by N. Heller
After the old Paleoindian said those words, all of them suddenly kept quiet. They exchanged glances but no one uttered a blatantly obvious statement like, "If we don't throw anything outward, the pocket dimension will not expand."
As the wind blew noisily against her face and body, it tossed Lin Sanjiu's fringe. A few random strands of black hair hindered her vision so she pulled them away from her face and pushed them behind her ears. She let out a bitter laugh.
Even though there were many things they couldn't see with their n.a.k.e.d eyes, there were all sorts of microscopic matter floating in the air, moving with the wind, allowing the pocket dimension to expand outward every second and every minute—
Unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Red Nautilus was slowly being consumed from the inside out.
"It doesn't need us. Any time there is wind in this pocket dimension, it can expand non-stop," the Zhongshan suit youth sighed. He massaged his temples hard before turning to Faun who had been silent all this while, "If this pocket dimension is really attempting to take over Red Nautilus, this is a huge matter. You better inform your organization as soon as possible…"
Currently, the group of people was sitting in the middle of the road by the battleground. If they raised their voice, they could call the guard over. Since this affair affected Red Nautilus on a whole, their small group couldn't settle this. This might even be beyond what Smiling Mermaid could deal with, so Faun knew he needed to quickly report this to the upper echelons.
Faun, well-hidden in his cape, nodded. He stood up and faced the direction of where the guard was standing. The guard had been looking at them curiously all this time because he did not get a response from the group. As a result, it made things easier for Faun.
"You! Go get—" he shouted.
He had only shouted those words when the wind around the group suddenly grew stronger. The air currents suddenly flowed much faster as they carried Faun's voice forward. Their hearts all skipped a beat. Before anyone could see anything, Faun had already finished yelling, —Steward Anka!"
The sound wave charged forward, penetrating the air like a tangible object. The wind whistled, tossing sand and dirt forward. A faint yellow line which demarcated the boundary of the pocket dimension sped forward rapidly, following the trajectory of Faun's voice, through the erratic air currents. It quickly reached the intersection beyond the upward slope and stopped just a few steps away from the guard before disappearing. All their faces turned dark.
Apparently, even sound waves which were generated within the pocket dimension could push the boundaries of this pocket dimension outward!
Faun stared blankly at the intersection before finally realizing what had happened. He didn't dare to say another word.
Everyone looked at each other for some time. Lin Sanjiu suddenly remembered something and quickly took out the paper and pens she had gotten from the library in the previous world. She handed them to Faun. Even though the situation regarding this pocket dimension was more complicated than they expected, shouting wasn't the only way they could get this information out.
Lin Sanjiu watched as Faun walked to the new boundary and signaled to the guard to stop moving. After that, he crouched down and started writing. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help sighing in her heart. She felt a little lost for a moment.
"What should we do next?" The young man in a Zhongshan Suit grimaced. Everyone felt more or less at a loss, "If this pocket dimension could expand with the movement of dust and sound waves, what on earth can stop it?"
"It isn't our responsibility to stop it. The big shots can worry about that," the half tree bark man gave him a sidelong glance before looking at the boundary of the pocket dimension, "I just want to know how we can get out."
For a few seconds, no one spoke. If the people from Smiling Mermaid were willing to help, they could experiment by letting a mouse or something enter the pocket dimension before chasing it out. However, even if that was not something difficult, there was no telling if Smiling Mermaid would do something like that for them or if they had other arrangements for their group.
The old Paleoindian looked around at everyone and spoke. It was hard to tell if he was being pessimistic or optimistic. Stroking some feathers from his war bonnet, he said, "It is too hard to stop this pocket dimension… But, once it takes over Red Nautilus completely, there is no need for us to get out. Anyway, it is just another apocalyptic world! Look. It had already occupied this area but there's nothing wrong. I think there isn't much of a difference even if we stay here."
Things were just as he had described.
