Transcendent Gene-Chapter 295: Final Truth [3]

Gio walked through the office space with serious eyes. His original thoughts were proven correct not long after he started looking around.

Just because the location seemed random didn’t mean that the facility itself was pointless.

In fact, it was more likely that the significance of the location was lost in history.

’I couldn’t find anything of note in the lab space, but this is different.’

Nothing was new information, unfortunately, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t useful.

The computers didn’t work anymore, but any paper documents were still viable.

He found them one after another.

’Vita was researching not only monsters, but the potential existence of other foreign races from beyond the wall.’

It started with research into the Great Barrier Wall itself. From there, they tested many hypotheticals until they landed on the conclusion that monsters were not the first foreign species the Gehenna Complex had ever seen.

’They even started to theorize that humans are descended from an extraordinary species. It’s a way to justify the potential for Sequencing in our genes that never blossomed before the Forthcoming.’

If that was the end of it, they could be excused as people who were getting close to the truth without any definitive proof that it existed.

But they were much more than that.

’This isn’t a coincidence.’

Every time Gio discovered a new piece of information, it tied directly into the scenario that had been manifested.

The five clues he knew...

’All five of them are here.’

[Humans have entertained relations with beings beyond their current understanding for as long as time in the human eye has existed.]

[The world’s history has been fabricated.]

[Not all fabrications are created with intention. They are sometimes created through fate and happenstance.]

[The otherworldly beings of the past never returned to this world.]

[There are two worlds telling their stories, but only one to receive them.]

Each of those sentences was present in its exact form somewhere in the facility.

’Vita is the key.’

Verita’s Nest was the reason why the realm manifested this era.

’They were the first humans to make a connection between the past and these mysteries.’

And if the first five clues were perfectly presented...

’...the sixth will be here too.’

Gio hastened his search, rummaging through every shelf and cabinet he could find.

He spent several hours in the facility without realizing its significance.

In two other locations around the scenario, two separate buttons were pressed.

As for the last...

It was also unlocked several days before anything went down in Lyverne.

Gio’s search for the sixth clue was bound to be cut off before it could reach its end.

Because even as he searched, everything began to change.

RUMBLE!

It felt like an earthquake at first. Gio grabbed a nearby cubicle to keep himself steady as a huge vibration forced its way through the undergrowth space.

He looked up with a frown on his face, only for his eyes to widen in the next second.

It wasn’t an earthquake.

He looked up and saw not the ceiling that had been there before, but pure blackness instead.

His head snapped around, and his eyes scanned the surrounding walls that were falling away into the same blackness.

The world itself faded away, leaving Gio standing on a white tile floor and surrounded by the few cubicles present in the surrounding few meters.

Everything else disappeared.

The blackness went on for countless kilometers. For a brief few moments, he didn’t think there was a "distance" at all.

That changed soon enough.

One by one, five other squares of white tile appeared. They were spread so far apart that to each other, they only vaguely resembled the light of fireflies or even the distant stars.

Gio’s frown deepened. He didn’t move a single step, as he didn’t know what dangers a single step could entail.

’What the hell happened?’

Vooooom!

An arc of blue aura cut through the blackness to his right, speeding into the distance and carving a holographic blue line through the space.

Vooom!

Vooom!

Voooooooom!

Several similar blue arcs appeared one after the other. They spread far enough to make the distance to the last of them unclear and split the entire black space into a grid of ten thousand squares.

Each individual square was perfectly the same size as the chunk of the facility that remained intact when everything changed.

The six white spaces in the darkness each perfectly took up one square each as if they were always meant to exist.

[Error!]

A blue holographic box finally appeared in front of Gio when the grid neared completion.

[Error! Unable to maintain realm!]

[Error! Unable to support manifestation!]

[Attempting restructuring...] 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

[Restructuring failed!]

[Attempting restructuring...]

[Restructuring failed!]

[Detecting third-party interference...]

[Combatting interference...]

[Combat failed!]

[Com—

Bzzt!

Before the next message could fully manifest, the holographic window glitched, turning the words to mud. The entire window soon melted away into oblivion.

HONG!

Gio’s eyes were led to the blackness above.

One by one, four letters appeared in the sky.

[VITA]

A sentence was burned into the blackness.

[Life is not a game; Humanity is not a pawn.]

WHOOOOOSH!

The sound was like two trains passed directly by Gio’s ears.

Huge virtual walls took their physical place and charged into the distance, blocking Gio off from the rest of the darkness and giving him one path forward or backward.

He could see the walls turn and expand, forming a complex labyrinth in the distance. He could somewhat gauge what was happening, though he couldn’t understand how.

’Didn’t Verita’s Nest disappear back then?’

The collapse of the company was never truly understood by the general public. Some said it was internal conflict, some said their enemies got to them, and some said they merely vanished.

Regardless of how it happened, it had been decades since Verita’s Nest existed in the world.

How were they appearing here?

’Now that I think about it, this scenario has a lot to do with them.’

Some clues could only be found at their labs. When Gio found the underground facility, he realized that Verita’s Nest was on the cusp of discovering the very secret that this Scenario Quest was based around.

’Obviously, the facility has something to do with it.’

Everything started when he was inside. The fact that there were six white lights, including the one he stood on, was also telling. The correlation between the number of white spaces and the number of clues present in the scenario couldn’t be ignored.

’Maybe the people who first found each clue...’

Or perhaps it had something to do with entering the facility itself.

Whatever the case...

’...the people at Vita somehow figured out how to...hack...a Scenario Quest...?’

When Gio checked his storage, he realized that even the clue cards were gone. He tried to summon the screen that showed him his quest progress, but it also no longer existed.

’Is the sixth clue just irrelevant now? Am I never going to learn what was going to be revealed?’

After all that chasing, did Vita’s interference take from him the absolute truth he would have learned otherwise?

Bzzt!

He wasn’t allowed to feel demotivated for long.

Bzzt!

The air fizzled to life. Sparks of electricity connected into a new holographic window that was deep red, like the color of blood.

[If you were called to this realm, you have been wrapped into the fate of Gehenna. However, just because you are here does not mean your role extends beyond this moment.]

Those words were written by a human and meant to be read by a human. The tone was noticeably different from the holographic windows humanity usually saw.

While those were cold and informative without any sense of humanity, these words felt like they conveyed an intent beyond their letters.

[This labyrinth has been presented to you for reasons I cannot yet reveal. Every decision you make within this labyrinth will have an effect that reaches far past your own steps.]

[Whether you choose to be a hero, a villain, or something in between is entirely your choice. Whether you want to save the world or destroy it is your decision alone. There is no such thing as a correct answer within the labyrinth.]

Gio furrowed his brows as he finished reading the text.

[Traverse it while following your heart of hearts. You will be rewarded as long as you are true to yourself.]

’These are words written by a human, but they disguise themselves as the words of someone as unbiased as a machine.’

It was nothing more than a disguise. At the end of the day, there wasn’t a person in this world without any biases whatsoever.

’And the person who wrote this is someone who represents Vita.’

Vita had a goal.

Whether it was defined as the furthering of humanity or something else, Vita had a goal.

’I don’t know what’s in the maze, but there’s a right and a wrong answer waiting for me inside.’

Gio didn’t know what the chances were that the reward would be answers, but he wanted to believe that Vita wasn’t trying to hide information that could save humanity from its demise.

’It might be that kind of thing. Maybe we really do need to follow our hearts through whatever the labyrinth gives us, but our hearts need to align with the "correct answers" they have in mind.’

There was only one way to find out what Verita’s Nest’s goal was.

With tentative steps, Gio walked into the blackness.