Everything that happened in this situation completely overturned Furukawa Hirozawa's imagination.
Originally, he thought this game was a story of mutual salvation between a female protagonist from an Underground People's inverted tribe who came to the surface, and Eiji, a young man from the Aiga people.
But he never expected there to be an even newer world beyond these two.
The starry sky of Aiga City was not a real starry sky, but the city lights.
It was just that the entire city was inverted, which was incredibly shocking.
Terrifying!
Furukawa Hirozawa rubbed his arms, and even in the warm May weather, he still felt a chill throughout his body.
So what exactly was going on?
A three-layered, mutually inverted structure?
Furukawa Hirozawa stated that his brain could no longer sort out what the true appearance of this world was.
All he could say was that the Author of this game was simply a genius; Urobuchi Gen was indeed Urobuchi Gen, inversion after inversion.
Now, Furukawa Hirozawa's head was spinning from all the inversions.
[Act Seven: castle in the sky]
In a modern city, two people landed on the ground, but this time, Patema stood firmly on top, holding the male protagonist's hands to prevent him from falling from a high altitude.
Eiji felt a surge of panic in his heart; from his perspective, below was a bottomless abyss and thick clouds.
That was the sky of Aiga City.
He experienced Patema's past fear for the first time and couldn't help but cry out.
"It's alright!"
Patema held the male protagonist's hands, comforting him.
An elegant and serene background music began to play; this time, the game's score was produced by Yoko Shimomura, using classical symphony, so it had a strong metallic feel.
But it was precisely because of this music that the entire game's atmosphere was brought out.
The more there was a resounding, long and distant symphony, the more it could reflect the serenity and emptiness of this scene.
At the same time, it could bring that silently surging, eerie atmosphere to its peak.
Walking in such a city, even Furukawa Hirozawa, who was playing the game, broke out in a cold sweat.
The entire seventh act was a game played in the castle in the sky, still with the male protagonist Eiji as the main perspective.
In other words, the two of them were combined and inverted above the sky.
Once they fell, they would die.
During the seventh act of the game, Furukawa Hirozawa experienced an unprecedented sense of primal human fear, completely different from the feeling he had in the underground city or the Aiga city maze before:
At least in those levels, there was still ground below, and the internal structure of the buildings was relatively enclosed.
But in the seventh act, the space below was the sky, with an entire sea of clouds covering the two people's feet; this open structure, on the contrary, could arouse fear in one's heart.
So terrifying…
Furukawa Hirozawa couldn't help but break out in a sweat, carefully exploring this castle in the sky.
What made him even more confused and terrified was—
After exploring the seventh act of the game for a long time, he didn't even see a single human, no, not even a single living creature.
Before, even in the underground city, he could see bats, lizards, or other creatures living underground.
But here, he truly didn't encounter a single enemy; the level, other than being inverted, didn't have much difficulty.
But precisely because of this, Furukawa Hirozawa felt even more afraid in his heart.
That sense of loneliness, with nothing in the entire city, swept over him like a tide.
Here, there were only Patema and Eiji.
Is this a game bug?!
Or was it intentionally designed?
If it was intentionally designed, then why was there no sign of life in this city?
Yet, the surrounding buildings and various mechanical devices were all lit up; it was these bright lights that formed the sky of Aiga.
An empty city with no inhabitants, it appeared even more eerie under such lighting.
So where did the original inhabitants go?
What happened here?
What was its connection to Aiga and the Underground People?
All of this left Furukawa Hirozawa bewildered.
…
Hehe.
Hehe.
Furukawa Hirozawa chuckled twice; if others saw him like this, they would most likely think he had gone mad.
Gen Urobuchi was indeed Gen Urobuchi.
Other games become clearer as you play them, and the more clues you accumulate, the closer you get to uncovering the ultimate truth of the world.
But Urobuchi Gen's script, on the other hand, becomes less clear the more you play.
The more clues and information accumulated, the more perplexing and confusing it became.
What exactly happened to this world?
The increasing number of questions left Furukawa Hirozawa completely at a loss.
But well, since he had already reached the seventh act, he could only take it one step at a time.
…
After exploring the city for a while, Furukawa Hirozawa discovered an important item on the ground of a certain level—
Patema's backpack.
When he picked it up, Furukawa Hirozawa suddenly understood everything.
"Wow, so that previous plot was laying the groundwork for this!"
In the second act of the game, Patema came to Aiga from the underground city because her backpack had fallen, but because the backpack was too heavy and would drag her and Eiji up into the sky, she had to throw it away at that time.
Now, seeing the backpack again, it was as if a switch had been flipped forcefully in Furukawa Hirozawa's mind, and a bright light suddenly flashed.
