Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 578 - 576
March 1st — Conduct the third quarterly Turing test on Alice.
March 2nd — Go to Amestris to receive the Medal of Botanic Alchemist personally awarded by President Jin Bradley for Triss, collect double the Imperial Alchemist's allowance, and visit my teacher (he's recently been researching alkylating agents, which may help with Siri's illness).
March 3rd — Listen to my self-summation after three days down the well.
March 4th — Repair the well and sew myself clothes to isolate from the well's effects.
Li Ang continued to flip through the desk calendar. He noticed that the dates inside had no annotations.
CLICK.
A photo fell out from the middle of the desk calendar. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
He casually picked it up.
The photo's colors were vivid. It showed a family of four standing on a lawn, with a three-story suburban villa with an attic as the backdrop.
The blond, middle-aged man stood on the far left. He was tall and well-built, dressed in a suit, looking ruggedly handsome.
His wife sat in a chair, gentle and elegant, cradling their smiling younger daughter in her arms.
The elder daughter stood on the far right, dressed in a gorgeous black dress, a faint smile on her face.
There was no text on the back of the photo, so the specific time it was taken wasn't clear.
But it couldn't have been too long ago—the elder daughter on the right side of the photograph was the same woman Li Ang had seen at the end of the corridor. Her appearance was exactly the same as in the photograph, except she wasn't wearing an eye patch.
"..."
Li Ang fell silent for a moment, then turned and left the room, heading to the door marked E.
The riddle on Door E was 2F2S21M2M3S13T2. At first glance, this string of numbers and letters seemed to have no discernible pattern. However, after combining it with the information from the desk calendar, the solution became readily apparent.
"A monthly calendar page has 30 or 31 days, arranged in 4 to 5 rows and 7 columns," Li Ang murmured to himself. "To set a password in English, one can find the position of each letter of the word in the English alphabet. For example, 'apple' would be 1, 16, 16, 12, 5. Treat these numbers as dates. Find their positions on a specific month's calendar page. Then, substitute them using the row number and the first letter of the English name for the day of the week (M, T, W, T, F, S, S).
"For example, if the date is the 1st, a Sunday in the first row, it becomes 1S.
"The 16th, a Monday in the third row, becomes 3M.
"The 12th, a Thursday in the second row, becomes 2T.
"The 5th, a Thursday in the first row, becomes 1T.
"To increase the password's difficulty, a '1' or '2' can be added after the initial of the day of the week to distinguish, for example, between T for Tuesday (T1) and T for Thursday (T2), or S for Saturday (S1) and S for Sunday (S2). So, an example might be 1S2, 3M, 3M, 2T2, 1T2.
"If the riddle on the door corresponds to this March calendar, then the real password should be..."
Li Ang did a quick mental calculation, converting 2F2S21M2M3S13T2 into 13, 15, 2, 9, 21, 19.
Mapped onto the English alphabet, they became M, O, B, I, U, S.
Mobius. Mobius.
He inhaled deeply, his fingers turning the six-letter English lock.
As the final letter, S, was entered, Room E's door slid aside.
Li Ang strode into the room.
Like Room D, Room E also had a one-meter square metal plate on its ceiling. On the floor were an envelope, some bottles and jars, and a keychain.
Opening the envelope, he found only a short line of text:
"Hurry up."
CREAK.
The sound of a door opening came from above the ceiling.
Once again, it was the voices of a man and a woman.
The man asked, "Is Siri asleep?"
"Alice just put her to sleep." The woman's voice sounded weary. "She had another nightmare. She said she dreamed of someone in heavy clothing climbing out of her wardrobe to give her medicine."
"I've checked the wardrobe; there's nothing inside," the man spoke softly. "She's probably just exhausted. Her condition isn't very stable, and I was away all day. Sigh. You've had a hard day too. Let Alice sleep with her tonight. By the way, this is the Alchemist Badge awarded to you by the Grand President, in recognition of your contributions to the field of surgical emergency alchemy."
"That sort of thing doesn't matter," the woman said anxiously, "He hasn't found out, has he? That you're hiding here researching artificial humans..."
"No," the man sighed. "We left the institution long ago; their reach doesn't extend this far. Besides, we've never taken Alice out in public. If anyone comes to the door, we'll just say she's a hired maid. Don't worry."
COUGH, COUGH, COUGH.
The man began to cough.
The woman quickly asked, "What's the matter? Still feeling unwell?"
"Hmm... Every time I go down the well, my body gets flipped around. Maybe I'm still not quite used to it. But it's alright. In a few more days, my clothes that can isolate the well's effects will be ready..."
The voices gradually faded.
Li Ang picked up the bottles and jars, examining the labels, his eyes devoid of emotion.
L-Menthol, Asparagine, Limonene...
He opened a bottle cap and fanned the air with his hand.
L-Menthol: a musty odor.
Asparagine: a bitter taste.
Limonene: a lemon fragrance, the same scent as on the envelope in Room A.
Just as I thought...
Li Ang took a deep breath and looked at the keychain.
The keychain held seven keys, each marked with a letter from A to G. On the back of each key, a number was inscribed:
A, 0
B, -72
C, 72
D, -24
E, -48
F, -2
G, 0
Li Ang hooked the keychain on his index finger, swinging it casually as he walked out of the room. He used the second-to-last key (F) to open the door to Room F.
In the corner of the room was a machine identical to the one in Room A.
On the floor lay an envelope, an empty glass cylinder, and... a stalk of sugarcane?
Li Ang walked over and opened the envelope. The letter read:
"Put the sugarcane into the feed chute, and the machine in Room A will produce enough battery fluid. This process, however, will take two hours.
If you are reading this letter before 10:00 p.m., you still have enough time to fill the batteries. Then, use them to open the stone gate leading to the surface.
If it's past 10:00 p.m.... you could also try removing the battery from your shoulder and gamble on that one chance for survival."
10:00 p.m., huh...
Li Ang had been tracking the time using his pulse and heartbeat. Combined with the remaining power in the battery on his left arm, he estimated it was now just a few minutes past 10:00 p.m.
"Heh."
He chuckled softly and shook his head. He walked forward, picked up the sugarcane stalk, and placed it into the machine's feed chute. Then, he turned, took the glass cylinder, and left the room without a second glance.
"Too bad. I've already figured out the secret of this corridor," he thought.
He returned to Room A, placed the glass cylinder into the designated slot, and pulled the lever.
The machine hummed and vibrated. A moment later, a clear liquid flowed from an inverted cone into the glass cylinder.
Li Ang took the filled battery, returned to the end of the corridor, and installed it into the stone wall beside Room F.
RUMBLE—
The bricks in the wall shifted, folded, and realigned, revealing a passage.
At the end of the passage, the woman in the elegant black gown and eye patch stood waiting. She had clearly been there for some time. Seeing Li Ang appear, she smiled. "It has been a while, Father."
