Following Lin and the others' search for Honkai beasts on the island, strange occurrences began to pile up one after another. In this desolate, uninhabited place, there was actually a hunter?
Lin pinched the jaw joint of the hunter girl with his left hand and extracted his hand from her mouth. That single bite had already sunk deep into his flesh; she possessed a ferocity that suggested she intended to tear a chunk of meat right off.
"Who are you?" Lin didn't obsess over flipping up her hat. After all, he harbored a similar complex about not wanting others to see his face, so he could somewhat understand.
"Heh, even man-eaters are being particular these days? Asking for the food's name?" Only a mouth was visible beneath the red hood, curved into a wild grin. "You monsters are just like the ones before. I have no name. Or rather, you can use the title others used to call me—'Little Red Riding Hood'."
Little... Red... Riding Hood?
After the Land God and the River God, it was Little Red Riding Hood?
Evidently, even Sakura had begun to notice a pattern. She cast a confused glance at Lin, then back at this hunter calling herself Little Red Riding Hood. Up to this point, everything they had encountered was permeated with a sense of hallucination.
Lin, however, didn't delve into the details at all. Instead, he began to negotiate with Little Red Riding Hood with absolute seriousness: "You've misunderstood. I don't intend to eat you."
"If you don't intend to eat me, why did you catch me?"
"Didn't you attack us first?"
"If you weren't going to eat me, why would I attack you?"
"..."
It seemed they were stuck in a closed loop.
"Besides, how do you explain the ears on her head?" Little Red Riding Hood's blood-red eyes stared from beneath the hood at the animal ears atop Sakura head. "Are those ears a normal human would have?"
"Those are the traits of a hero," Lin said flatly. "She made a cruel decision regarding her own body for a noble goal, and the result was these ears."
"A hero? Doesn't look like it to me." Little Red Riding Hood narrowed her eyes and snickered. "She has the same scent as me... she's a bad person."
"Are you saying you're a bad person too?"
"I never said I was a good one."
If this were a game, following the logic and setting, they should have gained Little Red Riding Hood's trust before accepting a quest. But clearly, the player's unique "preferences" during character creation had caused Little Red Riding Hood to be quite repulsed by them.
However, rather than focusing on Lin formulaic "game progression," Sakura was more curious about why the Little Red Riding Hood from the fairy tales had ended up like this.
"You're the Little Red Riding Hood from Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, right? Am I right?" Sakura used to tell this story to Rin when she was small. It was simple to tell yet carried a deep moral; it should be a childhood memory for most people.
"'The Wolf'... you people know of 'Him' too?"
Upon hearing the words "Big Bad Wolf," Little Red Riding Hood's tone grew heavy, her hatred palpable.
"Of course. We are planning to go kill the wolf."
Sakura looked at Lin in astonishment. He had lied without the slightest hint of hesitation.
"Oh? Does that mean we're on the same side?"
"Naturally."
Lin nonchalantly undid the vines binding Little Red Riding Hood.
...
"Lin... do you already know what's going on?"
Sakura stood by Lin side, watching Little Red Riding Hood as she crouched by the stream to wash her arm, and communicated with him in a low voice.
"I don't," Lin replied succinctly.
"..."
So he just lied on a whim without knowing anything?
"However, the 'Wolf' she mentioned is likely the so-called 'Mountain God'—the thing we must kill to pass through that mountain range."
"Why do you know this so clearly?"
Lin paused for a moment before saying, "Because the situation we are currently in is likely a pre-set 'game.' To clear a game, other than exploiting bugs, the only way is to follow the intended game flow."
"A game?"
With Lin explanation, the fog in Sakura mind dissipated instantly. An answer infinitely close to the truth took shape in her mind.
"A person tunneling out of the ground—Vil-V could do that with a magic trick, or it could be done with technology like optical camouflage. But based on an analysis of the situation then, the only possibility was that the dwarf really did tunnel out. I found no extra traces; he seemed to have grown right out of the earth."
"Making two people get lost in the woods—that can also be done. Lighting, scents, visual guidance, and so on. But it's almost impossible for me to be guided, and neither of us is easily misled regarding our judgment of the environment."
"Having people play the roles of a dwarf and Little Red Riding Hood is also possible, but our experiences and their images possess a 'narrative guidance,' much like the plot of a game world."
"Therefore, I believe we are not in the real world right now, but inside a consciousness space."
Another consciousness space?
Sakura looked up at the sky in a daze.
...
Watching Sakura stunned expression on the screen, a slender hand picked up a nearby glass of juice. After taking a sip, the owner of the hand stretched. "Realized it so soon? Well, I didn't exactly intend to hide it anyway."
"Is it really okay? Even the hidden BOSS I set up was speed-run by Lin. Will they really follow the script?"
Wearing a deep-blue swimsuit, Mobius propped up her chin and glanced at Vil-V, who was tinkering with a pile of instruments nearby. "If you hadn't insisted on adding that 'game' element, they wouldn't have discovered it was a consciousness world so quickly."
"Oh please, we're out here on vacation, not to make those two suffer." Vil-V, also in a swimsuit, wiped the sweat from her face with a wrench and curled her lips into a mysterious smile. "Besides, as long as we get the data and Sakura problem is solved, it'll be fine, right?"
"I can't say for sure."
"Oh? Could it be that you're jealous seeing the two of them being so intimate in there?"
"What on earth are you talking about?" Mobius snapped, glaring at the grinning, unbothered Vil-V. "Don't assume everyone is like you."
"Hmm... that's true..." Vil-V nodded in agreement. "I'm very direct. If I didn't like someone before, I didn't like them; if I like someone now, I like them. I won't be like you all, acting bashful all day like high schoolers in love."
"What kind of shameless nonsense are you spouting!"
"Huh? Am I not stating the truth?"
Vil-V spread her hands generously with a smile. "Look, whether it's us or Lin, any of us could die in the next Honkai eruption at any time. So why not forgive your own heart?"
Mobius frowned in disgust. "I won't die."
"But I might not be so lucky, and neither might Lin..." Vil-V smiled and gripped her hair. "Back then, to save me... he almost died right in front of my eyes... what was I thinking..."
"I was thinking, if he died, I would probably live in the shadow of his death until the end of my life."
Mobius was stunned. She looked at Vil-V seemingly guileless smile...