Fantasy Game: Infinite City

"Number of players: 25"

"Difficulty: Casual"

“There are no dungeon tasks, and players can exit the dungeon at any time.”

A white light flashed, Han Zu heard the system's prompt, and looked at the environment around him.

I was floating in the space, wearing something made of metal. This thing should be the skeletal frame of some kind of power armor, and I didn't know where the armored parts outside the frame had gone.

His body, which was wearing a skeleton frame, was captured in space by the tractor beam of the space station. He was unable to move and flew towards a hatch of the space station.

Taking advantage of this time, Han Zu looked around. There was nothing here except the space station. No planets or stars were visible. The space station was also very special because it was so big, as big as a city. It was more like a space city than a space station.

With the operation of the traction beam, Han Zu quickly arrived at the hatch of the space station. The huge hatch was opened, and some sturdy but flexible mechanical arms grabbed Han Zu's skeletal frame and sent him into the space station.

The hatch behind him closed, and Han Zu came to the interior of a maintenance facility. The robotic arm moved along the track above the facility, like a conveyor belt, carrying Han Zu deeper into the facility. On the way forward, Han Zu observed the situation below.

On his left were some small spaceships being repaired. They looked like combat spaceships rather than ordinary transport spaceships. Some mechanical arms were carefully repairing them.

On Han Zu's right, there were more than four digits of neatly arranged various power armors. Those should be the skeletal frames he was wearing now, the final complete forms. Similarly, a large number of mechanical arms were repairing them. In the aisle in the middle of the power armors, there were some people wearing full protective suits. They were holding some data tablets in their hands, and seemed to be recording the data of those power armors.

About 10 minutes later, the robotic arm brought Han Zu to a single-person maintenance platform, controlled the skeleton frame to land at the designated location, and the skeleton frame opened automatically. Han Zu left the frame and stood beside it. The robotic arms began to repair and adjust the frame.

"Please come over here."

Suddenly there was a sound around. Han Zu turned around and saw a small robot floating in the air. It looked like a giant eyeball with a large circular screen on the front.

The screen showed a man who was checking weapons. He lowered his head and his face could not be seen clearly. Han Zu walked in front of the eyeball robot and tried to talk to the person inside.

"Um.. hello?"

"Ah, now you're here. Come to my office first. We can discuss the details in person. Of course, if you want to take a tour first, that's fine too."

"Let's talk business first. How do I get there?"

"Just follow this eyeball robot."

“Beep beep~”

The eyeball robot made a few noises, turned around and floated in one direction, and Han Zu followed it.

The space station was very large. Even with the guidance of the eyeball robot, Han Zu still took two rail train rides before reaching his destination, a three-story church.

The main entrance of the church is very high, enough for me to enter normally. But when I entered the church, the hall was empty and there was nothing inside.

After walking through the hall, we came to the cemetery behind the church. There was no soil here, only some monuments. There were some people in space suits mourning here. After crossing the cemetery, there was a bungalow, but the front door of the bungalow was a garage door. The garage door was wide open, and it looked like an office inside.

Bending down, walking through the door and entering the office, Han Zu saw the man on the screen. He was still concentrating on repairing the parts of the weapon in front of him.

"Please wait on the couch for a moment. I'll be done in no time."

Sitting on the sofa next to him, the eyeball robot that brought Han Zu here floated aside and entered standby mode.

"That should be fine."

A few minutes later, the man finished repairing the weapon, assembled it, sat down on the sofa opposite Han Zu, and started a conversation with Han Zu.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Reverend Maxi. You can call me Maxi, or simply Mark. Do you want a cigar?"

Pastor Maxi took out a box of cigars and handed it to Han Zu, who waved his hand.

"I have my own, thanks."

The two men each took out a cigar and continued to communicate while savoring the smoke.

"So why did you want to see me?"

"Huh~~ I know you are trapped in a unique space, and so am I. The difference between us is that I know how to escape, but I don't have the ability to do so, and you have the ability to escape, but you don't know how. So I want to propose a cooperation."

"It sounds very attractive, but I want to know why you found me. Judging from the fact that you and I can meet, there should be many people like you and me who are trapped in a unique space, right?"

Pastor Maxi leaned back on the sofa, exhaled a puff of smoke helplessly, and continued.

"What you said is indeed correct, but I have also come into contact with most people who are in similar situations as us, and they all failed."

"But you're still alive."

"Yeah, I'm still alive..."

"Would you like to tell me why?"

"Of course!"

