Chapter 927: Loops at Night
Ethan stood there, staring blankly as the four women walked away, their figures gradually disappearing into the distance. He had been hoping to get some useful information out of the Ninth Division, something that could help him make sense of the situation, but instead, he had somehow managed to irritate them and get nothing in return.
He let out a quiet breath and shook his head. ’So much for that.’
Still, it wasn’t a complete loss. He had already learned enough to piece together the basics, and that alone was more valuable than anything they might have told him. Now that he knew where this thing likely came from, the next step was obvious. He needed to figure out how to destroy it before it fully matured.
The fact that the Ninth Division had already started targeting civilians told him everything he needed to know. Those people were no longer truly civilians, not in the normal sense. Once that energy infected someone, there was probably no turning back.
Otherwise, an organization like the Ninth Division, which was built around protecting ordinary people, would never resort to killing them so decisively, executing them without hesitation or remorse. They must have reached a point where there was simply no other option left.
Even so, Ethan refused to accept that there was absolutely no way to counter it. He would let them continue their research if they wanted, but he would find his own solution.
Because if they failed... Central Magnolia had millions of people.
If those parasites matured into their adult forms, that meant millions of controlled hosts, and from what he had seen in Shatterstar’s footage, those adult forms were not something normal humans could stand against. It wouldn’t stop at millions either. The spread would be exponential. Millions would become tens of millions in no time at all.
By then, Earth wouldn’t need an external invasion. It would collapse from within.
"Let’s move," Ethan said at last, turning away.
"Where to?" Micah asked.
"To do what we came here for."
Ethan’s gaze drifted toward the city center, where the massive projection of the energy sphere loomed in the distance. From where they stood, it looked real enough, but he knew better. That was just an illusion, a visual anchor. The true source of the energy leak was hidden somewhere deeper, impossible to pinpoint from here.
That was where Micah and Ryan came in. If anyone could trace the origin of this energy using formations, it would be them.
Ethan was almost certain now that what they were dealing with was some kind of array. There was no other explanation for the Divine Sea Temple’s presence here. They must have set up a formation that linked this space to the Void Realm, allowing its energy to seep through.
And mixed within that energy were those things Fiona had called parasites.
Though Ethan wasn’t entirely convinced that was the right term. Shatterstar had referred to it as a "contaminants," which sounded less like a living organism and more like a form of corruption.
In the end, the distinction didn’t matter. His priority was simple; shut this place down.
He needed to wipe the Divine Sea Temple out of the US completely.
Even so, he didn’t rush toward the center. Instead, he walked at a relaxed pace, blending into the surroundings like any ordinary passerby out for a late-night stroll. Step by step, he drifted closer to the energy sphere, as if he had nowhere in particular to be.
As he walked, he extended his Soul Sense, carefully observing everyone within range.
At first glance, everything seemed normal. People moved about, chatted, laughed, went about their lives without a hint of anything unusual.
And yet, that normalcy was exactly what felt wrong.
He couldn’t quite explain it, but something beneath the surface didn’t sit right with him. The presence of the Shadow Unit alone was enough to confirm that something serious was happening here.
Then there was another issue that had been bothering him since earlier.
The last time he had been here, when he scanned the entire region from above using his Soul Sense while riding on Shatterstar, he had detected nothing. No human presence. Not even insects.
And yet now, the place was filled with people. The contradiction had been gnawing at him ever since.
"Hey, doesn’t this feel off?" Ryan said suddenly, glancing around. "Shouldn’t these people be playing Ethereal right now? Why’s everyone outside this late?"
They were passing through another residential area, and the streets were crowded.
People stood in groups, chatting casually. Elderly couples danced together in an open square. Children ran around in packs, laughing and shouting as they played.
It looked like a perfectly ordinary evening in a lively neighborhood.
Except for one detail.
Ryan’s casual remark struck Ethan like a sudden jolt.
Ethereal had changed everything.
