Chương 577: Chapter 568: Anomalies

After we stepped through the next portal, I suddenly found myself laying down in the corner of a room. I was greeted by the scent of burnt grass and bird droppings. I wrinkled my nose. The smell was quite unpleasant, and it was also overpowering.

"Good that you're awake, Guest Name," said a new 'Aunt Jamira'.

"I was worried when I saw that you hadn't woken up."

"I see," I said, as I tried to process where we were. We were no longer in the mansion - at least, as far as I could tell. My friends and I were now scattered around a small, pitch-black room. It didn't seem as if there was no light inside - instead, it looked like the room itself was constructed out of some sort of pitch-black material. It looked similar to tar, although when I tried touching it with a finger, it didn't have the texture of tar at all. It was far more… fleshy.

It had some give to it, but whenever I stopped applying pressure to it, the wall would return to its original shape. It was like residing within the digestive tract of some kind of massive beast. The thought was more than a little disturbing, so I decided not to share it with my friends. I had no idea where the scent of burnt grass and bird droppings was coming from. I looked at the new 'Jamira' that was sitting with us. She looked exactly like the last Aunt Jamira we had met.

She had a perfect copy of the last Jamira's build, and her facial expressions were an almost perfect mirror of the last one, too. If I hadn't seen the giant web of different almost-identical copies of the same places stored within this mansion, along with the identical inhabitants, I wouldn't have known that the woman standing in front of me was someone I had never seen before. Curiosity overcame me. I ignored the strange room we had found ourselves in, as well as the odor assailing my nostrils.

Unless they were crazy, the creators of this adventure probably wouldn't immediately plunge us into danger right after we entered a room. After all, the purpose of this adventure was for members of the Market to grow and develop their abilities - not die over and over again due to absurd and unhelpful sneak attacks.

"Aunt Jamira, what can you tell me about your life before all of this?" I asked. Jamira paused, and she gave me an expression of almost complete bewilderment.

"What? Why does that matter? We have bigger problems to worry about, don't we?"

"Do we?" I asked.

"Of course we do! Right after escaping the mansion, that giant pit opened up and swallowed us! I don't know where we are now, but we definitely aren't near the surface anymore - I don't even know how we could have possibly ended up in a strange room after falling hundreds of feet into a pit! Even the fact that we're still alive is a miracle!" She said. I nodded.

This 'aunt Jamira' had worked quite hard to find a way to tell me what had happened 'after' we had escaped the mansion - in other words, she was working hard to fulfill her role as a tool for teaching us about the background of this place. She was very faithful to her role within this place.

"Thank you for informing me of that, but I really do find myself quite curious. What happened before you entered this mansion? I suspect that something is tampering with my memories," I said. Jamira froze. For a moment, I thought she would deflect, or tell me off, and her expression twisted as if she were frantically trying to recall something. I leaned closer to her. I wanted to know how this 'adventure' created dozens of copies of the same person.

I had very little knowledge of how many different kinds of magic existed in the Multiverse - after all, I had only lived in five worlds so far. I needed to know everything if I wanted to wreck this 'adventure' shop and prevent it from creating any more tragedies.

"I'm Morton's wife. What else do you want to know?" she asked.

"Don't we have bigger problems to deal with?" she asked, before she gestured towards our surroundings. I looked at the strange black substance we were surrounded by.

"I'm just trying to make small talk. I need something to keep my mind off of… all of this," I said. <I think that Jamira is right, though. We really do have bigger problems to deal with, > said Valeksi. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. <I'm trying to figure out how this whole thing works. If I want to break the adventure down, I need to understand what kinds of magic are used here, > I shot back.

<Besides, breaking down the instance and rescuing anyone here would probably be worth a lot of Achievement and some other rewards, too - or at least I'm guessing it would be. > <Creating unexpected outcomes that totally change the fate of large numbers of people does tend to be quite lucrative, > said Felix. Kexley audibly sighed into the communication bracelet, but didn't say anything. Jamira scratched her head.

