Chapter 92: An Immortal Beauty? More Like a Crazy Lady...

A sudden darkness swallowed her sight, then it blazed white again, as if she had been teleported from a void-space battlefield. One blink, one opening of the eyes, and the world had changed entirely.

“Ahhh...”“Hissss...” Alpha-Girl had not even had time to look around properly, had not yet had time to ponder the strange changes that had occurred within her, when a chain of wretched screams burst into her ears.

The snake-headed man and the man in sunglasses pointed at her, trembling all over, looking like foolish little beasts caught in a trap.

“You, you, you... how did you come in too...?”

“What, am I not allowed to follow?” Alpha-Girl asked in confusion.

“This seems to be a time bubble, like the kind we ran into before. Adding too many people all at once will greatly increase the difficulty of the bubble,” Ye Chao’s voice said beside her.

But... it was only a voice.

The instant she heard it, Alpha-Girl suddenly understood what that strange feeling was: the connection between her and Ye Chao had been severed, leaving only a faint thread, like a phone down to a single bar of signal.

Ye Chao could no longer stuff her here and there at will, and she could no longer instantly return home through their link.

A kind of panic rose naturally in her, the sort of panic one feels when a phone has only one bar left.

Pah, what was there to panic about? Wasn’t this perfect? She could finally throw off that annoying fellow! Freedom!

After a bout of internal theatrics, Alpha-Girl began to sense her brand-new, unfamiliar body, so much so that she no longer even bothered with the oddly cute snake-headed man.

Because now, she was stranger than he was. She had become a real human being.

A living, breathing human of flesh and blood.

No more floating and dropping at will, no more growing or shrinking as she pleased, no more appearing and vanishing or changing into any form she desired, or turning others into whatever shape she wanted.

And yet, in exchange, she could breathe, she could pant, and she could use her eyes, ears, nose, and even her skin to truly feel this... chaotic world from angles she had never possessed before.

She, the snake-headed man, and the man in sunglasses had entered a ruined little city—a ruined little city before the natural disaster. Because they could still see the sky and the earth, the city at this time had not yet been sealed over.

How did she know it was a small city?

Because within sight, the tallest buildings were only six or seven stories high, and none exceeded ten floors. To call it a city was already generous.

But that was not the point. “Roar!” “Howl!” “Caw caw...” Beastly cries and bird calls rose one after another; “Boom! Boom! Rat-a-tat-tat...” gunfire and artillery explosions moved east to west and back again, playing a war-film symphony in their ears, while the air itself was thick with the smell of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. That was the real point!

The little city was filled with smoke and gunfire, cannons thundering; it seemed two forces were locked in bloody combat here. That was the true matter!

What place was this?

And what in the world were these things?

Just as the snake-headed man and the man in sunglasses stared at each other, question marks practically bubbling up between them, a stout-faced fellow came down the street carrying a glass bottle, a bright yellow exclamation mark floating above his head.

“You three are the kind souls here to help me? Thank you, thank you!”

He enthusiastically shook hands with the three of them, bowing repeatedly in gratitude. At the same time, a dialogue box popped up:

Main quest activated: Help Old Bull Two find the cow.

So the man before them was called Old Bull Two, and he needed help finding a cow... probably his family’s cow had gone missing.

The yellow exclamation mark turned into a white question mark.

“What is this thing?” the snake-headed man and the man in sunglasses exclaimed in baffled wonder, poking at the dialogue box that had appeared before them, and at the “LV1” label above each other’s foreheads, like huskies discovering a new toy.

“Isn’t this common in a time bubble?” Alpha-Girl asked, looking at their yokelish reactions. A time bubble was basically a dungeon instance, wasn’t it? What was so strange about these things appearing in one?

“Outside of void-space, where else would you find levels, experience, quests, and the like? Even I took quite a while to get used to them. This is the change brought on by intruders to the time bubble...” Ye Chao explained.

“Who’s talking to you?” Alpha-Girl cut him off indignantly.

Mostly because she had already understood what he meant.

How exactly were time bubbles formed? No definitive conclusion existed yet.

The most accepted explanation was that, much like those who had become beastlike without losing their minds, or those transformed into plants that endlessly grew food, they were the result of someone’s, or several people’s, or even many people’s intense obsession distorting time and space.

Since it was obsession, the will of any intruder would likewise disturb the time bubble.

Last time, the Luminary Seed had collapsed under Alpha-Girl’s imagination; this time the Flower was clearly stronger and did not collapse immediately, but the instance had still acquired many strange changes because of her.

Recalling Ye Chao’s earlier explanation, Alpha-Girl gradually began to understand.

She touched the living body she now possessed... was this too the result of obsession?

“Of course it isn’t common. Though I’m not all that old, I’ve been through quite a few time bubbles hiss—this is my first time—was it you hiss? Or was it not hiss?” The snake-headed man pointed at Alpha-Girl, then stared in dumbfounded shock. “What are you hiss? You, you, you, shameless woman!” He covered his eyes and turned away.

The man in sunglasses was equally stunned. Though the restored sunglasses hid his comma-shaped little eyes, the long stream of nosebleed said everything.

This wasn’t a fairy sister, this was a crazy sister, wasn’t it?

What was Alpha-Girl doing?

Nothing more than touching her chest, touching her waist, then after her hips touching her thighs, testing the feel—still self-touch, what was so shameless about that?

If that counted as shameless, then the electric toys and the like from before the disaster ought to have been lined up and dragged out for execution, shouldn’t they? Alpha-Girl sneered in disdain.

Old Bull Two ignored her strange behavior.

“Our time is running out. Move out, warriors!” With a wave of his glass bottle, he led the way into the city as cannon fire roared.

So his cow had been lost in the city...

That would not be easy to find.

“This is a protection-type mission; we have to make sure this guy doesn’t die. Not an easy one...” the snake-headed man muttered through gritted teeth, glaring at Alpha-Girl, then quickly blushing and turning his head away again.

Since time bubbles were born from obsession, the simplest way to clear one was to follow that obsession and fulfill its wish—in other words, complete the main quest. Without the game-like structure brought by Alpha-Girl, the process was much the same, only there would be no quest prompts or those glaring question marks and exclamation points.

In that sense, it was hard to say whether the changes brought by Computa-Girl were a blessing or a curse.

Old Bull Two had gone ahead, and the snake-headed man and the man in sunglasses hurried after him.

Though the situation was bizarre, once they had entered, they had no choice but to do the task.

A time bubble was not a game dungeon where you could try again after death. If you died here, at best your spirit would be damaged; at worst, you would be tainted by obsession, fall into hallucinations, or even become a vegetable... no one dared die casually.

As for Alpha-Girl, she simply kept groping herself for a while longer. Spirit damage or whatever... for her, a Computa-Girl, that did not exist.

So it was only when the system warned her, “Falling too far behind the target will cause mission failure,” that she quickened her pace and followed after them.

But after she had only taken a few steps—

Whoosh... thud!

A massive falling stone, flung from who-knew-where, came straight down and smashed Old Bull Two beneath it.

!!!