Fantasy Game: Infinite City

"boom."

"Well.."

Howard felt himself being thrown onto the snow with a muffled sound, which woke him up from his coma. His head was still buzzing, but a gust of cold wind slowly sobered him up.

He covered his head, trying to relieve the strong feeling of dizziness, and supported himself on the ground with his other hand. He slowly climbed up, and the hand that was supporting himself on the ground felt the cool touch of the snow.

Howard stood up shakily and tried hard to recall what had just happened. However, as soon as he started thinking, he got a severe headache and fell to the ground again.

“Crack…Crack…”

The squeezing sound of shoes stepping on the snow reached Howard's ears as he was sitting on the ground. Someone walked up to him, squatted down and said something to him, but Howard's head was buzzing and he couldn't hear what was said for the time being.

It was dark outside, and Howard couldn't see the man opposite him clearly. The man took something out of his clothes, stuffed it into his hand, then threw something on the ground in front of him, said a few words, stood up, turned around and left.

Howard wanted to know what had happened, but when he tried to think again, the intense pain came again and Howard fainted again.

"Woo~~"

"hiss..."

I don’t know how long it will take.

A biting cold wind woke Howard up. This time his brain felt much better. Although he was still a little dizzy, at least he could think normally.

"clang."

Howard was trying to get up when something in his hand fell to the ground. The thing sounded heavy, and even through the snow, it still made a little noise when it fell to the ground.

Groping in the dark, Howard touched the object that fell on the ground. It was a short-sleeved shotgun. On the ground in front of him, Howard also touched a box filled with some shotgun shells.

Howard searched his pockets and found a cheap one-dollar lighter. He never smoked and didn't have the hobby of collecting lighters, so this lighter didn't belong to him.

But now Howard was in urgent need of light and couldn't care less. The wind was not strong at the moment. Howard, who was sitting on the ground, pressed the lighter and blocked the flame with his hand. The faint light illuminated Howard's side.

He should be on a road in a residential area now, with the shotgun he had just touched and a box of shotgun shells on his legs. At the farthest point of the light, actually not far from him, he found a row of footprints left on the snow.

Putting away the cheap lighter that was already getting hot, Howard checked the shotgun in the dark. Howard was very familiar with guns, so even in the darkness with almost no visibility, he still completed the inspection of the gun in a very short time.

The shotgun was filled with four shotgun shells and there was still one in the chamber. The gun was in good condition and there would be no problems. After putting away the box of shotgun shells, Howard stood up with the shotgun in one hand.

Howard was lucky. A cold breeze blew by, slightly dispersing the thick clouds in the sky. A ray of moonlight shone on the ground, allowing Howard to see a little more clearly. Although he could only see the rough outline, it was better than nothing.

Holding the shotgun, Howard took a few breaths of cold air and gradually calmed down. He recalled what had happened before.

A man suddenly came to his house with one of the spare keys of his house in his hand. He was about to enter his house, so he shot him in the back of the head and dragged him into the house. But for some reason, the man was not hurt at all and instead knocked himself out.

Howard was sure that he had indeed shot the man in the back of the head and had not missed. The man was not seriously injured, let alone had no scratches. This was very wrong.

The pistol he had on him was missing, probably taken away by that man. There were still some secrets hidden in his home, and he wondered if they had been discovered by that man.

Howard took the weapon in his hand and quickly returned home, but his movement route was strange. Even if he took a detour, he would almost always turn to the left. Howard's residence was actually not far from where he woke up, but because of the detour, it took Howard more than ten minutes to return to his doorstep.

The door was closed, and Howard didn't have his keys with him. He took out a spare key from a switch box at the door, opened the door, and returned home.

The lights in the house were turned off. Howard turned them back on and took a quick tour of the house. There were indeed many signs of rummaging. His keys, which he had originally placed on the shoe cabinet at the door, were missing. They must have been taken away by the man.

The sofa in the living room had been moved, revealing a secret compartment on the wall behind the sofa, which contained some guns and ammunition. Although they had been moved, they had not been taken away.

