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墨書 Inktalez
The neon rain shrouded the dark alleys of Shinjuku, Tokyo, while the blue light from vending machines shattered into spiderwebs in the puddles. I crouched on the fire escape, chewing on a cold rice ball, as a Holographic Projection advertisement pierced through the curtain of rain, exploding in my retina with blinding Scarlet—"The New World: Ultimate Judgment is about to enter public testing."
The sound of a metal lunchbox hitting the ground startled crows hidden in the shadows. The rice ball rolled three times in the filthy water, coated in a slimy residue of electronic waste. This couldn't be happening. I trembled as I tapped my wristwatch; the cached video of last year's bloody Live Stream was still playing on loop, and at that moment, the Virtual Court in the advertisement perfectly overlapped with the scenes in my memory, even the Iris pattern on the Defendant's Stand was identical down to the last detail.
"Damn it!" My fist slammed against the rusty iron ladder, and the dull pain in my knuckles brought me back to reality. Rainwater poured down into my throat through the filter of my gas mask, salty and bitter like blood.
I flipped myself through the apartment window; a matrix of twenty second-hand servers buzzed in the darkness, their heat sinks hot enough to fry an egg. Three hours later, sweat seeped from my palm onto the counterfeit ID card. As the login screen for "The New World" engulfed my vision, I could hear my heart pounding violently.
The humidity of a tropical rainforest clung to my neck, and virtual sunlight stung my eyes to tears—this was nothing like ordinary VR; even my olfactory nerves could detect the scent of rotting banana peels.
"Welcome to the beginner's village." An NPC girl in a grass skirt flashed a standard smile with eight teeth, her pearl earrings shimmering with an eerie pinkish-purple hue. I pretended to trip and bumped into her, my fingertips brushing against the inside of her skirt; the touch of nano-fiber sent electric currents racing down my spine—it was military-grade sensory material circulating on the black market.
Three days later, a private message from a Deep Web Forum lit up with a red dot. An anonymous user sent me a series of garbled files; decrypted within a Holographic Projection was a Middle Eastern Prince smiling behind a Judgment Court mask. The emerald ring on his ring finger glistened in the projection—an item buried with a death row inmate last year.
"Warning!" I posted my seventeenth pinned message in the Live Stream section, but the text felt like a meteor falling into a black hole. Danmu celebrations drowned out the truth, as virtual roses exploded with Tip effects, wrapping around every skeptic's throat.
At three in the morning, there was suddenly a power outage in my apartment. The moment backup power kicked in, I caught sight of swarms of drones outside, their Scarlet signal lights glimmering like bloodthirsty eyes of hyenas. On public testing day, the dome of Sydney Opera House exploded into digital fireworks.
One hundred thousand players simultaneously received a system message, the blood-red Invitation burning in the virtual sky: "You have been selected as a member of the Ultimate Judgment Jury."
My virtual avatar stood in the center of the Colosseum, watching as the shadows of the audience gradually solidified—eyes behind their masks all glimmering with the same emerald data stream.
"The game has finished loading."
At the moment the judgment hammer fell, networks across thirty-six countries crashed simultaneously.
In the torrent of data, I grasped a fragment of broken code, which turned out to be a backup memory I had deleted last year.
As the emerald ring slowly descended from the clouds, I tore open my chest skin, revealing a virus capsule hidden between my ribs— it was time for the Judgment Court to taste its own poison.
The Neon Sign in the real world flickered out one by one, while the Virtual Sun rose from the sea of blood in the arena.
Countless versions of myself raised their weapons; some held Keyboards, others clutched evidence chips, and one stood with empty hands, simply giving the middle finger to the starry sky.
On the suddenly interrupted black screen of the Live Signal, a frantic IP Address flickered like a dying firefly, sketching out the outline of an Iris before it vanished completely.
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