Chương 56: Chapter 55: A Seamless Experience

Rayne and the others carefully made their way along the street, gradually quickening their pace when they spotted the breach in the wooden palisade at the town entrance. The survivors, whose expressions had remained tense throughout the journey, slowly began to relax as well. After passing through the palisade and leaving Graywood Town, they found that the people who had stayed outside earlier had not left. Among them, Adeline stood out immediately in her silver-gray armor.

She noticed the group as soon as they emerged through the breach. Her gaze first fell on Huck and the five residents behind Rayne's party. Surprise flashed through her eyes, and she quickly came forward to meet them.

"You really did find more survivors." Adeline looked over the residents, visibly relaxing.

"Thank you. We're desperately short-handed right now, and you still escorted them all the way out for us." Rayne shook his head.

"If it weren't for Huck and the others, we probably would have died inside the almshouse." Standing behind him, Huck patted him on the shoulder and laughed.

"Don't mention it. We helped each other." Adeline nodded. She instructed one of the nearby guards to prepare food for everyone, then turned back toward Rayne's party.

"You four have been through a lot. You all look badly hurt, so you should rest for a while."

"Four?" Rayne paused. His brows furrowed slightly as he looked at Adeline. His reaction seemed to confuse her. She raised a hand and counted the people standing before her, then tilted her head.

"Is something wrong? I didn't miscount..."

"No... It's nothing." Rayne instinctively looked beside him. There were indeed only four members of their party here now. But Barton had clearly entered Graywood Town with them. Adeline had been standing outside the town at the time. How could she have failed to notice him at all?

"Weren't there five of us?" Tyren could not help asking. Adeline opened her mouth in surprise. Then she crossed her arms, raised her head slightly, and thought for a moment.

"Five?" She looked over them again. The confusion on her face did not seem feigned in the slightest.

"From the moment you arrived on the outskirts of town, I've only ever seen the four of you." Now it was not only Rayne. Both Asar and Serin looked confused as well.

"Then what about Barton?" Asar asked.

"Barton?" Adeline looked at him, unable to make sense of the question.

"Are you looking for someone? There is no one named Barton here." That was enough for Rayne to be certain. For some unknown reason, Barton had truly disappeared from Adeline's memory. The four of them exchanged glances, none of them knowing how to explain it. In the end, they could only brush the matter aside with a few vague words. Adeline still looked puzzled, but when she saw that they were unwilling to elaborate, she did not press them any further. The group rested outside the town for a short while.

Before they left, Adeline tended to their wounds, leaving Rayne in considerably better condition.

"One more thing. Please pass a message to Bishop Lorian. We should be bringing these survivors back to the church in about a day. Ask him to make preparations in advance."

"No problem. I'll let him know." Rayne nodded, then turned and led his companions away. Once they had put some distance between themselves and Graywood Town, Rayne turned toward Asar beside him.

"Come to think of it, what exactly happened back there?" Asar remained silent for a moment before shaking his head.

"I'm not sure. We still don't have enough information. But my guess is that it has something to do with Barton triggering his revival." Rayne frowned.

"You mean whenever we die inside the dungeon, these people lose their memories of us?"

"At the very least, that seems to be what happened with Barton." Asar paused before adding,"But we don't know how much they forget, or whether they only forget the person who died."

"True. We don't have enough information to draw any firm conclusions yet. Once we return to the church, we can see how Mr. Ashford and the others react." With that, Rayne made his decision. However, just as everyone prepared to continue, Tyren cried out.

"Oh, no!"

"What is it?"

"We forgot to ask that priest about the bell." The other three stopped in unison. After a brief silence, they sighed helplessly and slowly closed in around Tyren.

"W-What are you doing?" Rayne stepped forward and hooked an arm around his neck.

"Is that really important right now? Meeting up with Barton comes first, doesn't it?" Rayne tightened his hold slightly.

"Or we could leave this mission to you. You can go back and ask her yourself." Beside them, Serin silently reached out and jabbed Tyren hard in the side. Held firmly in Rayne's grip, Tyren could not break free. He could only squirm like a worm and beg repeatedly for mercy.

"I was wrong! I was wrong! We can ask her next time!" Tyren's miserable screams echoed along the road for quite some time. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. ◆ ◆ ◆ Inside the Core Chamber, Owen lay sideways across the stone platform as he watched Rayne and the others interact.

"That was a pretty sharp guess." Owen gently rocked his core before floating over to the light screen.

