Leaving the Fourth Ward and being sent to prison, the same nightmare always haunts Vadim.

It was a place shrouded in darkness forever, and he was like a traveler who had strayed into the darkness, and when he passed through the layers of fog, he was always greeted by a strange and extremely strange building.

Vadim didn't know how to describe the building, it had countless cave-like spaces, each of which seemed to contain statues, but whenever he wanted to go deeper, he would wake up from a nightmare and tremble through his soul.

That's how it is now.

He exhaled a chilly breath and used the nail of his index finger to record what he had recorded from his nightmare in a limited range of motion.

"Life", "Time", "Domination", "Nothingness", ......

It was the only room that was open to him.

Vadim guessed that these four should represent the power of the psionic path, but after being imprisoned, the blessing of "nothingness" disappeared, leaving him back in a state of prosthetic scrap and loss of psionic energy, and he couldn't even tell if he was dead, and it was his remaining soul that kept haunting the nightmare.

Reality is more desperate than a nightmare.

His body was trapped in some kind of container, and he couldn't remember how long it had been since he had seen the light, and he was accompanied only by boundless darkness and loneliness, and the concept of time had long since become blurred.

At first he would try to call out and get attention, but it turned out that he was the only one here.

The only hope lies in the recurring nightmare.

These four nouns must represent something.

Or what Vadim wants them to represent.

Before being escorted to prison, Nothingness had told him that his future was uncertain, and that what awaited him in prison would be unprecedented suffering, but there was no lack of hope in the midst of despair.

If he's lucky, he'll be able to get a new lease on life here.

During his time in captivity, in addition to the recurring nightmares, Vadim recalled over and over again the parting admonition of Nothingness, the same thing that may have been played out hundreds of times.

And this time, things seem to have taken a turn for the better.

The tip of his index finger felt the scorching heat, and Vadim knew what it meant almost immediately.

"Nothingness".

He used his fingernails to carve into the surface of the container what he had explored in his nightmares.

Then, meditate......

Vadim didn't know why he had such an idea, and it was like instinct in the back of his mind, and it didn't seem difficult to put it into action.

Immediately after, something was lit up in the depths of the darkness.

Some invisible force answered his prayers, he felt that his body had changed, he had become lighter than ever, the restraints in the container could no longer control his movements, and when he had the idea of "escaping from the container", his body took the initiative to act.

Everything has become so strange.

In a meditative state, his actions seem to have become some kind of turn-based game, and now, he is in the game's God's perspective controlling his actions.

He didn't struggle, and he didn't have to break the container.

The gaze floated with the invisible force, and it broke away from the container in a way that defied the rules of physics.

The first time his eyes came into contact with the light for the first time, he saw clearly the container that sealed his body - an egg-shaped object more than two meters high, with black tentacles wrapped around the surface that made him feel sick to his stomach, but in an emergency, he found something even more incredible.

After breaking away from the egg-shaped container, his feet did not hit the ground, but continued to float in mid-air, looking down at everything in the room.

It's more of a post-death perspective.

The soul and consciousness are separated from the body, and he has heard people in military technology talk about how in an extreme environment, human consciousness does not dissipate with death, but continues in the form of a conscious body.

Vadim looked around, and the place he was in seemed to be an experimental facility.

At least in the past.

The facility appears to have been abandoned for a long time, with slender black tentacles crawling all over the walls, the floor covered in a black-purple fungus blanket, and the drainage system overrun with slime and ominous foam tumbling inside.

A sudden experimental accident turns the place into a living hell, and the creatures that escaped from the accident devour the researchers and use it as a lair.

Devourer.

This is undoubtedly the most suitable name for this kind of monster, it has an appetite that can never be satisfied, and it is its instinct to swallow everything it can touch.

Thinking of this, Vadim was suddenly stunned.

Accidents are not uncommon in the company's research, and Chloe Pictures has made many superhero movies based on laboratory accidents, but ...... Why would he know this?

As he thought about it, but couldn't remember exactly when he had been exposed to information about the Devourer, Vadim was sure he had never dealt with such a disgusting monster before today.

Reality didn't give him much time to judge the situation, and he heard the heavy thud of the security door, which was approaching his cubicle at an alarming speed, from far and near.

An unprecedented sense of crisis came over me.

"Back off."

An option came to his mind, and almost at the same time he did so, a scythe-sharp claw broke through the security door of the compartment, and a huge praying mantis insect entered.

