Chapter 58: Dialectical Game |
The man before him had brown hair tied back in a small ponytail. Even with his serious expression, he couldn't quite pull off an air of authority.
He was supposedly the director of a research institute, but he looked more like a charlatan peddling fortunes from a street-side stall.
Qi Si knew this man. He was his only "friend"—the kind defined by mutual interests, whose minor flaws were tolerable because he was, in many situations, exceptionally useful.
"Jin Yusheng," Qi Si said with a smile, his eyes fixed on the man. "So your background isn't as simple as I thought. To have the resources and capital to build an entire research institute... and keep me on life support for three years."
Considering he was in a dungeon, he decided to play along with the world it had presented to him, his tone light and teasing.
The dungeon had already woven his personal information into its bizarre, twisted narrative, but he never expected it to pull a stunt like this.
The thought that a wily, resourceful character like Jin Yusheng would appear as a key NPC in a place like this struck him as both strange and hilarious.
After a moment of laughter, Qi Si's smile faded. He spoke seriously, "Given your... inclinations, I would've expected you to try a séance, not some cloning experiment."
Jin Yusheng froze for a moment, then his gaze shifted to a researcher in a white coat beside him. "You're right. This clone is remarkably like him. For a second, I almost thought he was back." He gestured toward Qi Si. "Take him to the observation room. Monitor his condition and report back to me immediately."
Qi Si uttered the words "Weird Game" intentionally.
According to the forums, the cognitive distortion within a dungeon usually caused NPCs to automatically filter out any mention of the "Weird Game."
People in the real world, however, could hear the words; they would just dismiss them as something out of a novel.
This subtle distinction was a perfect test. By observing the micro-expressions of those around him, he could analyze the situation.
"I can't blame you for thinking that," Jin Yusheng said. "I implanted a full set of Qi Si's memories into every clone. He died in the game. His last memory was of entering a dungeon called the 'Dialectical Game.'"
Qi Si’s expression tightened. "You're a player now?"
Jin Yusheng gestured to the researchers clustered around the bed. "Take him to the observation room."
...
The observation room was a stark white space where the ceiling, walls, and floor blended seamlessly, as if forged from a single piece of metal. Only the thin outline of a door broke the uniformity.
Qi Si's bed had been placed in the exact center of the room. He was still bound and unable to move, left to do nothing but stare at the camera-studded ceiling.
The situation was dire. Without any weapons, his combat ability was no better than that of an average adult; he had no hope of breaking free from the restraints.
Even in the unlikely event that the restraints were to somehow snap, escaping under the watchful eye of 360-degree surveillance would be impossible.
Staring at the cameras, Qi Si sank into thought.
There was no system interface, no main quest. Beyond his own memories, nothing suggested he was in a dungeon of the Weird Game.
But memory can be deceptive, and fragmented memories can easily mislead the mind. If, as Jin Yusheng claimed, he had died moments after entering his third dungeon, his current perception of reality would make perfect sense.
He would have died instantly, leaving no memory of the dungeon's content. Then, in a daze, he would have returned to reality, wasting the last half-hour of his life asleep, completely unaware that he was already dead.
Dying in the third dungeon was entirely plausible. After all, players on the forums had calculated that it was a major hurdle with an eighty percent failure rate.
The two dungeons he'd cleared before had been set in the past—one Gothic, the other classic Chinese horror.
This scenario, however, was pure science fiction, set three years in the future. Its style felt completely at odds with the Weird Game.
More importantly, knowing Jin Yusheng, it was entirely possible the guy was crazy enough to pour a fortune into trying to drag him back from the brink of death.
Of course, this could all be just a twisted trick by the Weird Game, designed to blur the line between game and reality and make him lose himself within the dungeon.
But he couldn't deny the worst-case scenario—
That he was in the real world, existing as a clone of "Qi Si."
"There are too many inconsistencies. First, leaving a clone alone in a room to conduct a thorough search doesn't seem like a mistake a legitimate research institute would make. But if it's a clue-gathering phase designed by the Weird Game, it makes perfect sense."
"Second, if I died in the game, my real-world body would have died too. No technology, no matter how advanced, could have maintained my vital signs for three years."
"Finally, I don't believe current technology is advanced enough for such perfect human cloning, nor do I think scientists have made any headway on a metaphysical subject like the soul."
