In the deepest domain of the inner realm, within the mysterious divine throne domain—amidst the fragmented remnants of a shattered history’s end.
Beneath a gray and murky sky stretched an endless forest of steel and concrete. Though it was daytime, this vast metropolis was hauntingly silent, devoid of the noise and liveliness expected from any major city. As far as the eye could see, there was only desolation.
Towering skyscrapers pierced the clouds, but down at street level, the scene was bleak: long avenues lined with shuttered storefronts, their colorful signs layered with thick coats of dust. Overgrown weeds dominated the roadside landscaping. Other than a few emaciated scavengers and a few homeless individuals curled up in corners wearing some sort of tech helmet—many of whom lay motionless, their state unknown—the streets were empty. Only once every ten minutes or so did a car rumble past the eight-lane highway.
This was a city on its deathbed, a dying city that served as a microcosm for the entire world. Despite the wide roads, signage, and the labyrinthine networks of elevated overpasses, all of it merely hinted at the city’s former prosperity—its past vitality.
Elsewhere in the city, atop a raised expressway, a black sedan sped along. Dorothy—dressed in a black sailor-style school uniform—sat in the back seat, her gaze fixed on the colorless metropolis beyond the window, her solemn expression betraying the thoughts churning in her mind.
“This is... a city? Such a huge city... those buildings must be dozens of stories tall—maybe hundreds? But why does it all feel so desolate?” said Nephthys from the front passenger seat, her voice filled with awe and confusion. She wore a cropped jacket and leather miniskirt with a baseball cap, gazing out the window with wide-eyed amazement.
“This... is the real world within this domain? That earlier one was just an illusion? A mindscape linked by countless minds, like the Dreamscape? It’s incredible…” said Vania from the backseat as well. She was still wearing a nun's habit, though far shorter and more form-fitting than in her original world—so short her legs were exposed in stockings, evoking the appearance of a modern cheongsam. Clearly uncomfortable, Vania sat with stiff unease.
“A world where the dream is thriving, but reality is collapsing… this is a truly sick society,” Artcheli remarked coolly. She sat between Dorothy and Vania, clad in a casual vest, t-shirt, and jeans with a cap, looking far more at ease than Vania.
“No wonder that previous world was so strange—it was fake. Hafdar crafted it, always scheming… good thing we didn’t fall into his trap and keep ‘adventuring’ there. The consequences could have been dire…” came the hoarse voice of Setut, reverberating in the car despite his absence.
“Then I suppose we owe our thanks once again to our brilliant Miss Mayschoss. Without her, we wouldn’t have made it this far. Let’s hope we can lend her some help in what comes next,” said Aldrich, now dressed in a gray trench coat and short-brimmed hat, steering the vehicle from the driver’s seat—looking much the same as he did in the real world.
Inside the car, their voices rose in discussion, reflection, and analysis. But Dorothy remained silent, her eyes fixed on the dark cityscape outside the window, her mind racing.
“A world where reality is utterly decayed, and dreams flourish... Is this the apocalypse this world is enduring? A miserable reality, driving people to desperately flee into a virtual one.
“Heh... It’s almost identical to the Blackdream’s envisioned end—corruption chasing after this exact kind of futureless obliteration.
“To choose such a world to hide in... Hafdar must have done so precisely for this quality—hoping to trap us with it…”
While thinking, Dorothy took out the charm forged through her Heaven’s Arbiter divinity and understood more clearly why the Arbiter had crafted these charms during rituals of the past.
Anyone carrying such a charm would automatically be integrated into the scroll world they entered—becoming a part of that world, as if they had always existed there. In the Second Epoch, this function likely existed to protect pilgrims who accidentally fell into a scroll world—preventing them from being mistaken for some outer-realm demon and attacked.
Back then, it was meant to ensure safety. Now, it was clearly prepared with their current journey in mind.
Hafdar and the fledgling god chose a scroll world within a historical fragment as their base of operations, meaning they had deep control over it. It’s likely they could sense anything foreign entering from outside the scroll. If Dorothy’s group had entered without the charm, their foreign presence might’ve been detected immediately. Then Hafdar would remain hidden while they stood exposed—leaving Dorothy and the others at a serious disadvantage, especially given their connection to Revelation.
But with the charm in hand, they bypassed the world’s detection system. Created with Heaven’s Arbiter divinity, these charms allowed them to infiltrate without alerting Hafdar or the young god.
