Free Web NovelChapter 78: Phase 64
Beyond the heavy steel blast door lay the faint outline of an inner chamber, submerged in a thick, freezing gloom. I raised my flashlight, the beam cutting through the dark to illuminate a secondary door that defied the sterile architecture of the Admin sector.
At its center sat a heavy, round doorknob made of polished silver, intricately cast into the shape of a snarling creature’s head. Surrounding it, etched deep into the reinforced metal face of the door itself, was a massive, precise pentagon—a bizarre, ritualistic symbol looking entirely out of place amidst the raw machinery.
I stepped forward, my hand extending toward the silver frame.
But then—
A sudden, blinding white line sliced horizontally across my vision. freeweɓnøvel.com
It wasn’t a visual glitch. It was a localized system execution.
My fingers never touched the silver knob. The ambient temperature didn’t just drop; the air itself seemed to turn into liquid nitrogen as the server around us violently pulled the plug on our current coordinates. The flashlight beam in my hand stretched into an infinitely long needle of light before shattering into millions of pixelated artifacts.
"Midnight—!" > Velvet’s mental voice slammed into my brain through the Share-Lock link. It wasn’t her usual rehearsed, clinical tone; it was a raw, chaotic spike of neurological panic. free𝑤ebnovel.com
Because we had masked our signatures using Ame’s ’Failed’ residue profile, the macro-protocol didn’t know how to categorize us. It didn’t leave us behind in the Admin sector, nor did it sort us into standard player slots. Instead, the system forced a brutal, three-way network re-mapping.
The sensation was nauseating. It felt as though a massive, invisible hand had reached through the base of my skull, gripped my spine, and yanked my entire consciousness backward through a straw. My laptop screen strobed a violent, warning red, its terminal logs scrolling past at a speed the hardware could barely process before the display completely froze.
[WARNING: UNRESOLVED MEMORY ADDRESS TRACED]
[FORCING SYNC COMPILES TO NEAREST NODE...]
This fucking damned world didn’t just dissolve; it exploded into an aggressive, screen-tearing glitch.
A violent spike of digital static tore through the Share-Lock at the base of my skull, sending a blinding white line slicing horizontally across my vision. The cold, industrial silence of the Admin sector was instantaneously annihilated, replaced not by darkness, but by a deafening, stadium-sized roar of audio feedback.
Then came the impact.
My knees buckled as gravity abruptly slammed back into existence. I collapsed forward, my palms hitting a surface that felt entirely different from the grated industrial iron of the Admin zone. This floor was smooth, cold, and smelled faintly of fresh lacquer and ozone.
"Ah... ghh..." A fragile, hyperventilating gasp echoed from the darkness directly to my left. Ame was curled into a trembling ball on the floor, her fingernails frantically scratching against the polished wood beneath us.
I forced my eyes open, blinking through the residual green static dancing across my retinas. The laptop screen was cracked down the middle, but the backlight hummed, casting a pale, shivering blue glow over our new cage.
We weren’t in a factory anymore. The system had dragged us right back into its twisted theater.
We were standing in the center of a massive, dim auditorium. High above us, tiers of empty, velvet-lined theater seats stretched up into the shadows like rows of open jaws.
Before my brain could even process the spatial re-mapping, my boots violently slammed onto a hard, polished wooden floor. The sickening sensation of our signatures being forcibly dragged through the network left a metallic taste in my mouth. My laptop screen cracked right down the middle, its backlights flickering erratically as it spit out corrupted error strings.
"Fuck..." I wheezed, my teeth slamming together as the kinetic impact jarred my jaw.
Then, the lights hit us.
Okay, what’s next?
It wasn’t a dim auditorium. It was a pair of massive, blinding theatrical spotlights dropping straight from the darkness above, pinning the three of us dead-center in their white-hot glare.
I blinked against the intense luminescence, my hand instinctively coming up to shield my eyes. As the green retuning artifacts cleared from my retinas, the sheer scale of the trap became clear.
We were standing awkwardly in the dead center of an elevated, massive proscenium stage. And out there, stretching into the colossal, tiered shadows of a twisted stadium, were rows upon rows of seats. Every single active participant—all the survivors of the first horrific round—were seated in the dark, their eyes tracking the sudden, violent light cue.
Dozens of faces stared right up at us.
VelvetVice stood entirely frozen beside me, her hand still hovering over her empty holster, her usual starlet armor completely cracked by the sudden exposure. To my left, Ame had collapsed entirely to her knees, trembling violently under the weight of a hundred judgment-filled eyes. We weren’t hiding anymore. We were a public anomaly, standing exposed like criminals caught in a spotlight.
Before the crowd could even begin to whisper, a jarring, sudden voice blasted through the towering speaker stacks, completely shattering the tense atmosphere with a burst of manic enthusiasm.
"Everyone!"
A cartoonish, mechanical fanfare blared, cutting through the stadium like a chainsaw.
"Welcome to the D-Drive Game Trial, again!"
High above the stage, floating effortlessly on a descending pedestal, stood Akuma.
She remained in her transformed state—the absolute embodiment of an ideal woman with a mathematically flawless, jaw-dropping hourglass silhouette. But she had entirely changed her wardrobe since the previous round, trading whatever shred of modesty she had for a masterclass in biological provocation.
Underneath the vibrant, white-hot stage lights, she was wearing a piece of seductive, hot pink underwear that clashed violently against the dark, dimly lit atmosphere of the stadium. Contrasting the loud pink were black, almost entirely transparent stockings and matching lingerie that clung tightly to her curves, leaving virtually nothing to the imagination.
Looking up at her from the stage, I couldn’t help but think she looked less like a host and definitely more like a high-end stripper running a twisted show. This fucking whore... It wasn’t fashion; it was a deliberate sensory hack, an optimization of data designed to force an immediate physiological reaction from every male avatar in the room—and the system’s tracking telemetry was undoubtedly logging the sudden, shitty spikes in our pulses.
Yet, the sheer visual perfection only made her behavior more deeply unsettling.
Akuma leaned completely over the edge of the guardrail of her floating pedestal, dropping her weight forward and swinging her legs back like a bored schoolgirl. She curled her perfectly manicured arms up against her chest, aggressively pouting her lips in tandem with that high-pitched, squeaky teddy-bear voice.
"My my... look who’s coming to the center of this glorious announcement instead of watching from the outside!"
She chirped cheerfully, clapping her hands together with a rapid, childish glee that completely contradicted her hyper-seductive appearance. Her voice panned dynamically across the arena, filling the massive space with a theatrical, mocking echo.
She chirped cheerfully, clapping her hands together with a rapid, childish glee that completely contradicted her hyper-seductive appearance. Her voice panned dynamically across the arena, filling the massive space with a theatrical, mocking echo.
"Sneaking around behind the curtains? Falsifying maintenance packets? Oh, you naughty little bollocks! You just couldn’t wait for your cue, could you?"
