Chapter 64: Even the Madman Sighed

2:00 AM in the real world
[You have disconnected. Please choose whether to...]
"Wake me up immediately!"
[Received. The current time is January 9, 2049, 2:10 AM. You will wake up in one minute.]
When Mo Dan opened his eyes inside the gaming pod, a large portion of his clothes was soaked through with cold sweat. That single minute from the moment the system prompt sounded until now felt exceptionally prolonged.
Pushing open the pod cover with one hand, Mo Dan stood up immediately and went to splash some cold water on his face. Too many things had happened today, and right now, he urgently needed to calm himself down quickly.
Winter tap water was always exceptionally cold, but the slight tingling chill on his skin made him feel a lot more relaxed. After briefly wiping his face, Mo Dan immediately returned to the gaming pod in the living room and lay down without hesitation to boot up the device.
...
[Your mental connection has been detected. Synchronizing personal information...]
[Connection complete. Reading character information...]
[Welcome back, Tan Mo of Chaotic Neutral. About to load into the Realm of Innocence. Have a good night.]
One minute later
The Realm of Innocence
At this moment, in the world of the game, three hours had passed since the complete annihilation of the Fenrir Squad, and fifty minutes had passed since the Crime Baron stepped into the imperial capital of the Zexwest Empire.
...
Mo Dan, transformed into Tan Mo, appeared on a certain trail in the eastern part of the Continent of Innocence. The slender figure of the half-elf stretched very, very long under the moonlight.
"Speaking of which, both times I've logged on recently, it seems to have been at night~" He smiled softly at his shadow, then began to stride forward while rubbing his temples, continuing along the path beneath his feet.
It looked relaxed and leisurely...
But the reality was far from that. Not standing in place to ponder deeply was simply because Mo Dan wanted to use his time reasonably, and he was confident he wouldn't trip over himself while walking just because he was thinking. However, that did not mean he was particularly leisurely.
"It's really something to be grateful for that humans didn't integrate their eyes, brain, and limbs into a single organ during the course of evolution," Mo Dan sighed like this after stepping over a branch blown in from who knows where, and then suddenly chuckled out loud: "Haha~ Wouldn't we just look like a giant ball then? With a huge eyeball embedded right on top."
The surroundings were quiet, with no one responding to his somewhat chilly and humorous remark. But Mo Dan didn't mind either; after all, at this moment, he only wanted to please himself rather than others. If he felt something was amusing, he would even be happy to tell a joke or two to the air.
A stage doesn't necessarily need an audience, unless the audience is also part of the stage~
He clearly did not want anyone to disturb him right now...
"Another blank memory, but the previous issues were more than just that." Mo Dan reined in his smile and muttered in a low voice: "It seems something extraordinary happened to me back then..."
He began to carefully recall his experiences from shortly before when he was still 'Heifan'. For normal people like us, walking while deep in thought is undoubtedly quite hazardous. After all, although daydreaming might lead you to turn a corner and crash into some girl who just happened to be eating toast while running to school, with a certain probability of catching a glimpse of the color of the panties under her miniskirt, those were extremely rare exceptions. Under most identical preconditions, the probability of coming into contact with the ground, a utility pole, a muscular man, or similar entities was far greater.
However, Mo Dan didn't need to worry about that. If an explanation had to be given, it could only be said that he was already accustomed to multitasking. Although he had never challenged dream-like techniques requiring extreme psychological fortitude such as "eating while using the restroom," low-end operations like reading a book, watching a movie, playing a game, and making a phone call simultaneously were completely unproblematic for him.
Exiting the game immediately after the memory gap was because he wasn't sure how deeply he had been affected, especially mentally. Although Mo Dan only vaguely remembered what had happened before his "blackout," he was still very concerned about whether it would impact his physical and mental state in reality. Fortunately, aside from scaring himself into a cold sweat, everything was normal.
And returning to the game immediately after confirming he was fine was naturally because he wanted more time to think, while also being able to make some progress on his journey.
Walking along seemingly absent-mindedly, Mo Dan began to sink into his memories.
The result did not go smoothly...
