Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 407 The Struggle of an Inferior Soul

Among all the minor flaws of April Fools' Day, apart from figures like Milo and the deeply rooted church being difficult to imitate or replace, there are also variables among ordinary people.

……

In Nanwei City, which imitates the world.

Milo walked alone on the streets of the city.

It was early morning, and everything in the city matched his memory perfectly.

But Milo still managed to find some subtle differences in this world, which was almost a one-to-one replica of reality.

He sensed some more chaotic souls, souls that shouldn't have appeared but were actually quite reasonable.

This sentence is quite awkward.

But that's the truth. People like Milo, who appear in the world of imitators as their true selves, shouldn't exist in the first place. Under this illusory system of imitation rules, he should be replaced.

The souls he noticed were like that; they shouldn't have appeared in the world of imitators either, but for some reason beyond the rules of imitation, they did.

Or more accurately, they appeared repeatedly.

……

On the familiar streets of the 23rd parish.

Milo stumbled upon some menacing shadows under the eaves.

They scavenge for food in garbage and swill like wild dogs, but in reality, they are much larger than ordinary wild dogs, and their gaze is more aggressive than that of any canine.

These wild beasts roaming the city, like those Milo had encountered on the Church Bridge, were once well-dressed humans.

At this moment, for some reason, they did not sink into the dream like most of the replaced ones, but instead broke into this world of imitators.

It's due to animalistic disease.

In the current world of imitators, there exists a situation where citizen A, who has not been transformed into a beast, lies in his bed, while the real A, transformed into a wild beast, roams the streets.

In short, the same soul appeared twice in the world of imitators.

This was something Milo hadn't noticed before entering the Dream Realm. But now, with his enhanced spiritual vision, he could clearly perceive this pervasive sign.

There are quite a few wild beasts roaming the streets of Nanwei City, and their numbers seem to be increasing.

This indicates that citizens who are replaced by the rules of imitation and fall into the dream are becoming increasingly bestial.

……

"Click."

In the shadows of the night, the throats of those rotting, flesh-and-blood beasts were all crushed from a distance the moment they pounced on Milo.

Milo walked the streets seemingly casually, like an ordinary law enforcement officer on night patrol.

But his attention was entirely focused on the spatial trajectory of the wild beasts.

They are all transformed from the human body itself, which means that there is still a loophole between the world of imitators and the real, conscious world.

Imnar had no reason to allow two identical souls to exist in its imitation world; even Milo couldn't hide this, so how could it possibly deceive the gods?

The only explanation is that it hasn't had time to solve the problem yet.

"So the beastification disease has always existed. It wasn't a chaos created by Imnar. In fact, he should be the one who most wants to solve this problem. He even started researching it several years ago. The list compiled by old Theon shows those citizens who disappeared into thin air. They all turned into beasts."

Milo followed the trail of the wild beasts and slowly approached a certain direction in the city center.

His vision gradually became clearer, and his thinking became more and more defined.

……

Marshall, who was briefly replaced but then saved by Milo, said that it entered a chaotic slumber that could not be described in words, as if it had completely lost its self-awareness and fallen into a dream.

Perhaps it was this step that led to the appearance of wild animals.

Some humans fell into a deep sleep, but then awoke and appeared in Nanwei City in a completely different life form.

……

Following the route, Milo eventually found the most magnificent building in the city center—the Garnier Opera House.

Only then did he remember that the last clue in Rick's notebook before his disappearance pointed to the opera house. —"Amina eventually reconciled with her fiancé, but not everyone can escape the curse of dreams, right?"

"The sound of chains."

"Some muffled sounds that were difficult to distinguish."

This is the handwriting Rick left for Milo. Unsurprisingly, when he decided to go to the opera house alone to find out what was going on, he had already fallen into Imnar's trap and eventually became one of those trapped in the dream.

Another problem with the Imitation World is that it has not yet been able to fully replicate life forms that are far more complex than the general public. Even Imnar, who has existed for countless years, has never encountered a half-zombie, half-human life form like Rick, which is full of blasphemous connotations.

So Rick is simply missing, not replaced; no other Rick has appeared in the Imitation World.

"Who would have thought that Rick would be the first to realize the problem?"

Milo muttered to himself as he stepped onto the steps leading to the Garnier Opera House.

It was the early hours of the morning, but he could clearly hear eerie music still echoing inside the opera house, seeping out from the cracks in the doors and windows.

As he approached the dark, gloomy windows, the music grew clearer and clearer.

This was very similar to the piano music Rick heard when he entered the opera house.

And Milo also attracted the attention of many beasts under the dome after he pushed open the door to the main hall of the opera house.

What's truly chilling is that the mutated beasts weren't just emitting low, muffled groans from their throats; faintly, they also produced subtle singing sounds that only human vocal cords could produce...

Inside the empty opera house, these eerie sounds drifted through the completely dark environment, seemingly foreshadowing a certain balance between reality and illusion in this space.

Milo walked calmly across the tiered stands and through the long corridor behind.

In the process, he crushed all the beasts that approached him, regardless of whether the human part of their souls was still struggling to survive. Milo showed no mercy or compassion.

The mangled remains of the beast stretched from the corridor all the way into the stairwell.

Finally, on the main stage, Milo saw a strange-looking creature perched on the piano.

Its back has completely transformed into the appearance of a beast, with ferocious bone spurs piercing through its skin and flesh. However, unlike those completely transformed individuals, its skeleton still retains a human-like appearance. Although the skin on its arms has peeled off, its five jagged finger bones stubbornly continue to strike the piano keys.

The pianist's humanity was still making a final struggle. On the verge of complete madness and bestiality, he used the last shred of reason remaining in his shattered brain to express his unwillingness through his playing.

Its shredded flesh and filthy blood covered the entire piano, turning the keys, which should have been white, into a scarlet red.

……

Milo was unsure whether this was the calamity foretold in the prophecies of the Monsis school.

The blood of the old gods bestowed upon this nation by the church may indeed be destined to turn into a disaster, but in his eyes, the broken limbs in this bizarre scene were far braver than the church hiding on the high bridge.

This beast-like remains, which had been playing for an unknown period of time, were clearly no longer capable of any aggression.

Milo walked past it and headed straight backstage.

But for some reason, he soon returned and fired a shot at the figure by the piano, ending the other's life in a relatively dignified manner.

At this point, the piano music that had been lingering in the opera house came to an abrupt end.

……

Then he went into the underground of the Garnier Opera House.

After navigating a complex flight of stairs, Milo easily found the reservoir used to store water from the underground river.

Standing on the high platform, facing the darkness below, Milo could clearly hear the sound of the water being stirred.

Click...

He took the kerosene lamp off the wall and lit it.

In the dim firelight, he could see fairly clearly that every few minutes a creature with long claws would appear in the reservoir below. It would paddle through the water with its four limbs, which had long claws, rising from the ten-meter-deep bottom to the surface, and then dragging the broken chains, climbing up the steps one by one...

……

This reservoir is like an unstable passageway.

Since beastification cannot occur in the world of imitators, this phenomenon can only occur in the real human body that has fallen into a slumber. This means that below the reservoir, there may be a connection to the conscious real world, to the real Nanwei City that is being replaced.

(End of this chapter)