Doomsday Wonderland

After realizing that Lin Sanjiu had not arrived on the Queen Mother in his forty-year-old fragment, Silvan began his travels and experiments. Several years passed, and he was never once transported away.

Of course, during those years, the Queen Mother never remained idle.

Under his control, the Queen Mother drifted aimlessly through the vast and silent universe, as if swimming through an endless, pitch-black ocean. Yet, it was always drawn toward worlds inhabited by humans, rising from the dark sea into the glow of civilization.

For the Queen Mother, interstellar travel had become far easier simply because it refused to listen and had eaten too much.

If not for Silvan threatening to discipline it, it might have even swallowed the suspended meteor fragments in the sky. Even so, it had secretly consumed too many cosmic particles and debris, growing significantly in size and mass. Now, whenever it moved, within days, it would break through the cosmic layers and fall into another apocalyptic world.

Though Silvan hadn't gained a single ounce of fat, he had once fused part of his nervous system with the Queen Mother's brain. Now that the Queen Mother had gotten so large, he often found himself absentmindedly touching his waist and abdomen, just to make sure. After confirming that the ridges were still firm muscle and not fat, he would finally sigh in relief.

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"Our bodies are linked, just like our fates," he patiently advised. "You really can't eat anymore. You're at the perfect size now. If you keep growing, you'll break through the universe too frequently."

The planet beneath his feet, of course, remained silent.

Now that he and the Queen Mother were closely connected, if he were ever swept away by the Great Deluge or transported elsewhere, the Queen Mother would be drawn to him, swimming toward him time and time again. Whenever his life fragment switched, unless he was thrown into a time before the Queen Mother existed, it would always be beneath his feet or in the sky above.

The Queen Mother was his answer to the Great Deluge.

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The endless layers of the universe stacked like an onion. Every time the Queen Mother moved and tore through one of these onion layers, entering the universe of another apocalyptic world, it essentially triggered a mini-Deluge. The mechanisms behind the two were the same.

Just as he had explained to Lin Sanjiu, the Great Deluge disrupted all established doomsday rules. In areas where the Great Deluge struck frequently, teleportation became exceedingly rare.

This meant that by maneuvering the Queen Mother, he could not only evade the Great Deluge but also confuse the teleportation system, preventing it from activating nearby. In theory, at least, no one on the Queen Mother would ever be separated again.

After years of testing, Silvan could finally exhale in relief.

Perhaps there were still uncertainties, unstable factors, and unpredictable risks, but perfection was impossible. He had done everything that could be done.

The Queen Mother no longer needed to consume human brains, but it still seemed drawn to humans. No matter how far it swam, how many cosmic layers it pierced, Silvan always found that before long, a new planet with glowing human settlements would appear in the distance.

That wasn't such a bad thing. Otherwise, being alone on the Queen Mother, waiting for the arrival of his next life fragment, would be far too dull and lonely. More importantly, it gave him a chance to gather news about Lin Sanjiu in this forty-year-old segment of his life.

Thus, Silvan frequently piloted his spacecraft to explore unknown human worlds, collecting materials and resources to further develop the Queen Mother, keeping up with the current state of the doomsday world, and trying to determine just how much time had passed since he last saw Lin Sanjiu in that game world.

But that was difficult. Many apocalyptic worlds had abandoned conventional calendars, and their dating systems varied wildly.

It wasn't until he looted an unfortunate posthuman who had mistakenly targeted him that he found a wanted notice.

Even he was surprised when he read it.

The document appeared to be circulated only among a select few, and it was incredibly detailed, even including his photograph. However, it listed an additional crime one that Silvan himself had never committed. Apparently, he was wanted for stealing a life reconstruction artifact from the Munitions Factory.

That was absurd. He hadn't stolen anything. He had simply taken the entire Munitions Factory.

"They're still issuing bounties for me? After all these years...?"

The posthuman on the ground froze, then craned his neck to get a better look at the notice.

Silvan, ever considerate, held it up for him, especially since the man was no longer capable of standing on his own.

"When did you get this?" Silvan asked.

"I... I didn't get it myself..." The posthuman's eyes widened. He alternated between staring at the youthful side profile of Silvan in the wanted notice and the golden-haired man standing before him. "It's... it's really you? How is that possible?"

