Volume 4, Chapter 62-2 – Plot Fragment(Part 2)

Tap, tap, tap…

The way ahead was quiet. She did not encounter anyone.

After descending to the second underground level, Anran looked around and found herself facing a huge training ground. It was an oval-shaped arena, with many rooms built around its perimeter.

Starting from the center of the training ground, a large trail of blood stretched all the way to the stairway and toward another passage on the opposite side.

Anran followed the bloodstains. At the end of the long, narrow corridor stood a room.

Its door was tightly shut.

But Anran knew this was her destination.

Naturally, it was not because of some badass sixth sense.

It was because a yellow question mark hung above the door.

Turn in the quest.

[Born in the Rain].

She would complete the quest once she entered the room.

Anran looked left and right. She found no one nearby, nor any place where someone could hide.

She put away the explosives and took out the Signal Detector. Its original reading of 200 had risen to more than 400 by the time she reached this place.

What a strong signal.

Anran activated Mechanical Interference on the sealed room.

The reading on the Signal Detector immediately began to fluctuate, jumping between dozens and hundreds without ever stabilizing. In this state, those devices still could not be used.

Anran stopped using the skill and put away the Signal Detector.

She walked to the door and held her breath, preparing to test it. To her surprise, it opened with the slightest push.

A flash.

Someone was inside.

Anran drew her gun and was about to fire when she finally saw that the room was completely empty. The light was coming from a device standing in the center.

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The question mark was at the very back of the room.

Anran stepped inside.

Surveillance equipment stood in one corner. The glowing device was the source of the signal interference. Its cold, silver exterior formed a seamless whole, and for a moment, Anran could not even find a removable panel. The room also contained work computers, communication equipment, and many other things.

Anran walked straight toward the question mark.

It hovered over a picture frame.

The wood-colored square frame rested against a table. Inside it was a photograph of a girl.

She looked only fourteen or fifteen, with a very young face.

A thick coat wrapped around her body, and the photograph showed only her upper half. The girl was turned slightly to one side and looked somewhat dirty and disheveled, but even that could not conceal her charm.

However, the eyes that should have drawn the most attention had lost their focus. Although she was facing the camera, her gaze seemed scattered in every direction.

“You’re not cute at all like this.”

A date was printed in the lower-left corner of the photograph: July 4, Imperial Calendar Year 8094.

There was no signature.

Anran picked up the frame.

But the quest was not submitted automatically, nor did any prompt tell her what to do.

Umm…

What was she supposed to do?

It gave Anran one hell of a headache. She turned the frame over several times before finally deciding to remove the photograph.

The moment she did, she noticed something unusual.

A broken blade fragment and another, smaller photograph fell out of the frame.

Anran ignored the blade fragment and lifted the other photograph in front of her eyes.

“…”

Anran froze.

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The subject was still the same girl. Anran could recognize her from the shape of her face, but aside from that, she could barely see any resemblance. The picture looked as though it had come straight out of a horror film.

The girl wore torn, coarse clothing, and fresh blood covered her entire body. A small round tag hung crookedly near her shoulder, marked with the words “Z118.” Her right hand was raised in front of her, gripping a short knife from which blood continued to drip.

Her hair hung loose. Compared with the unfocused eyes in the previous photograph, these eyes appeared, at first glance, like a lightless darkness. They contained no emotion, no vitality, and were filled entirely with the will to die.

This photograph also had a date: July 3, Imperial Calendar Year 8094.

“…”

“…”

“…”

Anran suddenly realized that she had entered a strange place. She had become an observer, finally touching the plot fragment mentioned in the [Born in the Rain] quest.

She had arrived many years in the past, following beside the girl in the photograph and silently watching the story unfold.

At this time, the girl was still a small child. Her family had been destroyed during civil unrest, after which she was taken away by the subordinates of a military officer.

But that was only the beginning of hell.

After meeting the officer once, the girl was brought to a building.

Anran recognized it as the same building she had just explored, except this was how it had looked more than ten years ago, before it became so old and run-down.

Soon after being brought inside, the girl was thrown into a cage and given her own designation: “Z118.” No matter how much she cried or screamed, no one showed her the slightest sympathy. Many other children were imprisoned in the neighboring cages. Some were older than her, while others were even younger.

From that day onward, hell descended.

This place was called the Return Cage. Everyone imprisoned here possessed a special ability.

Many people known as instructors managed the facility.

Everyone had to live each day according to a strict schedule, unless an instructor intervened. And when an instructor intervened, it usually meant that misfortune had arrived.

