Fantasy Game: Infinite City

"Bzzzzzzz~"

The lights in the research institute suddenly began to flicker, and the air around them gradually became humid. The originally normal air began to become heavy and sticky, so that a layer of water droplets condensed on Han Zu and Garcia.

“Hiss…hiss…”

"Snapped."

All the lights flickered for a while as if the voltage was unstable, and then suddenly went out with a slight explosion. The institute fell into darkness again. Only a few instruments were still working, but it didn't take long before they lost power and fell silent again.

"Electrical device in the energy room, go!"

Han Zu reacted quickly. When the lights went out, he thought of something and quickly headed towards the energy room with Garcia. They arrived at the energy room just before the power completely disappeared and saw the familiar black shadow on the power device machine in the energy room.

The shape of the black shadow was still unclear, but from its outline it looked like it had torn its upper body into a piece of cloth, and was wrapping itself around the electrical device like a mollusk, wriggling slowly. As it moved, the electrical device emitted intermittent overload sounds, and within a few seconds, it stopped working. However, the strange thing was that the machine did not show any signs of damage, it simply stopped working.

Han Zu walked over slowly, and just when he was about to touch the black shadow, he suddenly stopped. Han Zu took out one of his eyeballs, made a hole in one of his palms, stuffed the eyeball in, and then broke his palm. After the palm and eyeball fused and tentacles grew out, Han Zu placed his palm on the ground, controlled them to crawl over, and touched the black shadow.

However, the moment the severed hand touched the black shadow, it shriveled up at an extremely fast speed. Before the palm of the hand completely shriveled up, Han Zu quickly looked inside the black shadow through the eyeball placed on his palm, but saw nothing but the black shadow.

After the electrical device stopped working, the blurry black shadow retracted its upper body, shrank into a ball again, and retreated into the shadow of the energy room. Han Zu quickly repaired his body and stared at the black shadow, but even so, the black shadow still disappeared before his eyes. The surrounding air was no longer moist, and even became a little dry and stuffy, quickly evaporating the water droplets covering Garcia and Han Zu.

"Did you see what it looked like? What was that thing?"

Han Zu didn't say anything. He saw the severed hand on the ground next to the machine. It was extremely shriveled, even drier than a mummy. The skin on the hand had cracked and turned into dust, and the eyeball on it had completely lost all its moisture, turning into a dry and brittle film.

He gently picked up the severed hand, his eyes changed, and after observing it carefully, Han Zu's expression became serious.

"what happened?"

Han Zu handed the severed hand to Garcia, placed his hands on the machine beside him, and lowered his head, thinking about something.

Garcia looked at Han Zu's severed hand. Unlike Han Zu, her vision in the dark was poor, so she instinctively wanted to restart the machine, but was stopped by Han Zu, who pulled her back to the lounge.

There was a French window here. Although it was still raining outside and it was not very bright, it was at least much brighter than the energy room without windows. Garcia could see the severed hand in her hand clearly. She also saw the information that Han Zu had seen before. She had many questions.

"What is that black shadow doing? Why did it suddenly appear? Why did it run into the energy room? Why did it destroy the power equipment?"

Han Zu still didn't say anything. He just sat on the ground and silently lit a cigar. He was still immersed in his own thoughts and didn't even have time to put the lit cigar into his mouth. The burning ashes fell on his legs, making the sound and smell of burning flesh, but he didn't react.

Garcia understood that Han Zu must have thought of something. It was the first time she saw Han Zu become so serious. Judging from his expression, Han Zu should be trying to think of a solution to the difficult problem. So she did not disturb him, but still helped him clean the ashes on his legs and put the cigar into his mouth.

“Hiss… Huh…”

After a long time, with the sound of exhaling smoke, Han Zu returned to normal. He should have got the answer after thinking, and then he answered Garcia's question.

"What were you thinking about?"

"That dark shadow, and why it appeared here."

"Have you figured out the answer?"

"almost."

"How to say?"