These charms—originally prepared for pilgrims—may very well have been created in foresight of Dorothy’s present journey. The Arbiter possibly foresaw these events and established the tradition of crafting the charm accordingly. The fledgling god, too, likely foresaw Dorothy and her team entering with such charms…
Because of Setut, the young god likely assumed Dorothy’s group would come using Heaven’s Arbiter’s charms. And since that meant they couldn’t be tracked directly, the god laid a trap: choosing a world where immersion would serve as a snare.
This world… was one where virtual reality was extremely developed, and real life utterly decayed. Most people, to escape their harsh reality, had retreated into a fully immersive online game, living out their hopeless lives inside digital illusions. Nearly everyone had abandoned the real world, linking their sensory systems into a vast virtual network. They spent their days wasting away in pleasant dreams.
Thus, in this world, neural immersion and mass VR addiction were the norm. When Dorothy and her companions entered this scroll world with the charms, they were automatically integrated into this “normalcy,” seamlessly becoming citizens of the world. Their bodies were placed into sleep pods, while their minds entered the game world directly—making it feel as though they had simply crossed over into a fantastical world.
As a result, they mistook the game world for reality itself...
And because society here was so addicted to illusion, the virtual world became ever more realistic. Once overlays like HUDs and damage numbers were stripped away, and sophisticated AI NPCs added in, it became indistinguishable from reality. If Dorothy and her team hadn’t noticed the inconsistencies, they would’ve followed Hafdar’s script to the letter.
In Hafdar’s design, the Demon Lord within the game would appear to be the apocalyptic disaster of the world. He deliberately seeded rumors of spies within the allied nations and then “publicly” revealed himself through a false identity. Naturally, this would draw Dorothy and her companions’ attention—leading them to suspect he was the traitor and investigate him.
Since Dorothy’s team recognized Hafdar by appearance, his broadcast would inevitably attract their attention. When they finally acted against Hafdar’s in-game persona, the real Hafdar—observing from reality—would use the character’s location data to determine where they were physically.
In the end, trapped in illusion, Dorothy’s group would be nothing more than prey on Hafdar’s chopping block.
What saved them was Dorothy’s keen perception—she had spotted a few irregularities. Chief among them… was the location they appeared in upon entering this world.
Based on their past experiences with scroll worlds, Dorothy and her group had always arrived together, in the same location. However, when they entered this particular scroll world, each person had appeared in a completely different place, scattered across vast distances.
The reason for this was that their physical bodies had indeed entered the virtual world from the same place—their sleep pods were linked, and they entered together. But just like in online games, when a group logs in from the same internet café, they might not spawn in the same location once in-game. Especially in multi-race, multi-faction MMOs, even beginner towns can differ drastically.
Moreover, due to the integration mechanism of the Heaven’s Arbiter charm, Dorothy and the others, upon entering, were matched to the general conditions of the world’s residents. In this fully-immersed society, there were no “new players” anymore. As such, the game accounts generated by the integration wouldn’t be newbies either, and their avatars wouldn’t necessarily appear together.
This discrepancy in arrival locations was the first—and biggest—abnormality that puzzled Dorothy. But there were many other oddities too. For example, the sheer number of “adventurers” in that world. Dorothy noticed that there were simply far too many. Practically every corner of the city was filled with adventurers. A single merchant had to deal with a dozen of them at once. The occupational structure of society was visibly irrational.
Then there was the behavior difference: adventurers frequently broke into homes, scaled walls, and parkoured across rooftops without drawing suspicion. They even enjoyed dirt-cheap resurrection services. Dorothy had hypnotized both adventurers and civilians. Civilians could recall their life stories clearly—childhood, growth, education. But the adventurers only remembered their adventures; everything before becoming adventurers was vague. Worse yet, after hypnosis was lifted, some adventurers could even detect that Dorothy had used mental manipulation on them.
These abnormalities led Dorothy to recall a group from her previous life’s knowledge: players. Only game players could explain this behavior—numerous, reckless, easily revived. The adventurers were likely players, while the civilians were just NPCs.
The real world in this scroll was utterly devastated. The players, addicted to the game, now saw the virtual world as real. Their minds had twisted. Most refused to speak about reality, and many had forgotten it entirely—though this didn’t completely mask the distinctions between them and actual NPCs.
In the game, the abilities Dorothy used weren’t her real powers but skills assigned by the system. They worked flawlessly on NPCs, but had limited effect on players. After all, game hypnosis couldn’t read the real thoughts of someone sitting behind a screen.
