Chapter 108: Stinky Aliens Come Begging on Our Planet? |
"Of course you can." Samuel smiled and tapped Miles' outstretched hand, treating it as a handshake.
The moment he received Samuel's permission, Miles immediately vanished from his spot as if scattered by the wind.
It looked as though Samuel's slap had just blown him apart.
This was, after all, a world of "memories," so ignoring the physical laws of reality a little was perfectly normal.
Samuel watched this scene with great interest, making no move to stop him at all.
For him, this was nothing more than adding one more spectator to something that had happened long ago. Since it wasn't directly seeing into his thoughts, he didn't really care.
If anything, he had wanted to share this experience for a long time.
But he never knew how to say it or who to tell it to.
Talking about it directly would have seemed strange.
He was a clown, an actor...
If that was the case, how could he possibly refuse the applause of an audience?
Still, this was the first spectator to ever witness this play.
Thinking about it that way, he had to give him a truly excellent viewing experience.
Samuel elegantly raised his hand, grasping at the air. A black top hat appeared in his palm. With a deft flick of his wrist, he placed the hat on his head.
In his other hand, the head of a black cane emerged from his palm, then the shaft extended downward, solidifying and quickly forming a long rod. Finally, with a soft "tap," the hard tip struck the rooftop floor.
He had long since stopped taking things that had happened in the past so seriously. Let him watch if he wanted.
Besides, it was just a one-man show...
Then, he looked toward the sky.
Dark clouds hung overhead, and the rain was falling quite heavily, but it couldn't block Samuel's view.
He raised a hand to hold his hat steady, clicked his tongue, and his figure grew increasingly faint until his entire body dissolved into the curtain of rain.
His consciousness spread out like a spiderweb, following every single raindrop until it covered every corner of this city.
He was the stage, the actor, and the audience.
This play originated from his memories, but when the audience stepped onto the stage himself, he became a new spectator.
The rain kept falling...
Miles walked through the curtain of rain, holding an umbrella he had grabbed from a convenience store along the way.
It was a convenience store with flashing neon lights, glass sensor doors, and all kinds of goods on display inside.
Samuel, whose consciousness now covered the entire city, observed Miles closely.
He even knew to walk on the sidewalk instead of competing with cars for the road.
This kid wasn't stupid.
Miles walked with steady steps, turning his head to look around. His military boots stomped on the wet pavement, splashing up tiny droplets of water.
He looked at the streetlight not far away, then peered through the glass doors and windows of shops at the lights inside.
Then, a thought bubble appeared beside Miles' head.
Samuel had materialized his thoughts.
But Miles himself hadn't realized it.
"Oh, they use electricity..."
Miles actually recognized electrical appliances.
"I wonder if he's from another planet or just someone who slipped through the cracks..."
He muttered a rather inexplicable sentence.
Surveying this massive city and recalling the approximate city area he had glimpsed from the rooftop earlier, he formed a guess.
"A city this big... it's probably not from our planet."
His thoughts were displayed word for word in the bubble beside his head.
Ah, he had been mistaken for an alien.
[Stinky alien, came to our planet to beg for food?]
Soon, guided by a Law Contemplator's instinct, he walked into a plaza.
This was where Samuel had died once.
And it was indeed quite an unforgettable place.
It was the plaza in front of a large shopping mall.
Samuel remembered dying here the fourth time.
It was also the death, aside from his sixth life, with the most people present at the scene on the same day.
He had dodged three falling objects, avoided two loose manhole covers, reported a short-circuited plaza decoration that was leaking electricity, used Illusion Magic from across the street while calling the police to chase away a raging drunkard, and relied on his physical abilities, far surpassing ordinary people, to evade an out-of-control car rushing straight at him.
But he was still sliced into sashimi by a sheet of glass falling from the sky.
Hmm... he remembered someone had come to finish him off back then.
But Samuel remembered that on the night of his sixth life, he shouldn't have come here at all.
Soon, Samuel roughly guessed the reason.
Aside from the last night of his sixth life, the memories of his first five deaths had also had a major impact on him. They had probably all been mixed together into this memory.
Soon, Miles found a man performing magic tricks in the plaza in front of the mall.
The man had a face that was blurry and unremarkable, looking like nothing special.
This had originally been Samuel's own position, but since a "Samuel" already existed in this dream, the spot was naturally given to someone else to stand in for him.
Miles walked over and watched the performance.
From his perspective, this magic trick wasn't anything astonishing.
Setting aside the influence of the extraordinary, this magic couldn't even compare to some professional magicians in circuses from Liastan.
But if you factored in extraordinary abilities, then the so-called "magic" wasn't even worth evaluating.
Using real magic to perform fake tricks—who were you trying to fool?
Still, Samuel couldn't really be blamed. At the time, his only goal had been to "survive," and he hadn't had much energy to put into magic.
Miles focused on the scene, then suddenly noticed something.
He turned his gaze to the surrounding crowd.
Face after face—men, women, old people, children...
Under the dim yellow streetlights and the shopping mall's neon glow, every single one wore exactly the same smile.
Gentle, proper, joyful, giving off a feeling like a warm spring breeze...
The only problem was that their smiles were all identical.
The crowd wore a uniform smile, their expressions exactly the same as they watched Samuel, who had finished his performance and started telling a story.
They cheered, they applauded, but their movements were perfectly synchronized, as if they had rehearsed countless times, as if someone were controlling them from behind.