Infinite Game - Start With SSS Rank Class

Chapter 228: Memory Drive

Rover went up to the second floor, then the third.

The second floor was mostly bedrooms and a few small living areas. The beds, cabinets, tables, and chairs were all very well preserved, but there were no clear personal belongings. No clothes. No photos. No journals. Everything was clean to the point of seeming prepared in advance, but never actually lived in for long.

The third floor was different.

The third floor had a few locked rooms.

Not ordinary locks.

The doors were made of wood, but their surfaces bore strange symbols glowing very faintly. Rover tried pushing with force, but the door didn’t budge at all. Selina also tried touching her sword to it, but the blade had barely gotten close before a thin layer of light blocked it.

Rilia released a bit of cold aura.

No use.

Elith used spider silk.

Also no use.

Rover tried summoning [Shadow]. The darkness had barely spread to the door before being pushed back out. Not the kind of being beaten away by force, but more like whatever protected the door wouldn’t allow any outside energy to attach to it.

Sunako stood behind, softly saying: "Can’t be broken open?"

Rover looked at the door a few more seconds then shook his head. "Something here is protecting it."

Nanoe looked at the symbols on the door. "Resembles magic."

"Any way to open it?"

"Don’t know yet." Nanoe answered very directly. "Might need authority. Could also need special conditions."

Rover didn’t try to force it further.

If this place truly related to the astronaut, Professor Harlan, and his own father, then trying to forcibly open something currently under protection might not be a wise decision. Besides, they had just been through an exhausting battle and didn’t need to take more risks with a door whose contents were unknown.

Everyone returned to the main hall of the house.

Nanoe stood in the middle of the living room, looking at the entire layout around them, then said softly: "This place seems to have been prepared for travelers to live in."

Rover looked at her.

Nanoe continued: "Perhaps they were stranded in the spaceship, then died here. But that’s only my speculation. Everything here is too complete, complete to the point of seeming like someone had prepared an environment in advance for them to live forever without ever needing to step outside."

Rilia frowned. "If they had this place, why did they still die?"

No one answered immediately.

Selina sat down on a chair in the living room, her hand still resting on her sword hilt. "Maybe it wasn’t from lack of food or water."

Elith looked toward the window, where the clear lake could be seen in the distance. "Could also be that whatever killed them came from outside."

Sunako said quietly: "Or came from inside."

That sentence made the room quiet for a moment.

Rover watched them discuss it, then finally shook his head. "No need to overthink it."

Everyone looked toward him.

Rover sat down in a chair and said calmly: "We also don’t need to know exactly what this place was used for. Even if we knew, there’s nothing we could do about it right now. Sometimes the harder we try to find an answer, the less likely we are to find one. But if we just stay still, the answer will eventually come to us."

Sunako tilted her head slightly. "Great Lord Rover, do you mean we should rest here?"

Rover glanced at her. "I was speaking figuratively."

"Ah." Sunako nodded, then softly said: "But resting a bit wouldn’t be bad either."

Nanoe smiled.

The tense atmosphere in the room eased a little.

But right at that moment, Elith suddenly raised her head. "There’s something over here."

Everyone immediately looked toward her.

Elith was standing near a corner of the main hall. On the wall there was a strange device set on a wooden stand, looking on the outside like an old projector, but its construction was far more intricate. It had a very small slot, and above it was a circular, slightly opaque glass surface, as if used to project images outward.

Rover looked at the device, and a thought suddenly arose in his mind.

The memory drives.

The metal case they had just found in the freight depot.

He immediately took the metal case out of his backpack, opened the lid, then took out the small drives inside one by one. These drives previously couldn’t be used, requiring a compatible building or device to read the data. Seeing this projector now, Rover immediately felt that perhaps the compatible device mentioned in the information panel was exactly the thing before him.

Sunako saw his action, her eyes lighting up. "Great Lord Rover, are you going to use those drives?"

"Let’s try."

Rover picked up the first drive and inserted it into the projector’s slot.

No reaction.

The small screen on the device’s body lit up with a strange line of text, then turned gray.

Nanoe watched for a moment then said: "Might be broken."

Rover removed the drive and switched to the second one.

Still no reaction.

The third one.

The fourth.

The fifth.

Most were already damaged.

One, the moment it was inserted, the device only emitted a very small static sound then went dark. Another wasn’t recognized at all. Another caused the projector’s glass surface to flicker briefly but quickly went dark again.

Sunako, who had been full of anticipation, gradually grew disappointed. "So many broken ones?"

Nanoe looked at the remaining drives in the case and said softly: "They’ve been sitting in that warehouse for who knows how long. Keeping even a portion intact was already lucky."

