Doomsday Wonderland

The 1.7 seconds might have been a breeze for Lin Sanjiu, but it was the most excruciating moment Soulsqn had ever gone through in her life. Every second that followed was even harder and more perilous than the last.

The reason she could stand her ground for such a long time against the Veda’s onslaught was that Puppeteer had drawn most of their attention, despite the fact that he had been robbed of his mobility.

At the same time that Lin Sanjiu completely disappeared from their eyes, Puppeteer suddenly fell from midair and crashed hard onto the ground.

“You are tenacious. I’ll give you that,” said a Veda—possibly the previous one or another because nobody could tell since their tone was the same. “You are like an open book, so why do you have to risk your life and go against us? Just because we made you relive your memories?”

‘Memories?’

Soulsqn, who was fraught with apprehension and nervousness, was stunned upon hearing what the Veda said.

“One thing that I don’t understand about humans is your sentiment,” another Veda said, “No matter how you think you’ve used the rational part of your brain for decision making, in fact, even in your daily routine, more than 90 percent of your decisions are driven by emotions. You are one of the best examples. Just because we made you remember a very short bygone moment in your life, it was enough to trigger you to lash out on us without taking in any consideration.”

The Veda tended to give lengthy, garrulous speeches. Soulsqn paid them no mind, straightened her body and peered at the shadowy figure in the distance.

“Lord Puppeteer!” She shouted aloud, “Are you okay, Lord Puppeteer?”

“Ah, pardon me. I almost forgot about you.” It seemed that the Veda only realized the flesh worm’s presence now. The golden glow flickered in the passage, lighting up the surroundings with its aerating flash. Startled, Soulsqn instinctively bared her layers of mandibles and snarled at the Veda.

“Your species is, however, different from humans. You aren’t driven by emotions, but your behavioral patterns are rooted in primal instinct and desire. Our database doesn’t have any information on your species, so we seriously hope that you can provide us with such precious knowledge to complete our database.”

“B*llshit!” Soulsqn growled. She did not peel her eyes away from Puppeteer, who was lying on the ground. “Lord Puppeteer, can you hear me? Say something!”

“He can hear you, but he can’t move right now,” a Veda answered simply, “We know all his functional data very well, so it’s child’s play for us to disable his action module.”

Baffled, Soulsqn did not know how to respond. She had no idea how they could continue the fight. Lin Sanjiu was gone, the b*tchy little grand prize was nowhere to be found, and now even her almighty Lord Puppeteer was overwhelmed by the Veda.

A soft golden beam of light shot out from the sizeable “pool” and coruscated hither and thither on Soulsqn, playing a rough game of light and shadows on the flesh worm’s face. Soulsqn staggered back as a mouthful of pheromones sprayed out. Nevertheless, both her two strongest weapons were useless against the Veda. She could see that after the pheromones were sprayed into the air, those fine and dense chemical hormones fluttered down before they could even get near the target.

“Analysis completed,” said a Veda that was closest to her, “The composition of this chemical hormones isn’t common. It’s worth archiving in our database.”

“We cannot open the database right now.”

“Ah, yes.”

Several large “pools” exchanged several messages, but Soulsqn managed to capture only a few words. She could not care less about why the Veda could not open the database at that moment. She was shuddering like a swimmer emerging from an icy pond. Despite her persistent mindset, she could not come up with an idea about what to do. Suddenly, she felt something zoom overhead. Then, she was dazzled by the sudden flash of golden light that came from the direction of the Veda.

‘What happened?’

“279.323.10, and 279.323.20 are under attack!” A “pool” shook and flickered, scattering speckles of gold across the air. Similar to last time, it rapidly emitted a long chain of unknown codes as if it was warning its comrades about the attack. Then, before Soulsqn could spin her head around to see who had attacked the Veda, something in midair suddenly caved in.

It was an exceptional instant that even Soulsqn, who claimed to have mastered a plethora of languages, found hard to describe.

She could not see anything, but she somehow had a strong feeling that something in mid-air had collapsed. It even refracted the light golden rays emitted by the adjacent Veda.

‘What the hell is happening?’

Not far away, Puppeteer remained lying forlornly on the ground. There was no movement from either the black leather jacket or his pasty skin. It seemed as if he was a dead corpse.

While Soulsqn was pondering should she look back or not, the third Veda was shot.

It was an actual gunshot.

