Player 1

Chapter 30 Level 2(9)
Fujiwara and Tamura became good friends and acted together in the oasis almost every day.When the Halliday game started, they immediately decided to get involved.This is a good pair, Fujiwara is good at playing video games, and Tamura is very familiar with American pop culture-his parents were born in the United States, so Tamura grew up watching American movies and TV series, and he can speak English as well as Japanese fluently.

Both of them loved samurai movies, so they decided to recreate the characters, called "Long Sword" and "Short Sword".From that moment on, they decided that in the oasis, they were brothers.

Soto and Dayto made their name through the first door.Although they accepted several media interviews, they did not disclose their identities other than their nationality.The brothers have become celebrities in Japan, endorsed a number of merchandise and anime, and even have a live-action TV series based on their story in the air.Soto had suggested to Dayto to meet, but this angered Dayto and refused to speak to him for days.Soto hadn't spoken about it since then.

The truth about Daito's death is this: the two of them were traveling between the planets in Sector [-] on the Black Zee, when the push from the scoreboard told them that Edge had found the Emerald Key.They immediately realized that the "Sixth Man" would use the Findoro to search the tablet again to find Edge's exact location, and that their battleship would soon occupy that place.

Dayto and Soto had been prepared for this, and the brothers had spent a week planting microsurveillance devices on every Sixth Man ship they saw.Using these instruments, they discovered that the Sixth Man's fleet had changed course and was heading for Flobalds.

Knowing that Flobalz was the Sixth Man's destination, the answer to the quatrain's mystery became apparent.By the time they arrived at Flobalds a few minutes later, they had figured out how to get the Emerald Key.

The Blackpool landed next to an unoccupied White House.Soto ran in to collect nineteen treasures, while Daito was in charge of watching the wind outside.Soto's speed was very fast. When Daito told him through the communicator that ten "Sixth Man" warships were approaching, there were only two treasures left.Dayto assured Soto that he would do his best to guard the emerald key until he got it.Neither of them knew whether they would have the opportunity to come into contact with the Emerald Key in the future.

As Soto raced to bring the last two treasures back to the trophy holder, he activated the Blackpool's external cameras to record Dayto's encounter with the Sixth Man.

Soto turned on the video, turned it toward me, and turned away himself.

In the video, Daito stood alone in the open space beside the white house, and the "Sixth Man" fleet in the sky was landing towards this side. When Daito entered the range of the laser cannon, they opened fire immediately.Fiery red light arrows rained down on Daito.Behind them, more "Sixth Man" warships could be seen appearing in the distance, while the warships that had already landed put down well-equipped troops.Dayto was surrounded.

Obviously, the "Sixth Man" had already noticed this trend when the Kurosawa landed, and regarded killing the two samurai as their top priority.

Daito played his trump card without hesitation. He held up the transforming device with his right hand and pressed the start button, instantly turning into Ultraman—a silver-red alien superhero with glowing eyes, with a height of 150 six feet.

The "Sixth Man" ground troops surrounding him froze. They watched in horror and awe as Daito's Ultraman seized the two battleships and smashed them together like an oversized child in the air. Play with two metal toys.After dropping the flaming wreckage to the ground, Dayto turned to deal with the other warships in the sky, which surrounded him like flies in comparison.Some warships that escaped from his hands surrounded Daito, pouring laser cannons and Gatlings on him, but these firepower could not penetrate Ultraman's skin at all.With an echoing laugh, Dayto crossed his hands, wrists intersected, and a wave of energy blasted from his arms, sweeping away half a dozen Sixth Man battleships.Then he turned the energy light wave to the ground, and cleaned up the ground troops of the "Sixth Man" like burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Dato was so intoxicated by this power that he hardly noticed that the timer on his chest had started to flash red.This means that Altman's 3-minute transformation countdown is about to end, and his ability is almost exhausted.The time limit is Ultraman's biggest shortcoming, and if Dayto doesn't transform back to human in time, his character may die when the countdown ends.But if he returns to human form, the surrounding "Sixth Man" troops will kill him in an instant. In short, Dayto seems to have no chance to return to the ship.

I could see Sixth Men around Dayto yelling support into their comms, with new ships arriving every minute.Although Daito was destroying them one by one with light waves, at the same time, the flashing speed of the red light on his chest was getting faster and faster.

Soto ran out of the white room and told his brother through the communicator that he had got the emerald key.However, the Sixth Men also spotted Soto, an easier target, so they adjusted their tactics to focus their fire on Soto.

Soto sprinted towards the Kurosawa, using his "boots of speed", and slashed across the ground like a phantom.Dayto also changed his position to provide him with as much cover as possible, and he kept firing light waves to contain the "sixth man".

