It was still night in Cernobeli, but this night no longer carried the silence of the past.
Laughter echoed through the streets.
Car engines rumbled across the cracked asphalt.
The dull churn of factory machinery hummed in the background.
All these once-dead sounds now pierced Lucas's eardrums with painful clarity.
He stood at the edge of the factory dormitory, a place still under construction. The once quiet and ghostly restricted zone had been replaced by a lively Cernobeli that buzzed with vitality. The oppressive aura of the forbidden zone was gone.
Even the lingering effects of nuclear radiation, once the very soul of the place, had vanished.
"1986..." Lucas murmured to himself.
The residents, oblivious to the doom approaching, were still turning houses into homes, unaware of the monstrous transformation that was to come—
A thriving city that would soon become a land of grotesque horrors.
Lucas gripped the kitchen knife in his blood-stained hand, the metal still warm from battle. He stood frozen at the unfinished factory gate, lost in thought.
"So this is the only way to change fate? To rewrite history by going back in time?"
This wasn't the first attempt. Many had entered the forbidden zone in hopes of preventing the catastrophe. None had ever succeeded.
"Time and place... they matter more than anything," Lucas whispered.
He had been through dozens of attempts. No. 50 hadn't mutated. He hadn't returned from the dead again. Finally, something felt right.
His mental state slowly stabilized.
Far in the distance, the nuclear power plant still stood tall. Lucas looked at it with narrowed eyes.
"The forbidden zone will..."
::???::
::Wait, can this machine really travel through time?::
::When did Lucas figure this out?? I'm lost again.::
The Cream of the Crop: I get it now! The dormitory building hasn't been built yet. If someone returns to this place after the explosion, they'd be buried in the wall.
There shouldn't be any woods at the border of the restricted zone either. Those people probably tried to escape, and only then entered the zone.
So when they returned post-explosion, the trees that grew later ended up suffocating them.
The sudden aging of NPCs and the restricted zone doctor's bizarre behavior likely stems from them returning to a time after the explosion.
::666!!::
::Wait, why does the explosion timeline differ for each player?::
Blue Kill: Depends on how long they were exposed to the time machine.
The Cream of the Crop: Exactly! The longer the exposure, the deeper you go into the past!
::...Now it makes sense...::
::So Lucas had planned to return to pre-explosion times all along. But why? What was he trying to change?::
Suddenly, the kill-feed on the screen began to spike.
Death and elimination notifications poured in.
To the players not yet affected by the forbidden zone's will, a cold chill ran through their veins.
"Something's not right..."
"Why haven't we heard any activity in the zone?"
"Could it be some maniac going on a killing spree?"
"No way! If they kill the wrong person, wouldn't they die too?"
[Current Dungeon Players: (10/50)]
[Target information has been changed. Please recheck.]
As the system reprocessed data, player objectives were redefined on the fly.
Once the constant alerts subsided, a heavy silence settled in.
Inside one of the derelict residential blocks, player number 22—Marco—was escorting a mysterious woman home.
[System Prompt: Player Marco has triggered a Hidden Mission]
[Hidden Mission: Fulfill the last wish of a wandering soul within the forbidden zone]
[Reward: Unknown]
The woman beside him? A ghost tethered to this cursed land.
All Marco had to do was take her home.
Simple enough.
He followed the NPC as she murmured softly about her home. A familiarity bloomed in her eyes as she neared a door.
"It feels so familiar... my home... my home..."
She stopped and began to cry.
Marco smiled. He was only a step away from completing the task.
"You..."
Before he could finish, a siren blared in his ears.
[WARNING! WARNING!]
[Hidden Task Error! Hidden Task Error!]
[Awaiting Background Recalculation...]
[WARNING...]
Marco watched, horrified, as the woman vanished into thin air. Like she had never existed.
He slammed open his system panel.
[Error...]
[Awaiting Background Recalculation...]
All players across the map who had triggered side missions were met with the same error prompts.
"What the hell is going on?!"
Nobody had answers.
Then Marco noticed the corridor underfoot had begun to shift. The filth vanished. Trash and grime were replaced by old, dusty flooring.
He opened the door.
The room was nearly empty, with furniture clearly cleared out. This wasn't a rushed escape. It was deliberate.
From the window, he saw the cityscape had changed.
Fewer buildings stood. The entire city looked more barren.
But the true horror? The nuclear plant was gone.
Gone. Erased. Like it had never existed.
The field where it once stood was now just overgrown weeds.
A final system prompt flickered in Marco's vision.
[System Prompt: Nuclear radiation dissipated. Mental value recovery initiated. Mental +1...]
The oppressive air lifted.
Though deserted, the zone no longer felt... dead.
But a terrifying thought crept into Marco's mind...
"Is the restricted zone... gone? Or is it hiding something worse?"
[WARNING! WARNING!]
[Copy World View Error: Background Recalculation In Progress...]
[Hidden Task Invalidated...]
[Recalculating...]
Back at the dormitory gates, Lucas materialized from thin air.
To others, he had vanished for only a second.
But in that second... his hair had grown longer, his clothing had changed.
He exhaled slowly, looking up at the Cernobeli night sky.
"Swallowed by the explosion... The will of the forbidden zone has finally been broken."
In one hand, Lucas still clutched the bloodied kitchen knife.
In the other, he now held the pulsing [Heart of Vision].
"Now then... should I wipe them out one by one? Or all at once?"
He stepped forward.
But just then, a white beam of light enveloped him.
[WARNING! Copy World View Invalid. Copy Will Shut Down for Maintenance.]
[All Players Will Be Forcibly Ejected.]
[Ejecting Players...]
[Ejecting Players...]
And just like that, the game world trembled. The forbidden zone collapsed upon itself.
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