Pastor Maxi told Han Zu the story of one of the men. It was about a year ago that Pastor Maxi found that man using his method. Logically, that man had enough ability to escape the predicament. However, just when they were about to obtain the important things they needed to leave, that man was suddenly killed.

"The others were either assassinated or suddenly... went crazy, but I don't know why, I was not affected at all. Of course, you must think that these might all be done by me. I understand. After all, I have no way to prove that I am innocent."

"That is, every time you are about to succeed, something goes wrong."

"Yes, but I still can't find the reason. If I fail again this time, I will use my gun to blow my head off myself, and maybe it will end all this forever."

Han Zu just smiled, exhaled a puff of smoke, and spoke slowly.

“Sometimes, death is not a relief.”

"Maybe, but that's my last resort."

After extinguishing his cigar, Pastor Maxi looked at Han Zu, as if waiting for his reply. However, judging from his expression, he did not hold out much hope. However, things did not seem to turn out as he had expected.

"Okay, I'm fine."

When Pastor Maxi heard the unexpected answer, hope shone in his eyes again.

"Are you serious?"

"Of course! After all, I don't have anything to do."

"Great! So when do we start?"

"I'm fine with that. After all, you're the one who knows how to escape. But what's going on with this copy? You look more like someone from the copy."

"This copy is where I'm trapped. I've been here for three years and I can't leave."

"Then how did you get me into the team lobby? If it was according to what you said, I should have entered this dungeon directly without going through the team lobby."

"Team lobby? What does that mean? Didn't you go directly into the dungeon?"

"No, although it was only a few seconds, I did enter the dungeon in the team lobby."

"That's weird. In this instance, you can't send a team invitation in the instance?"

"It may be related to those people who died suddenly or went crazy as you said before. Who knows, someone might be targeting you."

"It's possible. By the way, when you entered the dungeon, how many players did you see?"

"25 people, what's wrong?"

"Is this the number? Have you seen them when you came here?"

"Probably not. Although I met a lot of people on the way here, they were more like NPCs in the dungeon. By the way, let's not talk about this for now. I have something else to ask you. If you have been trapped here for three years, even if the time in the Infinite City dungeon is not one-to-one with the time in the real world, then according to common sense, your body lying in the game cabin should have died due to hunger... Do you understand what I mean?"

"I understand, but my situation is a little...special. If I can get out, or if you can get out and find the location of my body, you will understand."

"alright."

"Let me continue to talk about those players. They..."

In the information that Pastor Maxi said, although it was written that there were many players, Pastor Maxi had not seen any of them during his time here. During this time, Pastor Maxi seemed to have become a real astronaut. He went from an ordinary "tourist" to a manager in the space station, and his level was not low. He had his own independent office and also had the right to manage the monitoring system in the space station.

The monitoring system of the space station is very detailed. Except for a few blind spots, it covers almost the entire space station inside and outside. Even in those blind spots, as long as there is no one standing still, they will be discovered. However, Pastor Maxi has not seen a single player during this period.

Pastor Maxi, who has management authority, can handle 90% of the personnel information of the space station. There is nothing abnormal in the information of these personnel, and there is no sign of these employees themselves disappearing or being replaced. Except for himself and Han Zu, who was called by him, other players seem to have evaporated from the face of the earth and have never appeared.

Whenever a new person enters or leaves the copy, Priest Maxi will receive a prompt from the system. If the number of players in the copy exceeds 10, an item will be refreshed at a random location in the space station. This item is what Priest Maxi said is one of the important key items needed to escape from the predicament.

"Huh~~ You said 90%, so those people whose data you don't have permission to view, is it possible that they are those players?"

"It is possible, but I don't have the permission to enter the location where those people are. Although I can bypass the permission to sneak in, there are still many security personnel inside. I can't defeat them by myself. And if I do that, my efforts so far will be in vain. I won't be able to use the monitoring system of the space station to find the refresh location of the key items. You know, this space station is not small."

"I always feel that those 'high-level officials' will have some important information. So, let's split up and you look for some important items that are refreshed at random locations, and I'll go find those 'high-level officials' to see if I can find any useful information."

Pastor Maxi gave Han Zu a communicator so that he could contact him directly. He informed Han Zu of the locations of the high-level people in the space station, and then began to search for the refreshed items using his information terminal.

Just before Han Zu was about to leave, Pastor Maxi threw a key card and a fully covered researcher uniform to Han Zu.

"This is the key card for the rear entrance to the research laboratory on the space station. The research laboratory is not far from here. You can go and see if there is anything you can use. By the way, it's best not to maintain your current body shape. It's too conspicuous."