Suddenly, Daito's voice sounded through the communicator. "Soto!" he yelled, "somebody's here, somebody's in—"

His voice stopped abruptly, and at the same time, his character also stagnated on the spot, and an offline icon appeared on his huge body.

Logging out of Oasis in mid-combat is tantamount to suicide, and during the logout process, your character freezes in place for a full 60 seconds, defenseless and exposed to any attack.The purpose of this setting is to prevent the character from getting out of the battle easily. To get out of the battle, you must first repel all enemies, or retreat to a safe area.

Dayto dropped the line at an inopportune time. The firepower of the "Sixth Man" concentrated on him in an instant, and the red light on Ultraman's chest flickered faster and faster, and finally went out.The huge body collapsed, almost hitting Soto and the Kurosawa.The moment he fell to the ground, Daito returned to his original form, but his human body also slowly disappeared into nothingness.Then, a bunch of props appeared where he had been lying - items from his inventory and backpack, including the shapeshifter.

he died.

A phantom passed by, Soto picked up all of Daito's belongings, and then rushed into the Kurosawa.The spacecraft lifted off quickly, rising into orbit with the Sixth Man's shell.I thought of my own experience of breaking away from Flobalz.Fortunately, Soto's brother helped him deal with most of the nearby warships, and the enemy's reinforcements had not yet arrived.

Soto entered light speed cruise.It was only a hair's breadth away from being destroyed.

The video ends and Soto closes the window.

"How do you think the 'Sixth Man' found his home?" I asked.

"I don't know," Soto replied. "Dato is very cautious. He should not have been exposed."

"If the 'Sixth Man' can find him, they can probably find you, too."

"I know. I'm prepared."

"very good."

Soto took out the transformation device and handed it to me, "Dato wants you to accept this."

I waved my hand, "No, you should keep it for yourself, maybe you will need it someday."

Soto shook his head. "The rest of his stuff is mine," he said. "I don't need it, and I don't want to see it again." He shoved the shapeshifter into my hand.

I looked at this artifact.This little metal cylinder is silver and black with a red button on it.Its size and shape are reminiscent of a lightsaber.However, I have more than half a hundred lightsabers, and there is only one transformation tool in the entire oasis, and its power cannot be compared with lightsabers at all.

I held the transforming device with both hands and bowed, "Thank you, Soto."

"It should be me thanking you, Parsifal," he saluted me back, "Thank you for listening to my complaint." He stood up slowly, his complexion seemed to have recovered a lot.

"You haven't given up yet, have you?" I asked.

"Of course not," he straightened up with a sinister smile, "but looking for easter eggs has nothing to do with me. Now, I have a new goal, a more important goal."

"That is?"

"revenge!"

I nodded, walked to the samurai sword hanging by the wall, took it off and handed it to Soto. "Take this," I said, "as a little feedback from me, and I hope it will help you in your new purpose."

Soto took it and straightened the blade. "Authentic [123]?" he asked in surprise.

I nodded, "That's right, it's the one who beheaded +5."

Soto bowed again, "Thank you."

We took the elevator to the hangar in silence.Before Soto boarded the boat, he turned to me and asked, "How long do you think it will take the 'Sixth Man' to get through the third door?"

"Dunno," I confessed, "hopefully long enough for us to catch up."

"It's not over until the last moment. Right?"

I nodded, "It's never over until the last moment."

0026
That night, shortly after Soto left, the mystery was finally solved.

At that time, I was sitting in the command center, holding the emerald key in my hand, and kept chanting the clues on it: "Accept the test and continue the mission."

In my other hand lay the paper.My eyes flicked back and forth between the two things, trying desperately to connect them.This attempt has been going on for several hours, but there is still no flash of inspiration.

I sighed, put the keys away, and placed the paper on the control panel in front of me, carefully unfolding it all the way little by little.It was a square piece of paper, six inches on a side, silver on one side and white on the other.

High-resolution image analysis software scans both sides of the paper.The scanned image is then displayed on a display in micrometers.Both the silver side and the white side are spotless, without any marks or writings.

Since I'm still chewing cornflakes, I operate the image analysis software with voice control.I command the software to render a [-]D model of the paper to my screen.This scene is somewhat similar to the scene in "Blade Runner": Harrison Ford's character Deckard also uses voice control to operate the photo scanning process.

I held up the scrap of paper and looked at it again.It glows dazzling white under the light.I imagined it being folded into a paper airplane and flying across the room.It suddenly reminded me of a scene in Blade Runner, the scene at the end of the film.

