Simulation

For 10 seconds, the rowdy and unrestrained atmosphere in the prison became quiet.

As if everybody was witnessing the news about the loss of a loved one for the first time, they heard not even a gulp in the whole wide prison. Then.

W-WOO... W-WOO.

The alarms went crazy.

WOAH!!!

YES!!!

DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!

PARLAY!!! PARLAY!!! PARLAY!!!

[ AN: Parlay means Doomsday in Sanskrit - the ancient language of the whole globe (by some opinions). ]

The fervour travelled like tsunami. Even the quiet juveniles, who never speak aloud normally, rejoiced with loud cheers at the supposed end of the world.

Vermont also carried a surprised look as his prediction came true, but his emotions went away as quickly as they came.

He wasn't the same as others. He was a bona fide space pirate that had traversed the whole Milky Way Galaxy and then some.

Gou was calm, but only because he was frozen in his place. Being the only guard amongst hundreds of blood-thirsty juvenile criminals, his face paled and his body shook in fear.

'Was I caught by a Psychic Ravett?'

Vermont didn't care about Gou's nightmare. He focused his mental bandwidth on the one that he was having.

'There are only two possibilities: I'm caught in a Mind Control or I have somehow broken the time-space barrier and travelled to the past.'

Vermont doubted himself and shook his head when he thought of the second possibility.

Even with the technological advancement of warping space, creating wormholes, establishing connections with Alien races, and creating a Cosmic Federation that expanded beyond the tiny Milky Way Galaxy. Humanity's exploration of the "Study Of Time" had been stagnant for centuries.

Not to mention, Vermont was stuck in a rabbit hole in a barren planet before he awoke as a 15-year-old in the year 3022.

'It must be possible to break the Mind Control.'

He analyzed the first theory of being in a Ravett's Mind Control. He considered the theory of time-reversal as absurdity for now.

'Is this a death loop or an evolutionary graph?'

Ravett's abilities weren't without loopholes and weaknesses. He just has to find them. Vermont worked his brain and focused on remembering everything he knew about Mind Control from his previous life.

'First, I need to understand how death works in this simulation,' he thought.

'... will I die if I die in the Simulation, wake up again at the start (loop), or won't die at all?'

To check his theory, he would not kill himself. Dying was scary, irrespective of whether it was a dream, a simulation, a game, or real life. He was only trying to perfect his understanding of his situation.

He preferred waiting it out over taking immediate actions. This one trait differentiated him from the rest of the space pirates, who only believed in the present and not in the future.

For space pirates, planning was unnecessary for two reasons: one, because they weren't as smart and couldn't see the bigger picture as Vermont, and two, because they only lived from hunt to hunt.

The other reason Vermont wasn't panicking was because Mind Control wasn't a novel experience for him. In the future, it was not only Ravett(s) but also certain artifacts, evolutionary visions, and many other things could induce similar simulation or visions.

His neurons fired at lightning speed as his mind became blank and different scenarios appeared in his mind.

He was great at Mind Control himself. Even if he wasn't a Psychic Ravett, his brain was an enigma amongst the superhumans. He was born with a unique condition that made his brain this way, the source of which Vermont never figured out in his past life as he was living a rogue's life.

'AAGH!' pain rose from his temples and travelled towards his frontal lobe. He grabbed his head in automatic response.

DRIP... A pearl of burgundy blood flowed out of his left eye and travelled through his cheeks, making an arc. It shocked him. Humanity had not only made a lot of technological shifts, but had also gone through many genetic changes in the past millennium. Burgundy blood was just one of them.

'How is this possible?'

Vermont's surprise was not because of the colour, but because he bled at all. He had never seen blood from overworking his brain before. It was an unfamiliar experience.

Even without the effects of the low-level Enhancers he had consumed, he had never received a blood backlash. So how could he have a backlash now, even after taking the Enhancer Serum developed by the Acremia Federation?