If Lin Sanjiu didn't spot the strange occurrences happening at the boundary of the pocket dimension previously, she wouldn't be aware of the difference between where she was standing and a spot a few hundred meters away. Before Sajee acted in that strange manner, all of them even assumed that the pocket dimension had disappeared.
Just as this thought surfaced in Lin Sanjiu's mind, Sajee, who was sitting, started laughing at almost the same time. It caught everyone's attention and they all looked at her back.
"That's not true!" she slowly turned her head around. Her thick scarf wrapped her neck, blocking the view of shoulders' movements. It created an illusion as if she had turned her head 180 degrees, "Didn't I mention that the goal of this small pocket dimension is to replace this fully developed apocalyptic world? Perhaps, we can't see it now… But once it reaches a certain size, it will show it true form…"
As if to prove her words, Lin Sanjiu felt the ground beneath her feet suddenly "pulsing" a few times. It felt as if it was a throbbing vein of a large creature.
After two massive skeletal wings grew from her back, considering her weight, Lin Sanjiu could not even conceive how she could be tossed into the air so easily. From her field of vision, she could see that the others were also tumbling in mid-air uncontrollably. It was as if they were ingredients that a chef was tossing in a pan. The ground trembled violently in an almost unimaginable way. It rumbled loudly. Finally, large fissures appeared and the ground was broken into countless small pieces. A gigantic creature slowly rose from the underground pushing aside the soil, gravel, and grass.
There was an explosive boom. The young man in the Zhongshan suit yelled out loudly in mid-air, "What is that! We're going to land on that thing!"
Chapter 301 - The Final of Doomsday Wonderland, This Is The Truth…
"Hey, stop sleeping. Our boss came to the company just now."
Through her drowsiness, Lin Sanjiu heard a familiar voice drifting from somewhere very far away. She felt someone nudging her. Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes in a daze. She blinked and froze for a few seconds. It was only then that her brain processed that murky voice.
The computer in front of her was in standby mode, and the window screensaver had been changing non-stop. It was now showing a picture of a large peony she had already seen for over a year. Lin Sanjiu rubbed her eyes.
She felt her eyelids under her fingers. Her arms felt slightly numb. She could also feel the poor blood circulation in her legs which stemmed from her long sitting time. These realistic sensations gradually grew clearer as her drowsiness and confusion faded.
"You're a pro. You must have had a deep sleep. We found you sleeping even after we came back from lunch." The colleague, who was speaking to her, stuck his face out from the adjacent cubicle. He flashed an ambiguous smile, "You didn't sleep well last night? What did you do?"
Lin Sanjiu opened her pair of amber eyes and stared at him blankly. This particular male colleague of her was exceptionally sweet to all the females in their office. To put it in another way, he was a little frivolous. Sometimes, the way he spoke was also—
"Wait, where am I?"
Lin Sanjiu shuddered. While she took a very quick glance around, she suddenly jolted up from her chair as if she had been electrocuted...
Unfortunately, she didn't feel the firm, familiar muscles in her legs support her. Instead, her body felt very heavy, as if it wasn't listening to he
r. She accidentally hit the corner of her cabinet with her shin. It hurt so much that she even took a deep breath.
"Ugh…"
The pain instantly made her mind a lot clearer. She noticed her male colleague's surprised expression from the corner of her eyes. "It's nothing. I think I just had a dream," she muttered.
"It was a dream, right?" Lin Sanjiu thought to herself, feeling a little uncertain, despite her answer.
The tall, rich, handsome boyfriend that she killed, the desiccated bodies in Hyperthermal Hell, the scary-looking duoluozhongs, her companions with their different appearances and characters… Since the perceived sense of time is different in a dream compared to reality, in her dream, it felt as though a couple of years had already passed. She even had a "what-is-this-year" feeling. Lin Sanjiu slowly returned to her seat again. She sat in a daze for some time before she laughed at herself.
"What's this? I'm really quite imaginative…" she shook her mouse and her screen lit up again with the desktop picture of a grass field with blue skies and white clouds. "If I write this dream down, I think I can have a novel."
