I Have A Super USB Drive

by <unknown>

  After what felt like another thirty seconds had elapsed, Chen Chen felt himself recovering slightly from the previous dizzy sensation. He felt a surge of joy as he mustered the strength to produce a sentence, "Don't… Don't mind me…

  "Capture them alive if possible!"

  Chen Chen let himself collapse onto the floor and clasped the floor with both hands to a point where even his fingernails were cracking and he remained unbothered. He felt like there was a terrible storm raging inside his mind. The height of the storm had only just passed and the roar of the wind was slowly fading out.

  One second, two seconds, three seconds…

  One minute, two minutes, three minutes…

  The storm came out of nowhere but took its time dissipating. Although it only took three to five minutes, Chen Chen felt like he had been suffering for ages.

  After recollecting himself from the slowly fading dizziness, Chen Chen picked himself back up from the ground. It was then when he noticed that his shirt was drenched in sweat and there was a pile of bile where he laid which he must have vomited without realizing it.

  The image had somehow caused Chen Chen to throw up without even remembering it.

  "Is this Basilisk?"

  A curtain of shadow glimpsed past Chen Chen's vision. He was sure it was the NZT-48 that saved him.

  According to Fujiwara Aoki, the Basilisk triggered a "Gödel's shock" phenomenon on whoever met its eyes and effectively shut down the brain. Although it was still unknown whether the effect was only temporary, the heart ceased to function along with the brain, which essentially meant that anyone who saw the Basilisk would die instantly.

  An extremely potent brain was required to alleviate the major damage caused by Basilisk. This meant that only young people with strong, developing brains and agile thinking had a chance to survive from Basilisk.

  However, even people like Fujiwara Aoki who was resistant to its effects had fainted for half an hour upon making eye contact with Basilisk. After ingesting the NZT-48, Chen Chen did not faint but instead experienced a violent reaction for several minutes after.

  "I was careless."

  Chen Chen shook his head. Although he was confident that he could negate the effects of Basilisk, this would still mark one instance where he was closest to death over the course of all his intricate planning and strategizing so far.

  With this in mind, Chen Chen approached the corpse that had been mutilated into numerous pieces. With a gentle wave of his hand, several poker cards so transparent they were nearly invisible proceeded to appear in Chen Chen's hands.

  After putting away the graphene poker cards, Chen Chen bent down and picked up the flashlight.

  "Weaponizing the Basilisk pattern, what a brilliant idea…"

  Chen Chen looked at the flashlight in hand and directed his attention to what was illuminated in front of the flashlight. Before doing this, he made sure to cover half of the flashlight's bulb with his hand and proceed to look down.

  In front of the flashlight was a mini copy of the Basilisk pattern carved on the hardwood.

  Just now, the flashlight was used to project the Basilisk pattern located right on the wall beside Chen Chen. Completely unguarded, Chen Chen had his first encounter with the dangerous image right away.

  It was largely unknown how the bearded man was able to pull this off and carve the Basilisk pattern in its entirety. Could it be that by covering one half of it while carving the other half, "Gödel's shock" would not be triggered since the image was not displayed in full?

  Chen Chen had a mild epiphany.

  At the same time, the voice of X-112 came from the Bluetooth earpiece again. "Sir Commander, are you feeling better now?"

  "Feeling much better now."

  Chen Chen nodded. "How's the situation up there?"

  "All the members in the school building have been captured alive. There are 18 of them in total, 12 of them are women. All of them were hiding in the cellar of the cafeteria located at the back of the building."

  X-112 answered faithfully.

  A gleam of cold light flashed past Chen Chen's eyes. It was true that some people were truly despicable. Regardless of how well you treat them, you would only receive hostility in return. Violence was the optimal solution to shatter the fantasies of such people.

  It was after you conquer them when you would see them turning into loyal dogs, bowing respectfully to you like clockwork…

  Chapter 304: Another Type of Virus? |

  Inside the abandoned middle school, there was a burst of crying and pleading from a group of women.

