51 Second Floor (1/2)

[Congratulation on reaching the second floor]

[Order and Chaos]

[The one who shall put order in this world shall prevail]

[The heretics shall perish]

The interface stood in front of the players for three seconds before finally disappearing. Shesmu who was still holding on DepressedRyan's body, looked around him and found multiple platforms flying in the air, with multiple bridges connecting them.

”This is weird, is that a number in the middle of the platform?”

Following Leo's remark, the whole party's eyes focused on one point. In the middle of the platform that they were standing on, an immense number 1 was carved.

”Hmm, so I guess that we should go from one to two and so and so forth,” concluded Leo.

”Yeah, Mr. Leo is right. That talk about order was probably hinting to this, right?” added Kazumi.

After hearing the party's input, Shesmu thought for a second before giving his two cents.

”One, two, three, four is one order. One, two, four, eight, sixteen is another order. Any numbers can be ordered in one way or another, depending on how you think about it.”

”You're right, but then what are we supposed to choose? There must be a way for the system to tell that we're respecting an order, right?”

”Yeah, there must be a way, Leo.” Shesmu paused before continuing, ”The thing about order, it's that it's meaningless, without initial parameters that are.”

”Initial parameter?” asked Kazumi.

”So you mean, we need to do something here to disclose the order we're going to use. Is that right?”

Amaterasu's words shocked Shesmu to the core. This b*tch… she isn't bad. How the heck did she reach this conclusion?

”Wow, Amaterasu, I would have never thought about that.”

”Right? Mister Leo. Amaterasu has always been the smart one! Whenever I have a problem, I always go to ask her about it!”

Amaterasu blushed at the compliments, while Leo just muttered ”Mister Leo”.

”Yeah, we need to find how to initialize the parameters for the order to make sense. And if I understood anything in my years of gaming, it's that the way to initialize them will be in this first platform.”

Of course, Shesmu already knew how to initialize the order. However, he couldn't possibly just go and activate it first thing. Thus, he put down Ryan's body and started searching with the party. The search took five minutes before Shesmu finally revealed the secret.

”Hey guys, I think I found something.”

Shesmu was looking at the middle of the carving when the trio heeded his call. A blue gem was engraved at the dead center of the number. Shesmu touched when a blue screen appeared in front of him, startling Kazumi and Amaterasu.

”Is this a map?” asked Leo.

The blue interface had many nodes, linked with one another with a line. These nodes at the end all linked to a red node and a blue node on each end.

”Yeah, these nodes are the platforms and these lines are the bridges. Now, if I got this right-” While Shesmu was talking, he clicked on the blue node. It turned yellow. He then linked it with another node. The latter and the bridge connecting the two nodes both turned yellow. In this way, Shesmu kept linking the nodes until he reached the red one. The interface disappeared.