Coming to the kitchen, Howard opened the refrigerator and moved some frozen meat on the top layer of the freezer, revealing a box hidden underneath. The box had not been discovered, so Howard took it out.

When the box was opened, there were some waterproofed cash and gold bars inside. They had not been moved and the quantity was not reduced.

After putting down the box, Howard returned to the bedroom. A poster on the wall had been torn off, revealing a heavy safe embedded in the wall at the back. The door of the safe had been torn open by brute force and thrown on the bed beside him. The safe had been turned over, and after Howard confirmed it, he found that something was missing, including a hard drive recording some secrets, a photo taken with a Polaroid camera, and an old handmade puppet.

Howard had a gloomy look on his face and was thinking quickly about something. Soon he thought of something and without even having time to restore the room to its original state, he took his gun, grabbed a high-powered flashlight from the house, and hurriedly left the house.

Although his pace was urgent, Howard still followed certain rules of action. He only turned left and took some time to return to the place where he woke up before. This time, with the high-power flashlight he brought from home, Howard's visibility was much higher. He followed the row of footprints that had not disappeared yet and chased after them.

However, after only a few steps, the footprints suddenly disappeared at a fork in the road. Judging from the direction of the last footprints, the owner of the footprints should have turned to the fork on the right.

Howard remembered where the fork on the right led to, which was the bomber's home. It was Howard who dismembered the bomber's body and stuffed him into the freezer of the refrigerator.

“Hu…Hu…Hu!”

Howard took a few deep breaths, as if he was making an important decision. He gripped the weapon tightly in his hand and walked towards the fork in the road on the right. The moment he crossed the dividing line, Howard's figure suddenly disappeared in the snow, just like the row of footprints, and disappeared without a trace.

some time ago.

"call..."

Han Zu was walking on the road in the residential area, smoking a cigar. Unlike Howard, Han Zu did not need any lighting equipment to see the surrounding environment clearly.

Coming to a fork in the road, Han Zu remembered that if he turned right he would be able to return to the bomber's home. He could sense the two hounds lying in the house.

He took a step to the right and accidentally kicked a small piece of frozen stone. After flying a short distance, the stone suddenly disappeared in front of Han Zu.

Han Zu stopped, and in the pitch black, with his pupils invisible, he carefully observed the place where the pebble disappeared. To others, there was nothing abnormal here, but to Han Zu, it was like a bubble without any colored halo, completely transparent. It was a transparent barrier that was many times thinner than a hair.

A swarm of drones was controlled to cross the barrier. There seemed to be nothing unusual inside. However, through the barrier, the swarm of drones inside could see Han Zu outside, but Han Zu could not see the swarm of drones inside.

"interesting."

When he stepped into the barrier, nothing unusual happened, and he didn't even feel anything strange. However, Han Zu reached out and touched the barrier behind him. The touch was very soft, like touching a ball of cotton, but he couldn't get out.

"Indestructible."

The system also sent a prompt. Han Zu nodded and walked towards the apartment building where the bomber's house was located in his memory. Soon he walked into the unit entrance of the apartment building and came to the elevator.

After swiping the key card, the elevator opened quickly. Han Zu extinguished the cigar in his hand and threw it outside the elevator. He walked into the elevator, closed the elevator door, and waited for the elevator to rise.

"Buzz!"

"Ding."

He didn't know if it was an illusion, but the elevator was running much faster than before, and the elevator door opened again soon. Han Zu took a look at the floor displayed on the elevator, and it was indeed the floor where the bomber's house was located, so he walked out.

"Ding."

The elevator door closed behind him and quickly went to other floors below. It seemed that someone else was using the elevator, but Han Zu didn't care at the moment. He returned to the front of the room, took the key out of his pocket, opened the door and walked in.

There was no change in the house. One of Han Zu's hounds was lying at the door. When it saw Han Zu coming back, it rubbed Han Zu's hand affectionately with its head. The other hound was lying in the previous room and had changed its appearance, apparently because the room was not big and its original size would make it difficult to move.

The woman was still curled up on the bed like a rabbit. It seemed that she would need a long time to recover. Taking off his coat, Han Zu took the things he had found in Howard's house before and sat in front of the computer in his pajamas.

