Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 12: New Game Launch [Complete]

1440: Relics of the Munitions Factory

Calling Advaita a ghostly figure was honestly an understatement.

After activating her ability, the Advaita on the screen was elusive. Every aisle and gap between the shelf dividers seemed to turn into a network of channels, reminiscent of circuit diagrams beneath the surface of the world, a map that only Advaita had access to. As an outsider, Lin Sanjiu could only watch helplessly as Advaita moved some goods with her hand, let a leg drop from the shelf, crawled out, and suddenly disappeared around a corner.

Since there was no way of predicting where she might appear or disappear next, searching for her traces across a dozen surveillance screens naturally became a daunting task.

"How's it going? Did you memorize it?"

Lin Sanjiu knew her time was limited, and her opportunity to watch the monitors might soon end. She tried to review all the screens showing Advaita several times. After Mrs. Manas finally confirmed she had it memorized, Lin Sanjiu pushed her chair back, stood up, stored Caster's card safely, and rushed out of the surveillance room. She then kicked the shattered lock components on the floor inside and pulled the coat rack back in place.

When she opened the security room door, Advaita was standing right outside.

Lin Sanjiu suppressed her initial shock and looked behind Advaita. "Where's Silvan? You two..."

"I couldn't stop him," Advaita said calmly, not moving away from the door. "There was just too much inside the Munitions Factory that he took."

"Did Chen Hanwu find more items?" Lin Sanjiu asked.

"He found another one before Silvan got back. Quite a good find."

A heavy feeling settled in Lin Sanjiu's heart. Neither of them moved, their gazes locked for a split second. Advaita finally smiled and said, "This room isn't very large, is it?"

The statement might be hard to comprehend, but Lin Sanjiu felt like Advaita's gaze was like the flowing water, meandering past her and pooling into a small puddle inside the room. Advaita exuded a certain quality that made one feel she was not fully a living being.

"Yeah, not big, it doesn't even have a table," Lin Sanjiu replied without turning back.

The illusion created by [The Power Of Word Picture] completely obscured the entrance to the surveillance room, making it appear as a simple white wall that was indistinguishable even to the person who cast the illusion. However, no matter how remarkable a trick might be, there's always something or someone it doesn't work on. Lin Sanjiu waited anxiously for a moment, and seeing Advaita shift her gaze and walk back into the mall, she silently exhaled in relief.

The mall certainly possessed the ability to self-repair. As Lin Sanjiu walked through the aisles, she heard the sound of the floor tiles reconnecting, saw screws sliding back into their holes, and watched tilted shelves slowly right themselves. In less than a minute, it looked as if a battle had never even occurred in the mall.

The bad news was Silvan hadn't retrieved the stapler that fell out of the fox-eyed girl's mouth.

This meant that Advaita's team had found four target items from shelves D7-D12, while Silvan's team only found a maximum of three target items from their exposed shelf domain. Two of these shelves were on Advaita's side and had already been searched by the fox-eyed creature.

As for the shelf numbers that Lin Sanjiu had just relayed, Silvan probably hadn't started searching for them. Knowing that Advaita was wary of surveillance methods, Silvan would be on guard against her. If she had some sensing technique, the moment he started looking based on Lin Sanjiu's information, Advaita would immediately realize they had exchanged messages.

So, were they now in a deadlock? Neither wanted to expose their shelf domain, as it would mean freely giving up the target items to the other party. Hence, would neither side take action?

Walking through the aisles with Advaita, these thoughts raced through Lin Sanjiu's mind.

"If they're watching us, we can't take items from our shelves until the very last moment," said Advaita, reaching the same conclusion as Lin Sanjiu. After reuniting with Chen Hanwu, she added, "Currently, we have one more item than they do, and we haven't touched any of our shelves. I'd say we have an 80% chance of winning."

Lin Sanjiu looked up sharply. If Advaita knew how many items Silvan's team had... did that mean she had been surveilling them? Did she know they hadn't been searching outside shelves D7-D12, so they only had three items?

"Can you monitor them?" she couldn't help but ask.

Advaita gave her a sidelong glance and smiled slightly but did not answer. "In any case," she continued, "we'll hold our ground for now."

"But..." Chen Hanwu hesitated, "it depends on the distribution of our shelf domains, right? If most of our 15 shelves are closer to their side, and they notice which shelves we've visited."

"They could immediately deduce our shelf numbers," Advaita said. "It's all about our timing. I already know where our shelves are on this side. It won't even take me a minute to collect everything. The time it would take for them to monitor, guess, and search will certainly exceed a minute. Thus, I just need to retrieve the items in the fifty-ninth minute of the game."

She suddenly laughed. "Even if they find out the shelf domain of one of us, I dare say, our odds of winning are still much higher than theirs."

Lin Sanjiu exhaled sharply through her nose as if she found this insinuation absurd. Yet deep down, she felt a tinge of surprise. Given Advaita's caution and meticulousness, it wasn't surprising she would consider the possibility of Lin Sanjiu being an informant. But was her current confidence because, even including the four shelves Lin Sanjiu revealed to the other side, Silvan's team still had fewer domains than Advaita's?

"What now?" Chen Hanwu asked, seemingly a bit more relaxed. "What should we do now? There's at least twenty minutes left until the game ends."

"We can now consider how to put the items into the storage space," Advaita said and looked in Silvan's team's direction as if she had heard something. Following her gaze, she saw a colossal silhouette rise under the ceiling in the distance. Or rather than rising, it seemed more like many small components coming together, one after the other, to form a massive figure.

"It looks like Silvan had the same idea," Advaita said softly. "Just as I thought. Erudite was in his hands all along."