"I'm just a wife to a wealthy wife of a noble's relative. If Vanessa hadn't died, who would bother remembering me?" Then Jamira shook her head.

"Enough. We need to focus on what's in front of us." I frowned. It really did seem like Jamira didn't have any memories of her life before entering this mansion. The way her expression seemed tense, almost empty, as well as the irritation in her eyes when she tried to think about the past made me suspect that she was already noticing the problem. Perhaps the adventure here simply didn't bother giving her any form of complicated backstory?

In that case, perhaps she would notice the problem with her own memories if I kept drawing attention to it - assuming all of my assumptions so far were correct. <Why are you asking her about her previous life, before entering the mansion? Didn't you state that it's unlikely she has a real backstory? > asked Valeksi. <Does her life before entering the mansion matter?

I refuse to believe that the Market, which values money over everything else, went through the process of creating a full-fledged world, having this person live a normal life until the age of thirty or so, and then imported her soul into this adventure scenario afterwards. That would be way too expensive, especially if they need a standardized, mass-produced copy of 'Jamira'. Some kind of method of attaching memories to her brain as they stick her soul into the new, mass-produed body would make far more sense.

> I paused. Valeksi's idea wasn't a bad one. The brain was the central point where the soul and the physical body interacted with each other. That was why brain damage could create massive differences in someone's personality, or send them into a coma - the brain acted as a bridge to the soul, and if it was damaged, it naturally created several problems.

With the Market's research on souls, magic, and death, it wouldn't surprise me if they had invented a cheap way to 'add' some memories to a brain, and then somehow got those memories to attach themselves to a new soul - or something of the sort.

<Technically, we have no idea how large or small the fee to enter this place is, since we didn't even check how much the booth was asking for before we walked right past it, > said Felix, as he stood up, brushed himself off, and started investigating our surroundings as well. <For all we know, it could cost ten thousand or even a hundred thousand Achievement per entry. Depending on how much money the average visitor spent here, very different levels of investment could have happened.

> Felix tripped, and nearly slammed headfirst into an eye as he got lost in his thoughts. Before he could faceplant into one of the twitching eyeballs on the wall, Sallia caught him, saving him from a rather undignified collapse. <Enough. Let's focus on the immediate emergency, > said Kexley. <We can focus on how this adventure works later - we really do need to figure out what's up with this room, and how we're supposed to progress the adventure and grab a few more abilities. Otherwise we'll die soon.

> I sighed, but grudgingly decided to put aside my questions for now. I didn't think we were in that much danger while we were in this room, but that might not remain true for long. It didn't take long for Felix to find a door in the black material. It was almost impossible to find without careful searching - but after enough poking and prodding, he confirmed that we did have a way to leave. Jamira's eyes lit up the moment Felix confirmed the presence of a doorway.

Then, before any of us could stop her, she rushed towards the doorway like a survivor from a shipwreck who had just spotted a lifeboat - and the moment she opened the door, the nearby wall grew a set of eyes and teeth, and then launched itself at her. Sallia barely managed to drag Jamira back and save her from ending up in the monster's belly. I checked the creature with soul-sight, and then blinked in shock. There was no soul in the creature.

There was no evidence of it being connected to a hive, or anything of the sort, either. It just… had no soul.

"Monster! I can't see its soul!" I yelled, before I tried hitting it with an extinguish anyway. Nothing happened. The monster ignored my extinguish as if it weren't even there, and then launched itself at Jamira again. This time, Sallia managed to kick it away, before Valeksi speared it with a few wooden roots. Sallia followed up with a massive overhand hack, which split the writhing, twitching mass of eyes and teeth. She frowned, and then stabbed it several more times.

"I think it's dead, but I got no kill notification," she said. I felt a wave of frustration crash through me. This part of the 'adventure' was even weirder than the first part. A monster with no soul, that didn't give us Achievement when we killed it… I didn't know what to make of that, but I knew one thing for sure. This area was definitely going to be a headache.