Chapter 11

The moment the roar escaped, the entire plaza and the tops of all the Corinthian Columns erupted with shrill alarm bells simultaneously.

“Buzz—”

A piercing high-frequency sound assaulted from all directions. Red lights received the command and instantly blanketed the entire plaza. Those stone columns opened their eyes like giants, lasers bursting from them.

In that sudden turn of events, in that instant, Horne flashed out from the bushes. He rushed behind the guard at extreme speed, a small knife popping out. Without even half a second of hesitation, he stabbed it into its skull. The moment it fell, the sound of flapping wings came from the sky.

A single small knife couldn’t kill an alien. He had planned to jump down while it was stunned, but the other aliens had already emerged.

A sharp screech tore through the air, impossible to distinguish whether it was mixed with the rain or thunder exploding from the horizon.

The alien’s sharp beak gleamed menacingly. Horne turned and charged toward the cluster of buildings.

No matter what, confronting them head-on in the open plaza was clearly not the right choice.

The piercing alarm bells penetrated his eardrums, shaking the entire Tower District to its core for a moment.

“Intruder detected! Intruder detected!” A mechanical voice echoed throughout the skies above the Tower District.

“Pop, pop!” Alert lights lit up one after another. Under the downpour, the plaza was a blinding white.

A figure dashed madly through the rainy night, flashing from the plaza’s edge into the cluster of buildings at extreme speed.

“Boom—” Another thunderclap drowned out the chaos.

Horne panted for breath as his figure raced through alley after rugged alley. Enormous flapping sounds pursued relentlessly from midair, but hindered by the torrential rain, they weren’t fast.

“Buzz buzz!” Alarm bells rang from various places. Horne stumbled underfoot, his thigh muscles instantly powering to steady his form.

His head throbbed. When he had first woken up, similar sounds filled the air around him. These alarm bells caused a needle-like pain in his head, his mind a chaotic mess, left only with an uncontrollable heartbeat and layered scenes overlapping before his eyes—past and present.

—“How much longer until he wakes?”

A massive room with a black vaulted ceiling, black surges, the floor trembling lowly. All particles in the space were shooting, condensing, dissociating.

A wave of nausea assaulted along with the blinding white. Horne’s steps never stopped as he turned a corner, urgently searching for a place to hide. But in this downpour, rainwater and sweat nearly swallowed all his vision.

Roars and screams rang in his ears. Back then, upon first waking, Horne had burst out from the black room. His neat, dry clothes gradually grew damp during the escape.

The rain and pale mist disrupted their judgment. Seizing the instant the aliens lost sight of him, Horne crouched and slid through a half-lowered door. His clothes scraped the ground, picking up a layer of mud. A whooshing sound wrapped in rain immediately swept past his position, charging farther away—he had darted into an unmanned store.

Outside the pitch-black room stretched black corridors endless as eternity, walls glowing faintly green like pulsing veins. Horne didn’t know what building he was in; he could only run forward on instinct, through the corridors. In the haze, he saw machine light spots flashing. He rushed over and stood on one—an ascending platform elevator, lined with the same eerie green metal sheen inside.

Horne panted, leaning against the wall as he sat in the store, his rain-soaked body feeling impossibly heavy. By rights, drainage grates should appear at intervals, and this place should be no different. He huddled in a corner, head tilted, confirming that amid the deafening white noise, no aliens had spotted him for the moment.

That elevator ran slowly. The former Horne had sat in the center of the massive elevator, unable to feel whether it was going up or down—only silence.

“Bang!” A grate not far from the store was flung open. Horne jumped into the drainage channel, entering the gloom once more.

This should be deep in the Tower District. To leave from underground, he could only follow his sense of direction outward. His time was short; he had to return to the Red Light District before dawn—when dawn came, the Holographic Game would begin.

No aliens noticed the shadow and footsteps underground. Horne panted heavily as he groped forward, listening to the crisscrossing chaos above. The aliens were still searching for him—not just flapping wings, but footsteps, shouts, recon drones. Amid the alarms, it was utter pandemonium.

Thinking of the recon drones brought that throbbing pain to his temples again. Horne gritted his teeth and rubbed his temple.

When he had first woken and boarded that elevator, the doors opened and a recon drone tracked him immediately, followed by a several-kilometer chase from the Tower District all the way to the streets, until he collided with that man.

Glaring streetlights shone through the grate, casting a clear line of light and shadow on the water flow. Horne passed through it, the sliced beams reflecting on his face and on his still-unsettled chest.

“I heard a human broke in?”

His muscles, which had just relaxed a bit, tensed immediately. Horne controlled his breathing. People were talking above.

“You’re looking for a human—why come to the East District? Go ask Ais in the West District.

“Wasting effort on this… I have to say, your liquid particle progress is too slow.

“Oh right, I just heard the frequency detector in the Hermit Lab lit up? The Hermit appeared? No movement for a hundred years—such a coincidence, right when a human invades.”

This man’s voice… Horne frowned. It seemed familiar.

