Feng Bujue paused for several seconds before announcing, “The distance between the two pillars and the object is exactly nine meters.”
When he uttered the words ’meters’, it was soon followed up with “Run!”
As he finished, Autumn Zither started to move, and they heard the building crumbling behind them. This proved that at that moment, Autumn Zither’s ’understanding’ had activated SCP-233. The crumbling sound did not affect Autumn Zither. He ran like crazy until he reached his teammates. Then, he turned around to see what had happened.
SCP-233 only needed 0.23 seconds to destroy physical objects, and that process was soundless. Therefore, when the crumbling began, the destruction process had already finished. What Autumn Zither heard was the aftermath, the sound of the building materials falling from the ceiling.
Standing from Feng Bujue, Weighty Words, and Ambitionist’s perspective, they could see that at the moment Feng Bujue called out ’run’, the two pillars and the walls between them were disintegrated on an atomic level. The ceiling and part of the floor that was adjacent to the wall also disappeared. Some cement brick that fell down from the second floor hit SCP-233, and they fell along with it down the hole in the ground. For a big building like this one, which was more than several thousand meters wide, it naturally would not collapse structurally due to the destruction of a wall and two pillars. After the small collapse and dust settled, a dark space appeared behind the wall, and the crack from the ceiling and the floor formed two pathways.
“What was that? Anything related to nine will be wiped out?” Autumn Zither asked.
“Looks like it,” Ambitionist answered.
He immediately understood why Feng Bujue did not have him be the person who handled the object.
“So, that’s why Autumn Zither who’s worse at math who was selected…” Weighty Words said. He paused as something crossed his mind. “Oh, I get it now, of the three of us, three of our IDs have nine strokes, and the remaining Ambitionist is level twenty-nine. That’s the relation, right?”
“Yup, that’s it,” Feng Bujue replied.
“But have you considered this? From your perspective, my only relation to nine is the character ’秋’, but perhaps I can come up with more relations on my own,” Autumn Zither argued.
“That can’t be help. Before the plan, I couldn’t tell you about the object’s property, and I couldn’t confirm anything related to nine with you because that would increase the speed with which you made the connection,” Feng Bujue replied. “In any case… you’re still alive, and that means that my plan is a success. I had quite some confidence in this plan. When I shouted, you were already standing about twenty meters away from the thing. The thing’s effective range is only twenty-three meters. Even for a normal person in real life, they only need less than three seconds to cover these last few meters to get to the safe zone. When you heard my statement, realized the meaning of the number nine, and connected that nine to yourself, the time that you spent would be long enough for you to step out from the thing’s danger zone. Of course, if you had some strange connection to this number and you related it to yourself in zero point something seconds… then I couldn’t help your bad luck.”
Autumn Zither had no issue with Feng Bujue’s attitude and words because he had sound reasoning. The success rate of this plan was indeed high, and the man thought about it thoroughly and had ensured his safety to the maximum. But Autumn Zither still had another question. “Wait a minute… you said the danger zone of that thing is twenty-three meters?”
“Yes,” Feng Bujue answered.
The other three exchanged a look, and it was Ambitionist who spoke. “Then, we have a problem… now that the thing has fallen down, unless it has fallen exactly twenty-three meters…”
“The path going over there might still be within its effective range, and we, who already know about its properties, will be wiped out immediately once we get close to that corner,” Weighty Words concluded.
“You do not need to worry about that,” a woman suddenly said.
The four players’ faces were colored with surprise because the voice came from the dark space behind the wall. Following the clucking of leather heels on the ground, a voluptuous figure slowly sauntered out from the darkness. Similar to the last time they met, X23 still looked so pure and beautiful. Her skin was as fair as first snow, and her long black hair swayed luxuriously behind her. The difference was, her outfit had changed into a black leather dress, and under the tight wrapping of the leather material, it accentuated her figure even further. Other than that, she remained mostly unchanged, so Feng Bujue had no reason not to recognize her. After all, Brother Jue had only met two Anomalies in his gaming life.
“Why are you here?” Feng Bujue asked. “This is a four-player scenario…”
“Is that how you greet your friend?” X23 flashed a seductive smile, and that showed the fangs in her lips. That gave the other three quite an alarming shock. Even though X23 was twenty-three meters away from the players, her voice travelled clearly into their ears.
“Haha… sorry,” Feng Bujue said with embarrassment. “How have you been?”
He knew that for X23, perhaps it had been one or two years since the last time they met.
