Chapter 255: The Play is About to Begin

, The Genie Who Started from Marvel

In the cell, Johnson, thinking of the future, watched the sun rise and set outside the window. The time cycle of this level was very similar to Earth's—a little over twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes. He didn't know where the sun went after it set every day, or where it rose from the next morning.

"Eh..." Johnson had just turned his head back when suddenly, the spirituality in his body vibrated, as if turning away like that would make him miss something important.

Following the intuition of his spirituality, Johnson widened his eyes. At the position where the sunlight was fading, he could vaguely see a human figure, and something resembling a balloon floating beside the other party.

After the sun had completely set, Johnson tried hard to look in that direction again, but he discovered nothing.

"The figure I just saw is an enemy..."

Johnson slightly curled his five fingers together and silently began to perform divination. The cell only restricted some relatively conventional powers; things like divination, which involved causality, had no restrictions—or perhaps it was impossible to restrict them, after all, this place was originally just a military base built by the Foundation.

The spirituality in his body gave a positive response. In an instant, Johnson's eyes lit up. Hope had arrived; there was a play to be performed!

Actually, whether it was an enemy or a friendly force didn't matter; what mattered was that it wasn't an irrelevant entity. Having been locked in this broken prison for so long, the enemies of the past had long since ceased to appear. Now that they could appear before him, it meant something had triggered them, allowing this line of hatred, already covered by time, to surface from underwater once again.

Clearly, the one who touched the line of hatred was certainly not Johnson. If being in prison could attract enemies, they wouldn't have just appeared now. So, it must be that something had happened elsewhere, causing that person to cast their gaze toward this level.

Digging out memories that had been unused for too long, Johnson compared them with the appearance of all the entities he had ever seen, looking for a similar one.

"The figure I just saw is a Partygoer..."

His spirituality gave a positive answer again.

"Frank has already arrived in this world..."

The feedback speed of his spirituality was much slower this time, but in the end, it still gave a positive response.

"My brother, you finally came!" Johnson couldn't help but feel overwhelmed.

After forcing himself to calm down a little, Johnson cast his gaze outside the cell. The play was about to begin; he, the Puppet Master, should take the stage and perform!

At the same time, Frank, who had returned to the Wanderers' Destiny Community base, also felt a force from the netherworld.

Someone is divining me?

Frank's first reaction was a bit of astonishment, followed by a burst of ecstasy.

Divination and such things, placed in this world, definitely couldn't be separated from Johnson.

Moreover, being able to emit the power of divination also proved that Johnson's current state wouldn't be too bad.

What special thing have I done recently... Why did he suddenly start divining my existence?

Frank thought, then naturally cast his gaze toward the documents sent over by the Partypoopers, which included information on some containment objects and exploration information for the Level 2137 level.

It seems that place must be visited once!

Frank thought in his heart, but before going, he still had to arrange his current work.

The next batch of aid and exploration teams from Earth Civilization would arrive soon. Leaving rashly now would easily release some bad signals to the current cooperation.

Moreover, Frank still had to bring some teammates. The dangers in the Backrooms were obvious; acting alone was not a good idea.

A few days later, in anxious waiting, Frank finally welcomed the new batch of exploration teams, as well as the leader of this batch.

"Long time no see. I really didn't expect it to be you coming. Are those vampires not being dealt with anymore?"

Frank gave Blade a big hug and said.

"Those bats have all hidden again. I don't have the heart to play hide-and-seek with them, and besides, favors owed must always be repaid..."

Blade said, glancing at the Sanctum Sorcerer Mordo, who was organizing the team nearby.

During this period, in order to find the vampire gathering places that were hiding deeper and deeper, Blade had mobilized quite a bit of the power of the Masters of the Mystic Arts.

Sometimes, in order not to let one escape, he even had to bring along a few sorcerers to specifically establish a Mirror Dimension.

After all, the vampires now, the moment they saw Blade, would ignore everything and turn to run, and the directions they ran in were very scattered.

Vampires like the ones in the past, who would come up to fight to the death with the ideology of noble vampire blood, had long since been killed off by Blade.

This could also be considered a kind of alternative artificial intervention in population selection.