Taking all this into account, Dorothy, being a transmigrator herself, quickly realized this wasn’t reality—it was a game world. She immediately attempted to log out. Fortunately, since this scroll world hadn’t yet completely reached its end, there were still a handful of people living in reality, so the logout function hadn’t been disabled. Dorothy successfully logged out. But even if it had been locked, she could’ve used her spiritual threads to control her real-world body and forcibly disconnect—just as she had resisted the Blackdream Moth’s hypnosis once before.
After logging out, Dorothy quickly located her companions and informed them of the truth through the information channel. Then, with careful handling, she guided them all to log out successfully as well. With that done, Dorothy began her real-world investigation in this apocalyptic scroll world.
“…That said, transportation in this world really is convenient,” Nephthys muttered, patting the car seat beneath her.
“Much faster than a horse carriage, and way more comfortable…”
“It’s decent,” Aldrich remarked from the driver’s seat.
“But I’ve seen better in the Craftsmen’s Guild. This vehicle’s design isn’t particularly impressive. As gasoline-powered vehicles go, I’ve encountered far more elegant designs—ones that unfortunately couldn’t be mass-produced due to cognitive poison restrictions.”
Dorothy, who had been quietly watching the city outside, arched an eyebrow at that and turned toward Aldrich.
“Oh? So you’re saying this car’s design isn’t unique? The Craftsmen’s Guild has many similar ones?”
“Roughly, yes. Both the frame and the internals—I’ve seen 90% similar models. But sadly, like many other things, they couldn’t be released publicly because of cognitive poison laws. If they had been, the real world’s productivity could’ve advanced by several tiers. We might’ve even reached a world like this one already,” Aldrich said matter-of-factly.
Dorothy’s brows furrowed even deeper.
“You guys invent and manufacture all these things… Doesn’t that cause any major problems?”
“Major problems?”
Aldrich appeared genuinely puzzled by her question before responding.
“What problems could there be? At worst, the inventions are used privately and not distributed. What’s the issue, Miss Mayschoss?”
Dorothy stood there frozen for a moment before she answered quietly.
“No… no issue…”
…
After some time spent searching, Dorothy’s vehicle stopped by the side of a road. There, they found an abandoned police station.
Using special means to unlock the entrance, they made their way inside. Dorothy found a police terminal, clearly broken and long inactive.
“Can you fix it?”
In the dim station, Dorothy stared at the dusty terminal and asked Aldrich. He stepped up silently, fiddled with the device, then replied.
“It’s good to go. Take a look.”
Dorothy walked over and saw the terminal had booted up. She didn’t operate it directly but placed her hand above the terminal instead. Tiny arcs of electricity jumped from her palm to the machine.
Using her electricity manipulation ability, Dorothy hacked directly into the nearly defunct police network, searching for valuable intel.
Hacking, a skill built into Dorothy’s Misaka Mikoto computation model, allowed her to use the Roaring Fury Path’s power to access electronic systems and efficiently gather information.
Dorothy had tried accessing the public network before—but it had long been overrun with game-related spam. Almost no useful real-world information remained. So now she turned to a police system, hoping to find internal records about this world.
She quickly uncovered a wealth of data.
Through the police network, Dorothy learned that this world had not always been as it was now—immersed in games and neglected in reality. It had once been a cyberpunk dystopia, dominated by massive transnational corporations.
Just decades ago, this world was buzzing with activity. A few mega-corporations dominated all aspects of life. The world was controlled by these super-corporations. Though technology had advanced tremendously, life was oppressive—people were exploited, reduced to tools for corporate profit. Corporate warfare was common, and countless lives were lost in these economic and military clashes. The world inched closer to destruction.
The turning point came when a megacorp named “True Universe” released a product that enabled complete neural immersion—fooling all the senses and allowing users to fully experience a virtual reality that felt “more real than real.” The product became an overnight sensation. In this hopeless world, people flocked to it, desperate to escape reality.
More and more adopted True Universe’s products, becoming virtual slaves. They lived out ideal lives in artificial dreams while using their real-world money to sustain their deteriorating bodies. After exhausting their funds, they signed contracts allowing neural terminals to override their conscious control, sending their bodies to perform labor while their minds stayed in dreamland—until they died of exhaustion.
Cruel as this was, it provided desperate people a form of release. And so, more and more became users—or slaves—of True Universe. This monopoly devastated competing companies, which eventually declared war. But after an all-out global conflict that ravaged the world, True Universe emerged victorious. All other megacorporations collapsed.