It felt like a sudden enlightenment.
Terrifying!
Gen Urobuchi's control over the plot and his ability to tie up loose ends were simply first-rate.
The flashlight in the backpack was broken and unusable.
There weren't many other useful tools, but thankfully, there were some scattered small gadgets and wrenches.
But now, Furukawa Hirozawa didn't know what to do with these tools.
Continuing to explore, at the end of the road, Furukawa Hirozawa found another key item:
An airship.
Rather than an airship, it was more like an anti-gravity balloon device, somewhat similar to a hot air balloon in Furukawa Hirozawa's understanding, with a large basket below the device where people could sit.
The only difference was that this flying device relied on anti-gravity for flight.
Through some exploration, a diary was found in the airship.
It turned out that this airship was jointly researched and invented by the male protagonist Eiji's father and Patema's father.
In this diary, Eiji's father recorded:
[September 23rd]
[Today, a major event happened. I met a strange man who claimed to be from the underground world.]
[That man experienced the exact opposite gravity to us.]
[I hid that man.]
[His appearance must mean something.]
…
In this diary, the male protagonist's father meticulously recorded how he met Patema's father and how the two became instant friends.
So, they used their knowledge and research on gravity to ultimately create this gravity airship.
The male protagonist's father rode it into the sky.
At the end of the diary, it read:
[Thank him for helping me achieve my dream.]
[Next time, it will be my turn to help him achieve his dream: that all humanity can live in peace.]
But…
Why didn't the male protagonist's father see it?
Where did he go?
Furukawa Hirozawa felt a surge of doubt in his heart; logically, since he rode the airship to this castle in the sky, there should be traces left by him.
However, there was no mention of it at all, and Furukawa Hirozawa didn't know what his fate was.
However, a premonition of ill omen surged in Furukawa Hirozawa's heart.
It was very likely that this great father, the Aiga people's sky explorer, had been shot down by the Aiga people on the ground during his flight.
This was also why he couldn't be seen in the castle in the sky.
As soon as he thought of this, Furukawa Hirozawa felt a wave of sorrow in his heart.
All clues about the castle in the sky had been collected.
When the male protagonist and female protagonist understood all of this, they gazed at each other, sighing.
Fate was truly wonderful; they never expected to repeat the story of the previous generation, and even further approach their parents' dream.
So the two decided to tell the Aiga people everything they had seen in the castle in the sky.
But this goal could only be achieved by repairing this gravity airship.
They would then need to find different machine parts from the city to fix it.
So Furukawa Hirozawa controlled the two of them to search the city.
This process wasn't particularly complicated, but the experience of solving puzzles and obtaining parts was very interesting.
…
After completing all of this, the seventh act finally ended, and after the gravity device was inverted, the two slowly descended from above in the airship.
[Act Eight: The Original Dream]
Aihe Leader, as if facing a formidable enemy, quickly summoned his soldiers, determined to shoot down Patema and Eiji.
Otherwise, if these two flew into the sky and could safely return to the ground, it would cause a terrible spiritual shock to the entire Aiga Kingdom.
Originally, the human heart was filled with an endless longing for the sky, and it was precisely after the failure of previous flight experiments that Aiga imposed a spiritual control banning flight on everyone.
Everyone was filled with fear of the sky, which prevented them from further exploring it.
But now, once Eiji and Patema returned, everything the kingdom had previously propagated would be destroyed.
This was something Aihe Leader could not accept.
The eighth act was designed as a bullet hell game, because Furukawa Hirozawa had to pilot the airship, dodging shells fired from the ground during the descent.
Playing up to this point, Furukawa Hirozawa couldn't help but smile wryly.
Shinji Mikami was truly a clever little guy, to be able to design this horizontal scrolling game as a bullet hell game.
These game developers at pokeni were truly insane.
…
Just as they were about to reach the ground, the airship was hit by a shell and crashed.
To survive, the male protagonist and female protagonist had jumped out of the airship cabin beforehand.
Then they ran on the ground, dodging the Aiga people's pursuers while heading towards the pit from which the Underground People had emerged.
The entire eighth act's level progression was extremely tense and exciting, with the pace suddenly accelerating, and the margin for error decreasing as it went on, causing Furukawa Hirozawa's adrenaline to surge.
It was truly delightful to experience such a game.
After a lot of effort (dying countless times), Furukawa Hirozawa successfully reached the Underground People's pit.
Then the two jumped down.
End of Act Eight.
Seeing this, Furukawa Hirozawa could pretty much make an educated guess:
The ending would definitely be everyone going to live in that city above Aiga.
