by N. Heller
Ignoring Lin Sanjiu's flabbergasted expression, Rena continued, "The people you need to be very careful around are those who wear a small marionette earring. All these people are Puppeteers' subordinates. There are real people and also puppets. Anyway, could you remove the bandage around your neck? Oh, is that so? Then, I guess you don't have a choice. Well, one of the distinguishing features about you that the Puppeteer listed is that bandage around your neck, so…"
Lin Sanjiu touched her bandage subconsciously but she wasn't too concerned about it. After that whole incident involving the merger with those Neuhumes cells, she was not only 10cm taller but her facial features were also deeper. The color of her amber eyes was now so much lighter that it could almost refract sunlight. Nowadays, when she stood in front of a mirror, she almost couldn't recognize herself, let alone the Puppeteer's subordinates recognizing her.
When she thought about this topic, Lin Sanjiu felt a naggy feeling about something. Adopting an "out of sight, out of mind" psyche, she quickly dismissed the thought and smiled at the siblings, "I know. Don't worry. When you guys get back, remember to look for the cat doctor."
The two kids nodded. Reno suddenly remembered something, "You mentioned that you wanted to meet up with your previous companions but that meeting point isn't in Red Nautilus. I remember that there is a famous meeting point in Ragnarök World. That world... how should I put this… Even though I have never been there, I heard that it isn't easy there… Anyway, you may have to wait until the next time to go there."
As long as she could meet them again, Lin Sanjiu didn't mind if it was earlier or later. Besides, Sayo was a local there, so Lin Sanjiu wasn't too worried. She agreed and made a note about it in her mind. She chatted a while more with the siblings and asked them more questions about Ragnarök World until it was about time for them to leave.
Reno and Rena started to fade suddenly.
"Okay, let's meet in two weeks' time." Rena tilted her head and gave Lin Sanjiu a wide grin.
"See you in two weeks." Lin Sanjiu smiled.
Chapter 289 - Lin Sanjiu’s Hyperostosis
As it turned out, Reno and Rena's concerns over Lin Sanjiu being identified by Puppeteer were unfounded.
Seven days after the two teenagers left, it was almost time for Lin Sanjiu to be transported to the next world. Lin Sanjiu had spent most of her time in Kisaragi Station as a higher consciousness entity. In retrospection, she discovered that she obtained only a pathetic number of Special Items during this 14 months. She only had two books, [A Girl's Sorrow] and [A World History of Art]. Furthermore, she would have to sell one of the books to earn some living expenses for her time at Red Nautilus.
After she threw away the vending machine that she had converted at the start of her journey, Lin Sanjiu did not have anything else to tidy up. After some contemplation, she searched through the hotel rooms gathering some blankets and pillows just in case she needed them in the future. From a certain perspective, it was very rare to find a world like Kisaragi Station where human artifacts and items were still so well-preserved. After searching through the entire hotel, Lin Sanjiu finally found the warehouse of the housekeeping department on the fourth floor.
She stuck two fingers out and flicked the door lock gently. The lock crumbled like it was made of biscuit and made a powdery pile on the floor. The door creaked open. Just as she expected, the warehouse was filled with towels, toothpaste, toothbrush, toilet paper and all sorts of daily necessities. After Lin Sanjiu's [Planar World] had upgraded once more, the maximum weight of the item she could convert already reached three tonnes. She wrapped everything she wanted in a big bed sheet she placed on the floor. With a single thought, the floor was empty. Even with a conservative estimate, those supplies could last for at least three years.
After she casually killed off a duoluozhong which had dangled its head out from a shelf, Lin Sanjiu started walking out of the warehouse leisurely. When she placed her hand on the doorknob, she had a vague feeling that something was wrong. She turned her head and looked. The warehouse was very normal, she did not spot anything unusual.
Oddly, she did felt a very distinct weird itch on her back. Lin Sanjiu slowly turned back and took two steps out of the warehouse. At the same time, she activated her higher consciousness scanning. When she noticed a black shadow, she turned behind very quickly. She realized that it was just an empty plastic bag.
