Chapter 74 STUPID ME!!!
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In a desolate wasteland, the aftermath of a grueling battle between dozens of players was evident all around. The ground was littered with shattered debris, and the air was thick with the acrid smell of weapons being shot, mingling with the metallic tang of blood from the small puddles of fresh blood.
Amidst all this chaos, an adamant young girl stood alone. Her body was adorned with magnificent energy wings that shimmered in a kaleidoscope of pink and black hues, poising defiantly, ready to strike within the blink of an eye.
Her wings, sharp and angular, reflected the light in a mesmerizing dance of shadows and colors, casting an otherworldly glow upon the desolate landscape that pulsated with a vibrant malevolence and tenderness.
Her empty yet, at the same time, vivid gaze bore into Daniel's soul, rendering him paralyzed with dread and tension. It was as if she could see his essence, sifting through his thoughts and emotions.
Daniel tried to see any feature in this enigmatic girl but her face was unreadable, devoid of any discernible characteristic, sans of any life or purpose.... Almost as if she didn't exist, Daniel couldn't help but wonder what series of events led to this outcome.
The girl stood in front of 10 enemies, but instead of the girl being the one facing problems, 9 of the enemies exhaustedly trembled and breathed heavily under their shadows with their weapons hanging limply at their sides. It was clear that they had been fighting for a while, but amidst the enemies, there was this guy with long hair and peerless beauty carrying a sword that seemed to emit a blue aura, proudly smiling as if he was enjoying the show.
Everyone could discern that he was in no hurry to jump into the fray, as he seemed to be enjoying the moment and finding fun in the face of imminent danger, a stark contrast to the fear and uncertainty that gripped his allies.
The second he gathered enough courage to take a step forward for a closer look, his mouth was suddenly filled with the soft taste of cotton candy. It was so sudden that he couldn't help but jump back in surprise. He looked around frantically, trying to figure out what had just happened, but he only saw a pink-haired girl placing her hair in his mouth and a female robot near him; above the girl, there was a bunch of random plushies scattered everywhere with the black cat carrying the number 13 with them.
The pink-haired girl quickly sensed his confusion and jumped out of her slumber, greeting him with a chirpy voice, "Hello there!" She inspected Daniel with slight worry, "Are you okay? You seemed like you just had a nightmare!"
'Was everything... just my brain and hippocampus...?' Daniel moved his hands and even pinched his cheek to confirm his hypothesis. After confirming that he wasn't dreaming anymore and still reeling from the swirling confusion of his unsettling dream, he murmured barely above a whisper, "Yes, just a nightmare..."
Yet this mysteriously simple answer piqued even more Dante's interest, but to tell the truth, just like Zeus, her attention was easily directed at anything that moved in her surroundings or whatever caught her fancy, "Of what?" she asked.
Daniel, still grappling with the remnants of his dream and not wanting to deal with her right now because of the grogginess, replied with his usual sharp, irritated tone, "Of you, breaking into my dreams, and making a total mess now shut and go back to sleep."
Dante fervently roared, "YESSIR..." her voice slightly trailed off as Dante's demeanor shifted, her childish facade melting away to reveal a more severe expression. "No, but seriously... You don't seem fine."
Reluctantly, Daniel relented; he didn't want to unnecessarily escalate the situation any further; he assured his friend, "Nothing to worry about, just side effects..."
With a dubious look for such an answer, Dante replied, "I'll believe you for now but if you have too much stress you should go and steam out, if the cause of your stress is me then ask for Su Yuan and Thalassa that they care of me for a few days."
Daniel, not saving anything, replied, "Actually, it would help a lot, but it's not that," Daniel insisted, with his tone firm, "Just some nightmares I had been having."
Dante, feeling the sensation of already living in this situation, exclaimed, "Hadn't we talked about this???
Daniel nodded wearily, feeling the weight of his weariness settling all over him, "Something like that... Now, please, just let me take a long rest... I just slept 30 minutes in the last 48 hours." He relaxed, resting on the quickly made-up bed with the pile of soft plushies, and closed his eyes to go back to sleep.
With a resigned sigh, Dante reverted to her usual bubbly self in real time, her voice filled once more with childlike enthusiasm, "Okay! Also, we just learned that Thalassa can change how the exterior of her body feels! Right now, it feels like these plushies."
With her metallic voice cutting through the chatter, Thalassa interjected without turning on the LEDs on her face nor moving, "I do believe you should let us sleep because we are actually tired."
Dante signaled with his hands and a nod of his head, "Okay!" then a realization struck her, "Wait, you are a robot. How can you get tired-
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*The next morning*
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Su Yuan calmly made her way up to the restaurant where Dante told him via the chat that Thalassa and Daniel were waiting for her, but the second she entered, instead of seeing a table for 4 and 3 players enjoying a meal, her view was filled with a bizarre situation, instantly she exclaimed worry, "DANIEL! THALASSA! Are you- Are you okay?"
Daniel stood motionless on the floor like a dead body, his gaze fixed emptily on the ceiling. The heavy toll of exhaustion that his body carried was evident in every line of his face and the dark circles underlining his eyes.
