Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 335 - 254: Rules

Chapter 335: Chapter 254: Rules

Duan Mingyuan felt that having only 25 health points was not Dr. Eisenberg’s only problem. After completing the transformation into the digitalized world, all of the doctor’s problems became even more evident before his eyes.

"High blood pressure, coronary heart disease, diabetes, dental cavities, mouth ulcers, kidney deficiency, and hemorrhoids, your health issues are really too numerous," Duan Mingyuan said, sitting in front of Eisenberg out of professional habit.

This time, he did not intervene; Dr. Eisenberg won the resurrection match on his own merits.

Ten seconds after being killed by a hoe, a white light burst forth from Eisenberg’s corpse, and then he completed the resurrection run, rising from the ground with half health points remaining.

He did not blame He Ya for hitting the back of his head. Instead, he discovered another rule of the Judge.

In the digitalized world, everyone could come back to life.

Everyone was granted unlimited resurrection coins and could possess a wonderful future.

"This has to do with your constant eating of doughnuts and sweet coffee. You should pay more attention to it in the future."

Duan Mingyuan discovered that Eisenberg was a sweet tooth, with a love for sweets surpassing anyone he knew to the extent that his coffee had to be sweetened until not a hint of bitterness remained.

"Sweets help with thinking."

Eisenberg’s complexion seemed a bit unnatural. "There’s no need to specifically mention the latter health-related issues."

Ever since arriving on the Prison Planet, he could not remember how long it had been since his last medical examination, but that was fine too. He would no longer have health managers incessantly nagging in his ear, warning him how such behavior would shorten his lifespan.

Eisenberg never imagined he would live to see his natural end. Upon entry to the Prison Planet, the company had directly canceled all his employee benefits.

He was more concerned with this strange and magical digitalized world. Everything here seemed no different from reality, yet everything was different.

"Is this your ability, or the rules of the digitalized world?" Eisenberg asked.

"Given enough time, anyone can train their proficiency up," Duan Mingyuan replied, but his response was interrupted by the hurried sound of a door being pushed open. The members of the Specter Squad could no longer wait. Just now, they had received both good and bad news.

The good news was that the company’s Destruction Fleet had stopped progressing toward the Prison Planet. They had docked at a transit station on the edge of the Star Zone, giving them a much-needed breather.

The bad news was that they had vanished.

Literally.

The intelligence department could not detect their position. They disappeared into thin air at the same time and then appeared in an unknown location. To those outside the Prison Planet, the planet had disappeared out of thin air.

Headquarters hoped for a report on the situation on the Prison Planet, but the Specters knew nothing of events outside the prison either.

So, they could only pin all their hopes on Sergeant Duan, hoping he would, as always, show them the way forward.

"Plans have changed, put a temporary halt on the rescue operation."

Duan Mingyuan issued new orders to the others. According to Eisenberg, until they fully understood the changes to this planet, no one could leave the digitalized world.

This was the realm of the second dimension, where entering is easy but exiting is hard.

In the case of Morgan VII, the Family Head of the Silver Lotus Family, he also never truly left the digitalized world. Whenever his presence or a speech was required, his butler had to prepare the imaging playback equipment in advance to connect the two worlds.

The opinion of Chamber of Commerce scholars was to build a mechanical body for Morgan VII that could house his consciousness. But due to some reasons the family preferred not to disclose, this research advanced very slowly, meaning that to this day, Morgan VII had to attend important events in the form of an image.

Regardless, to connect the two worlds, there had to be someone in the real world to coordinate with them. However, the situation was now special—the Prison Planet had disappeared, and no one knew where they had gone, not even Eisenberg-Adler.

If the "Cocoon" hypothesis were used to assess their current situation, they were now in a Conscious Space that didn’t exist in any corner of the universe.

What was worse, they had lost contact with the Judge.

After the restart, the artificial intelligence seemed to have developed its own will.

The free will made it unwilling to continue to follow Eisenberg’s commands.

"So you’re saying, without knowing what the AI might turn this planet into, and whether we can even leave this place, you rashly started the program?"

As they summarized, the Specters badly wanted to use the butt of their guns to give Eisenberg a good whack on the forehead.

They really wanted to propose turning Eisenberg into an experience-grinding tool, allowing each of them to level up a hundred times in the laboratory first.

"New technology is always accompanied by risk. Besides, it’s you who brought the company’s Destruction Fleet here, not me. Being stuck here temporarily is still better than dying under their bombardment," Eisenberg retorted sharply.

