Lucas's latest promotional video detonated the gaming forums like a spark tossed into dry grass. Threads multiplied by the second, comments racing across the screens of millions of curious players.
> "I took screenshots of the footage and compared them carefully," one player wrote.
"I can't find anything—anything at all—that looks the same between Lucas as a child and Lucas now! Sure, people change as they grow, but bones don't! Look at the bridge of the nose, the outline of the jaw, the orbital bones—these are two completely different people!"
Another post rose immediately beneath it.
> "My wife's reaction was super weird too. First she swore she didn't recognize adult Lucas, and the next second she completely changed her story? What's going on with that?"
> "This wife has issues," someone else typed. "Maybe she's the one who's sick, not Lucas!"
But another user pushed back.
> "Hold on, we already know Lucas had a medical condition. Whether there's something wrong with the wife is still up for debate. But if you look at the childhood memories exposed in both The Orphanage and The Town of Verne, they match perfectly. How could that possibly come from two different people?"
And just like that, the argument escalated.
While the crowd bickered endlessly, some sharper-eyed players began calling out to the moderators in the background. They demanded proof—every photo, every scrap of evidence.
"Post all the pictures the wife has!" one shouted.
"Yeah, we want to see the timeline!"
Within the hour, the moderators delivered.
---
All the photographs from the woman's private album appeared on the forum feed—hundreds of them, neatly arranged from the moment Lucas left the orphanage to the weeks before his admission to the psychiatric hospital.
In the earliest images, little Lucas beamed at the camera beneath the summer sun, a small boy with bright eyes and a smile wide enough to light the frame. But as the pictures progressed, the smiles shrank.
By the time the audience reached the photo of Lucas wearing a tiny backpack on his way to school, that radiant grin had dulled.
Then it faded.
Then it vanished.
In the final photograph—taken just before he was sent to the Ninth Hospital—Lucas's face was a blank slate. No joy, no sorrow. Just an empty stare fixed directly on the lens, as if he were already looking past the world itself.
> "Hey," one viewer whispered in the comment section, "you can already see the adult Lucas in that last picture. The same hollow eyes… It's creepy."
> "Yeah, but if that's him, how did his face change that much? It's unnatural."
> "Weird or not, the photos don't lie. Time changes everything."
After thousands of replies, the heated debate finally cooled, collapsing under the popular proverb: "Eighteen changes as a boy grows."
The audience accepted the explanation—for a while.
---
Barely a day later, another piece of news exploded across the internet, throwing everything back into chaos.
At first glance, the headline looked ordinary:
> Fire in an old apartment block in City X. Two confirmed dead.
The report described a small blaze that had broken out in the middle of the night. Most residents escaped unharmed. Only one couple, trapped inside, failed to make it out.
Tragic—but hardly unusual.
Until journalists investigated the victims' background.
The couple had no biological children. They'd adopted once—but the adopted child's name had been deleted from all official files. When authorities tried to contact surviving relatives, every trace led nowhere.
One relative had died of old age.
Another had suffered a car accident.
A few more perished in freak mishaps over the last decade.
In the end, no one remained to claim the bodies. The couple's remains were quietly stored at the city funeral home, awaiting cremation.
---
A forum user posted screenshots of the article with a single chilling note:
> "These two were Lucas's adoptive parents."
The forum went berserk.
> "Wait, WHAT?! They're dead?!"
"Both of them? In a fire?!"
"That makes every close connection Lucas ever had either disappear or die. In both hospitals he stayed at, staff and relatives died too!"
Someone typed the unthinkable:
> "Could it be Lucas who did it?"
> "It's possible," another replied. "Come on, how can this many coincidences pile up? It's statistically impossible!"
> "Remember what he told his parents and the hospital staff—he said he was protecting them. What if that was true? Maybe it's because he left that all these tragedies happened!"
The theory spread like wildfire.
> "Damn… that actually makes sense. But if he's so powerful now, why would he burn down a building? That's too crude for someone like him."