A loud explosion pierced Soulqn’s ears the moment a fire spark plunged into the “pool” with a violent force. The expended bullet shell clanged on the concrete ground as Soulsqn thought she could even catch a wisp of gunpowder that should not have existed in the air.

Deciding to throw everything to the wind, the flesh worm jerked her head back and was stunned again. She never expected them to save both Puppeteer and her in the nick of time.

Four Zeuses, or four Zeus puppets, were pulling themselves up from the ground, their eyes vacant and their expressions rigid. One of the Zeuses was holding a handgun in his hand, the muzzle of which was smoking. There was another one whose mouth was ajar, and in between his two rows of densely crowded teeth, there was a tiny object.

All these Zeuses were Puppeteer’s puppets. They should not have been able to move anymore after their connection with their master was severed by the Veda. Soulsqn wondered how they regained their ability to move, but that was not what shocked the flesh worm the most. The most shocking thing was that all their attacks were effective against the Veda.

One of the Zeuses punctured what his teeth were gripping, releasing a crisp pop in the air as if he was crunching a plump cherry. Soulsqn perked her head back to see that the few Veda in mid-air had begun shaking vigorously once more. Her heart raced so fast that it almost jumped out of her throat.

The flesh worm reacted swiftly. Seizing the momentary chance, she made a detour and darted straight towards Puppeteer.

“Lord Puppeteer!” she shouted. She stretched a slimy tendril out and flipped Puppeteer over, revealing his pale and gaunt cheekbones.

His eyes were wide open, deeply sunk into a corona of crimson glitter that rounded the peripheral of his eyes. Soulsqn heaved out a sigh of relief.

‘Thank goodness he’s still alive!’ 

“Why all the puppets are able to move again?” Soulsqn slithered under Puppeteer’s arm and half-lifted, half-carried him up. The Veda was quivering so hard that their scintillating golden glow had lit up the entire passage with flickering illumination, causing them to squint their eyes. Puppeteers could not reply to her, so he just stared fixedly at the direction where those Zeus puppets were. His lips were even paler under the contrast of his glitter.

“I…I get it now…” There were two different sounds intermixed in this room that was filled with sparkling beams of light. One was an understandable message that was directly sent into their brains while the other was a startling amount of messages that shuttled across the passage at a mad speed under the guise of the humming of an overloaded machine that made their heads buzz. “So…So you have already figured it out that we…we’ll sever your connection to your puppets?”

‘Huh? Could it have been Lord Puppeteer’s doing that made those Zeus puppets able to move?’

Upon hearing those words, Soulsqn turned to look at Puppeteer. The latter’s head was still hung low as his hair glissaded down his cheeks and shrouded his expression.

“Analyze them!” No sooner had a Veda barked out its order than a blanket of golden light swamped the several Zeus puppets not far away.

It was only then that Soulsqn realized she had made the wrong move. Why would she come to Puppeteer? She should have gone and protected those Zeus from being analyzed!

When her train of thought came to that realization, her body had already reacted. The flesh worm threw her beloved Lord Puppeteer back onto the ground and charged straight towards the Zeuses. After seeing two Zeuses being engulfed in the Veda’s golden radiance, she turned her attention to the remaining two Zeuses. With a quick fling of her tail, she lassoed the shin of the remaining two Zeuses and reeled them in.

The Zeus holding a gun and the Zeus biting the tiny ball in his mouth fell to the ground. With the golden light hard on her heels, every single second was precious to her. Grabbing the two Zeuses tightly, she ran in another direction at top speed.

“It…It’s no use…” the Veda continued intermittently, “We’ll capture them sooner or later—”

Bam!

Another bullet shot straight into the “pool,” reducing its remaining sentence into a scatter of golden glitter that tainted the air.

“Hah!” The flesh worm felt herself getting pumped up. Even though she was badly injured and the blast of the point-blank gunshot had numbed her ears, she was filled with so much energy that she felt like she could go for a few more bouts with the Veda. “Come and catch me if you can! Even though these two Zeuses can’t do anything to you, you guys can’t do anything to us either! As long as you don’t catch them, you can’t analyze them—”

The flesh worm, who got carried away by her success, said, “Why don’t you guys create an item to shield yourselves?

The moment the words tumbled off her tongue, Soulsqn froze, stunned. Perhaps because she finally realized she had gone over her head, she slowed down.

“We…don’t need you…to remind us,” the Veda droned on like a television losing power, “But we…mustn’t…open the database…”