“As you can see, I am no longer constrained by the rules of level four and three,” X23 replied.
Feng Bujue understood it immediately. X23 was now at least a level-two Anomaly, and that explained her appearance there. “That’s good… Then, you don’t need to live your life worrying about survival anymore.”
“Yes, indeed,” X23 answered. Based on normal conversational interaction, she should have followed that up with a question about Feng Bujue’s recent condition, but she did not ask. And the way she looked at Feng Bujue had an undercurrent of pity to it.
“Er… You didn’t just show up here just to say hi to me, right?” Feng Bujue asked.
“I’m on recycling duty at the moment,” X23 answered casually before changing the subject. “Right, I can’t stay here for long, so I’ll cut short the explanation.”
She paused to observe the status of the four players before asking, “Your main quest is to enter the Detective Club, yes?”
Before getting the answer, she continued. “The manager of the club is a strange man, and he is only slightly weaker than the four Pillars of Divinity.”
She glanced at the black space behind her. “He created this buffering space to stop me from entering the scenario to recover SCP-233, but when you solved this solve, the blockage within the buffer space automatically disappeared.”
“In other words… the manager has counted you as part of the plot for this scenario,” Feng Bujue concluded.
“Yes, now I have to leave with this SCP, so… after I leave, you can all carry on.” She raised her right hand and moved her finger. The next second, SCP-233 floated up from the ground and stopped beside X23.
“He’s upstairs…” X23 lifted her head upward, and lights seemed to flow in her eyes. “Be careful up there, Feng Bujue.”
“Oh, I will,” Feng Bujue replied. “Take care of yourself… After all, you…”
“I have to go.” X23 cut him off. She wiggled her finger, and the SCP-233 next to her floated on its own into the black space behind the wall.
“Will we see each other again?” Feng Bujue asked. When they last parted, X23 said that it was their last goodbye, but she did not die as she anticipated but showed up again, hence the question from Feng Bujue.
“We will…” X23 answered and then turned and walked into the darkness. As the darkness swallowed her up, she seemed to whisper as if to herself, “… Yes, we will.”
After X23 entered the space, the wall that had been dissolved miraculously recovered. The glowing data flowed down like a waterfall and reconstructed the wall. But the hole on the ground and the crack that headed to the second floor were still there, and the cement that had fallen still littered the ground.
“Er… Brother Feng.” About one minute later, someone finally spoke, and it was Autumn Zither. “Can you please explain… what just happened?”
“That beauty should be an NPC, right?” Weighty Words said. “But why would an NPC mention and understand terms like ’plot’?”
“Furthermore, all scenarios are randomly generated, but how come it sounds like you have met that NPC before?” Ambitionist added.
Feng Bujue really did not know how to answer them. After all, the gaming company had sent him message, and the two GMs, Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong, had both warned him that it was best to keep incidents regarding the Anomaly a secret.
“Actually… she is a unique, humanoid program in the game that acts like a recycling center.” Feng Bujue started to use his story-making skill. “As you can see, she was not affected by SCP-233, and you heard her say that she is working on recycling work. I’ve seen her once in a previous scenario, so she recognized me.”
He purposely lowered his voice to amp up the mystery. “Don’t spread any news about this. If this is spread, I can’t help it if you’re banned by Dream Inc.”
The three semi-believed him, but even if they had their suspicions, they had no basis to counter Feng Bujue’s statement.
“Hmm… Indeed, with Dream Inc’s penchant for the strange and weird, their employees would have designed a program to look like a beautiful woman and traverse the different scenarios. That is not impossible,” Weighty Words said.
Autumn Zither buried his suspicion in his heart and said jokingly, “Brother Feng, she’s a humanoid program. Why is it that you lost sight of us when you talked to her? People from different dimensions can’t be in love, you know.”
Feng Bujue was not one to allow himself to be mocked without countering, so he instantly curled up his lips in a wicked smile. “Humph… I’m surprised that you managed to evolve into Raichu without the use of a Lighting Stone.”
“Enough with the Pokémon references already!”
Ambitionist stood to the side silently, impervious to their banter. At that moment, Ambitionist was processing and collecting information. Obviously, he did not believe Feng Bujue, but unlike Autumn Zither and Weighty Words, he was instantly reminded of a term, a term he had seen on the forums, but the information related to it was all unverified rumors. However, the scene earlier could be explained with this term perfectly—the Anomaly.