"The reason why I couldn't see the shape of that black shadow clearly was because it wasn't obscured by some force. It just looked like that, a blurry shadow."

"It has no substance?"

"No, on the contrary, it has mass, and it's heavy. I can't even estimate its weight."

"Why would something like this appear here? And why would it destroy the electricity?"

"It's not destroying the electricity, it's eating it."

"Eating? You mean it's... eating electricity?"

"To be precise, it should be energy."

"A thing that feeds on energy? But why didn't it attack us? You know, you can be considered a mobile energy reactor now."

"Because it may have the ability to think, it follows its own set of rules, and it seems to hate living things."

Garcia picked up Han Zu's severed hand and shook it in front of his eyes, as if he disagreed with Han Zu's statement.

"I understand what you mean, Garcia, but when my severed hand touched it, I could clearly feel an extremely severe sense of disgust, which may be the reason why it left."

"But it still turned your severed hand into this."

"This energy absorption behavior was not entirely controlled by the black shadow consciously. My severed hand was sucked dry only subconsciously. I did not sense any hostility from the black shadow."

"But you feel a strong sense of disgust. Isn't that contradictory?"

"Not really. For example, I hate seabirds like seagulls, but I won't kill them when I see them, unless they annoy me."

"So it's a creature that gets its energy from machines, but why would it destroy the power plant? Wouldn't that reduce the amount of energy it can absorb? Or is it just not very intelligent and can only act on instinct?"

"He did not destroy those power devices. The reactor in the energy room was shut down only because the power overload activated the safety lock of the machine when the black shadow absorbed energy. In fact, the machine was not damaged. As for some broken lighting equipment in the institute, they exploded only because of the voltage."

"You mean to say that it was brought here because we fixed the power system, right?"

"Ah."

"But we used a lot of electricity before, why did it appear now? You know, according to the way it disappeared, it should have some kind of transmission ability, and it shouldn't appear now."

"Hiss... Huh... It should be that the energy reaches a certain level to attract its attention. If we infer from the power usage five minutes before it appears, we only need to keep the power of the institute below 40% to avoid attracting its attention and it will not appear."

Garcia thought of something and ran out. Not long after, the power system was back online, but only the power in the lounge was operating normally. The power used now did not even exceed 5% of the total power.

After the power in the lounge was working properly, Garcia ran back, picked up a laptop from the ground, and started building a model with an excited expression on her face.

"Snapped."

However, after seeing what Garcia was doing, Han Zu stood up, walked to Garcia, and rudely closed the computer.

"Hey, I'm almost there..."

"I know what you want to do. You want to build a 'trap' to capture that thing and then study it, right?"

"Yes, maybe from it we can find a way to leave here, I can..."

Han Zu pulled Garcia up and handed her his severed hand on the ground. He turned off all the power in the lounge, took her into a nearby laboratory, turned on the power of one of the instruments, and put the severed hand on it.

"Let's see what specific changes have taken place in this severed hand."

Garcia was a little confused, but she still did as Han Zu said. Through the experimental instruments, she saw the abnormality of the shriveled severed hand.

This severed hand was actually not injured at all, but for some reason, it lost all its energy, not a single bit left. The strange thing is that if it had not fallen off due to dryness, this severed hand would not have received any damage even at the cellular level, it would have simply been drained of its energy.

"How is this possible?! How did they do this?!"

"Although I don't understand science, I know my body very well. The moment my hand touched that thing, I felt an irresistible and powerful attraction."

"Theoretically, that thing... can kill you?! Sorry! I was too impatient, I shouldn't..."

"No need to apologize. There's nothing wrong with your idea. I would think so too, but not now. We need to learn more about that thing or find a way to strengthen my power. Otherwise, we should not get involved with it for the time being. It just has no hostility towards us, but that doesn't mean it will tolerate such rash provocations."

"By the way, your short hand is not toxic or radioactive, and it even self-ignites. In other words, that thing completely absorbed all the energy, so that the broken hand can't even do this kind of decay behavior. I'm sorry, I was reckless..."

