VIP Chapter 383: Next Stop
“Grrr… Let me touch you again… Just a touch… and I can feel your pounding heartbeat, it’s… very interesting…”
Liya, who was sleeping soundly on the bed, was not awakened by the “nightmare” this time. Even as the sun, which represented the passage of time in the dungeon, shone in through the window, causing her to drift in a half-awake daze, she still stretched out her “witch’s claws” to the side. She felt around as if trying to grasp something…
Then she realized… her hand had grasped nothing!
“Will!?”
She sat up in bed with a jolt, her hair a mess, with individual strands of her blond hair sticking out. Feeling a wave of panic, fearing that the pleasant days she’d had were just a dream, she widened her eyes, her body beginning to tremble uncontrollably…
At that moment, she felt a pair of hands gently stroking her head. Like a newly awakened cat, Liya half-opened her eyes and looked up, finally seeing the person who completely put her at ease—
“Huh? What’s wrong? Didn’t we say we’d get up early today and discuss our next plan with Lis?”
Will was already dressed and sitting at the table by the bed. Seeing Liya sit up as if startled awake, he turned and patted her head. In the beginning, seeing Liya curled up asleep on the bed like a timid cat, Will had been a little unaccustomed to it. After all, he rarely saw Liya with her hair down instead of in a ponytail.
However, after staying here for about a day, he had completely gotten used to waking up like this. Now he could see Liya, who used to be tsundere and strong-willed, lying softly beside him, even reaching out to hug him. Especially… When Liya’s blond hair was let down, she looked like a soft, cute little kitten, and would let out a soft “mew” when he petted her head, which was incredibly endearing.
“Oh, right… Speaking of which, there was that.”
Liya rubbed her eyes, her surprise subsiding. Indeed… Will was right here now, he wouldn’t “die” like before.
“But why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”
“I wanted you to sleep a little longer.”
As Will said this, he seemed to have hidden something under the table with his hand. This action was so deliberate that Liya noticed it immediately.
“You… are you hiding something from me—”
She got out of bed, her bare feet touching the ground, and leaned against Will, finally taking the item from his hand… a letter. But no matter how she looked at it, it seemed to be a blank piece of paper. She raised her head, holding it up to the light repeatedly, but before she could notice any clues, Will snatched it away.
“Alright, Lis is probably waiting. Let’s go find her right away.”
***
In Lis’s room, Liya brought over her small blackboard so that Will could explain the “conclusion” he had reached.
“So… this is where you calculated Iaar might become a BOSS?”
Lis crossed her arms, looking at the blackboard and Will’s “conclusion.” On a map of Entak’s dungeons, each dungeon was marked with monster distribution, along with their creation times.
“Yes.”
“What was the process?”
“Look here.”
Will pointed at the map. Most of the dungeons were crossed out with an “X,” while only a few were circled.
“Step one, filter out the dungeons where I know Iaar’s monster form will appear. This step alone accounted for twenty to thirty dungeons.” The reason for this step was simple. According to the original work that Will knew, he was the only one who could determine what kind of monster Iaar’s new personality would become—a fact that even the witch did not know. But… he hadn’t expected that this type of monster, which was very cool in the original work, would be so numerous in the dungeons. It was no wonder that Li Wei’qi, who called herself the “Awakened One,” should have known what kind of monster Iaar was currently in, but still couldn’t provide the information to the witch in time. Of course, the reason Li Wei’qi couldn’t find her might also be… Not all the elite BOSSes and even Emperors in the dungeons were willing to reveal their names, and the recording officers of the Adventurer’s Guild were extremely careless, not recording the names of every monster.
“…”
Lis remained silent. With her arms crossed, Will was reminded of the strict but irrefutable old professor he faced during his graduation thesis defense at Entak First Academy.
“What is the reason for this?”
Lis frowned, seemingly hesitant, but she still asked the question.
“The reason is that I know. The way I know is that I was not born here and possess information from the outside world—to increase your credibility, you can think of it as similar to the ancient magic books the witch possesses. You just need to understand this information.”
“…Alright. But after filtering down to this point, what is the second step?”
Lis’s “alright” was given with great reluctance. For a rigorous scholar like the witch, Will’s answer was as nonsensical as answering “because one plus one equals two” when asked “why is the answer to this math problem this.”
“Step two, filter out the dungeons that were created before The End of Ice Abyss.” He pointed to the creation times marked on the dungeons.
This step… was not information he obtained from the “original work.” Since he discovered that the original Apex of the Galaxy had disappeared and Li Wei’qi had become an unknown entity within the dungeon, where would the other “characters” from the original work be? Until… he remembered Shuna. As an original character from the derivative game he personally led, she had appeared here. So, was it possible that characters originally from the game’s gacha pool would appear in a similar way?
Therefore, over the past three months, he had not only searched the Adventurer’s Guild’s dungeon clear records using the names he already had but had also personally run through several of those dungeons. And then he discovered that his guess was correct. Some of the settings in this world had extremely similar expressions to the “mobile game” he had created and launched to make money. For example… All the characters that existed in the original work—the verdant Goblin Conductor, the slippery Super Slime Girl, the girl hiding in the empty armor… These characters, who originally corresponded to Apex of the Galaxy, entered the dungeons in the exact order they were added as new characters to the gacha pool. —Thank goodness, because the gacha pool order was a very important operational resource, and the work for the entire following year revolved around it, so he could still recall it more than ten years later. However, this meant that to pinpoint a character’s appearance time, one had to know the time before and after her. Iaar’s banner was before that Snow Woman, which was why Will began searching for the location of the original “Snow Woman.”
