This Game Is Too Realistic-Chapter 538.1: Countless Possibilities

When Spielberg came to his senses after following the mysterious person, he found himself standing in an empty corridor.

X-16 had somehow led him out of the prison without alerting a single person. No guards, no cameras, and no witnesses had seen them. They even took out Knife’s corpse along the way.

After leaving the prison, they entered a long underground tunnel, walked a considerable distance, and finally ascended in an elevator to reach where they were.

Behind him was the elevator door. The concrete-gray floor beneath his feet was seamless, while deep red walls stretched out to both sides, lined with amber-tinted wall lamps.

The industrial-style decor gave the place a solemn, minimalist elegance. It felt like the grand corridor of a modern palace.

He had never been there before.

X-16, who had been silently following beside him the whole time, had disappeared. He couldn’t tell if she had gone invisible again or simply left.

Feeling lost, Spielberg gulped nervously and muttered under his breath, "What the hell is this place..."

He hadn’t expected anyone to reply. But a cheerful voice answered from behind him. "This is the inner city!"

The sudden response startled Spielberg.

He turned to find a stranger smiling faintly at him.

"The... Inner city?"

"That’s right," the man who appeared from god knew when nodded, his smile still pleasant. "And not just anywhere. You’re standing at the very heart of it, inside the massive Boulder Tower, surrounded by countless skyscrapers."

"... Who are you?" Spielberg stared at the man in front of him.

He wanted to know which powerful figure had intervened to save him.

If that expert who could turn invisible hadn’t interfered, he would no doubt already be a corpse.

The man didn't hide anything and replied casually with a calm, friendly tone. "Eberts."

"Eberts...?"

The name sounded incredibly familiar.

Spielberg furrowed his brow, thinking for a long moment, and then his eyes suddenly widened until they nearly popped out of his skull. His expression changed entirely.

"Boulder Town Arms Industry?! He's that..."

"That’s right. Chairman of Boulder Town Arms Industry," Eberts said, still smiling as he watched Spielberg’s reaction.

Eberts...

The boss of Boulder Town Arms Industry!

He was ranked number two in Boulder Town!

Spielberg felt an earthquake in his chest and he gulped involuntarily.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t imagine why such a big shot would take interest in someone like him.

How many was this now?

"You... You wanted to see me?"

However, Eberts’ reaction surprised him.

"My curiosity about you ended the moment I first saw you. The one who wants to meet you is the true man of importance."

With that, he walked past Spielberg, brushing shoulders as he passed. "Follow me."

Watching Eberts’s back, Spielberg felt like his mind was tangled in a ball of yarn.

It felt like boarding a train bound for mist, with the end station rapidly approaching, but the scenery growing more and more blurry.

What unsettled him more was that he had countless questions, yet didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t even understand why he was there.

To dispel the fog in his chest, he swallowed once and followed.

The two of them walked for a while and eventually stopped before a narrow but tall door.

The door opened by itself and Eberts led him in.

Cautiously stepping forward, Spielberg glanced around the room.

It was extremely clean. The mirrored floor showed not a speck of dust, and there wasn’t a single piece of furniture or decoration. It was as empty as an isolated cell.

Except the room was much larger, and far more sterile. It wasn’t anything his small apartment or if he could even call it that, could compare to.

The only light came from a single beam of milky white light shining from the center of the ceiling.

Everything else was pitch-black, like a bottomless abyss. Spielberg couldn’t even see where the room ended.

"... Where is this place?"

Eberts didn’t answer. With a flick of his wrist, he pulled out a remote control like a magician and pressed a button.

The beam in the center shut off instantly. Spielberg felt as though he’d been dropped into a pit of darkness. However, the darkness didn’t last long.

The walls began to glow softly, displaying an increasingly blurry image. Colors slowly replaced the stark monochrome, until it was no longer a room.

Only then did Spielberg realize he was standing in a full-surround projection theater!

He had heard the inner city had something like it and it was used for watching postwar-era films, but tickets were ridiculously expensive, far beyond the reach of ordinary folk.

The theater he was standing in, however, was clearly something else. He heard that the theater in the inner city only had a curved front screen.

As for the place he was in...

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the surrounding air, were filled with shimmering particles of light. It felt as if they had stepped into another reality.

Buildings and streets slowly began to appear, then the scene zoomed out, revealing the massive outer wall of Boulder Town.

Crowds surged through the streets. The figures were blurry at first, but their shouting grew louder and more deafening.

Spielberg quickly realized the scene being projected was the inner city, specifically the main road leading from the outer city to the inner city.

Dozens, or even hundreds of phantoms started to move toward him.

They walked shoulder to shoulder, arms linked, forming a tide without end. Their faces were filled with fury. They shouted slogans in unison, marching with an uneven but resolute stride toward the armored soldiers guarding the entrance.

They seemed not to see Eberts or Spielberg.

Their gazes passed through him and they cut through his chest like invisible knives, aimed straight at the heart of the inner city.

Spielberg swallowed. A wave of terror rippled through his dazed eyes.

It wasn’t their anger that scared him. He had always stood with these people and he knew their rage wasn’t directed at him.

Only cowards feared the fury of the righteous.

What truly horrified him was the figure he saw lying on a cloth at the center of the procession.

Even though the figures were a little distorted, that was undoubtedly his corpse!

I... I’m dead?

Spielberg touched his face that felt, trying to reclaim some fragment of reality.

The yells of the crowd grew and the faces grew closer.

He saw strangers, people whose names he didn’t know. However... If he called them his comrades, he was sure they would answer.

At the current moment, all of them were screaming.

"Shoot us then!"

"Cowards!"

"Look into our eyes!"

Tearing his gaze from the surreal projection, Spielberg turned to Eberts while looking horrified.

"... Did you guys fake my death?"

No wonder they didn’t let him say goodbye to his friends!

They had faked his death!

But why?

Eberts suddenly burst out laughing. "Hahaha, why do we need to go through all this trouble? Who are you referring to when you said we faked your death? Are you referring to me, or that man who you have never seen before? Or perhaps, a familiar friend who holds a black card?"

Confusion was etched across Spielberg’s face.

Putting away his laughter, Eberts spoke again in a serious tone. "What you saw wasn’t real. It was just one possibility, a projection simulated by computer algorithms... but yes, it almost happened. We missed by just one second."

"We call this version, Ending A."

Spielberg stared at him, dumbfounded. He didn’t understand a word Eberts was saying. "What do you mean?"