Although he could be certain that before formally disconnecting and "blacking out," he was still himself, the memories after Banny threw Ned's corpse into the classroom remained extremely blurry. It was just like the tip-of-the-pen phenomenon that often happened to ordinary people—he clearly knew he remembered, but those fragments felt as difficult to touch as if they were separated by a layer of water film.
"Anyway, the conclusion should be that I... killed Banny, that untasteful assassin, and in the end, it seems I also took out that beastman intelligence operative who exposed Ned, or rather, the spy." Mo Dan frowned slightly: "Let's try recalling it from the beginning again..."
To protect Ned, everyone fled together. At the same time, Banny, who had finally unleashed his true strength, caught up. Then, Crab was the first to be killed...
[That fellow was like an idiot, but one has to admit, he is an idiot who makes me want to applaud him.]
The flight continued. The time Crab bought was not long; Banny soon caught up, continuously inflicting wounds on everyone like a cat playing with a mouse. Following that, Salazar took the initiative to stay behind to cover their retreat.
[With no hope of survival, if that closeted guy wanted to escape on his own, it wasn't that he didn't have a chance, but he didn't choose to do so. That being the case, even if he dies, he probably won't harbor any unwillingness.]
The time Salazar bought should not have been short either, but Ned also intended to stay behind to buy time. He revealed the locations where many dark intelligence files of the Marshall territory were hidden. Yinna was willing to stay behind with the former, while Shuangye made the most irrational decision.
[The clues obtained in Patro City previously were indeed correct. A large number of ritual sacrifices for the Whispering Cult were obtained from the Violet Empire, but I just didn't expect it to really be the Marshall territory. Heh~ To stumble directly into a one-in-nine possibility is quite a coincidence. I originally wanted to have that girl who is online 24/7 look into it, but it ended up getting locked down directly.]
Mo Dan recalled some information he had found earlier in the Whispering Cult stronghold. Those intelligence files had already been burned away when he left, but the more valuable contents had already been recorded in his mind. He was extremely interested in this cult, whether because of its scale, which seemed far to surpass conventional evil cults, or the 'evil god' they worshiped.
This was also the main task he prepared to have Cole and little Ai do, and concurrently the reason he previously asked Shuangye to keep an eye on the matter of 'slave trafficking'... He just hadn't expected to unearth the Marshall family so quickly. What surprised Mo Dan even more was that a certain girl's inner self was far less resilient than he had previously imagined...
"Wait!" Mo Dan's footsteps suddenly paused for a fraction of a second, and he narrowed his eyes slightly: "I remember at that time..."
The memories of that moment were clear, but looking back now, the content was very, very strange!
Shuangye insisted on staying behind, which plainly speaking was courting death, and Mo Dan, who still maintained his rationality, wanted to persuade her to leave, but the effect wasn't obvious. Then...
[I was still 'Heifan' at the time, and I knew very well that I wouldn't be able to handle that girl quickly, so I...]
Mo Dan suddenly grinned and muttered in a low voice: "I wanted to simulate the current 'me', yet still maintain my state at the time to ensure I wouldn't disconnect, and as it turned out, that whimsical idea actually succeeded!"
He remembered very clearly that himself as 'Heifan' at the time had helplessly attempted to simulate the exact mindset of the present moment to persuade Shuangye. After all, regardless of whether it was 'Tan Mo', 'Mo', or 'Heifan', they were ultimately all Mo Dan himself. Although the differences among them were unnatural enough to break conventional boundaries, if one put their mind to it, self-imitation was not entirely impossible—at least it was much easier than imagining oneself as someone else.
For example, when we pretend to be our parents, bosses, relatives, or colleagues, we might not resemble them at all; but if the object of imitation becomes our own self from a few years ago or from a specific moment in time, we should all be able to pull it off.
Although our thoughts and perspectives at this very moment may have long since changed, that period of time we personally experienced was genuinely real. What happened at the time, how we thought, and what kind of view we held toward our surroundings—we know all of those things.
"Could it be precisely because of this that I succeeded so easily?" Mo Dan shook his head: "That shouldn't be. If it were really that simple, why would I bother training myself to carve out a few minutes of transition buffer time every time my personality shifts..."
I have to put it into practice and test it!
