From the end of the world

Chapter 18: The Beginning of Doomsday 3
In the dark world, gray mist emerged all around me.

I said "my surroundings", but I couldn't find my body now. In this area full of gray fog, I became like the "ghost perspective" after death in an electronic shooting game. I couldn't feel my hands and feet, couldn't speak or move, couldn't breathe or blink, couldn't smell anything, and couldn't hear anything.

I don't even know if it's because I can't feel the existence of my body, but I don't even have any emotional ups and downs. I should have been very surprised and scared, but I don't know when I accepted it all and faced this mysterious space with an unexpected optimism.

After a pause, I began to try to control my perspective to turn and move forward.

Due to the lack of reference, I don't know if I am moving or not, I just focus all my attention on the idea of ​​"moving". Maybe I am moving forward now, I can only believe it for now.

I don’t know how long it was before something new appeared in front of me.

About a few dozen meters away, I saw eight chairs carved out of white rocks. Of course, "a few dozen meters away" is also a statement without a reference, it just feels that way. Of the eight rock chairs, seven are larger than ordinary sofa chairs, and they are lined up in a row; and another one is twice as large and is placed alone in the distance, facing the other seven.

Sitting on the largest rock seat was a figure of an unusually large, god-like figure. Because of the fog, it was difficult to see his specific appearance and clothing. There was only a black shadow that was hard to see through the fog.

As I got closer, I found that there were also figures on the other rock seats, but there were only two of them, and the other five seats were empty. The two people were sitting on the two seats on the left. The one sitting on the leftmost seat was a tall and thin figure; there was another figure sitting on the seat next to it, as petite as a child.

Compared to the god-like figure, the two shadows at least look like normal people.

Slowly, I began to feel curious - who are they? Why are they sitting here?

I obviously shouldn't have any emotional activity right now, but I can't suppress my curiosity.

Suddenly, I felt like I was about to wake up. It seemed like this was just a dream, and regaining my normal thinking ability meant I couldn't continue dreaming.

Just then, the tall and thin shadow on the far left seemed to notice my presence.

He turned his head suddenly and uttered a low and hoarse voice: "Who is it?"

"Hmm?" The petite figure next to him, who looked like a child, also turned around.

The huge god-like figure remained motionless like a sculpture.
I was about to respond to him, but when the words came to my lips, I realized that I shouldn't be able to feel my mouth, and all the seats disappeared from my sight along with the mist.

It turns out that I have woken up.

I opened my eyes. The space around me was no longer filled with fog. I was still standing in front of the wall of the basement, holding the black jade in my hand.
-
It was not until this moment that I realized that I was startled and got goose bumps all over my body.

What happened just now? I was dreaming while standing?
No, it's not so much a dream as it is like being dragged into some kind of illusory world...

Was it this black jade that did this?

I immediately put the black jade on the ground, then quickly stepped back a few steps, carefully observing this mysterious object. However, the black jade did not show any mysterious power this time, and lay on the ground like an ordinary stone.

Nothing unusual? But this thing just now clearly controlled my consciousness... No, it can be said to be controlled, but it actually did not bring me any danger. It just made me experience a strange illusion for no reason.

What was the meaning of the illusion just now? The area covered with gray fog, eight rock chairs, three strange figures... were they all human? Or were they incredible creatures living in that illusion?

There are too few clues and I can’t analyze anything. I can only pick up the black jade first.

I know this black jade may contain other mysterious dangers, but since I'm here, I can't just throw it away. If this is a clearly harmful substance, that's another matter. But since I can't figure out its nature for the time being, I have to take it back and study it carefully.

If I had stayed away from weird things out of fear of danger, I wouldn't have come to this basement in the first place.

I plan to continue investigating in this basement for a while. Although I think that this is about all I can get tonight, this basement is really empty, and everything is clear at a glance. The "fireflies" I set up everywhere can observe it in great detail. However, this place is at least "a space that does not exist in reality", and its existence itself is enough to fascinate me.

Suddenly, I noticed something was wrong. This basement seemed to have changed from when I first entered. There was something very crucial -

I turned my head sharply.

The stairs I came down from had disappeared, and the ceiling was flat, with no entrance or exit at all!

