Monster - Chapter 104
Chapter 104: Thriller Paradise - Distance
When Lin Sandie woke up, she was lying in the back seat of the car. Lou was driving and bickering with Miu the crow. The sunroof seemed to be broken, only half-closed. Through the opening, Lin Sandie could see the afternoon sun was blazing; she had been unconscious for about three or four hours.
Sunlight slanted down from the sunroof, casting a patch of light on Lin Sandie's forehead. She didn't sit up immediately, just stared blankly out the window at the grayish-blue sky.
She had thought she was prepared when she resolved to enter Disorder Land, that she could fight back in her own way. But what she had just witnessed completely overturned her previous understanding. This was a chaotic world that couldn't be conquered by intellect alone. It was a place of sudden slaughter and violent assaults, a lawless land where she couldn't possibly survive on her own...
"You're awake?" Lou's question broke Lin Sandie's train of thought. "Miu tried to heal you, but it wasn't very effective. The system mall doesn't have any medicine that would work, either. You'll just have to rest and recover from now on."
"Mm." Lin Sandie sat up. "Where's Officer Xing?"
"Saya took her away. She was here to find her, after all." Lou offered a reason that seemed sound on the surface, but upon closer inspection, it was riddled with flaws.
Lin Sandie nodded, her expression unchanging. All of her internal organs were aching. She reached up to touch the 'Scorpion' on her back and felt its tendrils burrowing even deeper into her body, as if they were piercing her very marrow.
"Where are we now?"
"Still in the ghost town. Once we pass the mental hospital up ahead, we'll be out of the town's limits," Lou answered. They were still inside the ghost town, but after the earlier explosion, everything was quiet. Most of the hunters had been crushed to death, and the survivors had long since scattered.
The mental hospital in this ghost town was huge. It consisted of three main buildings that, while not tall, covered a vast area. They were surrounded by many smaller houses, all fenced in together like a residential community. There was no way around it; they had to drive past the three main buildings.
Lin Sandie looked out the window. The area was filled with withered grass. The ground around the main buildings was littered with broken glass and debris that had peeled from the walls, all bearing the marks of time. Fortunately, the road passing through was well-traveled and not difficult to navigate.
"Do you think what we encountered this morning was normal?" Lin Sandie asked, surveying the scenery around the mental hospital.
"If you had a level, running into something of this caliber would definitely be abnormal," Lou explained, a lollipop stick hanging from her mouth.
"But this isn't a game, after all. It won't assign you a low-level boss just because you're a low-level player... I didn't expect Enya to still be here, either. Saya is just an ordinary person; she was only able to fight Wei because she has two very strange artifacts. That Wei has a weird connection with the man beside her, Morita Tsuyoshi. He can transfer the damage Wei takes somewhere else. If he uses his own body as the medium, it seems to be even more potent..."
Lou was displaying her seasoned expertise. Despite the chaos of the earlier scene, every detail had registered in her eyes, and she could swiftly analyze the reasons behind them—something impossible without a wealth of experience.
"...It's highly likely that Tree killed Enya's spirit and placed it here to deal with us," Lou continued.
"What are those two artifacts Saya has?" Lin Sandie was intrigued by items that could make an ordinary person so powerful.
"One is the Crown of Thorns on her head. When she takes damage, her mental anguish is multiplied, but her physical body heals rapidly. It trades mental suffering for physical recovery. It was left behind by a mad king from Leviathan's history. The other is the black pull ring on her finger. By making a gesture like pulling a pin, she can detonate a bomb anywhere. However, overuse leads to deafness and drives one insane."
"How do you know all that in such detail?" Lin Sandie remembered Lou saying that they could only scan an item's superficial properties and rank unless they physically touched it.
"I messaged her and asked."
Lin Sandie nodded. "In the future, if we run into sudden incidents like this, can we use Lilo's Poetry Collection first?"
The second positive effect of Lilo's Poetry Collection was that each poem provided a specific buff or debuff to the user, with the effect not exceeding 30% of their original attributes and lasting for thirty minutes.
Using a decent poem as a buff before an encounter would allow them to handle such situations with more composure.
"You're unhappy, aren't you?" Lou asked.
"No."
Lou offered the lollipop she was sucking on to Lin Sandie, but the latter turned away with a cold expression.
Lou immediately slammed on the brakes, knelt on her seat, and leaned over. She pinched Lin Sandie's jaw, forcing her mouth open, and stuffed the lollipop inside.
Forced to accept the candy, Lin Sandie's deathly pale face instantly flushed red with anger.
"Here, you can use it whenever you want. I just forgot earlier." Lou took Lilo's Poetry Collection out of her space bag and shoved it into Lin Sandie's arms, her tone a mix of apology and placation. "Don't be angry, okay? I promise I won't use you as a human shield next time."
"That's not why!"
"Then why?"
Lin Sandie grew even angrier. Looking at Lou's face—a perfect copy of her own—tears suddenly welled up in her eyes.
Seeing Lin Sandie's eyes brimming with tears, Lou—still kneeling on the seat and looking back—was struck speechless. The usually sharp-tongued woman suddenly became flustered and anxious.
Lin Sandie blinked hard, forcing the tears back. She took the lollipop from her mouth, bit her lip, and gave Lou's shoulder a light push. "Let's go."
