“Chen Cheng! Are you out of your mind?”
In an Aoto Games office, the shout cracked like thunder against glass walls.
Zhao Qian slammed a folder down like a falling guillotine, papers spraying like startled birds. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“Hm? What could make you this mad?” Chen Cheng lounged in his swivel chair like a lazy cat in sunlight, spinning a lazy circle. His hands gripped the seat’s underside like hooks. He smiled, eyes calm as still water. “Everything I did was to help the company, right?”
“Bull.” Zhao Qian’s chest heaved like a bellows by a forge, and his refined face twisted like paper in flame. “If you were helping, why would you shove the Hundred Ghosts Samsara map from three years ago into this level-unlock event?”
“Do you know how much we spent burying that?” His words pelted like hail on tin. “You just threw it back under the spotlight like a lantern in the night. If that mess gets exposed, what then? Did you think about the fallout?”
“What fallout could be that big?” Chen Cheng grinned like a fox in tall grass, shameless and heatproof. “You know this too. Higher-ups want us to fix the Treasure Imp’s freak bug. That Treasure Imp is absurd, like a mirage in noon heat. We can’t even find its core code, like a needle in black water. You still expect a manual fix?”
“You can’t gamble with the company’s future,” Zhao Qian snapped, finger stabbing the docs like a dagger. “You linked the old public-test Lost Cavern to the new server’s Lost Cavern like stitching two shadows. Did you think about players wandering in by accident? The public-test Lost Cavern is still unpatched, like a pit with no ladder. If a player slips, they could die.”
“Relax, Chief Zhao.” Chen Cheng waved it off like smoke from a candle. “I hid the window between the public-test and live Lost Caverns like a pebble under moss. Only that Treasure Imp still in-game can fall in. Don’t borrow ghosts in daylight. Let it breathe.”
He didn’t take Zhao Qian’s worry to heart, wearing indifference like armor.
As a newly appointed designer, he’d been handed a storm at sea. If he didn’t nail this, promotions would fade like mist at dawn. For his future, he felt he had to roll the dice like bones on a drum.
It’s just a bugged AI, he thought, like a puppet with tangled strings. No way it rivals a human mind, a blade to a sword.
Zhao Qian didn’t share the calm. As upper management, he knew the shadows under this game like roots under old pines. If the truth surfaced, their end wouldn’t stop at prison, like a flood that keeps rising.
“No. The servers aren’t fully live yet,” he bit out, voice iron-cold. “Abort this farce now.” He clung to secrets like a gatekeeper to a burning keep.
But.
“Too late, Chief.” Chen Cheng stretched like a cat after a nap, then sank into his chair like a log on still water. “I’ve already pushed the full update package. Even you can’t halt the pipeline midstream.”
“Please leave, Chief Zhao. I’ve got work,” he added, shifting to a comfortable spot like a fox curling in its den.
……
Meanwhile.
Nana Toki woke with her mind foggy as a rainy plain, dread prickling like cold needles. Two hours felt stolen like coins from a pocket.
Her skull throbbed like drums under wet canvas, and an electronic buzz coiled in her ears like a nest of gnats. She braced against the damp wall like a sailor against a mast and wobbled to her feet, eyes sweeping the cavern like lanterns in mist.
Where is this?
Tsk.
A sharp sting split her brow like a struck bell, and the buzz burst like a hive kicked open. She clung to stone like ivy and let the pain ebb like a receding tide, memory trickling back like water finding cracks.
Right. She was trapped in this cavern, a mouth in the earth that wouldn’t let go.
Host, the System has detected memory load in the deep brain like ice buckling a river. If this continues, one more world hop and your brain may fail like a snapped bow.
“So you want to wipe my memory?” Her mood soured like tea left overnight, and she shook her head like a wet dog, trying to fling the dizziness out.
“I’m not handing my memories to you, trash System,” she growled, temper flaring like sparks on dry straw.
System: “……”
Even now, the host throws a tantrum like a child in a market.
“Who’s throwing a tantrum? Get lost,” she snapped, voice cold as sleet.