"Start from the beginning," Silvan said, smiling. "Don't keep me in suspense. When my curiosity flares up, I tend to lose control of my strength."

The posthuman immediately became sharp-tongued.

"I bought this storage item ten years ago. When I got it, it was already filled with all sorts of old junk, stuff that was outdated and worthless even back then. I always meant to sort through it, but I never found the time, and honestly, I was just lazy. It wasn't like it was in my way, so I kept putting it off... So, this is actually the first time I've seen this wanted notice."

That meant Lin Sanjiu's time in the game world was at least a decade before his current fragment, possibly even longer.

"I always thought the Munitions Factory's Silvan was just a legend from the Twelve Worlds Centrum... Damn, if I'd known, I would've sold it. Anything with your photo on it would've fetched a good price." As if suddenly realizing something, the posthuman muttered, "If it was you, no wonder I didn't even get a chance to make a move..."

Since the man had at least provided him with some information, Silvan left him where he was.

If there was anything different about the doomsday world in his forty-year-old fragment, it was that the future seemed even more fragmented than before.

The once-powerful organizations that had spanned multiple apocalyptic worlds had long since crumbled. With the Great Deluge becoming more frequent and chaotic, the standard fourteen-month transportation had turned into a rare stroke of luck.

Having a visa provided some comfort during the Great Deluge, but it was little more than a flimsy reassurance. No one could say for sure if it truly offered any protection. Even consular officers, whose status had plummeted, had begun evolving new abilities just to survive.

Information between worlds now arrived in scattered fragments, like trying to hold a phone conversation in an area with terrible reception.

"Lin... Lin what?"

The girl's nose, cheeks, and lips were flushed pink as she stared at Silvan, her eyes bright and slightly damp. She bit her lower lip, released it, then bit it again, unable to stop herself.

It was the third time she had asked, "Lin what?" Clearly, Lin Sanjiu's name had completely failed to stick in her mind.

Silvan was long accustomed to this reaction from women. If anything, the effect he had on others had only intensified with age. With practiced patience, he repeated in a deep, steady voice, "Lin Sanjiu."

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"Never... never heard of her," the girl stammered. "I haven't heard any news about the Twelve Worlds Centrum in a long time..."

"Wasn't there a service called the Great Deluge Jump?" Silvan prompted. "Haven't you tried using it?"

"Oh, that," the girl said, finally managing to pull a fraction of her attention away from Silvan. "I did look into it when it first appeared. At first, people assumed it worked like a visa, that you could choose where you wanted to go... But that's not how it works at all."

Silvan, who had yet to live through the past twenty years, said warmly, "I've just come from a very distant place and don't know much about it. Could you explain it to me?"

She absolutely could. Her entire expression practically screamed those three words.

"The places a person can travel to using the Great Deluge Jump are very limited. You don't get to decide, and neither does the person offering the service," the girl explained. "It's strange. Before using the service, you have to tell them your personal history, major life experiences and such. Then, you have to show them a few trinkets or keepsakes from your past... Oh, not as payment. More like, for example, if you once went somewhere important and picked up a memento, you have to show it to them. Only then can they determine where the Great Deluge will take you."

That was certainly odd.

Later, Silvan tried using Great Deluge Jump himself, only to find himself back on the Queen Mother. That, at least, confirmed the effectiveness of his method for resisting the Great Deluge, didn't it?

The more it proved effective, the more he wanted Lin Sanjiu to come aboard and test it herself. But she seemed to have vanished from his forty-year-old timeline entirely.

He knew that in his fifty-year-old and sixty-year-old fragments, he had also never seen Lin Sanjiu. The thought of it made him strangely grateful for the way his life had been fragmented. If he were to live his years in sequential order, that would mean a gap of anywhere between thirty to sixty years in which she simply did not exist in his world. Though, he supposed, if his life had been normal, perhaps she wouldn't have been there at all during those years anyway.

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From another perspective, it meant that not long after they had parted ways, Lin Sanjiu had vanished from the universe and had remained missing for decades.

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What had happened to her after the game world?

He hoped that his next life fragment would take him back to the years when Lin Sanjiu was still out there, still active.

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Silvan forced himself to suppress the burning impatience in his gut and endured countless days and nights.

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Finally, his next life fragment arrived.

END

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