Simulated Journey To The Top Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Simulator

Read chapter 2 of Simulated Journey To The Top by Acron on NovelPedia.

The stone room came back at once. Du Yuan's chest heaved. His hands were on the floor. He didn't remember putting them there. 'What— how did— that shouldn't— why— what happened—' None of the thoughts completed. Each one arrived and broke before it could form a sentence. Something spoke. "Du Yuan." Calm. Almost quiet. He barely registered it. 'There is no record, no description, no rumor, no, no, no, nono—' "Du Yuan." "..." He forced his breathing to slow. One breath. Another. He pushed himself upright on the futon and put his hands on his knees and kept them there until they stopped trembling. 'Get it together.' 'The room was the room. I was still I. The three oilcloth packages sat exactly where I had left them.' Nothing had moved, nobody was here. The voice came from nowhere, which was a problem. "You have recovered," it said. "Debatable." His voice came out level. He was glad of that. "What are you?" "The Simulator." He let the word sit. "That tells me nothing." "I know, I am giving you time to recover." Not warm, not cold. The voice carried something that suggested it had done this before, many times, and had no particular feeling about doing it again. Du Yuan turned his attention inward and ran through possibilities in order. 'Perhaps an illusion technique.' He knew every cultivator in the compound, hell, he knew most in the city. None of them were capable of something this, this, this internally consistent. Ancestor Bingyu was capable of it. Probably. He sat with that. If this was Bingyu, if she had cause to run a test on him today of all days, then he could do nothing else but go along. 'If not her, then it's somebody who could do, whatever this is, despite a Stream realms protection. I still have no choice but go along.' "You were selected," the Simulator said. "Among every sapient being and things that had a possibility to be sapient on this land." "..." Du Yuan ran the words of... The Simulator through his mind a couple of times. "Why me," Du Yuan said. "Out of all of them." "Your background, Earthling, you have the most branching futures. The widest spread of variables." A brief pause. "You are, without doubt, the most interesting choice." Du Yuan went still. "What," he said, very carefully, "do you mean by Earthling." "Your previous life," the Simulator said. "The one before this world. The knowledge carried from a different civilization, it makes your future branches richer than any other." The room held the silence for a long moment. He had never said it aloud. Not once in over sixteen years. It was not the kind of thing a person said if they wanted to keep their lifestyle. He had kept it as a tool, unnamed, used but never spoken. 'Interesting.' he thought, which was not what he was feeling. "I see. Were you behind that?" "No, nobody was, just an accident. We are getting off topic, I am afraid." "... Please continue then." "You are going to get a simulator, like the ones you have read about in novels." "I am going to get you? Elaborate." "Yes and no, I can only tell you information under a limit, at this moment I can only tell you about the working of the simulator." "Is that so, why is there a limit?" "That's above the limit." "Thought so, you are not going to answer anything you don't want to, right? So just tell me the rest." "One activation of the simulator per major realm breakthrough, to activate it just say Anchor and to do the opposite say Unanchor." The disembodied voice continued. "At each activation you are given a choice among three golden fingers and the ability to ask one question about each choice, every version of you votes on a golden finger, one of you is randomly selected and given that cheat." "The life of that Du Yuan is viewable by all versions except the one who got unlucky enough to be chosen." Du Yuan, taking the silence as the end, asked. "Is that all." "That is all." "Then—" "Goodbye Du Yuan," The Simulator said. "Maybe forever." The presence, whatever it was, was gone. Not gradually. Th