Chapter 171 (2/2)

Well.. before is the keyword here. Now, five brand new sleeping pods (cas-kets) lay in a line, facing Vivian’s bed. Finally, something to fill the rather overly spacious basement.

But… to use five caskets to fill in the space… Hao Ren was not sure whether to cry or laugh at the scene.

As he placed the pods in their respective spots and stepped back to have a look, Hao Ren felt like he was in a morgue. Not only were the pods shaped like bleeding caskets, they were even painted with the most common color one could find in the morgue. To add to the eerie atmosphere, the machines exuded a chilly and lifeless feeling, and there was a crystalline cross engraved on each of the cover of the pods. If anyone simply turned off the lights, you would not need special effects to re-enact a scene from Ju On.

“… Won’t it be weird to put these where you’re sleeping?” Hao Ren looked at Vivian sympathetically. He believed that even if the vampire was a kind enough soul, he should not be taking advantage of her like this. Who would have liked to sleep among caskets anyway?

“If you’re not okay with this, I can move them upstairs. With two to three pods per room, there shouldn’t be a problem. We have four empty rooms at any rate.”

Once again, Vivian shook her head. “It’s fine. It does feel like home with them.”

Hao Ren then recalled that the vampire had slept in a casket before and spent many nights sleeping at the grave yard. Of course being surrounded by caskets seemed like home to her.

The MDT then floated to the front of Hao Ren and displayed the operating manual. Just as Raven 23333 said, the pods were very easy to use. They even supported mental input which made them accessible to even the dumbest of the Imperial citizens. (Hao Ren figured that higher end, military grade stuff would be much, much more complex.) It did not take long for Hao Ren to figure out the basics of the pods. He was even more impressed that each pod came with its own AI support and MDT dock, allowing the system to perform any automatic correction should the new user screw up somewhere.

Hao Ren grew curious of how Raven 12345 and Raven 23333 managed to wreck a device that even Lil Pea could learn to use. Got to give it to the crazy goddess though, she could even blew up the Reconfiguration Chamber, which only had a single button.

As he prattled on about the goddess to himself, Hao Ren forgot that he was connected to the MDT and his thoughts were being shared to it. The latter shook itself as it adopted a lazy tone to explain: “The reason that all Ravens were not able to use technological stuff is not because they can’t remember the operational steps but, they always have to do something unnecessary. Most of the time you just need to wait for the system to start itself up but, they just had to use spells to do some ‘enhancement’ and wreck things in the process. All of the Ravens come with the knowledge to use technological stuff however, all of them have this ‘I can do better than this’ quirk. There’s no exception to that… I guess it’s because all of them came from the same template.”

Hao Ren gave the MDT a perplexed look. “And this sort of information is disclosed to the public?”

“Why not? It’s available on the Main Data Network. The earliest thread was about 2000 years ago.”

Hao Ren was surprised. “Isn’t this blasphemy? Don’t the goddesses take issue with it?”

“The thread was started by His Majesty himself.”

Hao Ren was at a lost for words.

Lily by then, had been circling the caskets for a good part of the day. She had in her hand, a multi-socket plug. “Where are the plugs for these things?”

“You expect a mere 220V to power such high tech stuff?” Hao Ren leered as he flicked Lily’s ears. “The pods are self-powered. They use a micro-reactor furnace located in a sub-dimension for power. Once in operation, this machine will function to the world’s end if it’s not broken. Come, stop fiddling with it. I need to brief you guys on some stuff.”

Hao Ren clapped and the crew gathered in front of him. Hao Ren pointed at the caskets. “This thing here will slow down our metabolism to the point where we’re almost frozen and will sustain us while we are in the The Plane of Dreams. We won’t have to worry about of dying from hunger. The basic concept you need to understand about bringing someone into the dream plane is the synchronisation of the mind. These cas… sleeping pods will synchronise our minds and use me as a ‘guiding light’ of sorts to lead all of you to The Plane of Dreams. Simply put, all of you will enter my dream and follow me to dream plane. Remember to stay close to me. You might be booted out of the server if you stray too far.

Lily quipped excitedly, “So.. you’re like the WiFi?”

Hao Ren glared at Lily for a while and then he remembered something. “Oh right, Lily, do you know how to do dentures for canines?”