Chương 11: Welcome Back to Reality

When the white light drained away, the projector fan was still humming. Gu Zhiwei found herself still sitting in the conference room. The slide deck on the screen hadn't even moved off page 27. The product manager was looking at her, asking whether she could finish the feature tonight. The cloud sea, the Sacred Mountain, the colossal beasts, all of it brutally compressed into a single second and rammed back into her skull. A violent headache hit her, and nausea with it.

She pressed a hand to her forehead, the color draining from her face as beads of cold sweat slid down her temple. The coworker beside her noticed immediately.

"Are you okay?" Every head in the room turned. The product manager scratched his head, looking awkward, maybe thinking about that recent news story about a programmer at some big tech company dropping dead at his desk: "Uh... honestly, this isn't that urgent. Why don't you go home and rest?" It took Gu Zhiwei a long moment to get her voice working, and when she did it came out hoarse.

"Sorry. Bad headache." Her direct manager frowned at her.

"Can you make it to the end of the meeting? Ten more minutes."

"Not really. I want to throw up." All Gu Zhiwei wanted was to get home and sort through the wreckage in her head. She almost never took time off, and she certainly never walked out in the middle of a milestone meeting. Her manager studied her bloodless face and finally waved a hand.

"Fine, go rest." Gu Zhiwei closed her laptop. The system's voice rose in her mind at the same instant. 【Beginner world final tally complete. 】 【Player Gu Zhiwei, Strength increased: 18→20. 】 【Spirit increased: 25→26. 】 【First-clear reward has been issued. 】 【One-time skill loaded: [Forced Retention]. 】 【The next world deployment will begin in fifteen days. The new world will unlock the party system. Participants are advised to prepare in advance. 】 The transparent panel unfolded, visible to no one but her.

【Personal Panel】 【Name: Gu Zhiwei】 【Strength: 20/100】 【Spirit: 26/100】 Spirit was clearly harder to raise than Strength. And she'd noticed that ever since that first-combat reward, her Strength gains had slowed down too. 【Skills: 1. Retrocognition】 【Records unlocked: Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman (100%)】 【Artifact: Sacred Spirit Vine Staff (3 uses remaining)】 【2. Forced Retention (one-time)】 【Designate one player. That player will be forcibly retained in the Myriad Worlds when the current cycle ends.

The designation cannot be revoked once made. 】 Gu Zhiwei's feet stopped moving. Forcibly retained in the Myriad Worlds. Meaning that even with the quest complete, even with the person alive and whole, the system permitted one player to strip another of the right to go home. Why would the system call something like that a reward? The conference room door swung shut behind her.

Out on the open-plan office floor, keyboards clattered in overlapping waves, someone was on a call, someone tore open a bag of chips, and the sharp powdered-wasabi smell drifted over and made her cough. Two coworkers near the pantry were looking at a phone and laughing.

"Look, another UFO over Shanghai. How many is that this month?"

"Didn't the experts say weather balloon?"

"A balloon that big? I'm dying. AI videos look practically real these days. They've cracked the clickbait formula and they know it." Gu Zhiwei glanced at the screen before she could stop herself. In the video, low clouds pressed down over the city, and a vast silver-gray outline hung above the cloud layer. Only a narrow sliver of its edge was visible, cold light traveling slowly along the rim, like a metal scale set into the sky.

Back at her desk, Gu Zhiwei stuffed her laptop and charger into her bag, and when she braced her palm on the edge of the desk, the solid wood dented beneath her palm. Well, damn. Strength 20 worked in the real world too. She quietly removed her hand.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. It was almost noon by the time she got home. She shut the door, kicked off her shoes, stepped barefoot onto the wood floor, and folded herself into the couch, and only then did she feel like she was actually back. The curtains were still open. Sunlight came in at a slant across the living room, dust turning slowly in the columns of it. The glass of water she'd half finished before leaving was still on the table.

Seven days in another world. One second here. After a shower she pulled on a loose black T-shirt, curled into the couch, and opened the panel again. 【Quests】 had gone gray, reading awaiting next world load. 【Help】 was still stingy with words. Tapping it produced exactly one line: Participants are invited to explore on their own. The system had all but tattooed Customer service is deceased. Please direct all inquiries to a Ouija board. across its own face.

The Sacred Spirit Vine Staff in【Artifact】could be summoned by thought alone, but only three times. An ultimate like that had to be saved for when it counted. After the Earthfire Rock Beast died on the Sacred Mountain, she'd felt it clearly: the Grand Sacred Spirit Shaman's power withdrawing along with the staff receding into her mind. Her own Spirit was right back where it had been, the level where even working with Windlisten had left her wrung out.

Speaking of Windlisten, she paged through the panel and found no trace at all. It must have stayed behind in the Cloud Sea world. She opened 【Forum】, dark and dead until now. The interface lit. 【Please select a forum display ID】 Very considerate of the system. Nobody wanted to walk around a place like that with their real name on display. Gu Zhiwei thought about it and typed Greenfeather.

The next instant, threads cascaded down the screen in a dense waterfall, the online counter in the upper right ticking upward, upward, until it settled at six digits. 102, 301 Far more people than the twenty in her batch had been dragged into the system. The Myriad Worlds System had opened who knew how many beginner worlds across the globe, each batch apparently differing in both headcount and quest. They were one group among many.