"Alright, then did you bring any mission?" Frank continued to ask.

"No specific mission. Mainly responsible for opening up space for discoveries for the partners here, striving for development time, and incidentally exploring and mapping deeper areas."

Blade had quite a lot to say when meeting an old friend. His relationship with Frank could be traced back to when Tony Stark wasn't Iron Man yet.

"That's good. It just so happens I need your help. Magic and such things still have too much of an advantage in portability."

While Frank was speaking, Mordo, who had finished organizing the team, came over.

"Before this, we should do some handover work. Can you tell me to what extent the Pleasure War has progressed now? What is the attitude of the Partygoers and Partypoopers toward us now?"

Mordo spoke quite seriously. After all, this action was related to whether he could counterattack the King and regain the competition right for the position of the new generation Supreme Sorcerer.

In aspects like development and farming, Wong had quite a few advantages. That kind of advantage seemed to be a power carved into his genes, accelerating the learning speed, which Mordo hadn't been able to catch up with.

However, in terms of combat, Mordo could pat his chest and say, the advantage is with me. This was also his opportunity to overtake on a bend.

"The progress of the Pleasure War and various data have already been organized by me and placed in the office. You can ask Zishu directly about specific related matters."

"During this period, he has basically been responsible for it. I am just a humanoid signature pen and stamping machine."

Everything Frank said was the absolute truth. Letting him manage himself or a small team was fine, but managing an exploration team was a bit too much.

Moreover, this exploration team also had to handle various relationships with the forces here, which completely exceeded his ability range.

If it weren't for the fact that the Masters of the Mystic Arts needed someone with enough power and weight to sit in charge, Frank would have run away long ago.

"If that's the case, I will write it into the report." Mordo asked confirmingly.

"No problem, write it however it should be written. I have no opinion." Frank waved his hand and said.

Mordo nodded and turned to find Zishu. Blade frowned, "I don't like him. Let him write the report, and your role in it won't look very good."

"I don't care. Let's go, let's go back and study how to head to the Level 2137 level."

Frank pulled Blade and walked toward the office. He had been studying this for quite a while.

At this time in the Pleasure Level, inside the Partygoers' assimilation base, the entities of the Backrooms were slowly being turned into their clansmen by the power of the Partygoers here.

As a civilization that had been mingling in the interstellar space for a long time, the Partygoers had long ago abandoned the ability to reproduce through ordinary methods like pregnancy.

That way was both unstable and cumbersome, and the requirements for various basic conditions were not low.

The clans that participated in reproduction also had to have a certain number, otherwise, it was easy to have problems due to inbreeding. Assimilation wouldn't have such difficulties.

As long as there was one Partygoer, and at the same time there were other life forms, the clan could multiply rapidly, and the new Partygoers produced didn't need to go through a long developmental period; the moment they were "born," they were in the mature stage.

Everyone was equal the moment they were "born," having the same ideology and the same abilities.

"How is the cleanup of Level 2137? Does a figure like that old man from over two hundred years ago exist? =)"

The Partygoers were holding an internal meeting, and their meeting mode was very interesting.

Because everyone's thinking was about the same, when holding a meeting, anyone could raise questions, and anyone could speak. Anyway, as long as a question was thrown out, it necessarily represented the thoughts of a large group.

"Currently, none of the three waves of party invitations have received any reply. The compatriots who entered the military base have never come out of it again. =)"

"Then, activate the destruction procedure, bury that place completely in advance to prevent any accidents =)"

"Agreed =)"

More than half of the Partygoers in the meeting raised their hands to pass it, and the agenda was set just like that. It was just that convenient and fast.

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The Partygoers who didn't agree were basically individuals who had lived for a very long time and had all experienced the incident where Lao Die took on all of them alone.

However, their stance wasn't considered important. Once the ideology and changes stabilized, the minority part would be self-identified by the Partygoers as heretics and needed to be gradually excluded.

Otherwise, conflicting consciousness would seriously affect the initial consciousness of newborns.

Therefore, the Partygoer species had no middle ground, only extremes.

Either no change occurred, or after a change occurred, the side with fewer people would forever face the fate of having no fresh blood added and would definitely be excluded.