He had no intention of taking the blame for something that wasn’t his fault.

You see, the company’s swift reaction, including dispatching the Destruction Fleet, was because the Specters had openly declared their presence to the universe in a live broadcast. Using cellular drones, they had killed the Prison Governor, doing more than just publicly announcing their arrival; it was akin to slapping the company in the face.

Moreover, Eisenberg had disdained these pawns of the Chamber of Commerce from the start.

Their masters had broken the agreement with him and failed to bring the intelligence of the digitalized world here. Now everyone was trapped, and Morgan VII had played no small part in it.

"Now is not the time to argue!"

Duan Mingyuan interrupted the intensely confrontational sides, "Before we clarify the current situation on the Prison Planet, no one is allowed to act rashly."

His words effectively intimidated the specters, and he led the group away from the laboratory, back to the surface through the abandoned elevator shaft.

The battle between the captain and the prisoners had long since ended. During an hour of fighting, they had confirmed one thing with each other.

Specters couldn’t kill the jailers and prisoners holding unlimited resurrection coins, and the latter couldn’t inflict any effective damage on the specters either.

So in the end, both sides chose to back down, no longer wasting time and energy on pointless matters. Recently, Norton had also used the broadcast to recall all the jailers and seal the elevators, putting the prison into a state of complete lockdown.

And now, these specters, who had once terrified countless people, were gathered together, listening intently to the sergeant’s explanation.

Even the captain, who had just been on a rampage, was no exception.

She removed her skull mask and sheathed her thermal energy blade, her auburn hair damp with sweat.

"Three logs, two stones, combine them, and you can make a basic campfire," Mingyuan demonstrated to the specters personally.

"Every hour, you’ll need to add wood to the fire."

As dusk fell, the campfire came to life, and the specters looked at each other in confusion.

A group of people huddled around the bonfire, as if they had returned to a primitive society.

Mingyuan continued, "You must always keep an eye on your hunger and fatigue levels, keeping them in a healthy state at all times. As a rule, don’t wander around after dark; wait until daylight to go out and gather resources."

As he spoke, he entered instructions for the basic necessities of a campsite into an electronic manual, giving the specters plenty to keep busy with.

D47 district was an abandoned town, highly suitable for beginners to build a camp. They could scavenge a large amount of metal in buildings, a distinct geographical advantage. For the prisoners in D17, however, finding metal was as difficult as scaling the heavens.

"But Sergeant, I don’t understand," the captain chimed in, her confusion apparent. She had learned from other team members that everyone was trapped by the Judge in the digitalized world. Only by finding the Judge’s data core could there be a chance to leave this place, "Aren’t we supposed to divide up into squads to search for the Judge’s core as quickly as possible?"

"Suppose you find the Judge’s core, what then?"

"Hack it, or if it really can’t be done, then destroy it."

"Boom—" Before she could finish, thunder unexpectedly tore across the sky.

When the specters came to their senses, they were shocked to find the captain, who had been like a war god moments ago, had turned into a ball of white light and disappeared from their sight.

After ten or so seconds of silence, the panting captain returned to them in a disheveled state.

"That was a warning from the Judge."

Mingyuan explained, "Resurrection after death in the digitalized world was one of the rules it set, but as the server itself, it can modify the rules at any time. Every word we say, every action we take is seen by it."

The captain hung her head, saying nothing further.

The Judge at this moment was far beyond their comprehension; it seemed it could instantly bring down Heaven’s Punishment and end their lives with just a thought, which was almost...

Exactly like the gods described by the believers!

"Gathering resources, building a campsite, it’s not about becoming a player of a life-building game, but rather to learn the rules of the digitalized world, to understand it, and to master it."

This was Mingyuan’s most earnest suggestion.

Eisenberg believed that after collecting enough souls, the Judge had completed its "Cocoon" phase. With the strength of the specter squad alone, it was nowhere near enough to shake the various rules the "Cocoon" set on this planet.

Staying here and building a camp was the best choice for them.

But it wasn’t just the specters who needed guidance; Prison Governor Norton also sent an urgent message.

Just now, they had received bad news.

Turmoil had broken out in D73, and 1721 had vanished.

Given the situation at the scene, it could only have been the Judge’s doing.

Whatever the Judge’s purpose for taking 1721 away, it wasn’t a good sign.

They could hardly imagine what kind of sparks would fly when an AI and a terrorist obsessed with destruction were together.