Chapter 41: Green Chaos Emerald
The mini planet beneath Ross's feet was painted in a two-tone checkerboard pattern, like a chessboard. Scattered across its surface according to some internal logic were large numbers of red spheres and blue spheres, with the occasional white star-marked sphere mixed in.
As the extra stage concealing the game's greatest secret, it gave Ross no time to take in his surroundings. Instead, a single basic rule materialized directly in front of him:
[Rule 1: Touch the blue spheres.]
Then the mini planet began to rotate.
Ross found himself in the situation of a hamster on the outside of a spinning hamster ball that someone had just switched on — forced to keep his feet moving faster and faster to avoid being thrown off the surface.
And as the basic rule indicated, his task was to make contact with every blue sphere on the mini planet.
The rotation was compulsory, but the direction was his to control. He immediately moved toward the nearest cluster in his field of vision: sixteen blue spheres arranged in a 4-by-4 square.
His body passed through the sphere in the lower-left corner as if the sphere had no collision volume at all, and the moment he came fully through it, the blue sphere converted to red.
[Rule 2: Blue spheres that have been touched turn red.]
Without slowing down, Ross began circling the outer edge of the 4-by-4 arrangement, touching the twelve outermost blue spheres one by one.
When he touched the twelfth, his body on the verge of making contact with the very first sphere he had already turned red — the stage's hidden rule triggered.
All sixteen spheres in the 4-by-4 grid, a mix of red and blue, converted instantaneously into sixteen gleaming Gold Rings.
The logic behind the red-and-blue-to-Gold-Ring conversion was borrowed from Go. Simply put: as long as you could turn blue spheres red while simultaneously completing an encirclement judgment, an entire pocket of spheres would convert to Gold Rings without requiring you to physically touch every single blue one, the way you would in Snake.
At the same moment, the counter in the upper-left corner of Ross's vision, which had read [Blue: 102], dropped to [Blue: 86].
For many first-time players, this hidden rule was genuinely easy to miss. The main reason was the stage's entirely unforgiving exile mechanic:
[Rule 3: Touching a red sphere will immediately exile you from the current area.]
No margin. Contact and it triggers. Unless you restarted from scratch, the only option was to find a Giant Ring hidden somewhere in another area and attempt the stage again from the beginning.
Ross's verdict: too lenient. He loved it.
Getting to play something like Sonic occasionally — adventure-flavored, no real bloodshed, punishment mechanics that actually let you breathe — was a different kind of experience, and a good one.
Moving on.
Rather than collecting the Gold Rings he had just created, Ross changed direction and headed for the next cluster: a 4-by-8 arrangement of blue spheres in a single-file formation, completely ringed by white star spheres.
That section was clearly not going to yield to the same approach.
[Rule 4: Touching a white star sphere forces you back at least 2 spaces.]
This one was nastier than it looked. Because once a blue sphere had been touched and turned red, any collision with the elastic white star spheres would send you rocketing backward — straight into the red sphere directly behind you, instant exile.
Those were all the basic rules. With them properly understood, any player could clear this stage and claim the Chaos Emerald.
Provided the mini planet didn't fling them off first.
With roughly forty blue spheres remaining, Ross found he had no choice but to push the Nen energy in his body beyond the Grade E ceiling of Sonic Speed Movement just to stay on the surface.
By the time the final Go-rule encirclement was complete, the sustained tension in his muscles and nerves had put a fine sweat across his back and forehead.
But he had not failed. When the last blue sphere took a flat slap from his palm, a powerful repulsive force swept across the entire surface of the mini planet, scattering every sphere outward. Only Ross remained standing on the ground.
Then, as the mini planet gradually slowed its rotation, a glittering green crystal rolled gently across the surface and came to a stop in front of him on its own.
He reached for it with the careful deliberation of someone in silk gloves touching a thirty-year-old complete-in-box cartridge — just opened, every surface still unmarked by a single fingerprint.
The moment his fingers registered the crystal's hardness, a teleportation force seized him and the newly acquired hidden item together and threw them both out of the special stage.
Familiar weightlessness. Familiar packed earth underfoot. Ross reappeared in the regular cave passage, as if the Giant Ring had never existed there at all.
The green crystal in his hand told him everything he needed to know.
"Green Chaos Emerald... GET DAZE!"
Ross raised his right fist toward the ceiling, crystal in hand, wearing an expression of complete ceremony.
Then a string of system text materialized in front of him.
[Green Chaos Emerald: S-class Nen tool. Unique. Chaos Emerald. One of the seven legendary gems of the Sonic universe, containing the power of space-time chaos. A super energy source in its own right. Collecting all seven will release a power unlike anything that has come before.
Until all seven Chaos Emeralds have been collected, you will be unable to access this item's true power.
This item will return to the Secret Realm stage when you use your Secret Realm access to reset the stage.]
None of that surprised him. It was exactly how the game worked: worthless until the full set was in hand.
But the next notification was interesting. Quite interesting.
[You have officially obtained a hidden core item from a Secret Realm stage.
You have triggered the Carry-Out Vow mechanism.
That is: once you have obtained Secret Realm stage access and fulfilled the required conditions, you may carry the corresponding item out of the Secret Realm stage.]
Two additional lines had appended themselves beneath the Green Chaos Emerald's original description.
[Carry-Out Vow: "Sonic Mapping State" + "Chaos Emerald Full Collection" + "Super Emerald Full Collection" + "All Gold Rings Collected" + "No-Damage Clear."]
["Chaos Emerald" and all derivatives possess the "Uniqueness" property. Once you complete the Carry-Out Vow and officially claim ownership of this item, it cannot appear in any form in any other Secret Realm or in the outside world.]
As Ross finished reading, the Green Chaos Emerald began to pulse like a triggered mechanism, then drove itself straight into his chest and sank through without resistance.
And in the save file image corresponding to Ross on the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cartridge, behind the full-body silhouette of him standing with both legs planted in a wide, solid stance, a single green Chaos Emerald icon had appeared.