True Universe became the sole ruler of the postwar ruins. The vast majority of humanity now lived in the virtual world. True Universe had become the ruler of the world.
Dorothy processed all this intel rapidly. Then a voice called out.
“Any luck? Can you find out where Hafdar is?”
Dorothy turned toward the voice and saw a mummified figure, its body encased in a mechanical exoskeleton, its head topped with a neural helmet bristling with cables.
It was Setut—in this world, he seemed to have taken on a form of undeath, a consciousness still active in a decaying corpse supported by machines.
“There’s a lot of data here,” Dorothy said seriously.
“But pinpointing Hafdar’s exact location is still difficult. For now, I can only confirm... he’s likely connected to this world’s apocalyptic overlord—True Universe.”
“If that’s the case, then our next step is to investigate this ‘True Universe’? Where do we begin?”
Artcheli asked gravely.
But Dorothy shook her head.
“No... Directly investigating True Universe is a bad idea. It’s too massive. It’s bigger than any church in scale. We wouldn’t know where to start. Finding a crack in an institution that size could take forever.”
“Then… Miss Dorothea, which direction should we take?”
Vania asked with concern.
Dorothy fell silent. Then, after a pause, she pulled out her magic box and retrieved a helmet from inside, gazing at it thoughtfully.
…
Virtual World – Dragonhawk Kingdom, Frontier: Sage's City.
Bathed in the light of the rising sun, the vast city shimmered with magnificence. Countless grand structures gleamed under the dawn’s radiance. On its clean streets, noise and bustle filled the air—travelers from across the kingdom and even beyond gathered here, united by a common cause.
In one part of the grand capital, atop a spacious plaza, a towering Mage Tower stood tall. A large crowd had gathered beneath it. At the top of the tower, a robed elder stood proudly, delivering a booming speech to the crowd below.
“Heroes of the Kingdom! You have come from afar—your journey has been arduous! Each of you is one in a million, citizens of this beautiful world! Today, we gather to protect our realm—to defend truth and honor from the wicked Demon Lord! As the Kingdom’s Grand Sage, I thank you for your presence! I am honored to illuminate your path forward, brave warriors!”
Hafdar, Grand Sage of the Dragonhawk Kingdom, stood atop the Mage Tower, delivering his rousing address, eliciting cheers and cries from the crowd.
It was a speech designed to rally the adventurers from across the lands, inspiring them to join the campaign against the Demon Lord. After several passionate minutes, Hafdar finally concluded and returned into the tower.
Among the crowd, six figures quietly observed Hafdar’s departure. A witch, a cleric, a necromancer, an assassin, an engineer, and a spiritualist. After silently watching the tower for a moment, they turned and left.
Meanwhile, "Hafdar" returned to his study and sat down to begin writing a letter. Yet, as he picked up his pen, he hesitated for a moment—then resumed writing as if nothing had happened.
…
Reality – Beneath the lightless sky.
Within a vast urban expanse—a sea of concrete and steel stretching as far as the eye could see—stood a massive structure.
At its heart rose a colossal super tower, piercing the heavens at over a thousand meters tall. Dozens of secondary towers, each hundreds of meters high, encircled it. Around them were countless sharp-edged buildings layered concentrically, expanding outward until they reached the limits of visibility—covering thousands of square kilometers. It resembled a titanic fortress embedded within the ruins of a city.
This was the headquarters of True Universe, the final megacorporation in this apocalyptic world—and the epicenter of this entire historical fragment.
Far below this fortress-like complex—beneath layers of reinforced ground—lay a sprawling underground facility. In a remote section of this labyrinthine space, a vast chamber housed a giant screen occupying an entire wall. It displayed countless subdivided feeds. The largest screen showed a top-down map of the capital district of the Dragonhawk Kingdom in the virtual world.
Standing before the screen was Hafdar, clad in a white lab coat, his gaze fixed on the visuals and data, including the in-game version of himself.
This was the real Hafdar—the one in the lab coat. The Grand Sage within the virtual world was merely a controlled NPC, a bait placed by Hafdar within the game.
And now, at last, the bait had drawn in its prey.
“Finally... they’ve arrived.”
Hafdar murmured to himself as he focused on one smaller screen, showing the interior of a tavern. Around a single table sat several adventurers: a witch, a cleric, a necromancer, an assassin, an engineer, and a spiritualist—clearly Dorothy and her companions, though they said nothing aloud.
“Oh… it seems you've caught something at last.”
A cold voice echoed. Another man in a lab coat—Taharka, stern and sharp—walked up beside Hafdar, eyeing the screens with interest.