  The Black Knights and drones herded about a dozen women to the hall of the school's teaching building. At this time, more than ten men who were bloodied lay sprawling across the hall.

  Among these people, the injured ones sat where they were, quietly whimpering in pain while the uninjured or less injured ones were busy with medical care and treatment.

  As the two groups of people met, many trembling women threw themselves into the arms of their male partners, crying and wailing loudly.

  "Chen Chen-kun, no, Your Excellency Chen Chen, these women are innocent!"

  At this time, Fujiwara Aoki, who had bandaged his wrists, knelt in front of Chen Chen with his body supported by one hand and begged. "All of this is our fault. If Your Excellency can't quell your anger, I'm willing to commit seppuku as a form of apology. I only ask that Your Excellency spare these people!"

  With that, he lowered his head to the ground. "I beseech you!"

  Currently, Chen Chen was sitting on his knees in front of the group. Even now, his head was still buzzing, and he did not know how many of his brain cells had died. If he was an ordinary person, it was likely that he would be rendered immobile by now.

  The function of NZT-48, besides allowing people to obtain extraordinary mental capabilities, also suppressed any side effects in the body.

  At this point, Chen Chen had put on the PK Armor again. He slowly raised his head and looked at Fujiwara. His voice was low and hoarse. "Fujiwara-kun, you've misunderstood. I've never said I'd do anything to you guys. My purpose in coming here is very simple — I just want to obtain information."

  "I can tell Your Excellency everything I know, and I'll leave nothing out!"

  Fujiwara Aoki suddenly looked up. "Not only that, but we also have a special file on 'it'. Those Basilisk patterns and all kinds of mysterious phenomena are recorded in the file. Although I dare not say that it's extremely detailed, it records all the mysterious events we've experienced so far!"

  "Mysterious phenomena — do you mean something like the 'woman in the dream'?"

  Chen Chen's heart leaped and he asked immediately.

  "Yes!"

  Fujiwara Aoki replied, "We can give you all this information. As long as Your Excellency spares us, that's all we ask for!"

  "Very well. Go and get the file then."

  Chen Chen nodded and then warned again, "After I receive the file, I'll question each of you individually, so don't try to deceive me with fake files. As long as I'm satisfied, I can even perform surgery to transplant your right hand back."

  As Chen Chen spoke, a Black Knight walked over with Fujiwara Aoki's severed hand which had been placed in a metal box filled with ice cubes.

  "Really?"

  Fujiwara Aoki was overjoyed. He quickly stood up. "Then I'll get it now!"

  "Go." Chen Chen waved his hand and watched Fujiwara Aoki leave promptly.

  "Sir Commander, should we send a drone to stalk him?" X-112's voice came from the headset.

  "No, if he wants to run, just let him run."

  Chen Chen laughed icily and turned his gaze to the people in the hall. "Anyway, there are so many people here. We won't miss him."

  However, Fujiwara Aoki did not intend to escape. Within ten minutes, he walked over with a thick hardcover book, which seemed to have a lot of materials stuffed between its pages. The reason they chose a hardcover book should be for preservation purposes.
>
  Before Fujiwara Aoki could approach Chen Chen again, he was stopped by a Black Knight on the side. The Black Knight snatched the hardcover book and flipped through it page by page.

  The Black Knight had no brain, so things like Basilisk patterns were completely ineffective against it. There was nothing to worry about even if Fujiwara Aoki had set a trap.

  "In this volume, all Basilisk patterns have been placed inside the slots of the album. As long as you don't pull them out, you won't see the whole picture, so you can be guaranteed of its safety."

  At this time, Fujiwara Aoki explained, "As for the mysterious phenomena evolving from the Basilisk patterns, they can all be proven to not be infectious through text, because if the text is infectious, no one will record it. Because anyone who wrote down the text or read it will die from it."