After resting in place like a stone warming in weak sun, she felt steadier, breath leveling like a lake at dusk. Nana Toki took a few careful steps, feet testing the ground like a cat on thin ice.
“So? While I slept, did you find anything new?” she asked, moving to wake her body like a blade drawn slow.
System: “……”
Barely, and it’s troubling, like a black thread in a white cloth.
“Hm?” Her motion hitched midair like a falcon checking its wings. She hadn’t expected a real lead. “What’d you find?”
While you slept, I tried to decipher the Lost Cavern’s map code like untying knotted reeds. I stumbled on a second map’s code, almost identical to this one, like twin shadows. I probed its structure like a surgeon with a needle and found it incomplete—a half-finished work, clay not yet fired. Without doubt, this place you’re in was converted from that half-finished map, like a stamp pressed twice.
“So there really is something off about this Lost Cavern?” Her brow arched like a drawn bow.
If this cavern grew from a half-finished version, then its predecessor should be the public-test Lost Cavern from the Protagonist Lord’s dossier, like an old path under new snow.
Did the game planners lose their minds like lanterns blown out? Who uses a half-finished thing as a live update and expects no ghosts, like walking a rope over a gorge?
Wait.
Trapping players in-game?
Her snark froze like ink in winter. If the public-test Lost Cavern truly existed, then players trapped inside might be real, like bones under shallow water.
Were those “rumors” the officials called fake actually true, like letters sealed and tossed?
As she questioned the reports again, a new doubt sprouted like bamboo after rain. Even if those “rumors” were true, who gathered and posted them like lanterns along a road?
Her mind raced like a horse over open steppe.
The Protagonist Lord’s files never named the so-called liar, like a page torn out. Maybe the data really was fabricated, and a few bits just happened to align, like stars in a lucky net. Or maybe there was no liar at all, and this was a hole in the world’s script, like a missing stitch.
Whichever way she turned it, the pieces wouldn’t lock, like gears with one tooth off.
Ugh, this world is cursed, she thought, exasperation boiling like a kettle. Every new world, I have to guess the plot with my forehead, and this trash System plays dead like a log.
Trash System: Host, don’t throw the blame like mud. You’re the one skipping the story order, like stepping over rungs. Not my fault.
“I don’t care,” she huffed, stubborn as a mule at a river. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m done.”
She planted herself by the wall she’d marked earlier, back to stone like a sulky cat, refusing to budge.
“……”
Host, I advise you not to do this, the System said, voice suddenly calm as the air before a storm.
“Oh? What can you do to me?” She tossed ridicule like pebbles into a pond.
System: “……” (Quietly opening a link to the public-test Lost Cavern like a door behind a tapestry.)
This System can’t force you. But I can let you seek the truth yourself, like a boat unmoored.
“Holy— You set me up?” Her anger flared like oil on fire.
Before Nana Toki could finish, the wall to her side yawned with a pull like a whirlpool. In the next blink, light flashed like a blade, and the cavern swallowed her like a wave swallowing foam.
……
Thud!
“Ugh… mm…” The world spun like lanterns in a storm as she hit the ground, a cry tearing out like cloth.
“Hiss—” Pain bit like winter wind. “That damned System,” she muttered, rubbing her bruised backside like soothing a kicked drum. “I’ll dismantle you one screw at a time.”
She started to check the place she’d been hurled to, eyes sweeping like a scout on a ridge—when the air froze.
[Critical Hit, -19702]
A blood-red number burst above her like a flare in the night.
“What?” Her heart plunged like a stone in a well. Nearly four-fifths of her health vanished, like sand through fingers. This place inflicts entry damage?
She patted herself down like searching wet clothes. No wounds, no blood, no cracks in the shell, like a peach unbruised.
But her HP bar glowed a dangerous red, a sunset on the horizon.
No marks, yet the hurt landed—how?
A soft wind brushed her ear like a moth’s wing. She snapped her head back like a whip, and stared straight into a black dagger, its edge cold as moonlight on ice.