【Help me, I just got back from the undersea city, and now the sight of a fish or a shrimp makes me gag. 】 【Does anyone actually know what this system is? And we have to do it again in 15 days?! 】 【Reported it to the police. The officer recommended a psychiatrist... absolutely unreal. 】 【Skill discussion: does Dream Weaving count as Spirit-type or special-type? 】 【Somebody explain this to me: the skill I rolled is communicating with sea sirens, and then they dropped me into a desert world. How is that fair?

】 【Our quest ran ten years. I've been walking around in a daze since I got back. 】 【URGENT, refreshing for answers! Where is the party system? Can we party up before entering the new world? 】 The posts came in every language, and the system converted every one of them into the Chinese she read every day. She opened the ten-year thread. The OP said he'd been deployed into a steam-age civilization.

He'd married there, buried his wife, raised the child she left behind, and was in his thirties by the time he cleared it. Back in the real world, he was still sitting in his university cafeteria, and his roommate was asking why he was staring at a piece of red-braised pork. The comments held doubters, sympathizers, and people pressing for quest details from that world. The OP never replied again. Gu Zhiwei backed out of the thread, tapped the search bar, and typed Cloudperch. A new post came up almost immediately.

【Brothers and sisters of Cloudperch, over here! Identifying features: handsome, athletic shorts, fairly heroic in combat. Claims welcome. 】 Gu Zhiwei looked at that line and felt something in her chest finally loosen a little. She messaged Wang Pu through the forum, and within minutes, the six of them had a group chat going. Members: Gu Zhiwei, Chen Li, Wang Pu, Su Ye, Matt, Maria. Wang Pu: Woo! Full party survived! Uncle Chen, you're a man of your word, I knew you'd come looking for me.

Sis Zhiwei, send us a dot so we know your company hasn't dragged you back into overtime. Gu Zhiwei:. Wang Pu: A dot positively bursting with life. Su Ye took a while before she answered. Su Ye: I'm home. The chat went quiet. She didn't bring up the cloud beast again, and nobody dared ask. Maria sent a photo of flowers on a balcony: I'm safely home too. It's early morning here, my husband is making breakfast. Only seven days, and it feels like years. Matt: Home. The bone whistle the old man gave me is gone.

Gu Zhiwei: I couldn't bring Windlisten back either. Anything belonging to that world seems to stay in that world. Wang Pu: What I'm really worried about is the next world. When does this thing end? Su Ye: If we all end up in the next world, can we party up? Wang Pu: Obviously. I'll pour tea for you legends. Chen Li didn't play along with the joke. He forwarded a forum thread about the time discrepancy into the chat instead. Chen Li: There's no consistent rule to how long you stay in a world.

The longest I've seen so far is ten years, though I can't vouch for the claim. We should be ready for the possibility. Chen Li: Also, don't post your full skill set or your real-world identity on the forum. Nothing states that the anonymity is absolute. Matt: Agreed. Maria: I'll research and compile some herbal remedies. If the next world is also non-modern, they may be useful. I'll share them with everyone. Su Ye: We can gather herbs together. I think my Affinity for Living Things works on plants too.

Wang Pu: Settled, then. Six-person squad. Nobody drops out. Gu Zhiwei: Agreed. Wang Pu immediately fired off a string of cheering emojis. Wang Pu: Oh right, Sis Gu, what bonus skill did you get this time? Gu Zhiwei: A one-time skill. It lets me designate one player and force them to remain in the Myriad Worlds when the return happens. The chat went still. Su Ye was the one who broke it: If only you'd gotten that reward before we left. That Julie should've stayed in Cloudperch and gotten what she deserved!

Chen Li: One use only. That needs careful thought. Matt added a line: Are there restrictions on who it can be used against? Gu Zhiwei: None. As far as I can tell, it can target any player. Another silence. Chen Li: If the forum still works after deployment, report your location first thing. Everyone agreed. Gu Zhiwei closed the chat and went back to the forum's front page. The Shanghai UFO thread had already climbed onto the trending list.

The poster claimed he'd seen the craft before the system took him, and nobody was laughing at him now, because players in Europe, South America, and East Asia had posted near-identical images. A commenter in Northern Europe said that only players could see it. He'd pointed it out to his wife, who was standing right beside him, but she'd seen nothing except empty clouds and assumed he was losing his mind. Gu Zhiwei saved the images and kept scrolling. One thread jumped out at her.

【People who die in another world aren't simply dead. That world erases them completely. 】 The poster wrote that he and his childhood friend had been deployed into an apocalypse world together. The friend died on the third day of the zombie siege. He survived until the quest was complete, and the moment he returned he went straight to her house. Her mother answered the door. But that mother didn't know the girl he was describing.

She insisted she'd only ever had one child, a son, and that there had never been a daughter in the house. The bedroom the girl had lived in for over twenty years was a storage room now. Every chat log and photo on his phone was gone. Even their mutual friends thought he'd lost his mind. The replies below were a brawl. Nobody wanted to accept it. Some suggested divergent timelines.

Some suggested he'd invented the friend under the pressure of the apocalypse world, that maybe there had never been such a person at all. Some demanded the OP publish her name and photo. The OP never replied again. Gu Zhiwei read it through, and very little stirred in her. In this world, the only people likely to care whether she vanished were her product manager and her landlord. The first would worry about who'd take over the project, the second about who'd pay next month's rent.

But she had to know who kept feeding her into these worlds, over and over. She could die. She just couldn't die without knowing why.

"Ding-dong." The doorbell cut straight through her thoughts. She looked through the peephole and found a man she had never seen before standing outside.