Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 9: Esculent Alethia [Complete]

1067: Mosaic Title

Bohemia held her breath, sitting still in her chair, not daring to move a muscle.

The footsteps were slow and soft, with two to three seconds of silence between each step. In the deserted building after work hours, these almost inaudible footsteps were amplified by the long corridor, echoing through the vast walls, creating ripples in the silence.

It seemed like after reaching the final step, the footsteps came to a halt.

If one were to stand at the stairwell and look down the corridor, one would see a straight hallway and the office doors along it.

Bohemia glanced out of the window. In this season, the sun was setting quickly. The once blue-violet and orange-red horizon had gradually lost its strength, casting a layer of twilight. The desk lamp, alone on the table, cast a bright orange light on the surface.

The stack of documents she had pulled out had now turned into a mosaic. Even though no one could see the Descartes Spirit, who was not a player, it, like Bohemia, held its breath and remained still. Both of them waited for quite a while, but no more sounds came from the corridor, as if the person, upon seeing the light, hadn't taken another step forward.

Bohemia squinted at the mosaic and nodded towards the door.

"Do you want me to go and check? But there's no door," the Descartes Spirit refused, "Don't you watch horror movies? Characters who actively follow the sound to see what's happening rarely make it back alive."

Who could kill it in a Pocket Dimension!

Even outside the game, Bohemia could, at best, restrain it, but she couldn't have any substantial impact on its existence. She used Higher Consciousness to knock on it a few times, like a game of whack-a-mole, and the Descartes Spirit finally gave in reluctantly and crawled out from under the door. Since entering the game, Higher Consciousness had become almost useless and could only be used to deal with the Descartes Spirit.

"No one's outside," it said, with half of its body still inside the room, as if ready to retreat at any moment, "Strange, what's going on with that person... they came upstairs and then turned back?"

The entire corridor was now illuminated only beneath her office door.

That person must have seen the light under the door and realized that there was someone inside, so they turned and silently went back. Bohemia breathed a sigh of relief and slowly approached the window, looking outside through the cracks between the pages.

She stared for several minutes until the Descartes Spirit finally couldn't hold back and floated up. "What are you looking at?"

"No one," Bohemia whispered. "I've been watching the direction of the main entrance downstairs. If someone were leaving, I would see it from here. But no one has left... which means that person is still inside the building."

What to do now?

She didn't want to spend the night in this building with that person hiding in the shadows. But if she wanted to leave, she would inevitably pass the corner, go down the stairs, and walk through the darkness where her line of sight couldn't reach. If she were attacked, would she fail to achieve her third-stage survival goal, and would she really die?

"I do have a solution," the Descartes Spirit said.

She stared outside for a while, lost in thought, and the Descartes Spirit finally spoke.

"What?"

"As you said, I also believe that the person is still inside the building. It's unlikely they climbed out the window on the other side. That person must have come for you or your office, right?"