by N. Heller
Shocked, Lin Sanjiu swiftly took a few steps forward. Leaving a small distance between herself and the building, she stopped. She stretched out her hand and knocked on it gingerly.
The surface of the building was cold to touch and very hard. It did not feel like a normal metal building. When Lin Sanjiu pulled back her hand, a cloud of mist coincidentally dissipated above her. A few rays of sunlight penetrated through the mist. The surface of the building instantly lit up with dazzling intensity.
It was a real diamond!
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help gaping at the building in front of her. She stood entranced by its appearance. In an apocalyptic world, a diamond might not even be worth more than a loaf of bread. However, it was undeniable that Lin Sanjiu originally lived in a civilized world, so for her, it was still quite a sight to behold.
"It doesn't matter if it is a real diamond or whatever," Lin Sanjiu said after a few seconds when she got over her awe. "More importantly, what sort of amus.e.m.e.nt attraction is this?"
Lin Sanjiu heard a very soft noise walking past her. It stopped not far from her. It was the sound of Puppeteer's leather outfit.
"There aren't any instructions, and I can't even see the entrance," she added.
Just as she had pointed out, the four of them could not find any door-like mechanism even after walking a circle around the building. There wasn't any sort of description, explanation or instructions on the building or nearby. The building was a few stories tall but it took less than a minute for them to circle it. Logically, there was no reason that they would miss an entrance.
The final pitstop was right before them, but there was no way to enter. When Puppeteer walked through the pink mist once again, pacing very quickly, he finally showed his disp.l.e.a.s.u.r.e. The shiny dust around his eyes suddenly turned raven black. Wincing half his face, he was visibly exasperated, "Look carefully! You guys split up and look for the entrance! There is nothing hidden within the mist behind the building. This MUST be the arena of the final pit stop!"
Even though they had searched very carefully, there wasn't a single door in sight.
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help sighing inwardly after she circled the building again. She had no interest in the big final prize. Her main purpose was to catch Geran. If she really couldn't enter, she didn't mind just guarding it from the outside. Even if she did that, she probably could wait for her target here… That is if Geran had not entered the building already.
Unfortunately, she was wary about her plan as Puppeteer was clearly a ticking time bomb. After turning around a corner past an odd protrusion, Lin Sanjiu saw Meowie Hu walking toward her.
"Have you seen AYU?" the cat twitched his whiskers as he walked with his tail up straight. "Wasn't she with you?"
AYU hated Lin Sanjiu, so there was no reason that Soul would even voluntarily walked near her. Lin Sanjiu shook her head, "She is probably with Puppeteer."
The cat nodded, "Okay, I will look over there."
After their short exchange, the cat walked past her. Then, Lin Sanjiu noticed the colored feathers on Puppeteer's black jacket. He stood in the same spot and did not move. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help feeling a little uneasy even when she stared at his back.
"AYU isn't here?"Lin Sanjiu tried to make small talk despite not knowing what to say, "Don't worry. Since we are already here at the final pitstop. We can definitely enter. There wouldn't even be a final pitstop if no one could enter."
Puppeteer gave her a sinister glance and did not say anything. After a few seconds, he spoke to her in a quiet but threatening tone, "Go and look for the entrance."
The building was not as large as Seagral Square. She had already circled the building three times in such a short time. Despite this, Lin Sanjiu did not object and continued walking and searching. However, this time after she walked for half a minute, she suddenly stopped feeling a little apprehensive.
"Cat doctor?" she shouted, "Are you nearby?"
There was total silence in the pink mist. She couldn't hear a single sound, and the mist blocked half her field of vision.
"According to our speeds," Lin Sanjiu was perplexed as she muttered to herself, "We should meet each other again. This building isn't even that big."
"Did the cat doctor stop to talk to Puppeteer?"
Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt quite anxious, she quickly ran to the spot where Puppeteer had been standing previously. It was empty. He was no longer there. This time, her heart sank. Lin Sanjiu did not even bother to look for any entrances, she ran quickly around the building as her face slowly turned pale without her knowing. Unfortunately, she only saw the endless shroud of thin mist that covered the entire surrounding.
