Chapter 2867 - 1359: Sorrow/Joy

There was a moment when Double Leaf didn’t understand what was happening.

She just stared dazedly through the Eye of the Mage at those four, who, although more than half a year had passed, had never left her memory; even if she refused to think about them, they would often appear in her illusions and dreams, incredibly clear and incredibly real ’partners’.

This wasn’t because the girl, only 1.6 meters tall but already an adult, was overly sentimental or melancholic; it was because for Double Leaf, who had no offline social life, Ned, Yina, Crab, Saracha, and even Hei Fan were unique to her.

Indeed, from an objective standpoint, The Realm of Innocence doesn’t belong offline either, but is a large-scale multiplayer virtual reality game. No matter how players frolic inside the game, the reality is that they are ultimately lying in the game cabin, an indisputable fact.

And apart from Motan the player, the four members of the Fenrir Team were ultimately just sets of data; they had no flesh, no brain, no soul, and essentially did not exist in reality, existing at a level one dimension lower.

But even so...

In Double Leaf’s eyes, the gap between this falsehood and reality was nearly erased once she realized the simulation level of The Realm of Innocence was almost perfect, and the wisdom displayed by the NPCs was undoubtedly equal to that of humans.

Perhaps due to personality and habits formed over the years, Mu You still couldn’t interact or communicate normally with anyone outside of the game, but using The Realm of Innocence as an online game as an opportunity, she ultimately integrated into the Fenrir Team and truly made a few ’friends’ of her own.

She couldn’t compare to Motan, and was entirely at the opposite end from him. After all, even under the weakest psychological ’Absolute Neutrality’ persona, Motan was forced to develop an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly robust social ability to prevent himself from being admitted to hospitals or research institutions due to mental reasons.

Not only that, he also had a friend—Yi Dong—whom he could absolutely trust under any persona and who reciprocated that trust.

So, he might feel regret for the Fenrir Team, might frequently mourn his deceased teammates, might be subconsciously driven to avenge them, but he wouldn’t be unable to move on; in reality, most people wouldn’t be unable to move on.

But Double Leaf happens not to belong to this ’most’.

As the first friends in this socially anxious girl’s life, the status of the Fenrir Team in her heart was beyond even Motan’s imagination, at least at the beginning.

Just like many smart people, Double Leaf hid her ’Achilles’ heel’ very well, so much so that ordinary people couldn’t detect this ’weakness’.

Unfortunately, Motan wasn’t ’ordinary people’. On one hand, he was a member of the public charity organization ’BLACK SUN’, having met this girl online early on, and quickly became her undying rivals, while also being the partner who understood her temperament the best; on the other hand, he was a member of the Fenrir Team, Double Leaf’s first player friend ’Hei Fan’ in The Realm of Innocence, and part of her weakness.

In this situation, Double Leaf couldn’t hide her state at all.

Of course, as time passes, the wound in the girl’s heart that hasn’t healed even after more than half a year will eventually scab over and heal, and she will become more mature in the process, but it requires time—a decade, five years, three years, or even just one year—but not now!

So, when Fenrir Team’s four original deceased members appeared and charged at her without expression and made clear attacking moves, this girl who was entirely on par with Motan in terms of intelligence, means, and psychological quality, even stronger in some ways, ultimately lost her composure.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t cast spells, couldn’t react.

Unfortunately, this moment only lasted half a second.

And Motan, who stood behind her, took at least two seconds to complete the basic gear change (his current gear could only be worn as clothes) and pull out a weapon from his bag to complete the Back Stab move.

Not enough time!

Motan himself was very aware of the lack of time, so he didn’t even attempt it; he just looked at Double Leaf with slightly worried eyes and quietly closed the Half-step distance between them. We can interpret this as ’Frank Hughes’ seeing his friend suddenly stop moving, standing like an idiot on the spot, ready to protect her to avoid accidents.

Motan understood that getting out of the dazed state in a second wasn’t because Double Leaf had strong psychological quality, but because she must have been overwhelmed by another emotion. Despite being extremely dangerous, she still couldn’t be called ’sober’.

The trigger was Fenrir Team’s four members’ eyes.

Eyes are the windows to the soul; this truth has been instilled in us repeatedly since elementary or even kindergarten years, an irrefutable truth.

Whenever conditions allow, people instinctively look into others’ eyes and try to analyze something from them, and in most situations, this behavior often yields some results.