After the few Partygoers who didn't vote in favor looked at each other, they left the meeting room. They were preparing to throw a party.

In the eyes of humans, this might be relatively strange; clearly, they had failed in every sense, yet they still had to throw a party to celebrate.

But this was the characteristic of Partygoers. Knowing that their civilization was heading toward a wrong path and running wildly toward a cliff, then what else was there to think about? Hurry up and seize the last time to be happy.

Level 2137, when the Partygoers were setting up various special equipment near the military base, the containment objects in the base were quietly watching the actions of the Partygoers outside through a one-way mirror.

Crunch, crunch, the Jackalope was eating as usual, only this time it was gnawing on the body residue of a Partygoer.

New flavor, crunchy, it's a pity it's not chicken flavor.

Besides, it wasn't that the containment objects present all had very good tempers and didn't take the initiative to go out and kill the Partygoers outside, but because the entire military base was a large prison.

The small prison held "prisoners," while the large prison also locked up the "prison guards" together.

Otherwise, after so many years, the number of times containment objects appeared in other levels of the Backrooms wouldn't be so few.

They wanted to get out, but they simply couldn't. Johnson was also trapped inside here after going deep in to look for a mermaid.

If he had discovered something was wrong earlier, Johnson wouldn't have ended up in such a state.

Before coming in, Johnson had actually tried divination, but there were a large number of demigods among the objects of divination, which seriously interfered with his divination results.

The Jackalope and the Indestructible Lizard directly ate the divination power on the spot, while the Old Man drilled into his own pocket dimension and directly shielded the power of divination.

Finally, Johnson divined that the containment object Mermaid existed in the military base, and the danger level of the Mermaid was within an acceptable range.

This wasn't being stupid; he wasn't afraid that the divination wouldn't be successful, he was afraid that the divination would be partially successful.

The Peanut was bouncing around in the base, leaving some fragments of its own body in many places.

The Indestructible Lizard glanced at the Peanut, snorted at the transparent silk threads extending from the Peanut's head, and turned its head to the other side.

The Indestructible Lizard knew that Johnson was behind the Peanut, and could also guess that the abnormal actions of the Peanut now were Johnson plotting something, but it didn't care.

Whatever he was plotting wouldn't be plotted against it, and besides, if it really succeeded, this huge prison might be broken open, and then it would be free.

Johnson also understood that there were many containment objects in this base that could perceive spiritual threads, but he also knew the thoughts of those containment objects.

Perhaps this was a kind of tacit understanding.

Johnson's target this time was a containment object that just happened to be at the demigod level, the Plague Doctor.

A bird-beaked doctor who hated the plague extremely, would kill any life form infected with the plague, and would show a strong sense of guilt after killing.

Subsequently, the Plague Doctor would try to heal the life form that had already died, using the tools he carried with him to perform surgery on the corpse.

After the surgery was completed, these corpses would always "come back to life," gain the ability to move, and become walking corpses controlled by the Plague Doctor.

In the SCP Foundation's records, the Plague Doctor belonged to a containment object that was relatively friendly to humans and could be communicated with normally most of the time.

However, the humans willing to communicate with him no longer existed now; what were running around outside were all containment objects.

Although the Plague Doctor had a super strong instant-death judgment upon touch—that was a special ability that even the Indestructible Lizard was unwilling to test—he had a big problem: he couldn't kill a life form that had already died.

Of course, the biggest problem here was how to make the Plague Doctor judge a life form to be already dead, to be a dead life form.

Both elements of "dead" and "life form" were subjectively determined by the Plague Doctor.

Therefore, relying solely on the Peanut wouldn't be able to kill the Plague Doctor.

However, actually, after being controlled by Johnson, the Peanut's ability to not be observed by the naked eye, which allowed it to instantly move behind the target and complete an instant kill by twisting the cervical spine, was wasted.

Because the Peanut was now forever being observed by one person, and that was Johnson himself, unless Johnson disconnected the spiritual thread used for control.

Therefore, if they really fought, the Peanut under control really wasn't the Plague Doctor's opponent. ===== CHAPTER 256 =====