“Are you certain it’s them?” Taharka asked.
Hafdar nodded.
“I’ve reviewed their skill sets and profiles. Everything aligns as expected. It must be them.”
“Excellent. A reward for all your days of staring at this dreary cityscape.”
Taharka understood well that Hafdar had waited a long time for this moment—when Dorothy’s group would unknowingly fall into his illusion.
Both Hafdar and Taharka were aware of the charm’s power. They knew that with Heaven’s Arbiter’s charm, Dorothy and her team could enter without being detected—so the virtual world served as a safeguard.
Given the state of the real world, the charm’s integration meant Dorothy’s group would enter directly into the virtual realm. And since the charm could generate background history and memories from nothing—blending them seamlessly into the fragment’s fabric—there was no way for the broken world to detect them.
In short, the presence of the charm meant that even searching their appearances or skillsets in the global system returned nothing—they simply didn’t exist from the system’s perspective. The only way to find them was for Hafdar to do it manually.
Since he couldn't monitor the entire virtual world, Hafdar had devised a trap—a bait placed in Sage’s City, waiting for Dorothy’s group to be drawn in. Once they arrived in the trap zone, Hafdar could identify them based on observed characteristics.
Now, monitoring his bait in real-time through external reality’s equipment, Hafdar finally saw movement within his cage.
“Why aren’t they speaking?” Taharka asked.
Hafdar replied immediately, “They’re using some form of powerful mystical communication—likely tied to the divinity of the Divine Mentor. If they’re using that channel, we can’t hear them.”
“Can you confirm their location?”
“Confirmed. I’ve already pinpointed their real-world coordinates. I’m sending people now—you should dispatch a few puppets as well.”
Taharka nodded.
“Understood. What about their consciousnesses currently in the network?”
“Leave them alone for now. Don’t alert them. Once we have control over their bodies, everything else will fall into place.”
And so, in that massive underground control room, the dark scheme was set in motion. At the moment the order was given, above them—beyond the city’s outer edge in a barren field—a hidden base came to life. A sleek aircraft was launched from a concealed hangar, ascending rapidly toward the sky, heading toward a different city within this desolate world.
Soon after, it landed on a rooftop. The hovercar door opened, and out stepped a squad of armed soldiers in tactical gear. Upon landing, they immediately began their operation, swiftly moving down into the apartment building. After a round of searching, they found and opened a certain room. Inside, they were greeted by a layer of dust covering the space, along with several still-active sleep pods, each housing a dormant figure.
Without delay, the soldiers began inspecting the pods. Inside them were several slumbering individuals—a silver-haired girl, a dignified elder, and even a gaunt corpse.
“It looks like they’re all here… That guy Setut really did show up too…”
In the secret underground base, Taharka stared at the screen relaying the real-time footage from the scene and murmured thoughtfully. On the other side, Hafdar spoke solemnly.
“We need to check them first.”
Following his command, the team at the scene began examining each of the pod occupants. They checked for breathing, touched their skin, measured body temperature, and inspected ears and noses. Out of caution that overly aggressive checks might awaken them from the virtual illusion, procedures like blood draws were deliberately avoided. Once the initial checks were done, they brought out various unusual tools—Lantern scanner, soul detection instruments…
“Seems like nothing’s out of the ordinary… Try using spiritual threads.”
After concluding his inspection, Hafdar spoke seriously to Taharka. A moment later, from the body of one of the soldiers at the scene, several strands of spiritual thread—normally invisible to the average person—suddenly extended, reaching toward the sleeping figures inside the pods. The threads tried to latch onto them, but in the end, they coiled around the sleepers like serpents for a moment before all retracting.
“What happened?”
Hafdar asked upon seeing this, and Taharka replied in a low voice.
“I can feel it. They’ve already been linked by other spiritual threads. The source of those threads is that Usurper—scion of the Mirror Moon Goddess. Even Setut has been somehow tethered. She connected her own spiritual threads to everyone beforehand… including herself…
“I can sense traces of divinity in those threads. This might be one of her defensive measures—by linking her companions and herself in advance, if my spiritual threads connect to them, I wouldn’t immediately gain control. She’d be able to contest control through her own preexisting threads. And since her threads carry divine reinforcement… I might not be able to overpower her…
“If I connect now, my spiritual threads will clash with hers directly. That would instantly alert the Usurper’s consciousness within the network. If that happens, they’ll likely wake up on the spot… and that would be troublesome.”