He couldn't dodge it easily, and if it weren't for this prophetic thought, he would have been torn apart by the insect's scythe.

No, to be more precise, he had seen himself torn apart.

In that fleeting moment, Vadim saw his scythe-shredded chest, the giant praying mantis tearing open his prosthetic body with ease, and the bulletproof coating under the skin was torn apart like a toy.

But the crisis didn't end there, and the giant mantis's amber eyes locked on him once again.

With a broken prosthetic body and the loss of the blessing of nothingness, he is no match for this mantis at all.

Just as the giant praying mantis pounced on him again, Vadim's mind once again flashed instructions, and in this moment of life and death, it seemed that a certain door opened to him.

Vadim slammed into the inevitable scythe, and the blade slashed through his body, severing the tentacles behind him.

He witnessed another way of dying himself.

He was beheaded by a giant praying mantis, and his internal organs were scattered all over the ground.

But not this time.

For some reason that even Vadim himself could not understand, the slash that should have slashed him in the air was in the air, and the giant mantis's movements paused for a moment, its eyes fixed on the sickle-shaped forelimbs, and it showed a very human expression of doubt.

"Escape through the drain."

New directives have appeared.

Vadim didn't suspect him, and didn't have time to estimate the foamy, viscous liquid, for the vision in front of him made him understand the consequences of hesitation—if he wasted a second more, the praying mantis would catch up with him, leaving his legs in the room forever before he sank into the liquid.

You can't leave a bloody smell in the slime, it's going to provoke something else.

……

What the hell is going on from the moment ago?

When Vadim floated up from the other end of the drain, he finally had time to think about it.

Why does he see the way he dies again and again?

Each one is so real and tragic that it was like it once happened.

There was also the giant praying mantis, which was more than two meters tall, and it terrified Vadim in terms of speed and strength, its physical speed was close to the state of the overload system activated, and he never imagined that he would one day be chased by a bug.

It's still an abandoned testing facility, with two giant eggs on the floor of the cubicle, and blood vessels, black tentacles throbbing from time to time.

Just like the routine of those thrilling adventure games, after dodging the first monsters, Vadim found the first text in the room.

Devourer Observation Data Part 5

Yes, it was in this room that he first came across the concept of the Devourer.

The whole process of the experimental accident is recorded in the observation data.

The Devourer was supposed to be kept in a quarantine area, but due to a glitch in one experiment, researchers were unable to find a piece of flesh that had been separated from the Devourer's body during the experiment, and the fingernail-sized piece of flesh hid unnoticed in a crevice in the cabinet, and then slipped into the break room at night, eventually parasitizing into the body of a senior researcher.

The next day, the parasitic researcher opened the door to the quarantine area after the experiment was over.

The man who wrote this was filled with remorse, and it was towards the end of his life that he finally realized the biggest flaw in the entire research project - that they never treated the Devourer as a sapient being.

The human perspective blinds them and ends up being food for the monsters.

This is the last observation.

This is the end of the recognizable records, which appear to be in a state of extreme mental precariousness at the time they are written.

The second half of the observed data is filled with tadpole-shaped unknown text, a symptom of the distortion of the parasitic post-devouring mind.

The Devourers did not kill all of the researchers immediately after taking control of the entire facility, instead parasitizing the pieces of flesh into their bodies.

At the time of writing this last record, half an hour had passed since parasitism.

This is an extremely important textual document, not only documenting what happened in this laboratory, but also having an even more important purpose for its existence.

When Vadim came up with the idea, the content of the text changed to be simple and straightforward:

"1. Devourers are intelligent creatures who are good at setting traps to lure prey."

"2. The cut meat and tentacles still have vitality and cannot be completely destroyed."

"3. The time limit for being parasitic is 30 minutes, and you only have 30 minutes to stop the corruption."

"4. You will definitely look at the data report, it is inevitable to be parasitic, but this is also your only chance."

Seeing this, Vadim felt as if his heartbeat had stopped for a moment.

If he was experiencing a game, the game's designers must have been malicious and took pleasure in torturing the players and causing them pain.

But there was no regret medicine in the world, and when he saw the words, there was already a pinprick between his index fingers, and he saw some tiny creature burrowing through the wound, and before he could react, the wound had already scabbed and healed.

With a splitting headache, Vadim had to stand still at his desk for a long time to stabilize his condition.

At the same time, he understood why it was said that this was his only chance.

In addition to making the world in his eyes swell and blur, the headache also made him understand the tadpole-like words.