Her dream faded into the background, as she came back to reality. She started worrying about the mundane things in her life once more, "Oh, I think I need to hand in some report and data this afternoon."
Shaking her head, Lin Sanjiu opened her folder in a well-practiced manner. She stared blankly at the screen for a while before she started typing noisily on her keyboard.
Apart from her exceptionally realistic and eventful dream, this was an uninteresting day for Lin Sanjiu. There wasn't even anything worth mentioning. When it was almost the end of her workday, her slightly outdated iPhone suddenly lit up.
"Don't forget, you have a blind date with that doctor tonight. Do you need me to bring some cosmetics over for you?"
The person who messaged her was Zhu Mei.
Lin Sanjiu looked at that name, and her hand froze as she fell into a daze. After a few seconds, she replied, "Okay, please bring some mascara for me."
It was as if she could see the image of Zhu Mei dried-up corpse from her dream clearly in front of her...
"It's such a bother. Why did I dream of something so irksome?"
She should have screamed when she saw that. However, Lin Sanjiu scared herself with her instinctive reaction. She stood up and lunged her body forward. Balancing her body on one leg, she kicked backward with her other leg. The chair she was sitting on rolled backward and hit the person behind her directly.
"Ouch! What are you doing?"
The slightly frivolous male colleague held his abdomen. He exaggerated his movements and voice, "I just wanted to see who you were messaging. Do you really have to… Ouch…"
Lin Sanjiu was a little stunned. She looked down at herself. Her calf muscles, which she barely trained since she was usually desk bounded, were starting to ache from this sudden burst of activity.
"Sorry, you scared me," she smiled at the male colleague and tried to sound as friendly as possible.
She felt as if there was something in the depths of her mind disturbing her and it made her feel very uneasy. After watching her male colleague grumbling as he packed his things and then left, Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath. She bent over and started tidying her desk. She switched off her computer and decided to tell Zhu Mei about her own unusual behavior when they met later.
The best thing about this company she was working in was that everyone could leave on time. Almost everyone would leave on the dot unless their team leader requested for them to stay. As she was distracted, after Lin Sanjiu took ten minutes to pack up her things, she realized that she was the only person left in the office.
As they had an electronic door lock, the last person could lock the office door after entering a password. It reduced the hassle of handling keys. Lin Sanjiu tapped the device with her employee card and her fingers hovered over the combination keypad for a moment. However, she just couldn't remember the password.
"Come on. What's wrong with me today…"
Her best friend was so eager to see her get married soon that she seemed to be even more anxious than Lin Sanjiu. The restaurant for the date had an elegant atmosphere. They reached it 30 minutes early. After Zhu Mei gave her a makeover, Lin Sanjiu almost couldn't recognize herself.
"I feel rather uneasy today…" After the two of them sat down, Lin Sanjiu said softly to Zhu Mei while they waited for the doctor. "I had a dream this afternoon—"
"Hi! Doctor Chen. We're here!"
Before she could complete her sentence, Zhu Mei stood up suddenly and waved her arms at a young man standing not far from them. Zhu Mei only noticed what Lin Sanjiu had said before after Doctor Chen sat down and they introduced themselves. "What's your dream about? Doctor Chen, she was saying that she had a dream."
Looking at the plump man in front of her, Lin Sanjiu forced a smile, "It's nothing. I just dreamt that it was the end of the world."
"That's interesting!" Doctor Chen seemed pleased with Lin Sanjiu's looks. His smile widened and he started rambling, "Dreams help to fulfill human needs. Maybe, you have some needs that can only be satisfied in an end-world scenario... I went to Germany for a one-year overseas exchange during my university years. I learned quite a lot about psychology…"
Maintaining a polite smile, Lin Sanjiu felt as if her face was going stiff.
