Chapter Sixteen: The Game

WTF??

These three letters, along with two punctuation marks, were conveyed by the orc brother standing in front of Tan Mo through his rich facial expressions. Unless one is mentally unstable, it’s almost impossible to play this game. This guy was probably already wondering which asylum the kid in front of him had escaped from.

That pixelated face, the furtive expression, and the underground-party-like tone—none of it looked like the behavior of a sane person.

Besides, he probably didn’t even know him!

Unfortunately, this guy before him was truly a stray fish slipping through the net, both in terms of hospitals and the police...

“Enough pretending~” Tan Mo sneered and elbowed the orc player’s arm, whispering, “I saw through it a long time ago. You’re pretty much what I imagined. By the way, about that thing with the boiled water mixed with Erguotou…”

Before he could finish, the handsome orc with raging red hair (no mistake) lifted his leg and left without a word, muttering something as he went—words that seemed to carry a slight discriminatory tone about comrades.

“Uh, isn’t that so?” Tan Mo scratched his head, glanced around, then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ha! So it was you!? I said that kid’s aura was way weaker than expected. I really did come to the wrong person!”

Excitedly mumbling, he charged toward an ogre player not far away. That guy looked like a towering iron pillar, and for some reason, his face was twisted in a particularly eerie way, like a Frankenstein who had just poked a hornet’s nest—scaring even his own kind.

Nearby, Futaba, who had been squinting and silently glaring at Tan Mo, finally lost her patience. She took a few quick steps, grabbed his collar, yanked him back, rolled her eyes, and snorted coldly: “It’s me!”

“What do you mean ‘you’?” Tan Mo glanced at her disdainfully, waving his hand impatiently. “I made an appointment with my buddy here. Didn’t you see he’s waiting for me to come say hi?”

He gestured toward the ogre—well, the Frankenstein—and waved excitedly, calling out, “Buddy! I’m here! By the way, about that boiled water mixed with Erguotou…”

“It’s me! Me! Me!” Futaba grabbed Tan Mo’s collar and dragged him in front of her, her eyes practically shooting flames. She stomped and whispered fiercely, “I’m the one who uncovered that fake liquor company! It’s called Imperial Jade Liquid Corporation. They mix water costing less than 1.5 yuan with Erguotou, then sell it for 1888 a cup. I planted the crash program! You stole the internal data! We exposed the intel together! You even blew up the skinny monkey boss’s monitor! Got it?!”

The girl was nearly collapsing just now. Standing nearby, Futaba had heard the entire process of Tan Mo mistaking an orc for himself. She was already furious that this guy had imagined her as that kind of presence, and now Tan Mo, upon realizing the mistake, immediately targeted someone even uglier!

Who could stand that?!

If it weren’t for the fact that they were in a public space where force couldn’t be used, she would have already thrown a huge fireball right in this guy’s face!

“Ah…” Tan Mo looked at Futaba helplessly, then glanced at the ogre brother wearing nothing but shorts, and sneered, “So that’s how it is. Tch, truly disappointing…”

Futaba ground her teeth, glaring at him. “What kind of disrespectful expectations were you harboring about me before?!”

“At least~” Tan Mo suddenly dropped his earlier somewhat neurotic demeanor and chuckled softly, “you’re a bit more composed than that childish little girl in front of me.”

“Who are you calling…” Futaba instinctively retorted but froze when she caught his teasing gaze.

Even though Tan Mo’s face was heavily distorted by pixelation, Futaba could still sense his sarcastic smile and the deeper meaning behind his words.

Not calm enough…

I’m not calm enough…

Where exactly am I not calm…

Wait!

Futaba looked up in shock at this guy she had cooperated with for years but had never met, her expression darkening instantly. “You knew it was me all along?!”

“How so?” Tan Mo didn’t answer her question but asked instead.

“I’ve been observing people in this area,” Futaba quickly regained her composure, pushed her glasses up with a finger, and said seriously, “For at least two minutes, you weren’t among my group. When I noticed, you were already standing at a spot close enough that even if you lowered your voice, I could still hear you chatting with that orc.”

Tan Mo let out an awkward chuckle. “Could you please not use the word ‘chatting’? It’s kind of ambiguous…”

“Both the timing and the distance between us are too coincidental,” Futaba ignored him and continued, “Even if those two points could be explained by chance, your somewhat exaggerated actions were too targeted.”

“Alright, I’ll give you some credit,” Tan Mo clapped his hands. “Though this belated sharp sense isn’t really praise-worthy, as a gentleman, one should be more tolerant of beautiful girls, right?”

Futaba pursed her lips in silence for a moment, then looked at the blurred face before her and asked, “How did you know?”

“Do you find it unbelievable?” Tan Mo’s gaze seemed to be looking at an idiot.

Futaba felt a surge of anger again, but this time she quickly calmed down and said calmly, “I do have a guess, but I need to hear your answer before making a judgment.”

Tan Mo’s look grew stranger, suspiciously asking, “Are you really Sun?”

Futaba chuckled, “Don’t believe it if you don’t want to. Or you can just reveal some information and give me a chance to prove myself?”

