Chapter 98 : Chapter 98
Chapter : 98
Even without going out, I could feel a gaze patrolling the room. It seemed to linger for a few seconds in the place where we were hiding.
I held my breath, not daring to breathe too heavily, afraid of revealing any abnormality and having our position discovered.
The person seemed to have looked over the entire room.
After confirming that there were no problems, he admired his collection in front of the display cabinet for a while before slowly leaving the room.
I heard the door close and confirmed that one less person was breathing in the room before I let out a sigh of relief.
The exploration progress has already risen to 58%, only 22% away from 80%!
It seemed that as long as I submitted a few more correct guesses, this instance could be cleared.
I thought for a moment and analyzed the information I had just heard.
Obviously, that person just now was the big boss of Mandiper. However, from his tone, it seemed that he was still cooperating with some people.
Dolls in the warehouse, perfect raw materials...
I thought of the dark prison I had broken into when I went to save Nana. Since the dolls were real, living beings, did that dark prison equate to the warehouse the boss mentioned?
After all, the dark prison held many people, and the warehouse held many dolls. This corresponded perfectly.
As for the perfect raw materials, it definitely didn't refer to ordinary people.
Given that Mandiper had once wanted to bring Nika and Rocco back, I felt that this perfect raw material might refer to humans or other races with talent skills.
And the person cooperating with Mandiper was actually not hard to guess.
Paul, the bishop of the Church stationed in the Free City, was secretly providing Mandiper with information about children with detected talent skills.
It was likely that the cooperative partner was related to the Church.
It was even highly possible that they were cooperating with the Church.
It is said that a starved camel is still bigger than a horse.
Although the current Church of Light seemed very low-key, from the very beginning, I didn't think the Church of Light was as docile as they appeared.
Didn't you see that even after the God of Light died, this Church could still create a Goddess of Light?
After all, the earliest Church of Light could be traced back several thousand years.
Before the establishment of the Demon King's Eternal Empire, the Light Empire, where the Church of Light was located, could be said to be almost entirely composed of fanatics of the God of Light.
The escalating War of the Gods was also partly due to the Church of Light fanning the flames.
Thinking this, I submitted my speculation.
After a while, the instance progress increased, but not by much. The overall progress reached 64%.
Hmm? Was it because there was a mistake in my speculation, or did this speculation not have much to do with the Golden Man instance itself?
Divik leaned in, “My King, that person is gone. Should we go out and look for other clues?”
I thought it was feasible. I had a lot of information on hand, but it was very fragmented, lacking something that could connect them all.
It wasn't impossible to deduce the final result by just squatting here and guessing, but that would take too much time.
I needed to go through a bit of trial and error to get the final answer. But while Divik and I were in the instance, the time outside was not paused.
We couldn't spend too much time in the instance.
Not to mention that Isabelle was still waiting for Divik to investigate and bring back news, those kids from the children's group were also waiting for me to take them out!
I got on the dragon express and casually submitted 'Golden Men are made from dolls and white masks'. The progress rose to 78%.
I wasn't surprised. After all, the name of this instance was the Golden Factory, but what was being produced on the assembly line was not golden men but the masks used in the competition. This was obviously unreasonable, unless the masks themselves were a step in the process of making golden men.
And I had seen with my own eyes at the competition venue how that muscular man was parasitized by something unknown, sucked dry, and then refilled like a balloon being blown up.
In the end, that state was obviously no longer human. With the golden men in this room as a reference, I could roughly guess how the golden men were made.
Imagining that scene, I even felt the urge to dry heave.
Cruel and disgusting.
But I still didn't understand what the boss of this Mandiper was up to. From what I just heard, Mandiper still needed the protection of the Church, so it was impossible for them to pull such a big move.
After all, too many famous people had come this time. The force behind just that level 90 swordsman was not small.
Even if Mandiper had the ability to wipe them all out, they wouldn't have the strength to resist the accountability from the forces behind them.
If those forces united, just one Church couldn't protect Mandiper.
Not to mention, if the matter of Mandiper's golden men was revealed and caused a panic, even more people who considered themselves righteous would come to crusade against Mandiper.
At that time, Mandiper would become a rat crossing the street, with everyone shouting to beat it.
I walked around this room again. After confirming that there were no other clues, Divik and I returned to the ventilation duct and headed for our next destination.
Little did they know that not long after they had just left, the door of that room was opened again.
The tall man scanned the room once more, his gaze falling on the closed ventilation duct, and a ferocious and mocking smile appeared on his lips.