To be honest, Doctor Chen could hold a rather interesting conversation. He didn't seem like a bad person… However, as time went by, Lin Sanjiu felt like she was on tenterhooks. She felt as though she had forgotten something very important. Her thoughts had long drifted off. After a while, the two other people noticed this. Zhu Mei even pinched Lin Sanjiu lightly under the table.
"Excuse me, I need to use the restroom," Lin Sanjiu said hurriedly. Then, she left her table as if she needed to escape.
"What's wrong with me today?" she couldn't help asking herself while she sat on top of a toilet bowl cover, lost in thought.
"What if something suddenly attacks me when I'm so unfocused. Huh? What attack?!"
Lin Sanjiu scratched her hair. She found this worrying thought hilarious.
After she sat in the toilet for some time, as if trying to escape the current situation. She gradually calmed herself. Seeing that she had stayed in the toilet for quite some time, Lin Sanjiu stood up, "I shouldn't leave Zhu Mei there alone. It must be awkward…" she mumbled to herself as she opened the cubicle door.
However, her body stopped without any reason.
Following which, it was as if her body was acting on its own. Lin Sanjiu couldn't explain her own actions. She took out her phone and activated her camera. Then, she squatted and slipped her phone through the gap of the door and took a photo with the camera while she looked upward.
She pulled back her hand. The photo on her screen was a little blurred. It showed the bottom part of a basin and there was nothing unusual.
"Luckily, there isn't anyone around. I am sure someone would think I'm a pervert." She shook her head and laughed before she placing her phone back into her pocket.
Even though she had composed herself, the second half of the dinner date did not go as well as they had hoped. Doctor Chen probably noticed that his date was preoccupied so they ate silently for the next ten over minutes. Zhu Mei tried to make their conversation more lively but she knew that the blind date was a failure. Doctor Chen wiped his lips and called for the waiter.
"Let me pay for this meal. Keep your wallets, ladies," he said in a rather gentlemanly manner. He turned to the waiter and asked, "How much is the bill?"
"It is $382, sir." The very young waiter looked at the bill in his hand and asked, "Would you like to pay by credit or cash?"
"Um, cash." Doctor Chen smiled at Lin Sanjiu, "I'm a person that just can't get used to mobile payments, I feel more at ease when I bring cash around."
Lin Sanjiu nodded politely. She watched him as he took a few pieces of blue paper currency from his wallet.
He was holding mo
ney currency from Kisaragi Station World.
Chapter 302 - After The End
In that overly realistic and detailed dream she had during her afternoon nap, Lin Sanjiu remembered Kisaragi Station's banknote very clearly. It was made of a sort of plastic material so it was slightly translucent. It had a shade of blue between the color of the sky and the sea so it made a strong impression on her.
However, it should not appear here.
When Lin Sanjiu saw those blue notes, an "ah" slipped from her lips. She regretted her reaction the very next second. It was as if that had triggered something. The atmosphere at the table suddenly changed. Even though she quickly looked down, that had already attracted the attention of the other people sitting at the table. They looked at her for some time before turning away. Lin Sanjiu adjusted her expression and looked up again. This time, the money in Doctor Chen's hand had already changed back to the familiar pink notes with the picture of a president just like in her memory.
"Did I make a mistake?"
"What's the matter?" Doctor Chen looked at her a little puzzled while he handed over the money in his hands. The gentle background music in the restaurant was just as soothing as before.
"No, it's nothing," Lin Sanjiu tried her best to give an amiable smile as she felt a bead of cold sweat running down her back. Through her peripheral vision, she spotted another abnormality at their table. At this moment, her muscles were all tensed up, but she really wished that she wasn't showing any goosebumps, "I accidentally bumped my leg against the table. It's alright."
She hoped her own voice didn't sound that shaky to the others.
For dinner, Zhu Mei had ordered lamb chop with black pepper sauce. The restaurant served the dish with the steaming black pepper sauce in a small silver sauce boat. After Zhu Mei had finished her meal, she casually placed the small silver sauce boat beside her dinner plate.