I understand.

"Unicorn," I murmured.

The moment the voice was spoken, the paper folded automatically, turning into a silver triangle, and then folded in half again to form a smaller triangle, and then it automatically folded into four legs, a horse's head, a tail, and then a single horn.

Origami unicorn, the logo of Blade Runner.

I hurried up the elevator to the hangar while ordering Max to get my Vonnegut ready.

Take the test and continue the mission

I already know what "test" means, and where to go now.Unicorn origami has told me everything.

Blade Runner appeared no less than fourteen times in the yearbook and was Halliday's undisputed favorite.The film is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, Halliday's favorite author. I have watched "Blade Runner" more than 40 times, and I can recite every line backwards.

When Vonnegut flew into the stars, I opened the director's cut version of the movie in the center of the control screen and jumped straight to the two scenes I just remembered.

The film was released in 1982, and the background of the story is set in Los Angeles in 2019.The protagonist Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, belongs to the "Blade Runner", a special police force that hunts down replicants.Duplicants are man-made beings, yet they have the same intelligence and senses as humans, and the only way Blade Runner can tell them apart is to give them personality tests using the Voight-Kampff machine, which is similar to a polygraph machine.

Take the test and continue the mission.

The personality test machine only appears twice in the film, both in the building of Terry Corporation, which produces replicants.

As one of the most common buildings in Oasis, Terry Buildings are spread across hundreds of planets in 27 divisions.This is because the source code of this building is placed in the "Oasis" generation software as a free resource.For the past 25 years, everyone who has used the "Oasis" generation software to design planetary landscapes has been able to choose the Terry Building as a construction template.Therefore, some planets even have Terry buildings all over the street.My target is one of these planets, which is located in the cyberpunk-themed world of Ethlenorth in Sector 22.

If you guessed right, the entrance to the second door is hidden behind the personality test machine in every Terry building on Eslennoth.This saves the trouble of confronting the "Sixth Man" head-on, because they cannot occupy thousands of buildings on so many planets at the same time.

After arriving at my destination, it didn't take me a few minutes to find a Terry building.To be honest, it's even harder to find.The base of the giant pyramid-shaped building is several kilometers long, standing out from the surrounding buildings.As soon as the building appeared in the field of vision, I adjusted my direction and flew towards it.Vonnegut kept the optical cloaking device turned on until he landed on the building's tarmac.I disembarked and walked towards the entrance while activating all the ship's safety equipment.No magic is allowed here, so I can't shrink the ship down to a model and stuff it in my pocket.

I opened the map of Terry Building, found the nearest elevator, and entered the code in the movie on the code disk.The door opened, good luck.It seems that the people who designed this planet didn't bother to change the original password.That's a good sign, and the rest of the setting in the building probably won't change much either.

I took the elevator to the 440th floor. In the elevator, I activated the armor shield and drew my gun.There are still five checkpoints away from the destination, which means that I have to fight fifty clone security NPCs.

The shootout broke out the moment the elevator doors opened.Before leaving the elevator and entering the corridor, I had killed seven clones.In the next 10 minutes, I was like Chow Yun-fat in the John Woo movie, shooting all the way, and batch after batch of replicas were knocked down to the ground.Their bullets can't do much damage to my armor at all.And I don't have to worry about running out of bullets in the chamber, because every time a clip is fired, another one will be automatically transferred to the gun.

Ammunition spending this month is sure to be a tragedy.

After finally reaching the end, I quickly entered the password on another door.Time is running out, and the replica security guards in the entire building must be on their way to catch me by now.

My footsteps echoed in the empty hall beyond the door.Besides me, there was only one giant owl in the room perched on a golden perch.It blinked silently at me, watching me walk in a space big enough for a church.

The furnishings here are exactly the same as the office of Elton Terry, the founder of Terry Company in the movie: waxed stone floors, magnificent marble columns, and floor-to-ceiling windows that occupy the entire west wall, connecting the ceiling and the floor below; Looking out, it is the magnificent landscape of the city.

The long conference table stood by the window, and on it was a personality testing machine, which was about the size of a briefcase, with a row of buttons on the front and three data screens beside it.Several small bellows are connected with the machine, stretching and closing constantly, as if breathing.

When I walked over and sat in front of it, the machine started automatically.A robotic arm extended a ring-shaped device, like a retinal scanner, directly over my right eye.I looked around, wondering if Harrison Ford's character was going to come and ask me the same questions he asked Sean Young in the movie.Of course, I remember all the answers.But after a few seconds, nothing happened.The bellows continued to open and close, and distant sirens sounded vaguely through the gate.

(End of this chapter)