This scene slightly baffled Su Yuan, but this was because the moth was oblivious to the shenanigans of the previous night; the reason for this being that Thalassa didn't want to tangle her friend in this mess, so whenever Dante mentioned bringing Su Yuan, she just asked Daniel to revert the attention back to something different.
The moth leaned closer to alarmingly ask, "What happened???!!!"
Behind her, a female voice joyfully leaped to life, exclaiming to the moth, "We woke them up a few hours ago to take them outside but they got tired easily, after those events, we sent them to the shadow realm, which is the name we placed on our new and strange 'pocket' dimension that for some reason we have... Wait..." The girl confusedly turned to the sides, trying to search for something, then screamed in worry, "WE FORGOT THE CAT!!!"
As the girl searched in her pocket for the cat, who now only the heavens know for how long had been there, Su Yuan asked the unknown girl, "Who are you...?" To which, in an instant, the girl replied back with cat in hand, "Your pal, Dante-"
Daniel slowly opened his mouth and, exhaustedly, murmured while cleaning himself from all the plushies that stopped him from getting up, "Just ignore her... She isn't in the right state of mind."
Still without her earlier question about 'Why are you so battered?' being answered, Su Yuan worriedly asked again, "But what happened to both of you?"
Daniel, who seemed extremely tired and worn out, didn't bother to elaborate on it. He just mumbled, "If I were to name all the things, I wouldn't have the words," Thalassa interjected to continue his sentence with a robotic tone, "Nor time to express it..." She added a small detail, "After getting sent to this "Shadow Realm" My internal clock broke, I'm still trying to connect it with the time of this place."
Su Yuan turned to Dante, who supposedly was this pink-haired girl, and the girl, already predicting what she was thinking, exclaimed, "Something about our personality, it drastically changed, we are learning how to control it! Which is going eh... maybe in a year we'll be in total control?"
Daniel, seeing how her linguistic idiosyncrasies haven't changed from speaking in 'US', exclaimed, "'We' sounds to package I have total control over me... just like there is no I in a team there is no "WE" in me."
Su Yuan took the situation with a more carefree attitude and chuckled at it. She couldn't help but find the situation a bit amusing. Seeing this reaction, Daniel tiredly said to the moth, who didn't seem to understand the situation, "Could you take care away from my view... for as long as you can."
The girl got up to lean closer to Su Yuan, ready to leave the place, while she cheerily yelled, "YEY! Here is a list of everything I want to do!" The girl magically appeared with a list in her hand and dropped it. It began to unfurl with a dramatic flourish, and it seemed like it wouldn't finish unscrolling in a while because it had already passed beyond the limit of their field of view.
Su Yuan's disbelief lingered in the air as her mind struggled to understand the vibrant, hyperactive girl in front of her, "I still can't believe this person is Dante..."
In a sudden moment of clarity, the hyperactive girl's neurons suddenly connected, and she remembered an important but not urgent matter, "OH! actually I have been saving my rationality for something, when I dream I enter a weird place and have a lot of time to ponder stuff! so don't worry everyone i'll be gone for a day use it to replenish energy's becuase y'all will need it!"
Su Yuan's and everyone else curiosity was piqued by such cryptic words. "And what will you spend your rationality on?" The moth inquired.
"IN THIS!" in an instant, a pastel ticket appeared in Dante's hands, quickly emanating an artificial lover's aura all around the room, not even letting them react; the girl bid her farewells, "Cya!"
But just as he broke the ticket, rationality began invading her, murmuring under her breath, "STUPID ME!" Dante didn't want to use them yet, but his other personality saw it right to use now, "That was reckless... Ugh... I mean, I wanted to go, but not so soon; I was still contemplating it." With a rapid mental sigh, she continued, 'There was something to slowly override her personality permanently but I don't remember the name... Let's see if my alternative version has a better solution.'
As Dante pondered on the solutions to get even more control of his body, an elegantly serene and measured female voice echoed in Dante's ears, "Oh..." She murmured, with a slightly disappointed tone as her initial delight faded away at the realization of the true owner of that body, "Pinkie Pie...? Sadly, it's the wrong shade of pink, so you aren't like me... It's a pity. A second opinion would have come in handy now."
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AUTHORS NOTE (URGENT?):
Why is the chapter so... stupidly late?
I got sick...
Now, normally, that won't be a problem, I just sleep for a few days, take some meds, and finish!
My only worry is now that.
is the fucking 4th time... 4TH TIME!!! IN LESS THAN LIKE 5 MONTHS??
I am starting to take vitamins and nutritional supplements... right now, it is mainly a pill that is a cocktail of vitamin C and magnesium complex.
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This was going to be the actual AUTHORS NOTE of the original:
I love foreshadowing and presenting antagonists EXTREMELY EARLY.
Remember guys! Dante is a big fish in a small pond...
I wonder what would happen if I threw him into the ocean...
ALSO!
Do y'all remember the themes of the tickets to meet alternatives?
Love
Grim
Hedonism
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I'm not kidding when I say that I have been waiting for months to write these scenes.