The people who used to spend their nights outside like this would almost certainly be logged into the game by now.
Ethan checked the time.
"One in the morning..."
The streetlights were still on, casting a steady glow over everything, and only then did he realize he hadn’t paid attention to the hour.
One AM.
"That’s it..." he muttered under his breath.
"What was that, boss?" Micah asked, though he was too busy gawking at everything around him like a tourist to really pay attention.
Ethan ignored him and turned to Ryan.
"Is Ethereal still running?"
"Yeah, of course it is," Ryan replied. "That’s why this is so weird. It’s like these people have never even heard of the internet."
Ethan narrowed his eyes as he scanned the crowd again.
"Exactly. It’s one in the morning. Even before Ethereal, people weren’t out here dancing and hanging around like this at this hour. And those kids... running around in groups like that? Don’t they have school tomorrow?"
His gaze swept across the scene once more, slower this time.
That was when it clicked; their routines, they weren’t just unusual. They were completely disconnected from normal human behavior.
Ryan checked his watch again after Ethan pointed it out, his expression shifting.
"Alright... yeah, that’s definitely not right. So what’s causing it?"
He sounded genuinely puzzled.
Micah, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered at all. While Ethan and Ryan were still analyzing the situation, he had already wandered off toward a nearby crowd.
Two elderly men were sitting across from each other, playing chess.
Both were rigid, focused, their expressions intense as if they were competing at a professional level.
The spectators surrounding them, however, were anything but composed.
"Move your knight!"
"Take him with your rook!"
"What’s the point of taking him? You still won’t win!"
"So what if I won’t win? I’m taking him anyway!"
"Tch. You’re terrible. Stop pretending you know how to play. If it were me, I’d push my pawn."
"You’re calling me terrible? You’re the terrible one. Come on, let’s play. I’ll crush you."
The players remained calm, ignoring the chaos around them, while the onlookers argued loudly, nearly coming to blows over moves that weren’t even theirs to make.
Micah watched, amused at first, until the game ended. A new one began.
"Move your knight!"
"Take him with your rook!"
"What’s the point of taking him? You still won’t win!"
...
Micah’s smile slowly faded. The words were identical. Every line, every argument, exactly the same as before.
Even the moves on the board followed the same sequence, leading to the same result.
Red won.
A chill crept down his spine.
He pushed through the crowd and hurried back to Ethan, his face pale, eyes darting nervously.
"What’s wrong?" Ethan asked, noticing immediately.
"I... I think I just saw something messed up. Those chess players..." Micah quickly explained what he had witnessed.
Ethan and Ryan exchanged a glance before heading over to see for themselves. Ten minutes later, all three of them stood there, staring.
The scene repeated itself perfectly. Every move and every word. Like a recording stuck on loop.
"The hell is this...?" Even Ethan felt a chill run through him. At this point, the people around them might as well have been NPCs.
The chess game reset over and over again. The dancers repeated the same routine with every song. The children ran in identical patterns, chasing the same invisible goals.
Normal logic no longer applied.
Then, without warning, the sky flickered slightly. Two in the morning. The streetlights shut off all at once.
The sky began to brighten faintly, even though sunrise was still hours away in the summer season. It was subtle, like an automated system reacting ahead of time, adjusting lighting to conserve power.
And at that exact moment, everything changed. Every single person stopped what they were doing.
The laughter, the movement, the noise, all of it ceased at once, as if someone had flipped a switch.
Then, just as naturally, they began to leave.
In small groups of two or three, they walked away, chatting casually, completely unaware that they had just been repeating the same actions over and over again.
Like NPCs who didn’t know they were NPCs.
"Follow that guy," Ethan said quietly, selecting a target.
A homeless man.
Filthy, disheveled, someone who had been rummaging through trash bins all night.
At first, Ethan hadn’t paid much attention to him, but now that the looping behavior was obvious, he realized the man had been checking the same bins repeatedly, even though he had already gone through them minutes before.