It was as if the three people had been erased completely off the face of this world and vanished without a trace. After Lin Sanjiu searched for them fervently for the sixth time. She stopped in front of one of the surfaces and panted. She massaged her temples restlessly.
"Don't worry," Mrs. Manas calmed her, "Since this is the final pitstop, it must be a little different. The amus.e.m.e.nt attraction must have been activated somehow…"
"But, why am I still outside?" Lin Sanjiu asked impatiently while she slammed her fist into one of the surfaces. "If it had been activated, why wouldn't it let me enter!"
As she was very close to the diamond, her blurred reflection appeared on the surface. Even after waiting for a few seconds, Lin Sanjiu did not hear any reply from Mrs. Manas so she sighed and withdrew her hand. Just when Lin Sanjiu was about to move away, Mrs. Manas suddenly called to her with her quivering voice, "D— don't move."
"Why?"
"Well…" Mrs. Manas sounded like she had just made a gulping sound even though she was just a part of Lin Sanjiu's consciousness, "Didn't you notice something? I think your reflection turned around and looked at you."
Lin Sanjiu immediately felt goosebumps all over her body. She slowly shifted her gaze. As she was preparing to leave, she was standing sideways to the diamond surface. However, upon closer inspection, her reflection only showed her turning her body halfway and the action of her hitting the surface.
Calming her racing heart, Lin Sanjiu walked a little closer, feeling curious. As the reflection was too blurry, she didn't really notice when it was there. It was clear that this sudden strange phenomenon was linked to her group members' disappearance. After thinking for a while, she reached out and touched the surface of the diamond once more.
Everything turned dark the next second. For a moment, she couldn't sense anything. After feeling topsy-turvy as if the world had been smashed to a million pieces, it was as if nothing had happened. Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes. When she regained her consciousness, she shuddered suddenly and finally realized the environment she was in.
In front of her, above her head, around her and under her--
She could only see mirrors everywhere she looked. Notably, she was tall and thin in some of the mirrors and short and puny in others. There were also wavy reflections of her.
Lin Sanjiu never could have anticipated that the final amus.e.m.e.nt attraction in Starry Carnival Amus.e.m.e.nt Park was going to be a mirror maze.
Chapter 386 - In a Game, This Is Known As Escorting A NPC
The blinding glare of the mirror was discomforting. Lin Sanjiu had to close her eyes a few times to chase away the perturbing sensation.
She didn't dare make her move after she was s.u.c.k.e.d in and stayed in the same pose for quite some time. After drawing a sigh, she began to check her surrounding. Surprisingly, as a final pitstop, she found no written description in the Mirror Maze.
There were only mirrors after mirrors stretching all the way as far as her eyes could see. From the mirrors, she could see nothing but countless images of herself in different sizes, angles, heights, and weights, all following her actions.
Rules, tips, player instruction, and directions for the grand prize... It appeared that she had to dig those out all by herself.
"Setting aside how I get s.u.c.k.e.d into this
diamond," Alone in the Mirror Maze, she had no choice but to soliloquize since there was no one to talk to, "Judging from how I enter this building just now, it seems that "alone" is the criteria to enter here."
She came to this conclusion after reviewing what they had experienced earlier. Back then, when they were together looking for the entrance, nothing happened. Everything began to go awry only after they separated. The four of them, AYU, the cat doctor, even Puppeteer had disappeared into the ether one after another. Despite that, she was pretty confident that like her, three of them were somewhere inside the Mirror Maze.
"Secondly, the other criteria to enter this Mirror Maze is by touching the reflection that appears on the diamond?" Lin Sanjiu mumbled.
She wasn't very sure about this theory. All in all, she only came across miniature diamond ornaments such as a diamond pendant or ring during her regular days before the apocalypse. And all of them were too small to create a reflection, so she wasn't equipped with the knowledge whether or not a diamond could create a reflection. Aside from that, she couldn't remember if there had been a reflection on the diamond back then either.
