Time ticked by, second by second.
The setting sun gradually softened, turning a rosy red.
"...I found it! I found it!" The bear-headed man scrambled hastily down a vine, his face flushed with excitement. He stumbled and crawled as he rushed toward Chu Bamboo.
"What did you find?" The dog-headed man's eyes lit up. He had been feeling hungry and was building a fire next to Chu Bamboo, preparing to have a hot meal.
"...Boss, why were you eating without me?" The bear-headed man blinked, looking at the bamboo lunchbox in Chu Bamboo's hands, then at the skewered meat in the dog-headed man's hands. He started to look aggrieved.
"Eat, eat, eat, all you think about is eating!" The dog-headed man pulled a wrapped rice ball from a pouch. "Just eat it cold! It won't kill you... Now hurry up and lead the way."
"...Oh!" Swallowing the rice ball in one gulp, the bear-headed man started to climb.
'Hmm?' Chu Bamboo mused as he climbed. 'Are we really supposed to go over the top? Jeez, this dream is getting less and less logical... I just hope it doesn't turn out that you can get in without a key anyway...'
And then...
On the peak of the middlemost of the three mountains.
"...Are you serious?" Chu Bamboo surveyed the scene, his expression uncharacteristically stiff.
"Are you kidding me?!" The dog-headed man smacked the bear-headed man hard on the head. "The more I look at this thing, the more it looks like a volcanic crater. Although there's no ash or heat inside, it's just a sinkhole on the mountaintop..."
"So, if the mountain under our feet really is a building, then given its position and shape, isn't this a chimney? The architectural structures I studied weren't that different... this is how they build houses in the countryside!" The bear-headed man shrank his neck, looking wronged. "You can get into a house through the chimney, can't you?"
"...Huh?!" The dog-headed man was stunned. After thinking it over, he realized the logic seemed to hold up.
"Then let's hurry! Weave the vines into a rope and slide down!" The dog-headed man rubbed his hands together, extremely excited.
Chu Bamboo didn't comment. He just fumbled with the key, his brow furrowing ever deeper. He felt something was wrong... If there was really such a huge loophole, allowing entry through the chimney... was the key truly meaningless? It wasn't impossible, but the probability was low.
Besides, this method of entry was too easy... so easy it was comical, even laughable.
Most importantly...
"Based on my last experience, the time should be about up!"
"...What does that mean?" the dog-headed man asked, looking at Chu Bamboo in confusion.
"They're here," Chu Bamboo said, looking into the distance.
The leaves rustled, and the sound of dense footsteps carried on the wind.
The dog-headed man followed Chu Bamboo's gaze and saw the people emerging from the shadows—figures wearing Flying Fish Suits and holding Spirit Pendulum Instruments. Their faces were identical to the ones he had glimpsed through the rear window of the car.
But unlike the tunic suits they wore before, they were now dressed in Flying Fish Suits.
"The... The Captain's Office!" The dog-headed man's scalp went numb. His face turned pale and his legs went weak. He was so terrified that he jumped straight into the chimney-like sinkhole.
"B-Boss!" The bear-headed man was stunned. "Why did you... Why did you kill yourself...? What happened...? Wait, the Captain's Office... why is it the Captain's Office? Hold on, the Captain's Office... are they Transcendents?"
The bear-headed man was so shocked at this revelation that he froze on the spot.
The leader of the Captain's Office group was a tall man, well over six feet, with a square jaw. His muscles were huge and powerful.
Chu Bamboo clicked his tongue in amazement. 'In the Real World,' he thought, 'you'd probably need some hardcore training and technology to build a superhuman physique of this caliber... Of course, anyone who actually managed it in the Real World would probably be ascending to Planet Steroid in no time!'
"...Chu... Chu Bamboo, what are you doing here?!" The lead man froze. Even though he was standing at the foot of the mountain, his superhuman vision allowed him to clearly see the face of Chu Bamboo on the peak—or rather, on the edge of the chimney.
This... He knew this young man!
"Bye-bye!" Chu Bamboo smiled and waved. "See you next time."
Then, without a moment's hesitation, Chu Bamboo jumped down.
'This time, since I've been caught... might as well restart!'
Chu Bamboo wasn't afraid of death. On the contrary, he was afraid of dying at the wrong time. The random twenty-four-hour reset had its limits.
If the reset happened too late and caused him to get stuck, it would take an unknown amount of extra effort to fix the situation.
Chu Bamboo had learned this lesson the hard way.
For example, if the men from the Captain's Office knocked him unconscious, then being unconscious for twenty-four... no, considering it had already been over ten hours since he robbed the bank this time, if he was out for more than five hours, things would get very troublesome.
"...Why did you do that!" The team leader, Li Kang, moved like a flash of lightning, appearing at the edge of the sinkhole in an instant. He reached for Chu Bamboo but couldn't grab him. Not unless he dived in right now...
"Captain, calm down!"
"We're already in a dangerous restricted zone..."
"Damn it, the danger level is already off the charts! We can't stay here for more than an hour... No, a strange opening like this might connect directly inside... It's possible this thing is even more dangerous."
"...But... with things like this, how am I supposed to explain this to her?!" Li Kang's face twisted in anguish. He grabbed the nearby bear-headed man, looked away from the sinkhole, and leaped down in anguish.
The few figures hovering in the sky hurriedly followed him down. If not for their immense respect for Li Kang, they would never in a million years... get this close to a designated high-risk area!
...
Chu Bamboo had thought it would be like another bungee jump. A clean, quick death...
But...
'One, two... six, no, that's not right!'
Chu Bamboo had calculated before that this mountain was no more than two hundred meters high. Based on his past experience, a two-hundred-meter fall would take a little over six seconds to hit the ground. But this... there was no end in sight!
'Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four...'
'Still not at the bottom?'
At this point, he should have fallen nearly eight hundred meters! 'Damn it,' he realized, 'this isn't a normal building constructed on land at all. Its main structure is underground!'
Suddenly, Chu Bamboo's eyelids twitched. He felt a jolt run through his body, as if he had crossed some forbidden line.
Then, he saw something bizarre. The walls of the sinkhole were covered in barnacle-like crystalline growths. Illuminated by glowing clouds, they shimmered with a strange, eerie green light.
The luminous, misty clouds were like something out of a fairy tale, dreamlike and fantastical. It felt like falling into a wonderland... and at the same time, it was unnervingly terrifying.
'But, if there's light down here... why was it pitch black when I looked down from the top?'
A rusty taste suddenly filled Chu Bamboo's throat. 'Am I coughing up blood? Why? I haven't hit the ground yet... why would I be coughing up blood?'
'No!'
His groggy mind suddenly snapped awake. Chu Bamboo stared at his own arm in disbelief as the muscles swelled. Veins bulged beneath the skin, giving it a powerful, textured quality...
It wasn't just his arm, it was his whole body... every single part of him! It was all expanding crazily.
It was as if he was on the path to steroid ascension, his body evolving irreversibly... But was this really an evolution?
Along with the surge of power came a piercing pain in his brain and body, as if a thousand needles were stabbing into him.
SPLASH!
Chu Bamboo fell into water.
'Is it water?'
'It should be...'
The pain in his body grew more intense. Chu Bamboo's consciousness was already fading...
Vaguely, Chu Bamboo seemed to hear an alarm in perfect, standard Mandarin...
"Warning! Humanoid lifeform detected falling. Warning! Gamma-ray levels exceed standard limits! Gamma-ray levels exceed standard limits..."