Qi Si calmly sifted through all the inconsistencies he'd encountered since waking up, and a clear line of reasoning began to form.
"This dungeon may not have a main quest, but there's still an implicit time limit. I'm scheduled for destruction in three days, which means I have to escape before then."
"As a clone, I'm still physiologically human. I'll need to eat at some point in the next three days. Mealtimes could provide an opportunity to break free. Three meals a day gives me nine chances—plenty of room for error."
Right on cue, the door opened and a young nurse entered.
She looked to be in her early twenties, and her eyes, peeking out from under her bangs, shone with curiosity as she cautiously sized him up. She was pushing a small cart laden with a random assortment of medical supplies.
Qi Si's eyes fell upon a saline bag and more restraints on the cart, and a sense of dread washed over him.
Despite this, he lowered his gaze and said softly, "Excuse me, I'm feeling a bit hungry. Could I please have something to eat?"
The nurse smiled. "I'll be hooking you up to a glucose drip in a moment."
"..."
So much for things being simple. The Weird Game wasn't giving him any openings. Any plan that involved, say, taking the nurse hostage with a pair of chopsticks during a meal was clearly off the table.
For the next five minutes, Qi Si lay there, the will to live draining out of him, as the young nurse repositioned his restraints to accommodate an IV drip and inserted a catheter into a vein on the back of his left hand.
The catheter was flexible, designed not to puncture the vessel wall, which immediately thwarted any ideas he had of using the needle as a weapon.
From the nurse's professional demeanor, it was clear he wouldn't be getting out of these restraints anytime soon. All his necessary nutrients and hydration would be delivered via IV.
As for... waste disposal, Qi Si's mind conjured the lovely image of a catheter and a urine bag, a perfect solution for someone permanently strapped to a bed.
A wave of misery washed over him. *If it really comes to that,* he thought, *I'd rather be dead.*
Then he remembered that in his current state, even suicide was off the table.
A fresh wave of despair crashed over him.
Qi Si asked the nurse, "Could you tell me how one determines if a person has a soul? I'd like to see if I can... you know, work on growing one."
"Oh, I have no idea," the nurse said, looking a bit sheepish. "I'm just an intern. I only started recently."
*They must have a lot of confidence, sending an intern to handle me,* Qi Si thought wryly. "Do you know what's scheduled for me next?" he asked. "Any physical exams?"
The nurse thought for a moment. "The director is supposed to meet with you later. He'll ask you some questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"I don't know."
The nurse, a font of useless information, pushed her cart and left.
Qi Si said no more, squirming slightly on the bed to find a more comfortable position.
From their brief interaction, he could tell this "Director" version of Jin Yusheng was a far cry from the man he remembered. His attitude was much colder, and he didn't seem like someone who could be easily fooled.
The only question was whether his patterns of thought and behavior had changed as well.
Had the dungeon created a perfect replica of his "friend," or had it merely borrowed his face?
...
An hour later, two researchers in white coats entered the room. They disconnected the empty saline bag and converted his bed into a wheelchair.
As they wheeled him out the door, Qi Si seized the chance to glance at the lock below the handle.
It wasn't an electronic lock, but a standard mechanical one—a model he recognized. A single piece of wire would be enough to pick it.
The researchers pushed his wheelchair down a series of corridors, making turns left and right at various junctions.
Qi Si scanned the signs on either side, committing the route to memory.
Most of the doors were identical, offering no clue as to their purpose, but he managed to spot one small room that looked like a security office.
Unlike the others, it had a glass window, mottled with the faded remnants of taped-on paper. Through it, he could see a massive monitor inside, its screen divided into a grid of smaller surveillance feeds.
If he could just get inside and spend half an hour at the console, he was confident he could map out the entire building's layout.
Before long, they pushed him into a room that looked like an office.
He noted that this room, like the observation room, was painted a blinding, seamless white and had no windows.
The two researchers shoved him up to the desk, then retreated out of the room, pulling the door shut behind them.
In the stark, pale silence, Qi Si carefully surveyed the office layout, waiting with a sense of boredom for the next stage of the plot to unfold.
Ten minutes later, the silence was broken by the sound of the door opening. Jin Yusheng, dressed in a white lab coat, walked in.
The NPC with the familiar face sat down primly behind the desk, his gaze fixed on Qi Si as if confronting a mortal enemy. "Hello, Number 9."