Chapter 169, Fifty-Nineth Cycle (1)

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You have started your 59th playthrough.

"Bourbon, good boy, tell me, did you come from the future?"

So we've really returned to the save point on April 1st...?

Do you possess the power to die and be resurrected, and to be reborn through reincarnation?

I finally managed to load the save file and get back.

It's okay. Starting from this save point is difficult, but it's not completely hopeless or a dead end yet. Let's just follow the plan and take it slow. It won't be worse than the last playthrough.

Last time loop was really... In such a short time, they were all almost driven to the brink of despair. If it had been a day later, it would have caused unimaginable disaster.

Hiro will be exposed, the undercover agents in the organization will be exposed, and many, many people will die.

Fortunately, Sulli was there.

No, she should be called Shiho Miyano.

"This isn't a good place to talk. Let's find another place and discuss your reincarnation in detail." The robot took out a tranquilizer dart.

Rei Furuya didn't resist the effects of the anesthetic much, and slowly fell asleep after closing his eyes.

Fortunately, the previous playthrough only lasted seven days. After reloading, the world will likely only be delayed by up to an hour, preventing those who went to great lengths to create a reload opportunity from being caught and facing interrogation later.

In the last few seconds before he lost consciousness, he remembered the tea-haired girl's crying face.

He's always like this; he failed to protect Elena's daughter, and even forced that 17-year-old girl to kill him with her own hands...

Thankfully, thankfully she won't have any memory.

*

After waking up in the darkness, Rei Furuya has returned to the familiar pure white laboratory.

Karasuma Renya is still in robot mode, and the same suggestion and hypnosis as in the previous cycle have been activated, constantly stimulating him with information about reincarnation and rebirth.

While acting out a scene with Karasuma Renya, Furuya Rei was reviewing everything that had happened in the previous timeline.

The Dream Chair is not a complete product; it can only capture some of the most emotionally intense dream scenes.

He hadn't fully mastered hypnosis techniques, only learning some basics, but that was enough to deal with Karasuma Renya's hypnosis.

The problem is how to manipulate dreams freely under the combined influence of Karasuma Renya, the medicine, and the dream chair to create a scenario that allows him to escape without being detected.

Given Karasuma Renya's personality, even if his dream were perfectly crafted, she wouldn't let him off easily and would definitely keep him locked up for a long time for careful experimentation.

During this period, it is also necessary to prevent everyone outside from making any rash moves, so as not to let Karasuma Renya discover their identities or even arrest them.

However... before he can perfectly control his dreams, he may still need everyone's help.

His current situation is far too passive. Without everyone's help, he might really end up like that reincarnator from fifty years ago, captured and tortured to the point of mental breakdown by Karasuma Renya, then abandoned by the system, and finally erased by the world.

It was only through the desperate struggle of countless blue butterflies that he was able to light the way forward in the darkness.

However, he couldn't let the blue butterflies have their wings torn apart by the hurricane and be devoured by the red butterflies like in his dream. He absolutely couldn't drag everyone else into this. He could slowly experiment and train his dream control abilities here.

"Sir, I really don't know what you're talking about." Furuya Rei continued to act like Bourbon, an organization member who had been inexplicably arrested. "Did Gin say something bad about me to you? Is this a holographic game like Rum's before? You certainly wouldn't actually do anything to us in real life, right? After all, the organization is still in a critical recovery period. If we accidentally fall into the FBI's trap and cause internal strife, it would cause enormous damage to the organization..."

[System, I've cleared six save points and used one revival card. I have five revival cards left, right?]

The sixth save point, "The Worldline Where the Four-Petal Cherry Blossom Survives," was not completed; it was simply overwritten by the new save point, "The Raven Is Staring at You." No revival cards dropped there, so the player now has four revival cards.

Sure enough, it's only in these kinds of situations that the system will come back to life from its feigned death state to answer questions.

Are there any conditions for using the Resurrection Card, or any side effects?

Players are encouraged to explore on their own.

Hiro used the resurrection card once before and didn't notice any side effects. However, the resurrection method involved healing the wounds of the corpse and reviving the person directly on the corpse. What if it were used on the Morofushi couple, who had been dead for a long time, or even the Miyano couple, whose remains had been completely destroyed? Would it still work? In what way would they be resurrected?

Rei Furuya had asked the system about it before, but the system had always brushed him off with "Please explore on your own" without offering any explanation.

Perhaps making him struggle with mistakes and cautiously explore is also part of obtaining energy, so the system has never properly explained anything to him. All the conversations and information so far have been forced out of the system by him through his own exploration.

[Okay, so the appearance of that seventh special save point was because you guys thought I was too relaxed for those two months and couldn't get enough energy, so you created this to provoke me?]

The seventh save point, "The Crow Is Staring at You," is a special save point because the organization's boss, Karasuma Renya, discovers the player's identity and the truth of the game.

Rei Furuya scoffed inwardly: [Karasuma Renya will find out, isn't it because of your dream reminders? That's cheating. Are you so impatient because once the plot officially begins and Conan appears, you'll no longer be able to interfere with or control the world's development, or is it because you've already collected very little of my energy and need new stimulation?]

The system didn't respond; it started playing dead again.

However, silence is also a response.

Rei Furuya had been wondering what exactly was going on with this special save point in "The Crow Is Staring at You".

At first, he genuinely thought that the system was trying to gain powerful energy by cheating before the world program's official and rigorous "exam," and that it was also planting a red butterfly that would influence the plot of the "official exam" to come.

