Chapter 264: The Body

"Living dead?"

Joker said softly, "If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it can be considered a duck."

"By the same logic, if the survivor's way of thinking is mine, their behavioral logic is mine, and their dominant personality is mine, then they are me."

Eugene sneered, "Replacing another person's body, brain, and player ID—what's the difference between that and self-deception?"

"The renewal cycle for human red blood cells is 120 days. For stem cells, it's two months. For epidermal cells, two to four weeks. Other cells range from as long as six or seven years to as short as one year."

Joker shrugged. "Within seven years at most, your entire self, inside and out, will be renewed. Would you consider your past self a stranger?"

"No, but you failed to mention that brain cells cannot regenerate."

Eugene gritted his teeth. "As long as the neural structure of the brain remains unchanged, what you call possession, rebirth, or consciousness transmission is nothing more than forcing the possessed person's brain to watch a movie themed around your life."

"Exactly, which brings me to this item I've brought out."

Joker chuckled lightly, nudging with his toe the red, USB-drive-shaped object he had previously thrown on the ground. "It's a Relic bio-chip from the 'Cyberpunk' worldview; its effect is to rewrite the brain's neural structure over several months, achieving the effect of body usurpation."

"Combined with my skill, it enables perfect body usurpation."

Although the Sea of Consciousness requires no breathing, Eugene felt an intense sensation of suffocation; this madman before him wove schemes within schemes, layer upon layer, and likely had envisioned this very scene ever since he first entered the script mission and orchestrated the terrorist attack.

Eugene spoke with difficulty, "Before this, exactly how many bodies have you swapped into?"

"Just ten, or perhaps nine."

Joker shrugged. "Due to the special nature of the body-usurpation skill, every time I switch bodies, I lose all skills bound to my player ID,"

"however, unbound equipment and items can be fully inherited—as long as I remove everything from my inventory before dying and wait for the next body to pick them up."

"Additionally, thanks to the ID Name Change Card from the Killing Grounds Mall and those plastic surgery and aesthetic clinics on Slum Street, I can completely change my appearance and become myself again after each usurpation; it's very convenient."

Joker was frank and sincere, hiding nothing. If he won this gamble, everything belonging to Eugene, including that epic-quality golden arrow, would be his. If he lost, then with death comes nothingness, so there was no need to hide anything.

"Now, let us begin."

With that, Joker snapped his fingers.

The surrounding light dimmed, and the figures of the two gradually expanded, swelling to a height of twenty or thirty meters, standing like giants upon the earth.

"No matter how many times I repeat it, this illusion of a Dharma Form spanning heaven and earth still satisfies me."

Joker rolled up his sleeves, picked up a cargo truck from the ground as if it were a brick, weighed it in his hand, and stepped forward with a smile.

With nowhere left to retreat, Eugene pressed his lips tightly together and raised his fists in a boxing stance.

The vast stretch of time within the Sea of Consciousness amounted to only a few brief seconds in the real world.

From Kurosaki Ichigo's perspective, the charging Frankenstein was instantly killed by God-Blade Shadowless, while Eugene, having completed the kill, stood frozen in place, dazed.

Kurosaki Ichigo hesitated, then patted Eugene on the shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Eugene" looked at Frankenstein's corpse on the ground and shook his head. "I just didn't expect this person to die so easily."

"Never mind that; we need to go."

The driver urged them on, as the crowds of protesters at the scene were all looking in their direction.

Even if the Stormtroopers knew they were actually secret agents of the City Hall, they would have to steel themselves and arrest them in front of the television cameras.

"Wait a moment."

Eugene waved his hand, collecting the pile of equipment and items Frankenstein had scattered on the ground, then jumped back into the vehicle. "Don't go to City Hall; it's meaningless."

The driver frowned and asked, "Then where to?"

Eugene leaned forward, tapped a few times on the central control screen to open the map, and said, "Gather all forces and search for other players."

————

Frankenstein was dead too.

In the empty, abandoned unfinished building, Li Cheng and Gray Rain looked at each other upon hearing the system notification.

Earlier, Li Cheng had used the hacking program on the tablet left behind by Batmos to infiltrate Toy City's shared network and broadcast the nuclear power plant video,

but since Toy City was not lacking in computer experts, fearing that using that tablet again would lead to reverse tracking, Li Cheng and Gray Rain were now using temporary mobile phones shaped like toys bought off the street.

Through the live television broadcast of the parade on their phones, they witnessed the scene of Frankenstein attacking Eugene.

"First, Joker inexplicably died, and then Frankenstein, overestimating his own strength, tried to forcibly kill Eugene under City Hall's protection, only to be killed in return; two players dead in succession."

Li Cheng rubbed his chin. "What's going on here? I don't understand."

"Could it be memetic infection?"

Gray Rain also scratched her head, saying thoughtfully, "It's like when I play games; in a match of ten people, if just one person plays outrageously badly, there's a certain probability that the other nine will also regress to that same level."

"So stupidity is contagious, is it?"

Li Cheng's eye twitched; when Gray Rain first arrived in the real world, she was immediately captivated by the myriad forms of entertainment, wishing she had forty-eight extra hours a day to immerse herself in online games.

Her addiction to video games was so great that she split herself into five parts, with each clone playing a different type of game.

However, the more she split her clones, the more her intelligence averaged out.

Single-player games were manageable, resulting at worst in getting stuck on a level, but multiplayer games were disastrous; she often dragged her teammates down to the point of despair, leading them to yell into their mics, "Are you even human?"

At first, Gray Rain was somewhat worried, fearing her true identity would be exposed, that she would type in public chat, "Just wait, I'll get my cousin to crush you," and then merge her clones in an attempt to raise her intelligence,

but later she grew accustomed to it, even able to retort with confidence: "I only have four teammates, but there are five opponents; isn't it normal that we can't win?"

Separated by a screen and wearing Information Integration Glasses, Li Cheng also couldn't make sense of what schemes Frankenstein and Eugene were up to; after thinking for a moment, he took out a sheet of paper from the Death Note from his inventory and glanced at his future methods of death again.

"We've been discovered."

His tone turned solemn; in the new prophetic drawing, several new ways for him to die had appeared, all involving being beaten to death by City Hall thugs.

And judging by the time displayed on his wristwatch, the latest it would happen was within thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, there was still one hour remaining until the gold bomb explosion event mentioned by Yagami Light.

Buzz—buzz—

The sounds of several G81 Griffin gunships faintly approached from the distance; it seemed City Hall had made up its mind to ignore the turbulent public opinion and concentrate its forces to kill off the last two outsiders still wandering outside.

"What do we do now?"

Gray Rain's voice was tense yet excited; those several Divine Eagle gunboats were patrolling in parallel above the various city districts like a fishing net casting for fish, clearly not having locked onto the two of them yet, but it was only a matter of time.

"Find someone to help."

"Who?"

"Him."

Li Cheng picked up a sheet of drawing paper; besides depicting himself and Gray Rain being killed, the scene also included a third corpse—Gouchen.

The location depicted on the drawing was a subway platform.

(End of Chapter)