> "Nothing ever happened at the Sunshine Orphanage though," one user noted. "So why does every later incident tie directly to Lucas?"
> "Maybe coincidence… or maybe not."
> "When he lived in the orphanage, his illness wasn't severe yet. As he got older, it worsened. If he started sleepwalking, he could've done these things without realizing it!"
The conversation descended into paranoia. People speculated about possession, supernatural contagion, or classified experiments. A few begged for the sealed medical records from the Second Hospital, convinced the truth lay there.
> "If only we could find Lucas's full case file," one post read. "There was something about the real cause of his condition."
But the Second Hospital had long since closed, its archives lost, its doctors scattered—or dead.
---
While the internet raged with suspicion and fear, the center of it all—the man himself—remained silent.
No one knew where Lucas was.
No one knew what he planned next.
---
When Lucas finally stirred, he awoke in darkness.
He blinked, momentarily disoriented, before glancing at the clock beside his bed.
> "Slept for exactly eight hours," he murmured, smiling faintly. "Healthy and regular sleep time—hard-won luxury in my world."
Stretching, he opened the game panel hovering before his eyes. The glowing numbers instantly erased his calm expression.
> [Time until Group Stage begins: 2 hours 13 minutes 50 seconds.]
The sight made him sigh. He had planned his rest precisely to align with the tournament's schedule—eight-hour cycles, perfect efficiency. Yet somehow, the countdown always seemed ready to drag him back into the nightmare.
> "You can't escape the game," he whispered. "You can only make sure you're well-rested before it begins."
Then—Woo-ooo!
A shrill whistle sliced through the silence. Metal wheels screeched against frozen tracks. Lucas's surroundings shuddered as if reality itself had shifted.
A deep vibration rumbled beneath him.
Snowflakes flurried past the window.
Somewhere, a train was moving.
---
He opened his eyes again—and froze.
He wasn't in his apartment anymore.
He lay inside a luxury soft-sleeper compartment, its brass lamps swaying gently as the carriage rolled forward. Heavy curtains framed a frost-covered window. Outside stretched a white wasteland, endless snow swallowing the horizon.
> "A dream?" he muttered, sitting up slowly.
Then realization dawned.
> "No… not a dream. This is the second dungeon world."
His last memory returned—the game's global announcement, the end of the previous copy, and the warning that the next scenario would begin soon. Clearly, this was it.
But something was wrong.
His internal clock said the group stage should start in twenty-four hours, not now. Someone—or something—had advanced the start time.
> "So that's their strategy," he murmured. "Catch the players off guard."
He scanned the cabin carefully. Every detail gleamed with unsettling precision—the wood grain, the faint scent of oil and steel, the rhythmic clack of the rails. It felt too real for simulation.
His gaze finally landed on a sheet of paper pinned to the cabin door.
---
[Instructions for Passengers]
> Dear travelers, welcome aboard the Snowpiercer Line. This train departs from Station Zero and travels toward eternity. Please keep your tickets ready and remain seated at all times. The doors between carriages will lock automatically after departure.
Have a pleasant journey.
Beneath the polite words, crimson stains seeped into the paper like dried blood.
Lucas's expression hardened.
The "Snowpiercer" was no ordinary transport.
It was the new game world.
He could already sense the chill creeping under the door, a whispering wind carrying faint echoes—footsteps, laughter, and something else… something crawling.
He stepped closer to the window. Outside, the train wound through a blizzard. Snow drifts piled against the cars, and the endless night stretched beyond sight. A single sign stood half-buried in the snow beside the track:
> WELCOME TO THRILLER TRAIN.
---
Lucas exhaled slowly, his breath misting the air.
> "Snowpiercer? No… this is the Thriller Train."
He smiled—a thin, dangerous curve.
> "Let's see what horrors you've prepared for me this time."
As the whistle screamed again, the wheels caught speed.
The train plunged into the storm, carrying its passengers toward an unknown destination.
Behind the closed doors of every carriage, shadows stirred awake.
And far down the corridor, something—or someone—started to move toward Lucas's compartment.
---
To Be Continued…
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