“Forget it.” Tan Mo shrugged. “I just noticed a sudden flood of similar fake profiles online, casually looked into it, found them meaningless, and moved on. Then…”

He snapped his fingers, and half of the universe’s life vanished in an instant… Sorry, I got carried away…

He snapped his fingers, raised his eyebrows at Futaba, and said, “Turns out someone actually traced those leftover clues. The tracking methods and habits are quite similar to someone I know, which proves those fake profiles must be connected to you in some way…”

“I understand.” Futaba lowered her head helplessly before he finished. “Then you noticed only I fit the description among everyone in this area, so you came over to test me, like a blind cat feeling around. And then…”

“You just stepped right up yourself,” Tan Mo laughed. “Like a pure little girl angrily accused by a teacher of early romance.”

Futaba rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t I realize you had such an awful personality, Black?”

“Because we tend to unconsciously beautify unknown rivals in our minds,” Tan Mo extended his right hand toward Futaba. “Once the distance disappears, the non-existent flattering fantasies vanish too. So, nice to meet you, Sun.”

Futaba casually tapped his hand and snorted, “Judging by what you just said, it seems the Sun you imagined is quite different from me.”

“People are fragile, best not to shatter illusions~” Tan Mo shrugged. “I don’t intend to keep hurting your self-esteem, buddy… No, should I say ‘lady’? Or something else?”

Futaba sneered, “Call me whatever you want. Now, moving on, you’ve tried attacking the Innocence company’s system too, right?”

“Alright, little pudding.”

“What did you say?!” Futaba’s face, already cloudy, darkened even more.

Tan Mo looked innocent. “Didn’t you tell me to call you whatever I wanted?”

“Just keep calling me ‘buddy,’” Futaba said coldly. “So you’ve also suffered losses with Innocence?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Tan Mo’s tone suddenly darkened, his anger and madness intertwined with an indescribable complex aura that made Futaba shudder.

To the girl, the answer was obvious…

He must have hit a wall just like her, maybe even suffered a heavy blow. And possibly, because of his unreasonable male ‘pride,’ his sense of defeat seemed even more severe than hers.

[Hmph, serves you right! Who told you to tease me earlier? I wonder if Mr. Black, who arrogantly looked down upon finding out his rival SUN is a girl like me, feels even more miserable~]

Futaba thought maliciously.

Yet, as she increasingly believed that this chaotic guy before her was not the clever priest Black Fan, she was drifting further from the truth under Tan Mo’s deception…

At this point, the rhythm shifted.

Tan Mo wasn’t truly angry as he appeared. His slight agitation was more to mask his urge to burst into laughter. Every emotion and expression Futaba saw was a façade, a performance.

Since sending that message to Sun earlier that day, Tan Mo’s act had begun.

Including their interaction when he was in the [Absolute Neutral] role, the constant provocation just now, even the anger displayed like a proud genius struck in his own domain—all of it was fake.

Everything was to dispel Futaba’s doubts about the two entities ‘Black Fan’ and ‘Tan Mo,’ leading her further astray with wrong assumptions…

Now, only one last step remained.

---

“By the way,” Tan Mo abruptly changed the subject awkwardly, “I didn’t expect you to be playing this game. Looks like I was a bit presumptuous about the difficulties with the game pod earlier.”

Futaba didn’t want to provoke him too much—not because of the usual ‘soft-heartedness’ most girls have, but because she didn’t want to waste precious probing time on pointless mutual mockery. Who knew when this unpredictable guy might suddenly log off.

So she played along, “Me too~ Didn’t expect you to have time for games instead of always hanging out with tissues and restricted videos like most of your kind.”

Oops! That sounded like a tease!

But Tan Mo didn’t seem to mind. He smiled wryly, “I think you have some very unfair misconceptions about male hackers…”

“No, I just thought you were a shut-in,” Futaba said with a smile.

The atmosphere suddenly warmed considerably~~

“Haha, I do go out sometimes to feed stray cats and do some charity work~”

“That’s nice~ I heard guys who like taking care of animals give people a strong sense of security~”

Of course, this was just surface-level. Both of them were no pushovers. Though they seemed to get along fairly well, either could easily throw a stone and drag the other down into a pit, possibly causing several mudslides in the process...

Still, Futaba consistently intended to give Tan Mo a hard time.

As for Tan Mo, such thoughts only came from his [Chaotic Neutral] persona, so he inevitably suffered losses. The earlier mistake of being found out first was a lesson.

If it weren’t for a system bug caused by his split personality, he might have lost this game first after exposing a flaw at some unknown moment.

Whenever his personality switched to [Absolute Neutral], Tan Mo would feel a bit of lingering fear thinking about this...

But now...

He only felt pure joy and excitement~

As long as it brought him pleasure, he didn’t care whether he was digging dirt next to Onizuka or dancing on a knife’s edge...

Just having fun was enough!

As a pop-up appeared before Futaba, her last shred of doubt was completely dispelled.

[Player Tan Mo (Chaotic Neutral) requests to add you as a friend.]

“I feel like such an idiot,” Futaba muttered softly, then readily accepted Tan Mo’s friend request. She glanced at another name in her friend list:

Friend: Black Fan (Absolute Neutral)

Even if that guy had some issues, or was a skilled hacker, it didn’t matter anymore...

Futaba looked up at the little orange-haired mage before her, a faint smile appearing on her cute doll-like face.

[Because the biggest, most troublesome, hardest prey has finally appeared~]

Suddenly, she felt a surge of motivation!

“Even if you’re a bit overwhelmed by me adding you first, don’t daze off now,” Tan Mo’s somewhat cheeky voice snapped Futaba back to reality.

Looking at the petite orange-haired mage, he leaned close and whispered in her ear...

“I want to play a game with you.”

Chapter Sixteen: The End