"Sis, you've become stupid," Nyonyokyo looked at the sea, where ice floes floated. "The server couldn't have sunk."
Several new symbols appeared on the screen next to Toloruchan.
"The server disappeared. That means it's somewhere else now. It's secret. No one should know about it."
The text on the screen changed to a few dots.
"You don't know where he is? Maybe we should ask that man? He should definitely know."
Nyonyokyo's head turned, but her neck remained motionless.
"Where will we find him? He's not here."
A message appeared on the screen, consisting of large red symbols with a blue arrow.
"Is he here already?" Nyonyokyo's head turned again. "But where… Is he hiding?"
A beam of blue energy shot out from the snow, but Nyonyokyo managed to dodge it. The beam only severed a strand of her purple hair, which then fell to the snow.
"He's somewhere down there. Sis, can you sense his energy?"
The screen curled up. This time the attack was aimed at Toloruchan. A blue beam flashed past the mask and flew off toward the sea.
Nyonyokyo looked at her sister and noticed a crack had appeared in her mask.
"Sis, your face is going to fall off soon."
The next attack came from an unexpected source. A blue ball of energy with a snowflake inside it shot out of the seawater. It was larger than a human head, and its vibrations were so powerful that even the air around it trembled.
"Sis, it's definitely him. Let's ask him?"
Nyonyokyo looked at the orb and realized that talking to it was impossible. The doll activated its electric aura and instantly transported itself to the mountainside.
The orb reached the shore and released icy vapor. Toloruchan rose into the air with the help of her purple aura and was able to avoid being frozen.
"Where is he hiding?" Nyonyokyo turned her head back and saw a white-blue helmet with a shield in front of her. "Who are you?"
The doll leaned over, looked down, and discovered that the helmet wasn't "hanging" in midair, but connected to a torso clad in a blue and white jacket.
"You're not my sis," Nyonyokyo said.
"Of course," a voice from beneath the helmet answered. "I am your sister's master. Call me great lord."
A blue energy blade appeared above Nyonyokyo's head, but it never managed to strike. The doll was saved by an electrical aura, which made her movements much faster than usual.
"You're the one..." Nyonyokyo looked at the helmet and recognized the lower half of the face, hidden beneath the transparent visor.
"Yeah, I am Sogotoh," the man answered. "You, of course, don't remember my name. Your brain is too small. But your sister remembers, even though she can't say it."
"My sis is as strong as I am. I've checked it."
The energy blade vanished, and then reappeared behind the doll. But this time, too, the attack was in vain. Nyonyokyo simply vanished, leaving behind only barely noticeable bolts of lightning.
"I thought so," Sogotoh thought and looked at the snow. "I won't have time to catch her."
Soon, the great lord himself was forced to defend himself. An electric blade appeared in the air, successfully blocked by a spherical barrier before it could strike.
The blade transformed into lightning, which surrounded the barrier and attempted to penetrate it, but instead became stuck in a thick wall of energy.
"She knows how the energy barrier works. She's Nyonyokyo. She's Aragas' sister. How could I forget that?"
The lightning couldn't penetrate any further and vanished. Nyonyokyo appeared above the mountaintop, with electric wings on her back and something resembling horns on her head.
"It's an electric butterfly," Sogotoh thought. "Nyonyokyo has several forms, like insects. First, it looks like a normal doll, then like a doll with an electric aura, and then it turns into this."
Sogotoh activated the purple aura, and then touched the barrier wall with his hand. The blue energy it was composed of turned purple.
"Why am I doing this? I won't have time to dodge it anyway."
Sogotoh was right. As soon as the barrier and its summoner rose above the surface to a height higher than a man, a small electric bird flew into them. It managed to pass through the weak wall of purple energy, but missed its opponent. The summoned "creature" was too fast and flew past.
The barrier rose a few steps and was again attacked by something very fast. Sogotoh only managed to see a bright flash of light in front of him…
... In front of the barrier, a doll with yellow hair "hung" in the air, surrounded by a purple aura. The electric blade that the "butterfly" was holding in her hands seemed to be stuck to her black apron and could not pass further.
"Great lord!" Aragas shouted.
"Spank me..." Sogotoh thought, but quickly realized what his maid was really trying to say.
The black slingshot with a purple energy bowstring appeared in the hand of the "great lord", to which several energy balls of the same color were "stuck".
Nyonyokyo realized she was about to be shot and tried to pull the weapon free from the trap, but unfortunately, the apron somehow held the current.
Sogotoh released the bowstring. Purple balls shot out of the barrier and circled the target from different directions, as if choosing the right direction to attack... but then stopped abruptly.
