At three in the afternoon that day, Mu You boarded the private jet arranged by the special administration.
Besides him, there were 21 others on this trip. Officially, it was labeled as an investigative exchange group, intended for inter-governmental exchange of management and construction experiences.
However, in actuality, the team consisted entirely of primary combatants, led by the Blood Emperor and four other elite members of the Dragon Group. The rest were all top experts from different special administration offices, with the lowest ranked among them at level fifteen.
"These are the materials related to this mission, which the intelligence department put together overnight. Everyone should read them as soon as possible so we’re prepared when we get there."
After the plane took off, a board member from the Dragon Group handed out a thick stack of documents to everyone.
Mu You skimmed them briefly and found that the intelligence contained therein was far more detailed than what Lu Yao had found, basically exposing every aspect of the Wind-Thunder Gate organization.
"Our main focus is on this man."
The board member pointed to a photo of a young man wearing glasses, who was Kazuya Kusanagi.
"The drastic contrast in his behavior at different times suggests, according to information provided by the Ghost Captain, that he may have been replaced by an entity from another world."
"In other words, our enemy this time may not be human!"
The board member finished his statement, and everyone on the aircraft exchanged glances but no one questioned or denied his claim, because the cause and effect were clearly outlined in the materials. The situation wasn’t completely certain, but it most likely was the truth.
The board member then went on to highlight a few more key points from the materials.
After going through all the information, Mu You stowed away the materials, took out his mobile phone, connected to the Wi-Fi on the plane, and logged into the game.
[You appear in a damp, dark underground factory...]
Upon logging in, he found himself at the base of the Undead.
After a day of automated exploring, Mu You had found two more pages of diary entries in his robotic form.
[... With Mian Mian’s help, I’m gradually getting used to life here...They provide me with a clean living place, plenty of food every day, and distribute many toys to me... But for some reason, I always feel oppressed here. It’s as if countless eyes are peering at me from unseen places all the time. This has caused me to wake up in the middle of the night and become paranoid... Especially tonight, when I woke up, I saw a figure standing outside my room. The light from the window projected all the objects outside my door into long shadows, but somehow, the shadow of this person lay straight on the floor behind him, glaringly incompatible with other shadows. This kept me on edge... This person told me to go to bed on time, but something felt off, as if it was the shadow on the ground that was speaking, not him... Oh God, can someone save me? I want to go back to my grandmother’s side. Every moment here is torture...
[...I can increasingly sense the ’monster’ around me. Every night, I hear coarse, box fan-like breathing sounds coming from the west... The more I listen, the more I become convinced that the monster legends circulating here are likely true... I’m worried about my little friends who’ve disappeared. The admin takes them away in pairs, and they never come back. Mian Mian is gone too... Fortunately, Sayaka is with me. She was very scared when she came in, just like me initially. But now, I, like Mian Mian at the beginning, constantly console and comfort her, helping her adapt. We quickly become close friends... Until this morning, when I heard a familiar footstep passing by my room. I leaned over to identify it, it was the shadow projected from far away that I recognized: It was Little Bean Sprout! He’d been taken away three days ago and I thought I would never see him again, he’s back!
I was joyous and wanted to call out to Little Bean Sprout. As I peeked out though, the following event left me in despair: The shadow extending from my room wasn’t connected to Little Bean Sprout, but the admin—long and thin like a beanpole. I remembered that he never had a shadow before, but now, he kept turning back to examine his shadow, a smug smile on his face.
These two diary pages contained more information than the previous ones, especially the second one where many keywords were mentioned, like the ’beanpole admin’ and a ’monster’ legend, Mian Mian’s disappearance, and a new character named ’Sayaka’.
By the way, the name Sayaka sounds somewhat Japanese...
In any case, the second page contained much fragmented information.
Comparatively, what really caught Mu You’s attention was the first page of the diary.
In this 3=8 entry, it mentioned an individual who seemed like a dorm supervisor, checking if lights were off and everyone was in bed late at night. During this process, a particular detail was emphasized: This person’s shadow was positioned differently from the others. All the other shadows were slanting in one direction because the light was coming from there, yet this person’s shadow remained straight behind him...