Now, as the crowd dispersed in an almost coordinated manner, Ethan couldn’t exactly follow random people into their homes.
But the homeless man... He would have somewhere to go.
Sure enough, the man headed toward an old park, the kind that had long since fallen into disuse. There were no attractions, no ponds, just scattered trees and a few worn-down houses.
The man walked straight into one of them, surrounded by piles of collected junk, bottles and scrap he had likely gathered for recycling.
Inside, there was a broken sofa bed. He approached it and fell backward onto it, but not in a normal way.
He didn’t sit, didn’t even adjust himself. He simply collapsed flat onto it, stiff and unnatural, like a puppet with its strings cut.
Then he lay still and his breathing steadied almost instantly. To an outside observer, it might have looked like he had simply fallen asleep.
But to Ethan, something was very wrong.
The moment the man closed his eyes, his presence vanished from Ethan’s Soul Sense completely.
It was as if he had merged with the sofa itself. No life signs, nothing.
"The hell..." Ethan muttered.
"What’s wrong, boss?" Ryan and Micah asked at the same time.
"I get it now," Ethan said slowly, his voice low. "This explains everything. When I scanned this place from above before, it was daytime. Everyone would have been asleep."
He paused briefly, letting the realization settle.
"And when they sleep, their life signatures sync with those parasites Fiona’s team found. And those things... my Soul Sense can’t detect them at all."
Everything finally made sense.
"Night-active parasites..." Ryan murmured, frowning.
Ethan nodded.
Ryan wasn’t just a mystic arts practitioner. He had studied a wide range of obscure knowledge growing up, and while Ethan had never seen him work with parasites directly, he trusted his instincts.
"Do things like this exist back home?" Ethan asked.
"Not that I’ve seen in any of Master’s collections," Ryan replied with a shrug.
Ethan nodded once and let the matter drop.
"Alright. Let’s find somewhere to stay."
Ryan and Micah both blinked in surprise.
"Stay?"
"Yeah," Ethan said firmly. "I want to observe what happens tonight. And I also need to check in with Uncle Jed’s team, see if they’re running into the same thing."
"Fair enough," Ryan agreed.
Ethan’s thoughts continued to turn as they moved.
Central Magnolia was supposedly the place where the US first energy sphere had appeared. He had a strong feeling that this location was far more important than it seemed.
The appearance of those spheres was clearly tied to what he had done in Ethereal, as if something had been set into motion behind the scenes.
He had secured the four major fortresses around Harmony City, triggering the Energy Pool system.
And that system...
It was somehow connected to the real world.
Every time a player logged out of their capsule, energy leaked out, spreading across the Magnolia Valley region. There seemed to be some kind of barrier at the borders, containing it, preventing it from spreading further.
As a result, the energy continued to accumulate within the region, including the coastal areas.
Once it reached a certain threshold, the Divine Sea Temple appeared.
They couldn’t operate on land without sufficient energy, but deep underwater, in places humans couldn’t reach, the energy was abundant.
It reminded Ethan of the Antarctic region, where magical beast clans thrived. The difference was that the ocean had no such barrier, but that hardly mattered. Humanity still couldn’t fully explore its depths, not even with modern technology.
Sometimes, Ethan found it strange.
Humans couldn’t even fully explore their own oceans, yet they were already dreaming of conquering space.
Eventually, they found a suitable spot, another quiet building where they could sit without drawing attention.
Micah and Ryan immediately settled into meditation. Ethan, meanwhile, reached out to Uncle Jed.
He explained everything he had discovered.
On the other end, Uncle Jed sounded genuinely confused. There was nothing like this happening where they were. Their nights were normal. People stayed home, logged into Ethereal as usual.
They had already located and destroyed one Divine Sea Temple stronghold and were on their way to the next.
Ethan told them to slow down, to rest for now. He needed to understand this situation fully before they pushed further.
After ending the call, he sat down, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness sink inward, entering his Mindscape as his thoughts continued to churn.