Chapter 1354 - City of the Decisive Battle (11) (1/2)

So what’s going on now?

Rhode crossed his arms and gazed at the mental crystal in front of him. Eleanor, who stood beside him, also leaned against the wall, looking somewhat bored as she stretched out her hand and tapped the wall helplessly. It wasn’t an illusion, but reality instead. At least for now, they hadn’t encountered another attack and soon arrived at the third mental crystal that emanated Eleanor’s aura. But what happened next was depressing to Rhode because… Nothing exactly happened.

That’s right, nothing happened. Although Eleanor went up, touched and even tapped the mental crystal a few times, it didn’t react in the slightest. It was as if it had malfunctioned and there was nothing either Rhode or her could do about it. And the fact that they expected another Eleanor to appear and fight them didn’t happen either. In one sentence, things took a weird turn.

Rhode stood at the edge of the tower, looking out into the distance. He always felt as if something wasn’t quite right as the rules seemed to be changing all the time and weren’t very logical. The rules that he predicted in the beginning were somewhat different from the ones they faced later with Eleanor and the rest. And now, they were no longer somewhat different, but entirely different instead.

It was like a track and field race, which at first was thought to be a hundred meter dash before turning into a middle-distance relay run. And now, it was as if they were going for a long-distance marathon. Even though it wasn’t impossible for that to happen in the mental world, Rhode felt like based on Karin’s character, she shouldn’t have made such a mistake. After all, as a ‘researcher’, Karin was strict with herself. If she had such a casual side in her work, Rhode would need to check if there were any hidden technical issues with the magical warships after he returned.

What’s next?

The first thing to do was to inform the GM after noticing a bug in the game. But now… Rhode looked to the left and right, before shifting his gaze above. He spread his arms apart and shrugged helplessly. It seemed like the ‘game’ system wasn’t well set up. He couldn’t reach a customer service team to complain about the issue. However, he believed that Karin should be monitoring the process and that even if he didn’t do anything, she would respond soon.

As expected, when Rhode and Eleanor were so bored that they almost decided to brew a pot of tea to appreciate life, a pillar of light descended from the sky and Karin appeared from it. However, unlike before, Karin’s face was ice-cold and serious, with anxiety in her eyes that couldn’t be concealed. However, after meeting Rhode and Eleanor, her expression softened a little.

“Mr. Rhode, seems like you’re doing fine. That’s good to know…”

“Did something happen?”

Sweeping a glance at Eleanor, who had closed one eye and behaved like she was trying to sneak an observation at Karin who suddenly appeared, Rhode responded to Karin, walked up to her side, and they started whispering to each other. Meanwhile, Eleanor saw his meaningful glance and knew not to follow him. Instead, she leaned against the mental crystal and admired the night view boringly.

“Yes, Master. The situation is a little abnormal. This was what happened…”

After listening to Karin’s narration, Rhode quickly learned what the true problem was. Just as he expected, the rules of the game that he predicted at the beginning were actually correct. After all, this was a competition, and in order to avoid unnecessary mutual annihilation, Karin and her personalities considered the rules well before setting them. But soon, they realized that something went wrong. Like all programmers, if someone pointed out that there was a bug in the program, the programmers would just look at that idiot and wonder if that idiot was the one who made a mistake instead. And all of the Karins were no exception either.

They didn’t think there was anything wrong with their seemingly perfect rules at first, but thought that the contestants themselves hadn’t figured out the rules of the game yet. In addition, those mistakes were also within the permitted limits, so all the Karins were patient and silent, waiting for the contestants to get on the right track. But that was exactly what made them lose the best timing to adjust the rules, causing it to become unmanageable by the time they realized something went wrong.

“You must have heard the rumbles and collapses, right, Master?”

“Yes, I heard them.”

After hearing her question, Rhode nodded. However, the collapsing sounds were regular and sounded every once in a while. Although Rhode was also curious as to what was going on, he didn’t raise any questions. Even though it wasn’t that he didn’t want to head over to check out the situation; the problem was that there was no pattern to the collapsing locations and he couldn’t possibly predict beforehand where it would happen and run over there to wait for it.

Thus, in the end, he didn’t do anything about it and left the rest up to the Gods. It would be best if his team could encounter one, and if they couldn’t, It didn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to be his problem, was it?

“Earlier, we thought they were just the aftermaths from the battles between teams.”

Karin’s expression remained calm, but Rhode caught a hint of ‘that definitely wasn’t an excuse on our part for not noticing the anomaly’ from her face.

But since she was so adamant about it, he wasn’t that evil to expose her. At any rate, this was also a matter of reputation. The technical staff would be especially sensitive in this area. Since they already knew that they were wrong, Rhode saved them some face by not criticizing them further. And watching as Rhode nodded, Karin’s eyes were filled with some strange emotion. But she eventually coughed and spoke softly.

“It was only later that we noticed that something wasn’t quite right… Perhaps you didn’t realize, Master, but your team is the only team left to be able to truly complete the mission to acquire all the mental crystals.”

“What you meant is…”

After hearing her words, Rhode instinctively froze for a moment. Then, he realized what she meant.

“Only Catherine and Little Five obtained the mental crystals? But the number of mental crystals left are… No, one more crystal is gone now.”

Lifting his head to glance at the city in front of him, Rhode noticed that the radiance of yet another mental crystal had dimmed. And upon looking at that scene, Karin frowned and showed a troubled and nervous expression. But soon, she regained her composure.

“Yes, we made a mistake in the design. In fact…”

At that point, Karin paused for a moment uncharacteristically as if she were hesitating whether or not to tell Rhode the truth. In the end, however, she bit the bullet and voiced the biggest problem.

“…The mental crystals were snatched by the other mental projections.”

“… Huh?”

Upon hearing those words, Rhode was taken aback. After Karin explained with gesticulating hands, he finally understood what she meant. As a matter of fact, there weren’t just three projected personalities in each of them. Generally speaking, the reason why the mental world projected only three personalities was that they were the most powerful. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t other personalities present; it was just that those personalities were too lacking, such as a lack in ego, discipline, or some other traits.

In short, it was as if everyone had a variety of innermost situations. And if the emotions of happiness, anger, and sadness were refined into mental projections, there would be hundreds of them.

In the beginning, all the Karins dragged the most mature of personalities into this world and closed the mental channels. But recently, they discovered that someone was secretly opening the mental channels to allow entry to less-mature projections. This surprised all the Karins greatly. The paths leading back to the various mental worlds were still sealed without a doubt, but they overlooked one thing.