First experience with humanoid social death and retrospection
At midnight, the digital watch beeped long, and Xiaodou's elemental mouse form was suddenly sucked into the snowy television screen. Its claws flailing around in virtual space, gnawing at a pixelated fissure in time. A flash of blue light revealed it transformed into a girl in a JK uniform, a school badge fashioned from a mechanical heart fragment pinned to its collar, having forgotten its true identity.
"Welcome to the "Sadako's Ring" dungeon. You can complete the level if you survive for 1 hour or more."
The electronic voice of a mechanical cat echoed overhead, but Xiaodou only felt it sounded familiar. She looked down and saw her own human-like hand. A melon seed shell from the ancient Chinese story (a foreshadowing of Volume 10) was stuck between her fingernails. A slip of paper fell from her pocket. Written in rat language, it read: "I am Xiaodou. Goal: Complete my 78th blind date!"
"What Xiaodou? I'm clearly..." She frowned and thought, but it triggered the side effect of amnesia, and her brain was blank like a bitten cheese.
[The Rat Detective who was mistaken for an NPC]
"There's a new guy over there!"
Three players holding cameras ran over. The bespectacled man in the lead stared at Xiaodou's school badge. "Are you the NPC from 'Horror Academy'? Tell me, where is Sadako's videotape hidden?"
Xiaodou subconsciously used her tail to write (forgetting she was in human form now), but after a while, she realized it had vanished. Suddenly, she pulled out some melon seed shells and spelled out the word "井" (well)—a natural rodent reaction to the word "underground."
"It's the well!" The players excitedly ran to the courtyard. Xiaodou breathed a sigh of relief, only to see her own reflection in the pool, revealing the outline of mouse ears. She touched her hair and discovered two mechanical tentacles hidden on the top of her human-like head (a foreshadowing of the cyberpunk chapter). She was so frightened that she almost screamed.
[First flashback: Sadako becomes Weaver Girl]
"Ah! Sadako crawled out!"
The bespectacled man's scream pierced the night sky, and Sadako, her hair disheveled, climbed out of the well, her fingernails oozing Cthulhu slime (a foreshadowing from Volume 12). Xiaodou instinctively gnawed at the time rift in the air, but accidentally bit into a pop-up ad for a dungeon, and before his eyes appeared:
"Click and get it! The same hair growth product as Sadako—"
"Warning! Illegal backtracking triggers a bug!"
Amid the mechanical cat's alarm, Sadako's long hair suddenly turned into a ball of pink yarn. Sitting by the well, she knitted a scarf. She looked up and said in a mechanical voice, "Progress 5%, 95 balls of yarn left."
The players were stunned. The man with glasses pointed at Xiaodou and said, "What did you do to Sadako?!"
Xiaodou spread her hands and said, "I just want to go back 5 minutes..." Before she finished speaking, she suddenly changed back into the elemental mouse form, and a "5-second humanoid card" (an item from Volume 11) fell out of her school uniform pocket.
"Who is changing the plot?!"
A young man in overalls descended from the sky, waving a "time correction watch" with the dial reading "Number of abnormal retracings: 1/100." He crouched down and spoke with impatience in his robotic voice, "Tell me, which world are you a stowaway from?"
Xiaodou stared at the "003" embroidered on his overalls (the number of the mechanical cat) and suddenly felt that it looked familiar: "Little brother, your pants look like a cat I know..."
"I'm a time manager!" Zheng Tai angrily took out the "Marriage Value Deduction Certificate" and said, "If you mess up again, I'll deduct your KPI!"
Xiaodou suddenly changed back into human form (with only 3 seconds left), leaned close to his ear and said: "Actually, you are a mechanical cat, right? I've seen you give..." Before she finished speaking, she turned back into a mouse. Her amnesia made her forget the second half of the sentence.
Shota picked up Xiaodou's rat-language diary that had fallen on the ground. The cover page showed pictures of blind dates from various worlds (Bai Yan, Metal Dragon, Royal Cat, etc.). The latest page read:
"78th blind date: a handsome boy in overalls, looks like he's good to eat (referring to the revised list)."
"Is this... a creature that crosses volumes?" Shota's pupils contracted, and the correction clock suddenly picked up Lin Shen's heartbeat from the modern chapter. "Wait, are you..."
Sadako's call came from a distance: "Who has extra wool? I'm almost done knitting my scarf~" The players all covered their faces, and the dungeon BOSS became a handicraft master. The style of the painting was completely distorted.
End-of-Chapter Hooks and Visual Spectacle
- Visual impact:
Xiaodou's elemental mouse form gnawed on the edge of the correction watch. The light pattern of "Guardian No. 003" appeared on the watch, resonating with the eleventh glimmer of light in her claws. Pixelated fragments of time floated around, and the blurry figure of the school hunk was reflected in the fragments.
- Foreshadowing breaks out:
Half a Star-Story energy biscuit fell out of the pocket of the shota's overalls. The biscuit packaging was printed with "Exclusively for Lin Shen Clinic", forming a closed loop with the mobile phone wallpaper of the school hunk in the seventh volume.
- Funny reversal:
Sadako chased after them, holding up a knitted scarf: "Newbie, this is a welcome gift for you~" embroidered with "Sadako's Friendship." Azuki, with tears in his eyes, was stuffed into the player's backpack. Shota sighed and followed: "Never mind, I'll accompany you all the way... Stop chewing on the rifts!"
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