Taharka explained to Hafdar with careful deliberation. After hearing this, Hafdar fell silent for a moment, then asked.
“So you mean… all of them have already been linked to someone else’s spiritual threads, and the source of those threads is the Usurper herself—the one lying right here?”
Hafdar posed the question, and Taharka nodded firmly.
“Yes. The source is clearly her. I can feel it distinctly…”
As he spoke, Taharka had his puppet look at the silver-haired girl lying quietly inside one of the pods. His voice was resolute, and Hafdar, hearing it, couldn’t help but feel reassured.
“In that case, let’s just bring them all back.”
With that, Hafdar issued a direct order. The on-site operatives began gently lifting each helmet-wearing figure out of the sleep pods, placing them onto pre-prepared stretchers, and carefully carrying them out.
Now that it had been confirmed that the divinely charged spiritual threads were originating from the sleeping silver-haired girl, it could be concluded with near certainty that she was the real Usurper. After all, ordinary puppets couldn’t release spiritual threads, and while flesh marionettes of the Spiritual Threads Path could do so, they required external control—meaning they had to be both receiving and releasing spiritual threads simultaneously.
But according to Taharka’s verification, the silver-haired girl was the origin of all the spiritual threads in the room, and no external threads could be seen linked to her. In other words, she wasn’t a puppet.
If she wasn’t a puppet and could release spiritual threads, then there was only one explanation—she was the real source.
This was the strongest evidence confirming her identity as the true Usurper. With that, Hafdar could confidently order her and the others to be taken away.
As long as the most important target—the Usurper—had been verified, the rest of the group couldn’t be fake either…
The team then carried the key targets to the rooftop of the apartment building and loaded them onto the hovercar, which promptly lifted off and rapidly departed from the area.
Soon after, the hovercars returned to a waiting aircraft. Once all units had boarded and the preparations were complete, the aircraft took off without delay, soaring high into the sky toward a distant destination.
After a brief flight, the aircraft returned to its base—landing steadily in a secret underground airfield. Once all the hatches on the surface closed up, the ground above returned to its original barren state, as if nothing had ever happened.
The aircraft was now back inside the secret base. The site returned to complete silence—an eerie quiet that lasted for about ten minutes.
And then… it was shattered.
Shattered by a surge of force the land had never known—
BOOM!!!
Flames. Thunder. Shockwaves.
The earth trembled violently, as if shattered by a meteor. A massive sonic blast erupted across the landscape, flattening buildings—including True Universe’s headquarters—and reducing the entire cityscape to rubble.
As the ground cracked wide open, a gigantic sphere of light burst from beneath, expanding outward like a miniature sun, vaporizing everything in its path.
The light consumed the entire city… and kept going.
…
Far above, in the distant sky, Dorothy hovered, watching the light engulf the city below.
“So this… is the true power behind the Craftsmen’s Guild…”
“Impressive.”
The “sleeping bodies” Hafdar had retrieved weren’t real.
They were highly advanced bio-puppets, crafted by Dorothy, Vania, and Aldrich from living corpses, wrapped in flesh, filled with mechanisms—far more precise than anything Aldrich had previously made.
With enough stored spirituality to mimic real spiritual signatures, veiled by Shadow, and even fitted with artificial souls made by Aldrich, the puppets fooled every test.
Only the highest-grade Lantern powers might’ve detected them—but Hafdar didn’t have those.
As for the spiritual threads, Taharka had confirmed that they all originated from the silver-haired girl—but that was Dorothy’s puppet. It used a low-intelligence artificial soul to pray and open the information channel, letting Dorothy link her spiritual threads from outside the game, unseen by Taharka.
And the question: how had Dorothy logged her avatar into the game while her real body remained offline?
Simple. Using her hacker skills, she remotely hijacked her own and her companions’ VR headsets, simulating brain signals to fool the game into logging in characters—each controlled remotely by Dorothy herself, multi-tasking across multiple terminals.
To cover their tracks, Dorothy and the others even exited the scroll world and re-entered wearing charms, then used spiritual threads to simulate logged-in states while their real bodies exited the pods.
Then, Dorothy directed her puppets to fall into Hafdar’s trap—baiting them to retrieve the decoys.
And with them, they brought Aldrich’s bomb—personally supplied by Yellowstone, the Craftsmen’s Guild’s ultimate trump card.
A bomb capable of wiping out a megacity, changing the climate, and surpassing nuclear arms—
An apocalyptic gift, delivered directly into the enemy’s den.