Some were dragged into the torture chamber. Their shrill screams could be heard even from the training ground below. Sometimes, they were dragged into the room beside the torture chamber, where cries of agony mingled with the instructors’ unrestrained laughter.

At first, the girl did not understand what that meant. Then, one night, just after she lay down, she saw an instructor enter the cage of another girl who lived beside her.

Fear and screaming failed to stop the instructor’s brutality.

He stripped off the girl’s clothes and repeatedly beat her until she stopped resisting. Then…

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“She’s useless now, so we have to find her a new reason to exist. Hahaha!”

A few days later, that girl was taken away and never appeared again.

The young girl was deeply traumatized. She realized that even greater suffering awaited her. To keep herself from becoming useless, she desperately worked to improve her abilities. Although she was still abused from time to time, her extraordinary talent prevented her from meeting the same fate as that girl.

Time flew by. As the girl gradually grew older, she became numb to blood, abuse, and the mingled smells of gore and hormones. Then the Return Cage suddenly announced a new rule.

The stronger children could stand above the weak and wield authority like the “instructors.”

With that, the entire Return Cage descended into complete chaos.

The humiliation they had once suffered was transferred onto others. Their desire to imitate the instructors and wantonly violate the girls also awakened. Even some of the strongest female prisoners fell into depravity under the pull of desire.

The population of the Return Cage dwindled day by day. Yet the monsters raised within it grew at an astonishing speed through their beastlike struggle. Those at the bottom who were being exploited would sometimes suddenly become stronger, kill those above them, and take their place.

The officer was close to achieving his goal. Every prisoner had been injected with drugs. No matter how powerful they became, as long as they still desired to live, they would eventually have to obey him.

But human nature was never so easy to predict. Human nature gradually devolving into bestial instinct was even more impossible to trace.

The officer did not know that some of the children had joined forces.

They had lost interest in this cramped cage of desire. They saw the same unchanging people every day and wanted to venture into the wider world outside.

On July 3, Imperial Calendar Year 8094, when the calendar turned to that date, a bloody massacre erupted in the training ground.

An “upper-ranker” who tried to force himself on a woman considered untouchable had his XX burned off. After that, everything spiraled out of control.

Sensing that something was wrong, the girl tightened her grip on the short training knife. When several boys from the “Coalition” walked toward her with lecherous grins, the murderous intent hidden inside her burst free.

Z118, a girl whose designation placed her in the middle-to-late range, unleashed an unbelievable level of power.

She had no flashy techniques. All she possessed was speed too fast for anyone to react to and strength no one could withstand.

“Aah!”

“No!”

“Pfft!”

The exceptionally vicious Z118 carved a path from the training ground all the way to the main entrance. Everyone who stood in her way was mercilessly cut down. The instructor beside her cage, the one who had given her nightmares, was sliced into seven or eight pieces with her short knife.

At last, the building’s main door blocked the girl’s escape.

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It was a slab of metal half a meter thick.

Everyone knew that there was a secret passage leading in and out of the building, but no one knew where it was.

The group that had joined forces originally intended to force the instructors to reveal the passage’s location. However, events had gone far beyond their expectations. Every instructor had died during the uprising, and no one had been sent inside from outside.

Trembling, they watched the girl standing dazed before the door.

Her body was covered in blood. She looked like a vengeful ghost, and no one dared to come within half a step of her. They could only watch from afar.

Too… too… terrifying.

After she had stood there for a long time, a sealed window was suddenly opened from the outside. Sunlight once again fell upon the girl.

The people who entered were from Morningstar.

Their leader was Rons.

The officer had already been killed by them.

…

“Ding-dong! You have successfully obtained Plot Fragment ×1 for the story quest [Born in the Rain].”

The notification in her mind brought Anran back to her senses. She found herself standing in the room again, still holding the photograph.

This room was where the girl had killed the instructor in the plot fragment.

Z03, Z05, Z14, Z09, and Z08, all of whom Anran had killed, had appeared in the story. Aside from Z03, the umbrella-wielding man, the others had all taken part in the joint uprising.

“Z118.”

This plot fragment had been shown from Z118’s perspective. Did that mean the “???” who would award favorability in the quest was Z118?

It was only a designation, but Anran had more or less guessed Z118’s identity. After all, although her figure had changed greatly, the resemblance became noticeable after looking for long enough.

“You know everything now?”

A voice suddenly came from behind her.

Anran spun around sharply.