  Infectious text…

  Hearing this, Chen Chen could not help feeling horrified. Although in their previous conversation, Fujiwara Aoki had mentioned that the "it" evolving from the Basilisk patterns had taken many forms, it now appeared that the situation was more serious than he imagined.

  Even words were able to kill?

  As he thought of this, Chen Chen became even warier.

  After the Black Knight had checked the information, X-112 said, "Sir Commander, it's true that all the Basilisk patterns within are half-hidden and not fully exposed, but it can't be determined if what he said about the text-recorded 'mysterious phenomena' is true."

  "It's alright. Make him look through it himself," Chen Chen ordered.

  Following Chen Chen's order, the Black Knight once again pushed the book back into Fujiwara Aoki's hands.

  At this, Fujiwara Aoki did not say much. He simply flipped through the entire hardcover book.

  Although the hardcover book looked very thick, it was like a photo album. Each page was made with thick leather, so there was not much content. Fujiwara Aoki only took two or three minutes to flip through the book.

  "Good."

  After he saw this, Chen Chen nodded and another Black Knight immediately stepped forward and led Fujiwara Aoki to the next room for surgery.

  The God chips of these Black Knights all contained the full range of medical information. As long as there were enough tools, there was no difficulty for them in performing a limb surgery like this.

  As for Chen Chen, he took the material and began to flip through, page by page.

  In this collection of information, the pages were each laminated in plastic. It seemed that to preserve this data, this group of people had invested a lot of consideration.

  Following that, Chen Chen turned to the first page.

  The first page contained the Basilisk pattern named "Eye" that Chen Chen saw before, but this image was placed in the plastic frame of the book, so the margins were covered up. Thus when Chen Chen looked at this picture, despite feeling a little dazed, there were no symptoms.

  Then, Chen Chen turned to the second page, only to see a short explanation written with a gel pen. The words in the book were in Japanese and they looked graceful and neat as if they were written by a woman.

  [Basilisk pattern: Eye.]

  [Symptoms: When the observer sees the "Eye", it will induce Gödel's shock, causing the death of the observer. The survival rate is not more than 10%.]

  [Danger level: Level 3, extremely dangerous.]

  [Method of infection: None, unable to spread by itself.]

  Method of infection, unable to spread by itself…

  As he read the final line, Chen Chen immediately realized, some Basilisk patterns could spread by themselves?

  In that case, these Basilisk patterns were not only able to spread and infect humans, but they could also mutate during transmission. Was not this characteristic very similar to viruses?

  As he considered this, Chen Chen seemed to have thought of something.

  [ol][li data-annotation-id="5557e34c-470b-d1e2-e3b1-5daa0261a055"]A form of Japanese ritual suicide. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku[/ol]

  Chapter 305: Woman in Dreams |

  Was this a virus that used information as its carrier?

  This was Chen Chen's most intuitive impression of these Basilisk patterns so far.

  Nonetheless, this statement was still inaccurate because no matter how powerful a virus was, it could not conjure a woman out of thin air to strangle an infected person.

  This completely went against the laws of physics.

  With this in mind, Chen Chen continued turning to the next page.

  The second picture was very similar to the first. It was in black and white and consisted of countless blocks. These blocks were laid out in a complicated, repetitive pattern, and the effect was dizzying. Even when Chen Chen saw it, he felt that his thoughts were becoming sluggish.

  When these color blocks were pieced together, Chen Chen vaguely made out the figure of a reaper holding a sickle.

  Fujiwara Aoki had mentioned this image to Chen Chen before. Its name was Reaper, and its ability was…

  [Basilisk pattern: Reaper.]

  [Symptoms: The observer will not react when seeing the "Reaper". After the observer looks away, they will forget everything about this pattern until someone mentions this pattern to the observer. Then the observer will die instantly. The survival rate is not more than 5%.]