A Polaroid photo, an old handmade doll, and a hard drive.

The photo shows a girl holding a rag doll, who looks to be around fifteen or sixteen years old. On the back of the photo is written a paragraph with a marker. The handwriting may have become a little blurry due to friction, but it is still clear. It says "My dear daughter Ina, I hope you can be happy every day", and there is a simple smiley face at the end of the sentence.

That old handmade puppet is no different from the puppet in the photo, except that it is very old. It should be the one in the photo.

Holding the photo, Han Zu walked to the bed and compared it. Although there were some minor differences, the woman curled up on the bed should be the child in the photo, just a few years older. Judging from the age of the photo, it should have been taken six or seven years ago.

Returning to the computer and putting down the photos in his hand, Han Zu turned on the computer and connected the hard drive. He opened the hard drive and found a lot of things inside. Most of them were things like research data. In addition, there were a large number of videos, photos, some physical examination reports, and the only encrypted file.

Han Zu clicked on the videos and spent some time to watch them casually. He found that they were videos of a child's growth. The earliest video should have started when the child was seven years old. It continued until the child was fifteen years old. At the end of the last video, a Polaroid camera was used to take a photo of a child. The child was holding a doll in his hand and looked a little haggard, but he still had an innocent smile on his face.

The photos served a similar purpose as the videos, and many of them were screenshots of the videos, so there was no need to look at them. Those things that looked like medical examination reports were actually research reports on live experiments under the guise of medical examination reports. The experimental methods in them varied, but most of them were based on drug injections and brain surgeries. Some places even mentioned various experiments similar to sacrificial rituals.

"This is fucking... linking live experiments with sacrificial rituals, it doesn't seem like something a good person would do."

In general, these things illustrate one thing. Aina, who was sleeping next to them, had lived in a large experimental facility disguised as an ordinary environment since she was a child. Multiple live experiments and those strange sacrificial rituals gave Aina a superhuman physique and some strange powers, but also destroyed her brain. Now Aina's brain is no different from that of a ten-year-old child who has not received much education, or even a little worse. She may not even be able to speak, and she can't think in a complex way. Moreover, according to the records in those test reports, Aina was hypnotized irreversibly by them in some way. Now, apart from executing orders, Aina's way of thinking is limited to the most basic instincts such as eating, sleeping, etc.

"There's only one encrypted file left. I have to find a way to open it... Hmm?"

The last encrypted file on the hard drive seemed to have triggered some system in the computer. A program popped up on the computer and began to automatically decrypt the encrypted file.

“Beep!”

With a prompt sound, the encrypted file was decrypted. Inside was a compressed package. After decompressing the compressed package, it contained a confidential document, a video, and a notepad.

The confidential document was related to Aina. The most important points were that the people who took the photo of Aina were not her real parents, but two researchers who played her parents. Aina's real family members were secretly executed. Aina was abducted into the research facility. Aina had a congenital mental illness, a congenital blood disease that had not yet been discovered by the medical community, and a congenital heart disease.

The video is a test recording of Ina. In the video, the teenage Ina is slaughtering some people. However, in the video, Ina's expression appears to be very painful at one moment, and then becomes very excited and ferocious at another moment, and this cycle repeats until the slaughter is over. The two expressions keep changing. Ina falls to the ground, covering her head, her body twitching and convulsing, and foaming at the mouth, as if she has induced epilepsy.

In the notepad was a URL and several groups of numbers, letters, and symbols that looked like passwords.

When I entered the URL in the browser, it showed "The current domain name does not exist", and I was at a standstill for a moment.

“Beep!”

However, the hidden program in the computer was triggered again for some reason and opened another program running code. A minute later, the browser page flashed a few times and automatically opened the URL.

There was nothing on the background of this URL except a pop-up password box. Han Zu entered the first set of passwords in order, pressed confirm, and jumped to another interface.

"It's a bit interesting... What the fuck is..."

After reading the information clearly, Han Zu frowned, pulled the ashtray on the table and lit a cigar for himself.