But gradually, he thought of another possibility.

Rei Furuya was well aware of how relaxed he had been in the past two months. In fact, he knew better than anyone how happy and relieved he felt after successfully saving four friends from the brink of death.

This mindset is not only worrying for Hiro and his team, but also causing dissatisfaction within the system.

Perhaps momentary joy and happiness can indeed bring a lot of hope and energy to the system, but gradually, the change in Furuya Zero, who calms down and is no longer so tense, is too great compared to the Furuya Zero who used to provide the system with enormous energy at all times.

The joy of everyday life certainly doesn't compare to the energy of a dangerous and desperate death.

Moreover, this is not a temporary state, but is likely to last until the final ending. The system will certainly not tolerate Furuya Rei continuing in this state and will want to spur him to return to his previous positive mindset, instead of being in a relaxed state as if the finale has already been reached.

They did succeed.

So this save point means that the crow was staring at him, but he was just focused on watching the blue butterfly who had survived and was happy, which is why he was caught off guard and stepped into the pit that the system had dug for him.

"There's still something I don't understand." Rei Furuya asked, seemingly genuinely confused. "These save points are so difficult, aren't you afraid of overdoing it and killing me? Even if I don't die, aren't you worried about the impact on my mental state making it impossible to continue playing? The game doesn't officially start for another year, right? Aren't we going to skip all those important story segments?"

"Human life grows stronger with sorrow, more painful with strength, more thoughtful with pain, and more insane with thought." The system's inorganic voice slowly echoed. "This predicament is necessary. If you cannot overcome this difficulty, if you cannot maintain a normal game state, if you become passive in the game, then we will abandon you and choose another more suitable host."

"You're giving up on me on your own? Is that even possible?" Furuya Rei chuckled.

"The consequence of giving up is death," the system continued. "Or the erasure of all memories related to the system, including all memories of your reincarnations."

Rei Furuya remained silent.

"This is not an outcome you can accept, and you don't trust us. You have no choice but to move forward," the system said.

"If you abandon me, will you really choose Karasuma Renya?" Furuya Rei asked again.

[He does not meet our selection criteria.] The system denied.

Rei Furuya thought about his own situation and recalled the kind, strong, and never-give-up boys and girls in the group. He roughly understood the system's selection criteria.

So, he looked at the robot in front of him injecting him with medicine and slowly curled the corners of his mouth into a smile.

Karasuma Renya paused for a moment.

That smile... it seems like it's mocking him from the bottom of its heart.

He couldn't help but frown and begin to think, his originally firm confidence wavering slightly.

So far, Bourbon has not shown anything strange in the face of these unexpected situations.

Unless his acting skills are truly flawless, or he is someone who traveled back from the future and anticipated his capture.

Otherwise, could it be that he was too excited and made a mistake?

Was that dream really just something he'd been thinking about during the day? Was Bourbon really just an ordinary person? Is that why he was so mocked for going mad over the illusory pursuit of immortality and even plunging the organization into crisis?

The robot paused for only two seconds before injecting the remaining half-tube of medicine into the blond youth's body.

He refused to believe it, he was unwilling to give up this opportunity that had finally come again after fifty years.

Regardless of whether it's true or not, we need to prove it through experiments to put his mind at ease.

It's okay, they have plenty of time to take their time...

*

Save file loaded successfully.

You have started your 63rd playthrough.

"Bourbon, good boy, tell me, did you come from the future?"

This is the sixth time that Furuya Rei has heard this phrase.

Five more playthroughs have passed, and he still hasn't been able to clear this special save point.

However, after five cycles of repeated experiments and learning, Furuya Rei's hypnosis technique finally reached a very high level.

He was already quite familiar with the medicine and the Dream Chair.

Therefore, during the nightmare experiment, he was able to manipulate dreams to some extent, showing Karasuma Renya whatever fragments he wanted.

But he still couldn't perfectly weave a false dream. In the last cycle, Karasuma Renya found something was wrong and discovered that he was up to no good.

Most importantly, the more control Rei Furuya has over his dreams so that they don't involve others, the more difficult his situation becomes.

Rei Furuya, who survived to April 20th in this cycle, was once again discovered by Renya Karasuma to have the ability to control dreams, and that further nightmare experiments would be fruitless.

Therefore, Karasuma Renya decided to start human experiments directly. While reluctantly conducting nightmare experiments, he began to study the power of reincarnation in Furuya Rei's body.

Having had a lot of blood drawn, Furuya Rei's vision blurred. He weakly closed his eyes and tried to think calmly.

Because he had guided and controlled the situation well, Shirley was not involved and was still outside researching aptx4869.

Hiro, having regained his memories from the previous timeline, knew his plans and agreed with everyone not to act rashly.

But upon arriving here, a huge problem arose.

Now, once he's exposed and in danger, no one will come to kill him.

So how does he reload his save file and start a new cycle?

The agreed-upon time with Hiro was May. They promised Hiro they would go out to celebrate his birthday. If they didn't arrive on time, it must be because something had happened. At that time, they would take direct action to help him start a new cycle of reincarnation.

Rei Furuya opened his eyes and saw Eisaku Tokiwa and Renya Karasuma huddled together, studying the tube of blood that had been drawn out.

The two old men had the same expression of madness.

The blond young man on the operating table closed his eyes again.

There are still ten days left, I should be able to hold on until then...