Although she had asked many questions, Mrs. Manas didn't reply to her. Ever since she entered this Mirror Maze, Mrs. Manas had gone disappear again.
Lin Sanjiu's frowned. She crouched down and knocked on the mirror under her feet. Since it was an ordinary mirror, there was a reflection of a normal Lin Sanjiu. The Lin Sanjiu in the mirror aped her action and their knuckles connected on the surface of the mirror.
"This doesn't seem good..."
Mirrors had always been graced with the magic to make an area appear larger. Lin Sanjiu didn't realize it at first when she was thrown here, but after she had settled down, she found out that instead of being in a large room, she was trapped inside a miniature mirror chamber.
There were mirrors everywhere, top and bottom, left and right, front and back, forming into a closed mirror chamber. Nothing could breach the mirror chamber aside from sparkle of light that occasionally filtered through the slit between two mirrors. With that, she could only check her surroundings.
Carefully, she folded her wings since she didn't know what consequence was awaiting her if she shattered one. When she paced back and forth, the hundreds of reflections followed suit. She was at the end of her wits.
Then, with an anxiety-filled voice, she said while tiptoed to a mirror, "Why are there no road at all?"
Since she was inside a maze filled with distorting mirrors, a flattened, elongated, or even an undulated wavelike version of herself was nothing to write home about, but what she was facing now indeed had blown her away. In front of her was a huge-headed with an emaciated body reflection of herself. The large, round head tittered from left to right as is it would fall at any moment whenever the reflection moved.
Aside from the big-headed Lin Sanjiu, there was this ball-like Lin Sanjiu, muscular Lin Sanjiu, and pixelated Lin Sanjiu to name a few. She even realized after going around that there was one reflection of her without her wings and one mirror that had everything inside but her.
The only normal mirror was the one beneath her feet. Perhaps the weird reflections were making her brain spin, although she knew all of these were illusions, she couldn't help but continuously seek for a sense of security by checking the only normal reflection below her feet. By doing this, only then she felt relieved.
The body had rippling muscles. The two tr.a.p.ezius muscles on either side of her neck made her shoulders slope and connected with her c.h.e.s.t and shoulder muscles. Her arms were as large as her waist and she could even see the lining of the veins on each muscle. If the face of the reflection wasn't her face, she might not be able to recognize whose the reflection belonged to.
When she tried to call Mrs. Manas, an electronic female voice dearth of any emotion spoke from this enclosed room, "Player number 57, you have stayed in here for more than 3 minutes. Please leave the mirror chamber at once and look for the location of the grand prize. 10, 9,8,7…"
Lin Sanjiu could felt her blood accelerating as color instantly washed from her face.
She quickly looked around but her attempt was futile as there was nothing she could see aside from her reflections and none of them showed any hint of exit. In the blink of an eye, the countdown had already reached four. Lin Sanjiu then threw herself toward the mirror in front of her in her last ditch effort and before her curse word could escape her throat, the similar darkness had once again enveloped her whole.
It felt the same way as when she had been "s.u.c.k.e.d" into the diamond. It was something she had never experienced before entering the final pitstop. If she was to describe the experience, it had to be that it was as if she was still inside her mother's w.o.m.b. The incident was over in a twinkle, and she opened her eyes again.
What met her gaze was the same mirror chamber.
Her heart jumped twice, and she heaved out a sigh.
" So we can be warped to another place by touching the mirror? " She thought, her heart still jumping fast. " That's easy. What would happen if we stay for more than 5 minutes? "
The denouement wasn't her concern, and since she didn't want to risk herself, she just let the subject remain untouched. As she gazed around this new area, she found it was same as the previous mirror chamber. Nothing was here other than the endless stream of mirrors, and there was no sight of the grand prize as well. After letting out a breath, she walked to a mirror.