“Bang.” A door closed, leaving only the torrential water flow—no more voices.

According to this person, this was the East District. He should head left.

The Tower aliens’ vigilance was higher than imagined. In such weather, if he couldn’t infiltrate smoothly, finding that black room was a pipe dream. If he had to find a companion…

Horne suddenly considered the feasibility of approaching Hels.

But that person was too unpredictable, plus his ongoing cooperative ties with the aliens—no excluding the risk of a backstab. From their brief clashes so far, he was absolutely an excellent choice, but danger and reward went hand in hand. Unless he found something Hels wanted and proposed a trade, or uncovered some weakness to threaten him, or won the match.

His military boots splashed crisply in the water, stirring ripple after ripple. His soaked pant legs clung to his straight, slender calves.

On the way back, his legs felt less steady than on the approach, but amid the clamor, his heartbeat gradually slowed. Horne’s thoughts drifted until he caught a medicinal scent not belonging to the drainage duct.

The medicinal smell came from above, along with faint light. Horne lightened his steps, but another set of footsteps halted by the grate along with his. He stopped, waiting for the person above to leave.

The entire Tower District was hunting him—better to be cautious.

The alarms still blared; the initial headache from the sound had weakened considerably, as if he had finally adapted. Amid the alarm background, a pulse-like frequency detector sound kept ringing. Horne took a tiny step forward, trying to see without being seen from above. But just as he shifted that small step, a broadcast from some device above suddenly sounded:

“Beep—”

“Preset time match successful. Sequence confirmed. Identification: Hermit.

“Echo frequency: 440 Hz. Response received.

“Hermit, welcome back.

“Per settings, next return date: 2144 hours from now.”

“Beep!”

Still alarms, but this sound was very close.

Suddenly, Horne’s expression changed.

This wasn’t the Tower District’s alarm—

His Resident Chip beeped.

“Beep!”

At the same time, the footsteps on the grate paused, followed by a voice: “Who’s there?!”

“Slam!” The grate was flung open.

“Come out!”

Horne’s heart nearly leaped out. He charged forward directly. Only two people knew his ID—who would contact him at this moment?

—Hels!

Just as the person above flipped down through the grate, an identical Resident Chip signal sounded behind him.

“Beep!”

Horne panted sharply, following his sense of direction back the way he came. Water splashed half a meter high, echoes swirling in the duct. Only when he realized no one pursued did he gradually slow.

For now, infiltrating via the drainage system could be called a rather terrible decision. He could only pray the Tower hadn’t collected the intruder’s info.

That alien hadn’t pursued, but it brought a more urgent issue— it might have alerted the guards. Would they patrol the drainage system?

Fortunately, after the mad dash, the exit wasn’t far. When Horne reached the grate outside the Tower District, the entire drainage pipe held only water sounds—no imagined pursuit arrived.

The downpour had turned to drizzle. One night of pouring, one night of ravaging.

Familiar terrain. Horne lifted the grate, confirmed no recon drones above, leaped out from the opening, then nimbly half-kneeled to restore it. He let out a long breath and looked up.

The sky at the horizon was graying.

The early morning chill bit. People were already on the streets; seeing this drenched, mud-covered man, they all steered clear. Horne kept his head down, weaving through dim street corners. Whenever he spotted a recon drone from afar, he ducked into an alley, emerging only after silence.

The Red Light District remained sleepless as ever, its red decorations emitting a touch of warmth. The electronic clock on the wall pointed to five a.m.

Facing scrutinizing gazes, Horne turned into the elevator area and bumped straight into Ye Shu, who was heading home.

Ye Shu strolled leisurely. Spotting Horne, she let out a “yo,” immediately stepping back and pinching her nose, frowning as she said: “You weren’t upstairs? Gone all night?”

Horne pressed the elevator button and glanced indifferently at her: “Wasn’t.”

As the Red Light District manager, Ye Shu wanted to pull rank and scold the disobedient employee who dirtied the floor. But she stood there a long while before disdainfully spitting out: “So you went swimming in the mud, then took a clothed bath?”

“Didn’t.”

“Then you fought? Got punished?”

Horne didn’t understand but had no intention of asking.

This silence made Ye Shu think she guessed right. She smiled knowingly: “Good luck.”

Horne: “?”

Ye Shu covered her mouth laughing, then added slowly: “Oh, youngsters need to watch their limits too. If you need emergency supplies, use the internal terminal in the hallway—staff will deliver.”

Horne confirmed he didn’t understand, didn’t bother thinking, and replied offhand: “Got it, thanks.”

“Ding.” The elevator arrived. Horne walked straight in, waiting as the doors slowly closed.

Ye Shu exited the elevator hall and ran into the bartender heading off shift. She sidled up eagerly: “Wan Ji! Quick, Hels’s first time on the top floor, five thousand for one night. Guess if this icy little flower gets offed? Or tormented to death in bed? Eek, that ending—I don’t even wanna think.” She patted her chest, glancing toward the elevator hall.