Acting on his thoughts, Mo Dan, whose interest in studying himself had suddenly surged, immediately stopped in his tracks. Standing in place, he tried hard to recall the thoughts and mindset he had when he possessed the 'Absolute Neutral' personality, and attempted to graft them onto his current self.
Two minutes later...
"Boring! Boring! Boring! Nonsense!" Mo Dan rolled his eyes frantically: "It's completely impossible! Just thinking about having that drift-along, take-things-as-they-come virtue makes me angry. Am I turning my life into a glass of plain, lukewarm water!?"
Falling silent for a brief moment, he hesitated and muttered to himself: "Or perhaps... I should try simulating 'that one'?"
Ten seconds later...
"Ugh, no, I loathe myself so much, I want to commit suicide!" Mo Dan suddenly dropped to his knees in an exaggerated manner and retched, sticking his tongue out for a long time before staggering back to his feet, his eyes glazed over as if he had entered a sage-like state: "I feel like my worldview is about to explode, although it seems I didn't really have much of a worldview to begin with..."
Clearly, he was completely incapable of doing it. No matter which of the other two personalities he tried to imagine himself as, he couldn't hold it together, and both attempts left Mo Dan extremely displeased at the moment.
Perhaps out of inner resistance, or perhaps because he already knew from past attempts at self-treatment that it was futile, Mo Dan did not continue trying.
[I'll leave this to ponder the next time I log in with the Heifan character. Anyway, at that time I successfully made Ms. 'SUN' change her mind. Tsk tsk, what a waste of emotion. As the ancients said, sitting in front of the computer screen, we truly have no idea whether the person on the other side is human or a dog. And here I was actually caring about you quite a bit~]
The slanderous thoughts in Mo Dan's heart right now were naturally directed at his dissatisfaction with Shuangye. After all, he had previously thought that the 'SUN' who could give even him a bit of a headache was quite interesting, but he hadn't expected the other party's inner self to be so fragile. This simply made him feel somewhat incomprehensible...
However, on this point, Mo Dan was making some assumptions. After all, no matter how smart or special Shuangye was, she was merely a girl under twenty years old, slightly autistic, and under 1.6 meters tall. She wasn't mentally ill, and one had to realize that not everyone started causing trouble from a young age like a certain fellow—doing things good, bad, stimulating, bizarre, thrilling, and illegal basically across the board... with a life experience as rich as could be...
No matter how you looked at it, this comparison was far too unfair.
Yet Mo Dan wasn't completely indifferent to Shuangye's situation. Thus, when his memory recalled up to this point, he casually opened his friends list, which had been prompting him with new messages ever since he logged on...
Sure enough, there was a message from Shuangye inside.
Unlike her usual bombarding barrage of information, this time the message she sent to 'Tan Mo' consisted of only a single line.
'I went back... I don't know what to do, I don't know how to act, I don't know what to say. I found out I'm much more fragile than I imagined. It hurts... If you're around, it's fine even if you want to mock me.'
Only a message like that, leaving one unsure whether to laugh or cry.
If Mo Dan had purely been 'Tan Mo', he probably really would have started mocking this opponent who suddenly felt somewhat neurotic.
But he wasn't. He could more or less guess the kind of emotional state Shuangye must have been in when she sent him this message.
She hadn't logged off immediately after the battle ended. Instead, for some reason, she had suddenly turned back, and inevitably discovered Ned's corpse while realizing that 'Heifan' had already logged off. If she walked back even further, she would also find Yinna, Salazar...
At least within his somewhat blurred memory, Mo Dan had seen their corpses.
They were all dead. Aside from the two players, the remaining four members of the Fenrir Squad ultimately failed to survive...
Even though they were data, AIs, NPCs...
Even though the current Mo Dan could fully understand and accept this result, and could even smile while strolling through the night...
This did not mean he had forgotten the bits and pieces 'he' shared with the Fenrir Squad.
Granted, unlike when he was Heifan, Tan Mo might be a madman or a fanatic.
Yet even a fanatic would not turn a blind eye to those people, those events...
His emotions might not be stirred, his inner self might not produce ripples...
Still, after smiling and falling silent for a long time, he let out a faint sigh.
And with an expression that had rarely turned serious, he replied to Shuangye with an extremely unserious message.
"Did your period start?"
Chapter 64: End