He had gone to great lengths to steal that one bottle of Enhancer Serum. It took him a year's worth of planning and a half-a-decade's worth of resources to execute the plan.

Despite having taken the Enhancers (albeit only a low-level one), his brain couldn't process simple probability calculations? The shock he felt was greater than him finding out that his father had siphoned all the money he was saving for his brother's operations.

He felt a discrepancy between his 'thought' and the 'execution', and he couldn't pinpoint why this was happening. Maybe it was because his 15-year-old brain was trying to execute optimized instruction of his 'enhanced brain' from the future, he could only guess.

'Does that mean my current body is without Enhancer's effect?'

'That's Impossible-!!!"'

Although him not taking Enhancer was true for his 15-year-old current self, it was only a Mind Control. His actual body was still lying somewhere on the orphan planet. Mind control like this could show any vision, even making someone believe that they are someone else if done correctly. But, personal traits and capabilities were difficult to change.

Even for the Acremia Federation's top Psychic Ravett, limiting Vermont's brain functions by solely relying on the Mind Control should not be possible. His brain was not a low-level entity, it was an enhanced brain.

'Acremia Federation; these baboons don't have that kind of manpower, anyway.'

'... was I caught by a third party then?'

Born with high-capacity neurons despite having normal human genes, Vermont's control of his mental state was exceptional. He never found out why his brain was equivalent to those with C-tier or higher bloodlines in the past, but he never complained. However, that also meant that whoever was controlling his mind right now had a stronger mind.

"I remember camping in the cave of woeful screams before-"

Just moments ago, he was celebrating having completed a successful raid on the barren planet. Drunk from the high of a successful raid, he slept in the cave where he had found an artifact that looked like a golden figurine.

It wasn't uncommon to discover Ruins of an ancient civilization on barren planets and Vermont had thought that he had struck gold when he landed on the planet. Some space pirates lived for the thrill of exploring undiscovered ruins after all.

"Wait-! That Artifact! Is that the reason-"

SHAKE... BLAST... RUMBLE!!

[ EMERGENCY!! ]

BUZZ... BUZZ...

[ EMERGENCY!! ]

[ ALL THE PRISONERS ARE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW OFFICERS TOWARDS THE SAFE LOCATION ]

With speakers going crazy with sirens and alarms, all the gates of the prison cells opened as per the emergency protocol.

Gou had not had time to react. Especially now, when he heard the announcement, his pants were soiled by an onset of flood.

For Vermont, who had forced his brain to run twice as fast as his ordinary 15-year-old self, things still happened slowly. He easily saw through the chaos and Gou's grief seized face.

He didn't care about the plane crash, as it would not affect his prison cell. Even the entire half of Block A, where Vermont's cell was situated, was unaffected by the debris falling from the sky.

He only cared about breaking the simulation. He couldn't wait to test one theory he had come up on the spots regarding the simulation.

'Can I alter the key events of the simulation?'

Using the dexterous body that 15-year-old Vermont had trained in the prison gymnasium for four months, he jumped at Gou in a swift motion.

Luckily for him, his body didn't have any problems following his mind's instructions, unlike his brain. He slid himself behind Gou and got hold of his neck and right hand, holding the baton.

'So it is only my brain functions that have been affected?'

Grabbing him was much easier that Vermont thought. He could still assess his physical capabilities while wrangling a prison guard 7 years older than him.

Hitting Gou's dominant hand with his raised knee to make him release the baton, he followed his high-speed action with a chock hold and pushed Gou down with his body weight.

"AAGH! What!! Hey What is the meaning-"

Gou felt pain rise to his brain, and he was out of his stupor. To wake a person up, there was nothing better than a nature's built-in alarm called Pain.

"Uhmm-!!"

But it was already too late.

Vermont pulled a pillow from the lower bunk bed on his side and suffocated Gou without letting him move a single inch. The jiujutsu-like hold Vermont had on Gou's body felt like he was under 30 times the gravity.

-FAINT!