Chapter 116: Thoughts That Cannot Be Faced

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Looking toward the doorway, Colin saw two men standing outside. One was a servant, and the other was also a servant.

One of them held a storm lantern and stood watch with dutiful vigilance. Even though this was a Level Five Underground Fortress, whose defenses were difficult for even a lord-level aberration to breach, they had not allowed themselves to become careless.

Inside the room, a soft, almost inaudible breathing drew Colin’s gaze elsewhere.

Not far away, Shana leaned against a sofa with her eyes closed, resting.

But at the disturbance caused by Colin getting to his feet, she suddenly clenched her fists and opened her eyes, bursting into radiant white light.

Then she saw Colin sitting up and froze. She was just about to speak when Colin shook his head, stopping her.

“Keep resting,” Colin whispered.

He rubbed his forehead, then took out the parchment and glanced at it.

Regional Channel population: 377.

A number that could be called “perfect.”

Colin remembered that there had been 397 people yesterday, yet only twenty had died by now...

The fifth day would arrive soon. In many regions, roughly half the original population still remained. The predicted extinction on the fifth day had not occurred.

Of course, neither had the predicted extinctions on the second, third, or fourth days...

But compared with before, something about today felt wrong.

Colin checked the chat channels again. Neither the Regional Channel nor the World Channel seemed to have any major problems.

Tonight, there had not even been a knock at the door.

“Why does this feel like the calm before a storm...” Colin exhaled. “I hope I’m not just frightening myself.”

Although he still felt rather exhausted, physiologically speaking, his brain had already received sufficient rest.

What tired him most was his mind.

Besides, once he had woken, he could no longer fall asleep.

Helplessly, Colin rose, washed his face, lit the storm lantern, and sat behind a solid wooden table. Using the Prompt, he began organizing and collating the explanation of the “great and small miracles” in his mind, along with some other knowledge.

By the light of the lantern, Colin’s face was solemn and focused. His eyes held nothing but the endlessly wavering flame.

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He was becoming less and less willing to let his mind stop.

Even though Colin felt genuinely exhausted, as though he had not rested nearly enough, and desperately wanted to sleep comfortably for another entire day...

He did not dare stop thinking.

In a world like this, as he gradually touched the deepest “information” of the world through the Prompt, the feedback he received became increasingly despairing...

The “countdown” was despairing. “Punishment” was despairing. The “gray mist” was despairing...

Even those so-called “miracles” inspired despair.

In this world, rotten down to its very soil, there was not a single thing that could make anyone feel at ease...

He could barely see a future.

“No. This isn’t the time to think about such things. I only need to focus on the road beneath my feet...”

Colin collected his scattered thoughts, took several deep breaths, and resumed sorting through what had happened the previous day.

He had to make certain that spreading this knowledge would not provoke a terrifying reaction, draw the system’s “gaze,” or trigger “punishment”...

After a long while, he had almost finished organizing the information. He then sent it to someone in a Level Two Territory, instructing them to spread it to the World Channel as soon as dawn arrived.

To ensure that no problems arose, the person posting the information would also have to be prepared to die and publish it alone from another Level Two Territory.

That was because once the “gaze” appeared, it would cover an entire small region. Everyone had previously acted alone, so no one had known this.

Now that Russell had revealed the truth, they had to make proper preparations in this regard. Otherwise, one mistake could kill an entire group of people.

“If the Punishment system causes trouble again, then the next people it kills should be those who once tried to send information, failed, and yet escaped by sheer luck because they lacked sufficient inspiration to meet the conditions for ‘Hunting,’ right?”

Colin remembered that even now, Punishment had not let the previous generation of survivors off the hook. Anyone who had once fallen beneath its “gaze” might one day meet their death...

And that “one day” would not be too far away.

That was why Rogge said he had already lost everything. It was merely a question of which day he would die.

“Come to think of it, although the previous generation of survivors obtained a vast quantity of supplies, quite a few of them were practically nothing more than bullets without ammunition...”

Colin recalled some of what Rogge had said. In their generation, they had possessed vast quantities of firearms and artillery, including large-caliber howitzers. Combined with Level Four tanks that could be called mobile fortresses of war, they had been nearly invincible...

But the result was that they had become heavily dependent on the system. In their thirtieth-odd day, the system malfunctioned, a “special disaster” erupted, and their ammunition was rapidly depleted...

Then the system stopped issuing ammunition. In an instant, those powerful weapons became useless, reduced to piles of “scrap metal.”

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The weapons did not truly belong to them, and without the relevant technological knowledge, they could not even produce the simplest “black powder”...

Then, for reasons no one could explain, internal divisions arose. In the end, many of the survivors chose to flee...

They fled with everything they had.

Three days before the countdown ended, Rogge and a group of more than a dozen survivors from the previous generation, each accompanied by their own servants, escaped to this place and set foot upon this unknown land. But the result was...

They still failed to escape.

Once the three-day countdown ended, their systems became completely unusable, and they lost all contact with the outside world.

In the end, the civilization known as Gondor disintegrated and collapsed in the truest sense, reduced to a name without substance.

Colin could not help wondering: if they had worked from the beginning to study this world, rebuild their own technology, and develop a civilization centered on plasma...

Would everything have turned out differently?

At the very least, even if they had collapsed to their current state, they would not have been left without the slightest means of resistance.

But obviously, unless history began again and developed along another path, this was a question that could never truly be answered. Too many unknown factors made any meaningful evaluation impossible.

So Colin did not dwell on it.

Yet he realized that every abnormal action of the system resembled a cruel, inhuman game—one filled with traps that could only be recognized after it was too late for regret.

“Firearms and artillery were the greatest trump card the system gave them, and in the end they proved to be nothing more than bullets without ammunition. Then... what will be our greatest trump card?”

As he thought, Colin was forced to confront a question whose answer he had known from the very beginning, and which he had never been able to avoid.

He knew what the answer was, and it filled him with despair and oppression...

Because the answer lay within him—

“The Prompt.”

The greatest variable in the human civilization of their generation.

As he faced this perplexity head-on, an invisible oppression instantly enveloped him, bringing with it a pressure too difficult to put into words.

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