"Asar really is impressive." Owen had created this mechanism mainly to prevent strange bugs involving the interactable characters. Although they were merely beings generated by the dungeon, they could think and communicate like real people. Honestly, the level of intelligence they displayed far exceeded anything Owen had expected. At first, he had assumed these characters would be little more than slightly smarter robots.

If they discovered that adventurers could die and return to life, that could create logical contradictions or provoke unpredictable reactions. Owen had established this rule to prevent exactly that. Whenever a challenger died, the system would blur the dungeon residents' memories related to that challenger, depending on the circumstances. Those problems might never occur. Even so, Owen had decided to take precautions in advance, both to be safe and to preserve the adventurers' immersion during their challenges.

"This is exhausting. I never thought giving them a proper experience would take this much work." Owen's mind gradually drifted back to his previous life. Behind every experience that felt seamless and natural were countless dedicated engineers who had spent untold hours testing, fixing, and refining it.

"You guys really worked hard back then..." After saying that, Owen fell silent for a while. He suddenly found himself missing all sorts of things from his previous life. Then, for some inexplicable reason, a fierce determination surged within him.

"Since I can never experience those things again, I'll carry that spirit into this world!" The light around Owen suddenly blazed brighter.

"I'll make sure the people here can experience something just as seamless, natural, and wonderful!" The moment the words left him, Owen froze. He carefully recalled everything the adventurers had encountered since entering his dungeon. A bare-bones canyon filled with Desiccated Corpses. An enormous brute capable of smashing people into bloody pulp, followed by an unreasonable dual-blade boss. Then there was this haunted Graywood Town.

And the Bellringer's Scion, which had only just left Rayne's entire party covered in wounds. The azure light across Owen's surface vanished without a trace. With a soft thump, he dropped back onto the stone platform and once again became an unremarkable gray rock, lying completely still. What the hell was so wonderful about the experience he had created for the adventurers? However, Owen quickly reconsidered. This world was nowhere near as peaceful as his previous one.

He had designed these demanding encounters so that adventurers could grow stronger and have a better chance of surviving when they faced real danger. Once he thought of it that way, Owen felt better. After watching Rayne's party for a while longer, Owen was still dying to hear Rayne's story. Should he simply use his traveling-merchant persona to coax it out of them? The instant the idea appeared, Owen forcibly crushed it.

"No, no, no! Wouldn't that basically tell Rayne and the others that some perverted creep has been hiding behind the scenes and watching them all day?"

"I don't want them thinking I'm a pervert!" Owen slowly wriggled around in midair like a child desperately wanting something he could not have. To drive the thought from his mind, he opened the system panel and began searching for anything that might distract him. As it turned out, he found something he had almost forgotten. The Red-Marked Targets list showed that Cyrus and the others had only a little confinement time left.

[Red-Marked Target: Cyrus] [Remaining Confinement Time: 6 Hours, 32 Minutes]"That went by quickly. I can't believe an entire week is almost over already." Owen casually checked the situation inside the confinement rooms. Aside from that brute Blake, everyone else remained quietly inside their respective stone rooms. Owen nodded in satisfaction.

"That's right. Think carefully about what you did wrong. Once your confinement ends, don't do it again." Owen had no idea whether this punishment had achieved anything, but at least he had tried his best. Judging by their current behavior, they all seemed reasonably cooperative. Except for that irritating Blake. Although Blake had stopped shouting abuse lately, Owen still could not stand the sight of him. Should he secretly replace Blake's final meal with mush?

"No!" That would not count as punishment at all. Owen still could not forget the blissful expression Blake had worn the last time he ate the mush. He truly had no way of dealing with that musclebound idiot. Owen glanced at the countdown on the panel again. In a little over six hours, Cyrus and the others would be ejected directly through the entrance portal, just as he had arranged. The thought of them becoming human cannonballs immediately improved Owen's mood.

"Fine. Since you're almost done serving your sentence, I'll give you a normal final meal." ◆ ◆ ◆ A little over six hours later, Cyrus sat cross-legged on his bed. After spending so many days here, he had even begun to grow accustomed to life inside the confinement room. Sometimes, he found himself thinking that perhaps it would not be so bad to live a quiet and ordinary life, without constantly scrambling after one thing or another as he had in the past. But the thought vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

A life without freedom could never be called a good one. As Cyrus contemplated his uncertain future, a white light suddenly flared on the stone table before him. Cyrus remembered how he had leapt to his feet in alarm the first time he saw it and could not help chuckling.