"What's happened?" Sogotoh shuddered. "Is this a skill error?"
Unfortunately, it wasn't. The energy balls began to move away from their target, and soon turned into tiny dots on the horizon.
Sogotoh suspected the worst. He looked down and saw, amid the snow on the mountainside, a giant purple energy flower with a translucent eyeball.
"This is Toloruchan. She can separate her eyes from her body and use them in battle where her sisters can't. One eye travels with her hand, and the other is hidden within this flower. Normally, a single gaze can only focus on one target, but with this flower, she controls multiple targets at once."
Sogotoh realized his position was too dangerous and decided to retreat. The next moment, the purple barrier vanished, and Aragas, who had held Nyonyokyo's blade, vanished into thin air...
The doll and her "great lord" found themselves at the opposite foot of the mountain, behind a cliff that hid them even from the summit.
"Why didn't you go to Unana?" Sogotoh asked.
"You can spank me," Aragas turned her back. "I'm hard."
"Unana could be in danger. I can handle these dolls myself."
"Yes, that's possible, but only for the great lord who was before. Now these dolls have become stronger, and the great lord has forgotten a lot. He doesn't spank as well now."
"Ooh... I really have forgotten a lot since the freezing," Sogotoh agreed silently, then asked, "How much stronger have these dolls become?"
"So much so," Aragas said, waving his hands around the space around her breast.
"Yeah... Dolls have something like that. I used to think it was a joke, but then I remembered that dolls can't tell jokes."
"With dolls, everything is expressed in their appearance. Therefore, you can understand everything about a doll by its appearance."
"Yeah, you can tell that you're well protected," Sogotoh looked at the apron, from which breasts protruded in almost all directions.
"I'm the only doll with a hard body. Even you, great lord, can't spank me with your hand."
"Yeah, I can only do that with a special skill."
"That's why only you, great lord, can spank me. Others can't. Once upon a time, I was an ordinary doll and lived in a crypt. I wasn't accidentally disassembled, and I could walk. I fought with my sisters. They are battle dolls, so they must fight so that the other dolls understand that they are battle dolls."
"Did you defeat them all because they broke?"
"Yes. No one could disassemble me. I wanted to be disassembled apart at least once, like the other dolls, but I was too hard for that."
"Perhaps these dolls, Nyonyokyo and Toloruchan, can disassemble you?"
"No, they're not that strong."
Aragas once again gestured around her breast.
"This means we have a chance," Sogotoh cautiously peered out from behind the rock.
"I will protect you, great lord, even if they disassemble me and then don't put me back together."
"Okay. I just remembered something about those two dolls. If you do it right, they won't be able to disassemble you."
***
Unana opened her eyes and for a long moment couldn't figure out where she was. The room, with its wooden log walls, resembled her room. A wide bed, designed for two people, stood near the wall, but had no pillow or blanket. Even through the small round window, a branch of the same coniferous tree, already bearing green needles, was visible.
"I feel like I'm home, but something's not right here."
After some time, Unana realized she was lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. The large pillow that had served as both a seat and a plush toy was no longer there.
"That lizard did something again. When will it choke on its own tongue?"
Unana struggled to get off the blanket and discovered something brown on her.
"Who is this?"
Unana summoned her inventory. Despite the screen being very different from hers, the mirror was found almost immediately.
"I'm a bearry again..."
Unana was wearing a brown bear costume, but this time it was lighter. Instead of a jacket, she had a fur top, and instead of a hood, she wore a beanie with small round earflaps. Her hands were covered with gloves shaped like claws, and her legs were bare. Only a brown fur skirt slightly covered her hips.
"This is what a little sister bear should look like," Unana smiled and waved her "paw." "I need to show this to Yueret. He's definitely here somewhere. He needs to see me! I've become a little sister bear cub, and he's a big brother bearry. We'll eat squirrels and nuts together."
Unana closed her eyes and for a moment imagined herself as a real brown bear with chubby cheeks, hiding something in her mouth.
"No, I'm not quite a bearry yet," Unana shuddered and opened her eyes. "I'm still asleep. When I wake up, I'll be just a boring little sister. I have to hurry."
Unana ran out of the room, not even noticing how she passed through the wooden door. But she smelled the smell coming from the first floor.
"Sawdust cake," Unana immediately recognized the smell of her favorite food and ran down the stairs.
The kitchen, like everything else, was in its usual place. Even the fridge stood against the wall, as if waiting to be opened.
But Unana wasn't interested in the fridge at all. The youngest of the "bear cubs"' gaze settled on a yellow-gray round cake sitting on a low wooden table.
"Are you hungry?" the familiar voice called from the side.