  [Danger level: Level 3, extremely dangerous.]

  [Method of infection: None, unable to spread by itself.]

  When he saw this, Chen Chen could not help shaking his head. This Reaper was truly peculiar. Who knew how many people died, how many lives were stuffed within this image, before the survivors were able to sum up these rules?

  It was likely that even a dozen lives were worth less than a single punctuation mark in this book.

  After that, Chen Chen flipped the page again. There were seven or eight patterns behind. One of the patterns was called "Shaker", which meant that after seeing that picture, the viewer would shudder all over until their cerebrospinal fluid and blood had been completely shaken out before they died.

  One pattern was called "Flame", indicating that after seeing that image, the person would suffer from spontaneous combustion out of thin air, burning from the inside until they were reduced to a pile of ashes.

  There was even a pattern called "Filth". Anyone who saw this pattern would suffer from dark blotches all over their body and this pattern could be transmitted to other people.

  It was like the dark spots were alive. They first appeared on a random part and then started to spread across the entire body. As they spread, the human body began to become continuously carbonized and it finally reached the point where taking one step would break one's hands and feet.

  When the carbonization spread to the internal organs and the head, the infected person would then die…

  After the series of patterns, the book also later noted that there were still a few pictures that had not been included and the nature of those patterns was not clear. One must be cautious and so on when encountering unknown patterns.

  Afterward, Chen Chen continued to flip to the back and immediately saw the next paragraph, but these texts no longer had any patterns. Rather, they were phenomena that had evolved in bizarre manners.

  [Mysterious phenomenon: Woman in Dreams.]

  [Symptoms: The infected person will start to dream and it will be a terrifying nightmare. The scene in the dream is always astonishingly similar to the place where the infected person sleeps, that is to say — the place where the infected person sleeps will also be the setting of their dreams, whenever they dream. The only difference from reality is that they will see a woman in white in the dream.]

  [They will not be able to clearly see the face of the woman in white, only a pair of white eyes without any pupils. When they see the woman, the infected person will always experience intense terror and wake up quickly from the fright.]

  [However, after being infected by the strange phenomenon of the "Woman in Dreams", each time they sleep, the
y will dream of her again. Moreover, the more they dream, she will get closer and closer to the infected person, and eventually reach the infected person.]

  [After corresponding this to reality, bystanders will see the "Woman in Dreams" emerge from the chest of the infected person out of thin air, and choke the infected person to death, upon which the "Woman in Dreams" will also vanish.]

  [Danger level: Level 2, somewhat dangerous.]

  [Method of infection: Temporarily unidentified. It is known that physical contact with an infected person, sexual relations, sharing the content of the nightmare, and so on, will not cause infection.]

  After reading this, Chen Chen immediately looked pensive. Was this the mysterious phenomenon that evolved from the Basilisk patterns? It was truly spooky.

  Chen Chen suddenly thought, what should he do if he was infected with this stuff?

  Although Chen Chen was still in big-brain-mode under the effects of NZT-48 at this time, when faced with this strange phenomenon, he could only come up with two solutions.

  The first one: suicide.

  Of course, this did not mean shooting oneself in the head. Rather, one would inject an anesthetic to keep one's brain in a blank state where one would not dream. Upon waking up, NZT-48 would be quickly ingested. By allowing one's brain to rest in this manner, one might be able to evade the killing method of the "Woman in Dreams".

  The second method was less punishing but riskier. Namely, to return to reality.

  This was because Chen Chen had speculated that there was a great deal more to the USB drive. Was it possible that the creator of this USB drive had considered this situation beforehand and thus the portal was able to isolate such mysterious phenomena?

  Chen Chen's conjecture was not unreasonable, because in the USB flash drive's first form, life forms could not be extracted. At one time Chen Chen thought that the USB drive really could not allow life to pass through.

  However, it was not until the USB drive's second form that Chen Chen understood, the first form seemed to be a protection for the weak.