After feeling a very peculiar feeling all over her body, it took Lin Sanjiu two to three seconds before she realized that this feeling of uneasiness came from her own body.
She lowered her head and looked at herself. She saw her long legs, arms and her body which did not even have a pound of excess fat. She seemed normal. She used her hand to touch her back and was instantly stunned.
Shortly after, she sprinted down the hallway noisily and rushed in front of the full body mirrors in the main lobby. When she saw herself in the mirror, she couldn't help letting out a soft fearful cry.
"What's this…"
Her previous "out of sight, out of mind" attitude came back to bite her. She could no longer deny and escape her worry. The cat doctor had warned her that theoretically her body might be further altered. It had finally had been proven.
In the mirror, there was a reflection of a tall, slender woman with an icy expression who was standing very still. Her pair of light amber eyes were usually icy cold, yet, right now they held an indescribable expression...
There were two large bony wing-like projections protruding from her back. They peeked out from her shoulder very slowly, piercing through the material of her singlet, before they stretched upwards.
No, they weren't just bone protrusions. They were much closer to wings made of bones. After seeing that pair of scary-looking, threatening "wings", Lin Sanjiu couldn't say a word even after a long time.
The bleach-white bones had a tight-interwoven structure and seemed very hard. Long fang-like spiny structures grew from the topmost section to the tips of the wings. As the joints of the wings moved, the spines moved menacingly like poisonous serpents that could attack any time. When the two bony wings finally stopped growing and settled for a fixed form, Lin Sanjiu felt her legs go weak. She wanted to just sit on the floor— but she couldn't even do something as simple as that— because the end of her wings stabbed themselves into the floor of the hotel's main entrance. They supported her body firmly and sturdily.
The wings, which were almost close to two meters, formed two large narrow triangles on her back when she retracted them. Even though she had not tried to extend them fully, she could see from the numerous joints that these wings were going to be astonishingly flexible.
"What the f*ck." Mrs. Manas, who usually portrayed herself as a role-model teacher, cursed.
Even though the cat doctor had already predicted such a possibility, Lin Sanjiu just couldn't imagine that such a mutation would occur even after she had grown taller.
"What… what are these two things? I remembered those Sages don't have things like these bony wings…" she mumbled weakly.
Mrs. Manas hesitated for some time without saying a word. The teacher seemed to be shocked by the view of her back. After quite a few minutes, she finally spoke softly and with uncertainty, "Maybe, the sages that you see are just one type of species with that appearance?"
This explanation made a lot of sense. Lin Sanjiu turned and stared at her own reflection. She found herself momentarily speechless. After that, she looked down and eyed the tip of her wings.
There were about eight serrated spines forming the frame of the wings. Each of them had the girth of her arm and their tips had a metallic sheen. They didn't seem like they were made of bones but rather had a metal-like appearance. Lin Sanjiu tried to move the wings on her back and realized that it felt as though she was controlling a muscle or her little finger. With a single thought, her large left wing slowly opened up.
After she fully extended her left bony wing, its horizontal width reached more than 2 mete
rs. It had already reached another end of the hotel lobby. With another thought, the serrated spines extended out with a swoosh. They tore through the air making a sound that seemed almost like a malicious spirit devouring a human. With another thought, the bony wings retracted quickly like a beast closing its mouth.
Mrs. Manas didn't say a word for a long time.
"Why don't you try flying?" she asked rather foolishly.
Though it was a somewhat disappointing, but very predictable, Lin Sanjiu couldn't fly with those bony wings. After they were fully extended, air would just slip through the gaps between the bones. Lin Sanjiu created a drift with her wings, but no matter how strong the drift was, her feet were still firmly planted to the ground.
"Can you withdraw the wings into your body?" Mrs. Manas thought of another question.
"I'll try," Lin Sanjiu wanted to reply but she realized that her body was suddenly fading. From the looks of it, she would have to bring these two large wings to Red Nautilus.