Slowly, as if it was a laborious task, she lowered her head and looked at her legs. They weren't the long and slender legs that she remembered. Instead, they were now two strong and muscular legs.
The dirt on her boots had soiled the sparkling mirror; however, it didn't hinder her to see through the mud at herself.
The "muscular Lin Sanjiu" that she saw a few seconds ago in the previous mirror chamber was now reflected below her, staring back at her.
"W-Wha—" Lin Sanjiu quickly crouched down to check on this bizarre sight in front of her. She hadn't gotten used to her new body yet, so she almost tripped when her body pressed on the corded muscle on her t.h.i.g.h. "What happened to me?!"
"Could it be not only that we will be warped out from the mirror chamber when we touch the mirror, but we would become the same as the reflection in the mirror?"
Lin Sanjiu decided to return to the previous mirror chamber the moment the thought surfaced in her mind. However, just as she stood up, she suddenly realized something. In all the mirror chambers she had visited, there was only one normal mirror—the one below her feet, so since she had become like this, touching the normal mirror again wouldn't do her any good.
Not to mention that nothing happened when she had touched the mirror below her feet just now.
"Jesus, what the hell is this place!" Cursing under her breath, Lin Sanjiu quickly looked around the mirrors for the mirror that might turn her back to her original self.
She was soon defeated. Since this place was a distorting mirror maze, it was apparently impossible to have a normal reflection.
"If I change every time I touch a mirror," As she studied the mirror, she asked, "What should I change into now?"
Although she was given a lot of options, none of them were viable.
"No," Lin Sanjiu reckoned the time and told herself. "It matter not what would I change into since everything would be undone and I can return to my normal look once I finish the game. Now I only have to focus on finding which way should I take on."
It was that she didn't have much information, so she was clueless as of how to make her progress in this Mirror Maze. After she pondered for a while, she walked toward a mirror that had a long and serpentine reflection.
"Hailing the player number 57," the narrator sounded out again without any warning.
"Huh, who the hell…" thought Lin Sanjiu. Then, the voice came in and interrupted her thought, "A player is coming in…"
Before the narrator could finish her announcement, a person had appeared from the ether
and rolled out from the mirror beside Lin Sanjiu. Lin Sanjiu was stunned.
"What's the use of announcement if the incident came before it!"
She could fill up the unspoken sentence of the narrator with what happened in front of her, hence she cussed the narrator in her heart. Then, when she exchanged glances with the intruder, her hope that he was somebody she knew shattered.
That person had an elongated face that looked human—no, she couldn't relate that face to a human face if she wasn't imaginative enough. Like the face of a horse, that person's eyes were on the sides of his face, leaving a complete bald at the center part which ended in a swell at the lowest region of his face. There were two holes at the swelling part and Lin Sanjiu could only attribute them as the person's nostril, so the whole thing was his nose.
Judging from his attire or the slight leftover of human facial features, Lin Sanjiu was certain that she hadn't come across this person before.
"Hahaha," The intruder studied Lin Sanjiu from head to toe and burst into a brazen fit of laughter. "So is a he," thought Lin Sanjiu. "I guess you just arrived here not long ago? That's great! I have been inside this final pitstops for ages, and now, I finally came across a newbie!"
His words gave Lin Sanjiu a fright. She asked, "How long have you been here? Do you know what is this place?"
"I've lost track of time but my beard had reached my Adam's apple when I was in the previous mirror chamber," The Horse Face replied to her readily. As he was speaking, he moved one step forward and an arc found its way into the bottom of the Horse Face, "Since I was here for a long time, it's natural that I know everything about this place. Do you want me to tell you?"
Trained by countless battles, Lin Sanjiu had a sharp instinct for imminent danger. Her muscles tightened and her skeleton wings were up in the air, preparing to strike down its foe.
"Hehe, you're a sharp one. The space here is so small and you're still carrying that two large wings on your back. To be honest, you look scary," The Horse Face stopped moving forward. His voice belied his words as he didn't seem to be scared by Lin Sanjiu at all, "Come, hit me with them!"