"Oh." Lou nodded quickly, returned to the driver's seat, and stepped on the accelerator in a fluster.
She had made Lin Sandie cry. But why was she crying?
They drove in silence, the only sound being the occasional rustle of pages as Lin Sandie read in the back. Lou kept stealing glances at her in the rearview mirror. Lin Sandie's head remained lowered as she ate her lollipop and flipped through the book of poems, never once looking up.
After driving in silence for some time, Lou exited the ghost town and followed the main road built by Thriller Paradise, heading northeast toward the Western World section of the park. She and Lin Sandie had already agreed to skirt the edge of Western World after the ghost town and head straight for the Dream Castle to raid Enzo's stronghold.
Their drive was interrupted when someone suddenly blocked the road. Lou slowed the car and saw a man who looked to be around forty. He stood beside a knee-high rock, waving at them. The man had short, curly brown hair combed back, revealing a high forehead. The strong wilderness wind had blown a few strands across one eye. He had a long, thin face, a high-bridged nose, and thin lips. He was squinting against the sun, making it impossible to see his eye color, but his face had a harsh, melancholic look to it, though he wasn't unattractive.
The man was wearing a white shirt, a black tie, and a black robe over them. If not for the robe, Lou would have mistaken him for a member of the Rose Society, since only those posers wore shirts and ties in Disorder Land.
Lou scanned the man.
Name: Cheng Gui
Age: None
Gender: None
Current Status: None
Profile: None.
The man trying to flag them down gave Lou a bad feeling, so she didn't stop. Although she had slowed down, after getting a clear look at his face, she ignored him and drove on.
But after another twenty minutes of driving, something bizarre happened: she saw the same man by the side of the road, waving at her again.
The lighting was the same, he was next to the same rock, and he wore the same expression. It was like they were caught in a loop.
"Little Crow?" This time, Lou didn't slow down. Instead, she first consulted Miu, who was monitoring the area from the sky.
"Something's not right, but I can't put my finger on it," Miu replied. "I feel something attacking my mental domain, but it's not a specific skill or anything else..."
Miu explained, sounding uneasy. Here in Leviathan, its and Lou's powers and skills were recovering, but the process was slow. It had its own unique defenses for its mental domain—a necessity for every Guide—but this sudden encounter with the strange man named Cheng Gui gave it a terrible feeling for reasons it couldn't pinpoint.
"Got it. Keep your distance, in case this guy has some kind of wide-range, area-of-effect mental attack."
Lou instructed Miu over their team channel and kept driving. The crow pulled back, flying higher and farther away until the strange sensation disappeared.
"The range is about a five-hundred-meter radius. That's huge," Miu reported its findings to Lou.
"Understood."
Just then, the sound of rustling pages came from the back. Lin Sandie had found a poem she thought was suitable. Without hesitating, she tore the page out and handed it to Lou.
Poem: "Could Have"
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened a little earlier. A little later. A little nearer. A little farther.
It didn't happen to you.
You survived, because you were the first.
You survived, because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because there were many people.
Because you turned left. Because you turned right.
Because it rained. Because a shadow fell. Because the sun shone brightly.
Luckily there was a forest. Luckily there were trees.
Luckily there was a railroad, a hook, a beam, a thicket.
A frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the water.
Thanks to, because, however, despite.
What would have happened, if not for a hand, a foot,
a step away, a hair's breadth,
a sheer coincidence.
So you are here? Still shaken after a close shave?
There's a small hole in the net, and I am speechless.
Listen, how fast your heart is beating inside me.
Unsure of what they were about to face, Lin Sandie didn't want to waste a powerful poem, so she chose a conventional one that symbolized a sliver of luck.
Not all the poems in Lilo's Poetry Collection were for buffs, and the prudent Lin Sandie intended to save the more powerful ones for later.
Lou took the poem from Lin Sandie, stuffed it haphazardly into her pocket, and kept driving without stopping. Meanwhile, Lin Sandie tossed the stick from her finished lollipop out the window.
Twenty-some minutes later, Lou saw Cheng Gui by the side of the road, waving at her for the third time.
She stopped the car.
Lin Sandie glanced at the ground outside her window and saw the lollipop stick she had thrown out earlier.
"Lin Sandie, you drive." After stopping, Lou immediately opened the door, got out, and walked toward the man named Cheng Gui.
Lin Sandie got out as well, and without a word, she slid into the driver's seat.
"Where are you headed?" Lou asked Cheng Gui, her tone reasonably polite. As she got closer, she noticed he was wearing a simple black judge's robe and carrying a large, leather-bound notebook under his arm. He looked like a presiding judge on his way to court.
"The Dream Castle. Can you give me a ride?"
"What are you going there for?"
"To find a car to take to Center City."
"You know I didn't want to stop and pick you up, right?"
"I know. But I stipulated that anyone who encounters me must 'be kind to others,' and I weakened the self-awareness of all who meet me." Cheng Gui seemed to have no intention of being mysterious, directly explaining the cause of Lou's predicament.
"Huh?"
"I am the Law of Leviathan. A pleasure to meet you, Outsider," the man said as he walked to the car, opened the door, and climbed inside.
The Law of Leviathan was a person?!
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