This is the suicide note of the person being studied, who wrote this text with the last of his sanity before he completely lost consciousness.

Because he knew that after the accident broke out, the company would definitely send a security team to go deep into the facility to rescue the research report as much as possible.

Maybe the security team will come to this room and see this last piece of information.

The antibody vaccine is in the eastern part of the experimental facility, but it is the hardest hit area, and the devourers seem to be able to steal the memories and knowledge of the parasitic through parasitism, and if you want to go to the area where the vaccine is located, you must face the aberrant monsters hatched by the devourers.

The researcher who left this text laughed at himself for not having the courage to do so, and for him, staying here and waiting for death was the final end.

The tadpole text also mentions other regional information.

The arsenal was less than 300 meters away, and perhaps he could find some thermal weapons there that could be used against the giant praying mantis.

Like any other creature, Devourers don't like fire.

Vadim waited for a long time, but this time the dense text did not change again.

New game hints never came up again, no thoughtful drawings of the lab for him, no detailed course of action for him.

To make matters worse, there was a chilling noise coming from the drains.

Action must be taken as soon as possible.

After making sure there was no more noise outside the cell, Vadim ran towards the door before the approaching object burst out of the drain.

Even if there was no prompt, he escaped from this hellish place.

The arsenal seemed like a good place to go, and he needed some weapons that could be used to roast the bugs, or at least take advantage of their fear of fire to temporarily push them back.

Then there's the East Zone, which the researchers mentioned in their data report.

……

Vadim's thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

As he was heading out, his gaze shifted.

The whole world was spinning, but he still saw the scene "behind him" with his vision blurred by parasitism.

A headless body stood in the doorway, still running forward.

Stained with blood, he could barely see the trap set on the isolation door—sharp metal wires.

"Boom-"

There was a slight thud as his head landed on the fungus blanket, and the last remaining vision was quickly obscured by the increased tentacles.

"When you go out, watch out for the metal wire on the door."

As his consciousness sank into darkness, one last thought crossed Vadim's mind.

"The experiment is over, and the consciousness has dissipated."

"Number of experiments: 23 times"

"Do you want to move on to the next experiment?"

"Go on."

Qi He stood in front of the mechanical instrument and gave an affirmative reply from the artificial intelligence.

"Did you fail again?"

Gustav sighed and said sympathetically, "What a pity, I'm afraid he didn't even realize the fact that he had become a guinea pig, right?" ”

"Perhaps."

Qi He watched intently as the instrument showed them the impact.

In the cubicle of the abandoned laboratory, Vadim was once again awakened from a nightmare, but the witnesses of his experiments did not rejoice that he was outside the "box", on the contrary, a lingering thought lingered in his heart.

Qi He looked intently at the 'Nothingness' mark lit up by the light.

He always felt that the last time Vadim woke up, the light on the mark had become a little brighter.

"By the way, Gustav, be quiet."

Without looking back, he said, "How can you be sure that we are in a 100% pure real world?" ”

The small theater of its three hundred and thirty:

Tuesday, evening, year, month, day

Song Lan attended the meeting for the first time as a representative of the guild, and he confidently and courageously put forward his own ideas at the meeting.

With the gastronomic festival in the second arrondissement just around the corner, the Council should fully demonstrate its humanity to the coalition government and approve holidays for food lovers in the public sector.

This bold proposal, which was a little too bold, caused Lu Xiang to be named and kept after the meeting.

"Didn't you say you had already got him? Why did he make such an unreasonable request as soon as he entered the Council? ”

The Speaker made a straight face in his office.

They hoped that the guild representatives could play a role and call on everyone to work hard to work overtime and create a good and hard-working workplace environment, but this Song Lan was good, before they could speak, this guy had already begun to call for a holiday.

"Chief, have you heard of the strategy of boiling frogs in warm water?"

Faced with cross-examination, Lu Xiang replied fluently, "Song Lan is a person who eats soft and does not eat hard, and tough methods are ineffective against him, so we have to do the opposite." ”

"How do you do the opposite?"

"At the beginning, we could approve his proposal first and let him take it lightly."

"Very well, so how do we get him under control?"

"That's the subtlety of boiling a frog in warm water, that he will be motivated, and he will attend the meeting on time every time in the future, without even realizing that he has fallen into our trap, day after day, year after year, and so on until twenty or thirty years later, until the day he retires, and we will remain silent, as if nothing had happened."