Mhm.
It must be this way.
Urobuchi Gen's script was clearly arranged; the dream that the male protagonist and female protagonist's fathers couldn't achieve was [that all people can live in peace].
Then everyone would no longer fear gravity inversion.
Since there was an empty city above, then Patema's people, who originally lived underground, could completely live up there.
…
[Act Nine: The Truth of the World]
The two returned to the underground city again, and the Underground People rushed over to embrace the male protagonist and female protagonist; everyone was truly overjoyed that Patema had returned.
The male protagonist also greatly enjoyed this moment.
But just then, a tremor suddenly came from above, and the entire television screen shook.
Immediately following was a giant excavator, digging directly in from above.
Rumble.
A loud noise.
A heavy vehicle carrying Aihe Leader and soldiers was lowered from above by a cable.
"We finally found you, inverted people!"
Aihe Leader sneered.
"To protect Aiga, I will eliminate you heretics!"
But just then, the ground could not bear the weight of the heavy vehicle and collapsed downwards.
Patema, Eiji, along with the Aiga soldiers and Leader, fell heavily.
They fell all the way to the ground deep underground.
Only to see that where everyone had been standing, a huge crack had already been smashed open.
…
At this point, it was the final act of the game.
So, the plot had also reached its climax.
The clash of their ideologies and conflicts, the physical collisions, also became exceptionally intense and sharp at this moment.
Furukawa Hirozawa couldn't help but sit up straight, deeply feeling the tension as a major battle approached.
The entire ninth act level was a chase, with Aihe Leader pursuing from behind, and Patema and Eiji fleeing underground.
That fatal feeling of being hunted like prey made Furukawa Hirozawa's nerves taut to the extreme.
Terrifying.
Too terrifying.
What kind of person with such a sinister mind could design such a level?
The problem was that as the hunted player, there was no effective way to fight back.
If caught, it was game over.
However, one slightly more humane point about this level was that it was played from the male protagonist's main perspective.
So the BOSS also stood on the same gravity plane as him, making it slightly easier to dodge.
If the game had to be played upside down, Furukawa Hirozawa estimated he would have to flip his television over.
…
However, in the final level, the male protagonist and female protagonist could use some attack methods, throwing gravity stones to cause damage and strikes to the BOSS.
Under such circumstances, as the BOSS's health continuously decreased to zero.
The game finally entered the epilogue of the final act:
As the BOSS was defeated, the entire game screen suddenly went black, then transitioned into a cutscene animation.
Rumble!
The ground where Eiji and the BOSS were standing suddenly cracked open.
Then they fell down.
Yes.
The ground cracked open, forming a huge void.
At the same time, when Aihe Leader fell from above the void, his eyes suddenly lit up.
Below was a vast sea of clouds.
To be precise, it was the real sky.
Now, Aihe Leader, just like Patema who had once traversed the underground to reach Aiga, he too had penetrated the underground of the underground and saw the azure sky.
Before drifting lost into space, a joyful smile appeared on his lips.
Is this the sky?!
Nani?!
What kind of development is this?!
Seeing this scene, Furukawa Hirozawa was utterly astonished.
…
At the same time, the image on the television screen also kept rotating, turning one hundred and eighty degrees.
It returned to the female protagonist's perspective.
Patema held Eiji and passed through this underground void, coming to the ground.
The camera continuously zoomed out.
Only to see lush green grass, and on the vast land, many dilapidated tall buildings stood, but these structures, once representing human civilization, had now become ruins.
Various green plants covered them.
White clouds floated in the sky, and the sun was bright.
The earth was bathed in light.
The Aiga people and the Underground People came to this new, true land.
A pure white moon hung high above, but around the moon was a ring of lunar halo; those were the remnants of the surface that had floated into the sky after an accident and were captured by the moon.
At the same time, subtitles appeared in the game:
[Producer: Shinji Mikami]
[Script: Gen Urobuchi]
[Music: Yoko Shimomura]
…
Nani?
So the male protagonist was the true inverted person all along?!
The Aiga people were the ones who hid in the earth's core?!
After completing the game, the initial interface also changed.
It became a ruin, with white clouds floating above.
That was the final scene, the moment everyone finally returned to the ground.
Furukawa Hirozawa held the controller, unable to recover for a long time.
After a while, he finally stood up with a sense of loss, clasped his hands together, and said to the void:
"Thank you for the meal."
Finishing this game was like eating a particularly creative gourmet meal.
What a delicious game!
Please Support me by becoming my Patreon member and get 20+ chapters.
[email protected]/Ajal69
change @ with a
Thank You to Those who joined my Patreon