At that moment, a chilling feeling emerged from my heart, as if a number of ice cockroaches were crowding from my coccyx along my spine to the back of my head. The exit disappeared? Why?
I had been clearly watching the "fireflies" around me to see if there were any unusual movements on the stairs and exits, so when did they disappear?

Was it the time when I fell into illusion just now?

I immediately went to check where the stairs were originally, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see that there were stairs there. The same thing happened with the ceiling, where even the fine grain of concrete seemed to say that it had always been like this.

This is ridiculous. If there was no entrance or exit from the beginning, how did I get down?

You have to calm down first and think carefully about what to do next.

The appearance and disappearance of caves should follow some established rules. As long as I can find this rule, I should be able to reopen the exit.

It’s just that “everything has its own rules” is the common sense that humans have summarized and analyzed from nature, and what I’m facing now is a strange event that goes beyond the range of common sense. So maybe there was no rule from the beginning, and all my thinking was in vain.

It is true that the cave appeared in the ritual array, and the ritual array was man-made. However, Agent Kong also mentioned that the ritual array itself does not have the function of opening the cave. This may be an unknown phenomenon beyond the thinking of the fallen demon hunter and out of the scope of man-made.

And tomorrow morning, the witcher woman will come to the room on the fifteenth floor. Whether she intends to eliminate the ritual array or break through the floor of the room on the fifteenth floor, in the end she will put an end to the strange incidents in the cave with her own methods.

In this way, I will never see the day when the cave opens again, and I will be trapped in this space that does not exist in reality.

What a desperate situation!

However, this is all my own fault.

I will never say something like "If I had known...", at least not now. I have to think positively. This may be a test. Sometimes people have to put themselves in desperate situations to know themselves. Haven't I always wanted to know how I would behave when facing desperate and dangerous situations? Now is the critical moment.

Let’s first analyze the pattern of the appearance of caves. What did I just do that caused the cave to disappear?
No, I should change my perspective... Is it because "I didn't do anything that the cave disappeared"?
When I fell into the illusion, I temporarily lost the ability to monitor the cave and the stairs, and the cave and the stairs disappeared during this period. ...So...could the answer be, "The cave disappears when no one is observing"?
This assumption seems reasonable.

During the day, Agent Kong knocked on the door and Changan temporarily covered the cave with a carpet. When the carpet was opened again, the cave disappeared. And there is no doubt that during this period, Changan and I lost our observation of the cave.

When Changan encountered the strange cave incident for the first time, he temporarily left the room on the 15th floor to confirm whether the cave led to the room downstairs. In this state, he must have lost his observation of the cave. Then he called the police, and when the police came, the cave disappeared... But did he go to the room on the 15th floor to observe the cave before calling the police? He didn't seem to tell me.

Even if my hypothesis is correct, I only know why the cave disappeared, and what I need is to make the cave reappear.

This is the only thing I really have no idea about.

If the conditions for the cave to appear cannot be met in the basement, but must be met outside the cave, then I am really helpless. Should I expect others to enter the room on the 15th floor and meet the conditions for the cave to appear by chance? The problem is that no one will come to the room on the 15th floor now - except the demon hunter woman who plans to eliminate the strange events in the cave.

Maybe I need to change my analysis angle again and broaden my horizons.

Why must I follow the clueless rules to solve the current dilemma? I am not an ordinary person without special abilities, but a person with super powers. It is better to find "outside tricks" and try to break the situation violently.

But... unfortunately, my superpowers don't seem to be suitable for this situation.

My superpowers are great for killing people and wreaking havoc, but using them to solve puzzles is like using a chainsaw to perform precision surgery. I'm afraid the result will be a mess.

By the way, speaking of violent breakthroughs, it seems that I have never thought about this question before.

This basement is a "space that does not exist in reality", so what is outside the basement? The "outside" here does not refer to the room on the 15th floor that can only be reached through the cave exit, but "outside the wall".

I don't think the real world lies beyond the wall, but right now is a desperate moment, and any new discovery could potentially be a clue to a breakthrough.

More importantly, I was curious.

Thinking of this, I walked to the wall and raised my right hand.

I activated my super powers.

(End of this chapter)