"Come to think of it, we're supposed to be enemies, aren't we?" He murmured with a self-mocking smile.

"Is it really all right to be this merciful to your enemies?" Naturally, no one answered him. Even so, Cyrus reached out, picked up the bread that had appeared on the stone table, and began chewing it slowly. Come to think of it, eating was one of the few pleasures available inside this stone room. Just then, a heavy crash came from the neighboring room. It came from Blake's room. Cyrus paused briefly but did not pay it much attention. He continued eating the bread in his hand.

The first time he heard such a noise, he assumed Blake was attempting to force his way through the light screen surrounding the room. He had been completely mistaken. That musclebound idiot had grown too bored inside the cramped room and spent all day inventing different ways to exercise. The crash had probably come from Blake attempting a handstand and falling flat on the floor again. Cyrus only hoped he would not manage to injure himself. There were no physicians or priests here to treat him.

As for Jessup's room, there had not been the slightest sound from it for quite some time. He was probably still asleep. At first, Sanna would occasionally argue with Blake. By now, however, even she had fallen completely silent. Darm had been even quieter. Since being locked in here, he had spoken only once, when Blake irritated him on the first day. After that, he had never made another sound. If they truly were released, what was Cyrus supposed to do next? Blackstone Dungeon was no longer an option.

Cyrus could guarantee that the moment they were freed, the Adventurers' Guild would issue an order forbidding them from approaching Blackstone Dungeon again. In the end, greed had blinded him. Cyrus raised both hands and rubbed his face hard. Should he return to his old profession? Should he continue hunting those damned dungeon cores and try to fulfill his lifelong ambition? But when he truly thought about it, there was nothing to be proud of. He had only ever gone after weak dungeons.

He had never once dared to set foot inside a truly dangerous high-rank dungeon. Even after all these years, he had not changed at all. He was still nothing more than the frightened little boy hiding in a basement. Then Cyrus felt something strange. His body seemed to be slowly rising into the air. Before he could understand what was happening, a violent sense of weightlessness seized him. The stone room before him was instantly swallowed by darkness.

The next moment, an irresistible force slammed into him and hurled him forward. ◆ ◆ ◆ A steady drizzle was falling over the temporary camp outside Blackstone Dungeon. Rainwater dripped from the edges of the tents, and the once-dry ground was gradually turning to mud. Greer and Camilla stood near the dungeon entrance, discussing whether they should add several rain shelters to the temporary camp. Halfway through their conversation, the portal suddenly erupted with dazzling white light.

Greer instinctively stopped speaking and turned toward it. A figure shot out of the portal at astonishing speed. Before Greer could even react, the man plunged headfirst into the rain-soaked mud.

"What... is going on?" Before he could step forward to investigate, the portal began trembling violently again. In the next moment, four more figures flew out one after another. The dungeon spat them out like garbage, sending them crashing into the mud beside the first man. The adventurers sheltering nearby immediately abandoned their cover and crowded around, heedless of the drizzle. Camilla stepped forward. She studied the figures for a moment, then leaned close to Greer and lowered her voice.

"It's Cyrus and the others." Greer froze. Disbelief gradually spread across his face. He truly had not expected Cyrus and his party to be released at a time like this. These people had attempted to destroy Blackstone Dungeon outright. Yet the dungeon had merely confined them for seven days before releasing them just like that? Greer looked at the five people sprawled in the mud, and his expression gradually became strange. Could this dungeon's moral standards actually be higher than humanity's?

Was this really how dungeons were supposed to behave? To prevent the camp from descending into chaos, Greer instructed a Guild staff member to fetch several towels. Then he began dispersing the adventurers gathering around them.

"Don't crowd around here. Once we understand what happened, the Guild will make an announcement." With Elias personally overseeing the camp, none of the surrounding adventurers dared say much. Although they were still plainly curious, they obediently turned and left after hearing Greer's words. The Guild had never deliberately withheld information on how to clear the dungeon. There was no reason for them to risk offending the Guild merely to learn the news a little earlier.

Since being ejected from the dungeon, all five members of Cyrus's party had remained facedown in the mud without moving. Looking at their miserable condition, Greer suddenly felt uneasy. They could not possibly have died from the fall, could they? Just as the Guild staff member returned with the towels, Cyrus, the first to be ejected, suddenly twitched. With great difficulty, Cyrus braced both arms against the ground and lifted his face from the mud.

The next moment, he saw Greer standing before him, staring down at him. After a brief silence, Greer spoke first.

"Did you settle in all right?"