"Bro…" Unana said, and then turned sharply to the side. "Yueret…"
Her big brother was indeed standing by the stove, though he was dressed rather strangely. Instead of his usual dark clothes, he was wearing a blue-white bear costume with a hood, which seemed too cartoonish for a human.
"You've become a bearry," Unana said in a childish voice.
"It's for my little sister. She's a bear cub."
"So you're a teddy bear too? If your little sister is a bearry, you should look just like her. But you're a blue-white bearry, and I'm brown. Why is that?"
"Ask dad. He created this game."
"Ahh..."
Unana looked at the cake, which was still sitting on the table.
"So, this cake isn't real?"
"No," Yueret answered. "You can try it."
Unana walked over to the table, knelt down, and then dipped her "paw" into the cake.
"I don't feel anything. Maybe it's the glove?"
Unana took her "paw" out of the cake and licked it, but instead of the usual taste of sweet soft sawdust, she felt nothing.
"This cake doesn't taste good," Unana sniffed the traditional bear dish. "It doesn't even smell."
"But it's edible," Yueret approached his sister. "Your stats have increased."
"Where…"
"Overhead…"
"Uh, I'm not a doll, so I can't just turn my head in any direction."
"Just look in the mirror."
Unana summoned the mirror and saw red symbols above the bear-eared hat, gradually dissolving into thin air.
"That's what stats look like. They're not visible in our world."
"Yeah, that only happens in games. In the real world, they'd get in our way."
Unana recalled the mirror to her inventory, then waved her hand and looked at the cake with the hole.
"If this cake isn't real, then you're not real either?"
"Everything in this world is fake," Yueret explained. "You and I, this house, this cake, even the fridge…"
"Oooh..." Unana muttered an unintelligible curse. "I wanted to show my big brother what a real little sister bear cub should be like."
"You can show me."
"But you're not the real Yueret. My real big brother will never see me in this costume and realize he's a bearry too, even though he's human."
"Just go through the portal."
"What?"
Yueret pointed his "paw" at the fridge by the wall.
"It's a fridge," Unana said.
"This is a portal for bearries. If you open the door, you'll be transported to the real Yueret."
"Is this true?" Unana asked.
"Yeah," Yueret answered. "Open the fridge."
"Won't Kimchan come out?"
"No. She's not here."
"That's why she's in the fridge. She hides there and eats my food."
"Don't be afraid. The food in the fridge isn't real. Even if someone's sitting there, they're eating the same cake that's on the table."
"You're not lying to me? I can check."
"Check."
Unana approached the fridge and was surprised to find a slot in the door shaped like a bear's paw.
"Is this... for me?"
"Yeah, for you, my little sis bear cub."
Unana turned around to make sure it was her brother who had spoken...
...but Yueret was nowhere to be found.
"Well, okay, my brother isn't real anyway," Unana sighed and turned to the fridge.
The bear's paw was pressed against the slot in the door. Unana felt a vibration that seemed to be trying to twist her arm backward, but she felt no pain.
The door opened. Unana was thrown back a step. A bright white light emanating from the fridge struck her eyes.
"So this is what a bear's death looks like," Unana covered her eyes with her hands and turned away. "It's an empty fridge, with nothing in it."
The glow didn't last long. Unana opened her eyes, removed her hands from her face...
... And found herself in the snow. The fridge was gone, as was the house itself. Instead, on one side there was a snow-covered pine forest, and on the other, a sea with ice floes floating on it.
"This is where bears go when they see an empty fridge," Unana sighed. "Only the most important thing is missing here. I guess I haven't earned it, so now I'll be fishing in this cold water... Wait. What am I thinking? I came here to find Yueret."
Unana looked at the snow and noticed large footprints in it, similar to bear tracks.
"The bear girl stole Yueret."
Unana ran after the tracks and only after a few moments realized she felt nothing. Usually, at such moments, his sister would be overcome with fear or anxiety, but now there was nothing.
"Am I not real either?"
Unana stopped near a floe of ice that had washed up on the shore and then placed her hand on her breast.
"It looks like there's nothing there. But who cares... I have to find Yueret."
The tracks led Unana to an ice bridge that ended somewhere in the fog.
"If I walk on this thing, will it disappear? In games, things like that usually disappear when I step on them."
Unana decided not to cross the ice bridge, but then she noticed those same bear tracks on it...
"If this thing didn't disappear when someone walked on it, then it shouldn't disappear now."
Unana carefully stepped into the bear's paw print and found her foot fit completely within it.
"This bear girl isn't big, probably about my size, but she managed to steal Yueret. Soon her head will be floating in the water and her paws will be in the fridge."