"Thanks to your help, the new prison is almost complete, and the next step is the practical issue."
In the Fire Moth lounge area, Vill-V walked alongside Chen Ran: "I want to conduct a practical test before the acceptance at Fire Moth."
"Practical test?"
Chen Ran quickly turned his mind and said, "Are you planning to lock yourself in and then escape?"
"Yes."
Vill-V smiled: "If even I, the creator, cannot escape from the depths, then it's highly unlikely anyone else will escape from the cage I created."
"I will hand over the button to arm Subject 512 in the depths to you. If it flashes red, it means I failed to escape; you can press the button to close the mechanism. If it flashes green, it means I successfully escaped, and then the depths will need to be rebuilt."
"However, if it flashes red, you must hurry to save me because the red condition I set is when a person's body is on the brink of death."
The depths was the name Vill-V gave to her creation.
This prison led to the underground of Fire Moth, and its design was not complex, consisting only of a long corridor. It looked very simple.
This was also the quickest way for her to complete the project, as she wouldn't consider overly complicated designs under the pressure of the timeline.
However, from one end of the corridor to the prison, Vill-V specifically designed five mechanisms.
The first mechanism was complete darkness, depriving a person of sight.
The second mechanism was extremely cold temperatures, numbing a person's sense of smell and mobility.
The third mechanism was toxins present in the air, used to paralyze a person's nerves.
The fourth mechanism was a Honkai Energy suppression factor, directly limiting a person's combat ability.
The fifth mechanism was a special frequency radiation that interfered with a person's cognitive abilities.
Depriving a person of their five senses from the source was the terrifying aspect of the prison Vill-V created.
What Vill-V needed to do was to see if she could successfully walk from the depths to the exit of the corridor under the activation of these five mechanisms.
Chen Ran couldn't help but click his tongue in amazement.
In the era before MANTIS, such a prison would be sufficient to hold anyone. Even after the advent of MANTIS, as long as the power of the mechanisms was increased, it could still hold the vast majority of people.
However, basically, only Kevin and Aponia would be exceptions; the former couldn't be contained even in the Sea of Quanta, while the latter could directly solve the mechanisms due to her special mental perception type.
Thus, in the end, the depths could not hold everyone.
He watched as Vill-V walked into the prison she designed from the corridor, and then the entire depths began to be enveloped in darkness.
…
…
"It's so dark; I should have known better than to make it so serious."
In the prison of the depths, Vill-V felt as if she were enveloped in complete darkness.
She murmured to herself: "How could anyone escape from this prison I set up? Sigh, but since I've already made the statement, I can't let myself lose face."
She was a magician, and she hated losing face the most.
Wearing her work uniform, Vill-V reached out her hand, but in absolute darkness, she couldn't even see her own fingers clearly.
This was the reason for designing the depths to be underground; only in this way could there be an absolutely lightless place. She couldn't even find the reflective mirror on her body.
The feeling of suddenly becoming blind was quite uncomfortable.
However, just this alone wouldn't stump her.
In her mind, she had the entire design blueprint of the depths, and relying on her memory, she quickly found the entrance.
Despite the complex fingerprint lock and the primitive prison, she still cracked it in an hour. The main reason was that her vision was deprived, which made her quite unaccustomed; otherwise, she could have done it faster.
"Next, it's the corridor."
"However, I designed the corridor to be unobstructed; it doesn't seem very difficult... Should I go back and increase the difficulty a bit?"
Vill-V thought happily.
Then...
She regretted it.
For a person, having their five senses deprived was an extremely painful experience.
Even the most whimsical magician, skilled at deceiving others' senses, was still fundamentally human.
With her vision stripped away, her sense of smell and perception dulled, her body became stiff, and most importantly, her brain was interfered with by a specific electromagnetic field, making it impossible to concentrate on thinking.
Only one consciousness drove Vill-V: "Escape, hurry and escape."
"I need to get out of here!"
Just because a person gave up thinking didn't mean they lost their instincts.
She instinctively lifted her leg and ran outward, but the long corridor seemed endless, shrouded in an infinite darkness that began to panic her heart.
Everyone harbors a fear of the darkness, especially when their ability to think is disrupted by electromagnetic waves; this fear is instinctively magnified.
However, the gradually dissipating body temperature diminished her ability to act.
Even though running generates heat, the process of running made her feel an extreme cold.
Out of biological instinct, she began to slow her pace; the cold was more terrifying than the darkness.
This was the consequence of a disturbed mind, completely unaware that this was a form of chronic suicide.
Thus, the most terrifying aspect of the depths designed by Vill-V was turning anyone into an animal driven solely by instinct.
She wandered aimlessly, feeling as if the end was never in sight.
This is the depths.
A cage that traps people forever within.
Even though Vill-V possessed a brilliant mind and rich experience in escaping, these experiences could not be etched into the genes of living beings, rendering them useless.
The fear within her continued to amplify, and her body temperature kept dropping.
Finally, Vill-V could no longer endure and collapsed onto the ground.
The red light for Depth 512 lit up, and Chen Ran hurriedly shut off the mechanism.
Then, a complex expression appeared in his eyes.
Vill-V was less than a meter away from the exit.
"Are you okay?"
Chen Ran instinctively supported her and found her body as cold as ice, like a sculpture. Without thinking, he quickly took off his clothes and draped them over her, holding her in his arms to prevent her from losing any more heat.
After a long while, Vill-V slightly regained her consciousness.
However, the fear of darkness and cold seemed to have taken root in her heart, refusing to dissipate.
She looked at Chen Ran's face and said, "Don't move yet."
Before Chen Ran could react, Vill-V pressed his head down and kissed him.
He felt an invasion as fiery as flames, leaving his mind blank.
There was no flirtation, nor was there ambiguity.
The reason she did this was merely to drive away the fear with something more intense, an instinctive behavior born from that fear.
Vill-V was an expert at deceiving hearts, so she understood how terrifying it could be for fear to take root within. Only in this way could she quickly eliminate the previous experience.
As for Chen Ran's thoughts, they were not within Vill-V's calculations.
At worst, she could compensate him later. Vill-V had always advocated for equality.
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