Chapter 290 - How To Buy A Bun In The Fourth World
Lin Sanjiu had to admit that she had already seen quite a few different worlds, from the Hyperthermal Hell with its unbridled desertification, Garden of Eden with its weird technologies and Kisaragi Station with its death-like silence...
However, none of these worlds had ever made her feel like a sort of… unsophisticated country bumpkin.
When Lin Sanjiu arrived at Red Nautilus, it was nighttime.
Two large moons hung in the dark red sky. They were like two stacked sheets of ice. The moons were so close to the ground that a person gazing at them would even suspect that their lunar craters were visible to the n.a.k.e.d eye. Walking under the two large moons almost created a sort of soul-stirring sensation as if one was just floating in space.
The luminous moonlight pouring from the two moons were partially blocked by gigantic mountain-like shadows that covered the land. Lin Sanjiu stared at the black shadows. She strained and squinted her eyes but she just couldn't tell what those structures were.
Clearly, man-made structures wouldn't be that big. Even though she was looking at them from afar, the size of those structures seemed oddly out of place when compared to the size of a city. When she compared a skyscr.a.p.er to one of those large mountain-like structures beside it, the skyscr.a.p.er was like a grass sapling beside a hill. They created a mind-blowing contrast in terms of size.
It was as if Zeus had thrown down Mount Olympus and left a chain of mountain ranges resting on the horizon under the glistering red moonlight.
Lin Sanjiu looked around as if she was trying to get some clues from her surroundings. After a quick survey, she found out that she was lost, and this made her almost forget those large shadows in the distance.
She had arrived in an alley between two skyscr.a.p.ers. She could look into the distance through this gap between the two buildings. Lin Sanjiu didn't know if she could count herself lucky. When she looked up, she realized that the skyscr.a.p.ers were so tall that they disappeared into the clouds in the night sky. She couldn't even tell how many stories there were. As she walked a few steps down the alley, she realized that she was surrounded by a jungle of concrete and steel. She discovered that the particular alley, situated between the gap of two buildings, was so rare that it was one of a kind.
Above her, there were various flyovers segregated into twenty stories. The skyscr.a.p.ers were so densely packed that there was barely any space for people to walk. She spotted smoke rising from some chimney somewhere. The sky with the large moons was well-sliced into various pieces by the countless overhead power lines as she walked through the alley with puddles of dirty water. The various elements combined to form a strange landscape of a technological wasteland. Lin Sanjiu could hear the vague sounds of vehicles driving by and human conversations. She suddenly felt a sense of long-lost novelty. It was as if she hadn't seen enough of this place. Almost as if she was in a reverie, she slowly walked along the small alley.
Her skeletal wings trailed behind her in the dusky night as she took her first step into a bustling city.
"Beep!" A sharp alarm suddenly pierced through the air. This was followed by some cries of alarm and complaints. A metallic flying vehicle managed to apply its brake in front of the building beside Lin Sanjiu. It was just in time. The vehicle wobbled in the air for quite some time, the driver seemed to spend quite some effort before the vehicle stopped properly in mid-air.
Lin Sanjiu was amazed, she gazed at the flying vehicle for a few seconds. After that, she walked past the vehicle and continued walking through the strange new world.
There was a "Hostel— Only 35 small crystals per night" sign hanging haphazardly by the entrance of a building. It was so dirty that Lin Sanjiu could not even make out what its original color was. Beneath the sign, there were a few other translated words. Lin Sanjiu could only recognize the additional English and Japanese translations. The remaining languages were all very strange and she had never seen them before.
Looking around, she could see these multi-language signs hanging outside shops and stalls providing all sort of services. These signs covered the alley, clogged with dirty water, in a chaotic manner: "Special Item High Cash Conversion", "Half-priced Information Consultation", "Weapon Upgrade and Advanced Ability Training", "Free Special Item Appraisal", "Doomsday Survival Course", etc. There were so many signs that there was barely any space between them. The facades of the skyscr.a.p.ers were also covered by layers upon layers of advertis.e.m.e.nts.
