lin Sanjiu shut her eyes tightly. She did not know how many seconds she had left before she lost her memories again. She heard organized footsteps, coming close from afar and slowly walking towards the equipment box. After what seemed like a century, yet also a breath’s time away, the footsteps arrived beside the two of them.

She slowly opened her eyes and saw a thin, scrawny body. There was no head on its shoulders, the cut was messily covered by skin and clothes, and it looked eerie and dark, and did not feel real at all.

The headless Meme walked as he used to when he was still alive. He bent over and selected a black combat bag from the hill of weapons.

It was exactly like the combat bag Silvan gave him earlier.