I have found out your real name

Chapter 14 polybius

Behind the door of the arcade is a staircase that stretches downwards. The walls on both sides of the staircase are covered with wet wallpaper, as if even the air has become humid.

There are strange patterns painted on the wallpaper, which look like human faces and black pupils.

At the end of the stairs, there is a wooden door. There is a piece of yellowed paper taped to the door panel with a short message of "10 yuan a time" written on it.

"This store is located underground."

“Basement arcade stores were probably very common back then.”

Li Wu looked at Xingchuan who was motionless and asked strangely: "What's wrong? Why don't you open the door?"

The magical girl took a few steps back stiffly, fell back above Li Wu, and made a "you come first" gesture.

"...You must be afraid, right?"

Logically speaking, those negative realm monsters are much scarier than this arcade shop.

"Is there anything I can do? The atmosphere in this place is too weird. My arms are numb."

Xingchuan stroked his left arm: "It would be fine if there is a clear enemy. Just use Jiyotan to kill it."

"Actually, you can also take a shot at this store. Hey, I was joking."

Seeing the girl who said "Why didn't I think of this great idea" on her face and started to eagerly try to summon a weapon, Li Wu quickly interrupted her bold idea.

He took hold of the door handle and turned it gently.

The door was pushed open easily, and a smell of rotten mold that had been tempered by time came out.

There is nothing special about the interior furnishings. In the airtight room, the floor is covered with dark green carpet, the ceiling is covered with mottled marks, and there is no peeling wall plaster on the ground. A chandelier emits a dim light the size of a grain of rice. This is the only light source in the room.

Several arcade machines were randomly packed into almost all the empty spaces in the room. A wooden table was squeezed into a small corner in the upper left corner of the room. Behind the wooden table was a figure model dressed as a western cowboy.

It looks like that's the service counter of this arcade store.

The two walked in. The room was not big, and it didn't take long for them to see every corner.

"There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about it."

Xingchuan shouted in distress: "Are there any ghosts, monsters, or monsters here?"

Ignoring her tricks, Li Wu checked the arcade machines and asked, "I'm not very familiar with the history of arcade machines. Didn't Xingchuan say at the station that he liked playing this type of game before? Do you think the layout on these arcade machines is normal? Of?"

This arcade shop that seems to be a ghost story from the 80s seems to have a few types of games, only two types to be precise.

One was painted with red paint, and the outer shell showed the appearance of a man pumping his fist to the sky. It had a red joystick and two big buttons, one red and one blue. The game screen being played was a figure wearing something similar to a judo uniform. A red-haired man and a blond man wearing an orange kung fu suit engage in a horizontal battle.

The other is a pure black machine with a normal coin slot on the front. There is only a joystick and a small white button on the console. There is no game screen displayed on the screen and there is no decoration on the casing. A line of bright white English letters is written on the top:

POLYBIUS (Polybius)

"Let me see, ah, isn't that Street Fighter 1? Different from the later six-button layout, there are only two big buttons."

She seemed to have forgotten her hesitation before entering the door, and walked forward with some enthusiasm and tapped the game button: "It is said that the attack power will change depending on the strength of the hand."

"What about the other one? I always feel like I've seen that line in English somewhere."

Li Wu asked.

Xingchuan walked to another machine and said with some confusion: "I have never seen this type of machine... Is it some kind of super obscure game work? There is no company name."

She seemed to want to start it up and check it out, so she pressed the small white button.

The screen flickered, and a black and white interface appeared, with a new line of text appearing in the middle:

Sinneslschen

Seeing that line of words, Li Wu had an idea: "I remembered where I saw the word polybius."

He pointed to the line of words that emerged: "That should mean 'deletion of meaning' in German."

"Eh? Really? Do you, Li Wu, know German?"

"No, I wouldn't, but I've heard this urban legend."

While Li Wu was being recited by his father about folklore, he also spent some time indulging in reading various street stall literature and ghost stories. By the way, there was also the influence of light in this. The arcade ghost story "Polybius" was also in that period. time to see.

In 1981, in several suburbs of Portland, Ohio, a game called "Polybius" started a craze. It was developed by a German company called "Deletion of Sense". The content is just to use simple pixel small aircraft to fight against enemies.

However, quite a few players have become addicted to it, and many people claim to have seen strange sights in the game, such as the face of a crying woman, meaningless characters, etc., and even developed amnesia, Symptoms of insomnia, night terrors and even suicide.

This is obviously the way a classic urban legend unfolds, and it is also mixed with a lot of elements similar to conspiracy theories, such as a man in black suspected of being an FBI being witnessed collecting machine data, and the game itself is actually a mind control experiment of a secret agency, etc. wait.

But no matter what, in Li Wu's perception, this game, which should have been fictitious and non-existent, turned into a real thing and appeared in front of his eyes.

After listening to his narration, Xingchuan raised his right hand: "Teacher Li Wu! Why can we conclude that it is fictional? If the Bosha game really existed in reality and was spread to the boss at the time, eventually What about causing him to commit suicide?"

"Because many people have investigated this legend, and they basically believe that it was shaped by a variety of social news. And there is a more important point." Li Wuxu glanced at the other party, "No. Did you yourself say that someone is using monsters from the negative realm to create yokai in the form of kaidan?”

"Compared to the fact that there are anomalous things here that have been passed down from the 80s, it is more consistent with your theory that someone created this game based on fictitious rumors, right?"

Have you forgotten what you said?

Xingchuan's face stiffened and he laughed a few times.

Li Wu summoned a ball of flame again: "Why don't you try burning these obviously weird arcade machines?"

"You obviously stopped me from firing the cannon before, and I just wanted to say that Li Wu's functions seem to have increased!"

"Maybe it's because the battle with Ru Nu stimulated changes in my abilities."

He brought the flame close to one of the machines marked polybius and pressed it.