“Oh? It seems our factory has been visited by a few uninvited rats.”
His voice was filled with thick malice, “How interesting. Inform the people below to pay a little more attention. Don't let the rats find anything important.”
“The rat-catching game begins now.”
“Little rats, hide well now, and don't get found...”
...
I and Divik had not yet realized that our whereabouts had been discovered. We were still walking along the ventilation duct. We went to two more places.
One was the warehouse the boss had mentioned. However, what was stored inside was different from the humans I had imagined.
They were indeed dolls that looked very similar to humans. Many of the dolls were hung high in the air by iron hooks, like exhibits.
This scene was very strange. At a glance, many people were hung by iron hooks, like a scene from a bloody slaughterhouse, but there was not a trace of blood.
The joints of these dolls were also replaced by small spheres. With a closer look, one could tell that they were not human.
Besides the iron hooks, this warehouse was also decorated in a very childlike and cute way. There were even childlike and naive simple drawings on the walls.
It seemed to present an absurd fairy tale.
I looked around but found nothing new. I only felt that the posture of these dolls was somewhat similar to the scene where Nana was hung in mid-air by chains.
This also happened to prove that my previous guess was correct.
The warehouse of the Golden Factory referred to Mandiper's dark prison.
The other room was another white mask workshop. It seemed to be a place where the previously produced mask blanks were further processed.
A black-robed man was soaking the masks in a dark green liquid that was bubbling strangely. After a while, he would take them out and apply a strange potion.
I tried to use [Appraisal] on those things, but the system was like it was broken and didn't give any reaction.
If I used it a few more times, a warning prompt would pop up, telling me to play the game according to the rules and not to try to cheat.
I: ...
It seems that the things in the exploration instance cannot be [Appraised].
However, our exploration progress had reached 86%. We could exit the instance at any time and end this exploration.
I poked the dragon's head. "We can leave this space now, or we can continue to explore. The only difference is whether the final reward is big or small. Do you want to continue exploring?"
This reward was basically only useful to me. NPC teammates were just a help.
In addition, Divik's level was too high, so he wouldn't gain any experience after completing the instance.
Continuing to explore would be a pure waste of time for Divik.
I was very considerate of my subordinates. After all, Divik had a mission this time, so I gave him the choice.
I just didn't know if this instance would be recorded by the system if it wasn't fully explored. If it was recorded, I could come back and play this instance again in the future.
Even if the reward wasn't as much as the first clear, it would be considerable after playing it a few more times, just like the instance in Sunset Village.
I thought Divik would want to go out, but unexpectedly, after a moment of contemplation, Divik chose to continue exploring.
“Are you interested in this instance?” I was curious. Divik had been very silent when I was exploring just now, as if he was not interested, which was why I thought he wanted to leave the instance.
Divik hesitated for a moment. “No... it’s just that you said before, right?
This space is an independent space generated based on the outside world, and basically, you can find corresponding existences.”
“I came here this time to find out the origin of the dragon bone of that Chigu Sword.
If this dragon bone really came from the few members of the dragon race who went missing before, then I should be able to find clues here... right?”
At the end, Divik was a little unsure.
I thought along Divik's words. It seemed that there was no problem with what he said. According to the principle of instance generation, it was indeed possible to find clues.
“Alright, then we’ll…”
Before I could finish my sentence, the factory below fell into chaos. A group of black-robed men rushed in, and the one in the lead shouted:
“Two rats have snuck into the factory. The master has ordered us to temporarily put down what we’re doing and catch those two rats no matter what!”
Divik and I looked at each other. It was obvious that the two rats referred to him and me.
“We’ve been discovered?” Divik cracked his knuckles, ready to rush up and activate his berserk mode to turn these people into bean paste.
I backhanded Divik's arm and whispered: "Go."
Are you crazy? It's really unnecessary to go head-to-head with the NPCs in an exploration instance.
Even if Divik's strength was enough to take on a hundred of them, with our current size fighting against giant black-robed men, I just felt strange, and I wasn't confident.
We drilled back into the ventilation duct. Before leaving, I looked back and saw that these black-robed men had suddenly put on strange masks...
They looked like the gas masks that often appear in many sci-fi movies.
I suddenly had a bad feeling.
Sure enough, we hadn't run more than a few steps when a blue-green gas visibly filled the inside of the ventilation duct. I took a breath in unpreparedly, and a [Poisoned] debuff appeared on my status bar.