Even though Lin Sanjiu had a pair of retracted wings which were almost 2 meters long, surprisingly, she looked comparatively unremarkable. The people here had a very weird sense of fashion. The siblings' outfits could even be described as "very conservative" compared to the fellow residents of this world.
A cat-like shadow streaked across the other end of the alley. Shortly after, a woman wrapped in a skintight garment made of snow-white fish skin chased behind it, she seemed to shout something like, "Wait for me, my little baby!" About 45 degrees above Lin Sanjiu, a window opened. An old but energetic Taoist priest, with typical long white hair and a lofty appearance, stuck his head out. He started quarreling animatedly with his neighbor, a middle-aged woman with multiple rollers on her hair, in Shanghainese.
Lin Sanjiu walked slowly through the street, feeling somewhat at a loss, like a country bumpkin who had just arrived at a large city.
"Missy, would you like a bun?" a refined-looking woman dressed in a red qipao smiled at her, beckoning, "In Red Nautilus, buns are our most famous snacks!"
Even a bun seller could tell that she was a newcomer to this world. Lin Sanjiu suddenly remembered what Reno said so she couldn't help feeling a little curious. She looked at the glass steamer in front of her inquisitively. The steam made it difficult to see the content in the steamer, so she asked, "What sort of steamed buns do you sell?"
"I sell all sorts of buns!" the woman replied cheerfully, the seller did not show even a slight bit of curiosity toward Lin Sanjiu's skeletal wings. "What color do you want? I have mysterious purple, elegant gray, romantic pink, classic black, refreshing green and sepia yellow. One bun costs one small crystal. How many do you want?"
"I'll hav- have a sepia yellow and a refreshing green," she stammered slightly. She had no idea how she should phrase all her curious questions.
"Sure!" the woman in the qipao took out a piece of brown paper from nowhere and wrapped up two snow-white buns before handing them to Lin Sanjiu. Lin Sanjiu took out two red crystals of the smallest size and paid the woman. Next, she examined the buns closely but she couldn't see a tinge of sepia yellow. She was a little hesitant and didn't dare to eat the bun she clasped in her hands.
"You always operate your stall here?" she probed.
"Every time I come back to Red Nautilus, I would open my stall here," the woman in the qipao was rather friendly, "I just came back, so I'll be here for 14 months. If you want to eat steamed bun again, you can always come back!"
"Ah, yeah, sure…" It was very obvious that this was the first time Lin Sanjiu was in one of the worlds within the Twelve Worlds Centrum. "Excuse me. How can I reach Seagral Square?"
That was the meeting point she and the siblings had agreed on.
"Oh gosh. That's far," though the woman in the qipao sounded just as friendly as before, her face revealed slightly that she wanted Lin Sanjiu to move away from her booth quickly, "Why don't you buy a map and check!"
Lin Sanjiu answered the woman with an agreeing tone, but she felt slightly embarrassed. Holding the buns in her hand, she continued walking and looking around. When she turned behind, she spotted a person, who seemed like a local, buying a few steamed buns from the woman in the qipao. After she saw him eating the buns nonchalantly, Lin Sanjiu placed the steaming, "refreshing green" bun near her mouth cautiously.
A refreshing scent of new leaves, like the smell of the forest reviving in early spring, wafted into her nose. Lin Sanjiu had no idea what sort of ingredients were in this bun, but she had never tasted such a wondrous fragrance in her mouth. It was as refreshing as nature yet had a sweet, dry aftertaste. When she chewed, she could taste a very faint bitterness. The taste of the complex amalgamation of flavors was simply marvelous.
"These buns are certainly worthy of being Red Nautilus' most famous local snack," Lin Sanjiu thought to herself and looked at the remaining "sepia yellow" bun in her hand. Her curiosity grew and just as she was contemplating whether to eat the steamed bun immediately, she spotted a small shop selling maps. She hurried over.