Rover said nothing.

He continued trying.

When he inserted a drive whose exterior shell was slightly darker than the others, the projector suddenly emitted a very faint sound.

Beep.

The circular glass surface on the device lit up.

A stream of light projected into the middle of the hall.

The image was initially very blurry, full of static, like an old damaged film reel. After a few seconds, it gradually stabilized.

Everyone watched the projected image in silence.

It was footage taken from above.

Rover quickly recognized this angle resembled something recorded from an aircraft.

Below was a city.

No.

It had once been a city.

Right now, it was burning.

Black smoke billowed from everywhere. Tall buildings collapsed, streets were torn apart, overpasses crumbled, countless vehicles piled atop one another like broken toys. Fire spread across many areas, dyeing the entire sky a chaotic orange-red.

Sunako covered her mouth. "What is this..."

No one answered.

Because right after, the image in the projector shook violently.

From within the smoke and fire, massive tentacles rose upward.

They were enormous.

Each one larger than a high-rise building. The tentacles’ surfaces were covered in dark red veins, slick and continuously contracting. One tentacle wrapped around a tall tower, slowly tightening.

Crack...

Even though it was only an image, everyone seemed to be able to hear the sound of concrete and steel being crushed.

The massive building was crushed like a Lego toy.

Then the second building.

The third.

The massive tentacles continued rising from beneath the city, wrapping around bridges, towers, residential districts, then crushing everything in a sea of fire and black smoke.

Rover watched the scene, his gaze deepening.

Nanoe stood beside him, her face also growing serious.

No one said anything more.

Because just this first image from the memory drive alone was enough to prove one thing.

The secrets buried in this place were perhaps far greater than anything they had imagined.

The image in the projector continued shaking violently.

The aircraft seemed to be flying over the city’s central district, but its speed wasn’t stable. Perhaps the pilot was trying to avoid the massive tentacles rising from the ground, or perhaps the entire sky at that moment had already been thrown into chaos by hot air currents, black smoke, and shockwaves from the city below.

The camera tilted to one side.

Below, the entire city looked like a creature being torn apart piece by piece. Streets that had once been straight were now cut by pitch-black fissures. High-rise districts collapsed one after another, forming massive clouds of dust. Fire spread from one district to another, swallowing buildings that hadn’t yet collapsed. The massive tentacles continued coiling around the city, sometimes hidden beneath black smoke, sometimes rising high like enormous serpents hunting prey.

Sunako stood still, her face white.

She had heard of apocalypses in stories before.

But truly seeing a city destroyed like this, she realized the word apocalypse wasn’t simply about monsters appearing or people dying. It was the feeling of an entire familiar order being crushed before one’s eyes, of things once considered solid like concrete, steel, bridges, streets, ports, and high-rises all becoming as fragile as paper.

The camera swept around.

Rover saw the sea.

No, more precisely, it was the coastline lying in the distance from the city.

But at this moment, that shoreline was no longer normal.

A massive wall of water was rising from the horizon. At first, because the distance was too great, everyone only felt it looked like a black line stretching across the sea’s surface. But as the camera zoomed in closer, everyone realized it was a tsunami.

A tsunami taller than a ten-story building.

It dragged along mud, rocks, ships, containers, fragments of the port, and countless unrecognizable things. Cargo ships, once enormous in human eyes, now looked like bathtub toys, easily lifted and thrown by the ocean waves.

A cargo ship was pushed sideways by the wave, its bow tilting upward, then its entire heavy hull was swept into the black water current like a paper boat. Containers stacked on the deck were flung into the sky, colliding with each other before falling into the sea, then being swept straight toward the city. A massive crane at the dock was snapped by the seawater, toppling over, dragging countless electrical sparks through the curtain of mist and water.

Sunako watched the scene in a daze.

She had seen monsters before.

Had also seen spirits.

Had even just seen an Overlord astronaut hovering in the hall, summoning a massive satellite to crush everyone. But the image before her now still made a chill run down her spine. Because this wasn’t a battle between a few individuals. This was an entire city being wiped off the map.

No place to hide.

No path to escape.

No one who could resist.

The tsunami crashed onto the shore.

BOOM!

Even though it was only a projected image, in that moment, everyone seemed to feel an explosion echo within their chests. Rows of coastal buildings were instantly crushed. The port vanished in the blink of an eye. Wide roads were swallowed by seawater. Vehicles, trees, utility poles, billboards, all of it was swept away in the pitch-black current.

The massive tentacles still writhed throughout the city.

The tsunami crashed in from the sea.

Fire spread out from the center.

Black smoke covered the sky.

The entire scene resembled the end of the world.