Han Zu didn't care. He was very open-minded about death. After dealing with the severed hand, Han Zu patted Garcia on the shoulder.

"It doesn't really matter to me when or how I die, but I can't accept a death that is too stupid. I can jump into a volcano while holding my enemy, but I can't accept dying stupidly by trying to swim in the lava."

"I'm sorry, I..."

"You apologize too many times."

"Snapped!"

"what!"

Han Zu slapped Garcia on the back of the neck to stop him from apologizing too many times. He didn't know what he thought of, but suddenly an idea flashed in his mind and he thought of a possibility.

"Garcia, your idea is not completely unfeasible. I have an idea!"

"Huh? What idea? Didn't you say this idea is stupid now?"

Han Zu briefly told Garcia about his idea, transformed into the body of a tyrant, and ran out of the research institute. After a while, Garcia saw Han Zu running back carrying the prototype of the game cabin.

Transforming into the leader's body again, Han Zu carried the game cabin all the way into the energy room and placed it together with the energy generating device.

"Are you sure this will work?"

"If my idea is correct, after luring that thing out, we should be able to use the game cabin to teleport it and us to other places. If we are lucky, we will have enough space to figure out its habits, behavior logic, and action methods. If we are unlucky, it is nothing more than trying a few more times. We will succeed in some time."

"But before we officially start, I need to do some calculations. I have to find out the specific energy value needed to attract that thing without destroying the power device and the game cabin. We have to prepare for the worst. We also need to study the game cabin. We only have inferences at the moment and are not sure whether the game cabin can really do this."

In order to obtain relatively accurate data, a large number of complex calculations are required on the power output to the gaming cabin, so this work naturally fell on Garcia. Fortunately, electricity is not completely unusable. With the help of computers, the calculation speed is much faster than expected.

While the computer's calculation program was still running and before accurate data was obtained, Garcia directed Han Zu to disassemble the game cabin into a large number of parts. After removing some decorative parts, he reassembled it into a portal.

"What is this part for? It doesn't seem to be part of the game cabin."

Han Zu was playing with a small part in his hand. It looked like an irregular small polyhedron, but it was much heavier than it looked.

"Let me see... Hmm..."

Using the tools at hand, Garcia disassembled the outer shell of the irregular small polyhedron, revealing the sophisticated instruments inside. After a brief confirmation, Garcia understood what it was.

"Is this a... camera with a built-in positioning function? Why is this thing among the parts of the game cabin?"

"What the hell? You mean someone is spying on me?"

"What you said is not accurate. This thing can only be located. It cannot send out the stored files and information. Whoever installed this thing on the game cabin must personally recover the device to know what happened. The positioning function on it is used for this purpose."

"That pervert even wants to peek at men? Can you see what's stored in there?"

"The storage unit is specially made and requires a specific decoding device to read it. And strangely, the device that provides power does not have a power storage function. This means that this device will only start working when someone starts the game cabin."

"So it's recording me in the Infinite City?"

"Strangely, what you said is not correct. This thing can only record things in the real world. Strictly speaking, it should only work a few seconds before you enter the Infinite City and a few seconds after you leave the Infinite City. Someone is using this thing to monitor the round-trip usage information of the game cabin users."

"Who could it be? I have never seen any living thing since I came to this world. Even that black shadow is the first time I have seen it."

Garcia thought about the information Han Zu had told her before and expressed her thoughts.

"Don't take it too seriously. According to what you told me before, the prototype of this game cabin should have been here before you came. It may also be used to monitor other people, not targeting you. But in that case..."

"It means that besides you, me, and that black shadow, there are other people in this world."

“Beep.”

The computer completed the calculation and the data obtained looked very impressive. The probability of success was over 80%. At least there should be no problem in teleporting the black shadow into the Infinite City.

However, that inexplicable little device temporarily made Han Zu give up the idea of ​​taking action.

"Maybe we should look here first."

The rain outside was gradually getting lighter and there was a sign that it was stopping.