I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 270

The sun slowly rose, and the morning sunlight gradually covered the giant dragon.

The giant dragon didn’t hesitate either, chasing after that sun.

But just like when Little small fry had previously tried to catch the moon, the giant dragon flew for a long time but seemed unable to touch that distant sun.

With no other choice, the giant dragon could only stop in mid-air first.

“Perhaps we got the direction wrong,” Zero-One suddenly said.

“What do you mean?”

“We shouldn’t destroy these illusions. We should go destroy the real things in this scene, the places that truly carry authority.”

Hearing Zero-One’s suggestion, Little small fry still didn’t quite understand.

“Real things? What here is real?” Looking at those various combined scenes, Little small fry couldn’t tell which were real and which were fake.

“You don’t need to look. That real thing is right before us,” Zero-One had Little small fry look down at the sea surface.

A fearsome giant dragon was suspended above the sea surface.

Little small fry stared for a long time before suddenly understanding.

The only real thing is us.

“Kill ourselves?” Little small fry asked in a daze.

“You understand.”

Little small fry froze in place. It never would have thought they’d have to make such a decision.

“If you can’t bring yourself to do it, I can do it,” Zero-One’s calm voice came through.

It seemed to think this was a very simple matter.

“No need, I’ll do it myself.”

Little small fry didn’t hesitate and didn’t doubt Zero-One’s words. The sun’s authority instantly descended upon the giant dragon’s body.

Scale by scale, the dragon began turning charred black, with heat continuously penetrating from the outside.

Little small fry once again felt the despair from when it first encountered the sun, that inescapable pain drilling into its heart, destroying its flesh and will.

This time, there was no longer a moon to soothe its pain.

It seemed to feel the heat torturing it while intertwining with its thoughts, breaking through the heavens and ascending to an even higher level.

Countless rays of light struck Little small fry. It was caught in the red storm, at the mercy of forces beyond its control, dying and living repeatedly.

Until it lost all perception.

Everything before its eyes was pitch black.

…

“You can wake up now.”

Zero-One gently called to it.

The recent scorching heat disappeared completely, and all around was a water-like sensation.

Little small fry struggled and slowly awakened.

“Look below.”

Just after waking up, its vision still blurry, Little small fry dizzily followed Zero-One’s suggestion and looked downward.

But this one glance instantly snapped Little small fry awake.

Below was no longer a calm sea surface.

Nor was it ruins after destruction.

Those were grooves formed by “horizontal, vertical, slanted, and dotted” strokes, deep and bottomless, with endless black void within the grooves.

“What is this?” Little small fry asked in a daze.

“Those are words,” Zero-One explained calmly.

Little small fry stared at those grooves for a long time before coming to its senses.

“My world is a string of text?”

For a moment, it couldn’t tell whether the scene before its eyes was real or fake.

Could it be that the fish swarm still hadn’t escaped from those illusions?

However, a new authority power appeared in its body.

“Dream?”

Little small fry carefully felt this authority, its thoughts gradually becoming clear.

The Dream authority represented breakthrough.

That was an ability capable of crossing boundaries.

“We found the method to break through our shackles?” Little small fry could hardly believe it.

It never would have thought that this conquest would actually allow them to escape the cage, cross the boundary, and stand at a higher vantage point.

It was just that the truth of the world was somewhat too absurd.

Little small fry swept over those scenes they had once conquered—they were all just simple words.

No wonder.

No wonder those scenes were all so pure, because the meaning of these words was inherently so pure.

The sea was the sea, the sun was the sun.

Authority was the same. In the world of words, the words themselves represented power.

These words expressing scenery also represented other meanings, and those meanings were authority.

Little small fry also discovered that on these words conquered by the fish swarm, fish-shaped grooves had appeared.

The fish-shaped grooves replaced the original strokes of the words, yet seemed perfectly natural.

This also meant that the fish swarm occupied part of these words.

At the same time, they also gained the authority of these words.

“What the fish swarm has been doing all along is nothing more than adding strokes that belong to us to the words!”

Standing at a higher vantage point, Little small fry instantly understood everything.

So it frantically began searching through these grooves.

Finally, it found that word it had been longing for—moon.

Now, it was a Little small fry curled into a ball, with “slanted and dotted” strokes representing the moon’s radiance.

The moon had long ago had its strokes replaced by the fish swarm.

Little small fry looked disappointedly at what it had once yearned for so deeply.

“Just strokes after all…”

The moon was like this, and so was the moonlight.

“Are they all fake? Then what do my feelings count for?”

Looking at the grooves representing the moon, Little small fry also understood why the moon’s authority could control time.

Simply because this word also represented the meaning of time—there was no other reason.

“So simple.”

Because it was so simple, Little small fry’s understanding was instantly overturned, and it froze in place, not knowing what to do.

“Are you alright?” Zero-One asked with concern from the side.

Little small fry stared blankly at Zero-One. “Don’t you feel despair? We’re just words.”

It found it hard to believe that Zero-One could still be so calm now.

“I felt a little when I first saw it, but not anymore.”

Zero-One looked earnestly at Little small fry.

“We’ve succeeded, haven’t we?”

“What we were before has nothing to do with now. I was also once just a little dot that knew nothing. Thanks to you, I was able to know this world and finally escape this cage.”

“We’re already much better than those other creatures in the words. At least we know the essence of the world.”

“Rather than caring about where we came from, it’s better to think about where we’re going.”

“The fish swarm was always meant to swim toward higher places.”

Zero-One spoke very calmly about its feelings.

It seemed to never have looked at things from an individual’s perspective.

From beginning to end, Zero-One would only consider problems from the fish swarm’s angle.

“But don’t you feel that everything you’ve done is meaningless? Just playing around in a string of text. The so-called conquest is just scribbling randomly. Past feelings were also fake.”

Little small fry anxiously questioned Zero-One. At this moment, its heart was a tangled mess.

Some questions were actually just asking itself.

It also wanted to look at all this calmly like Zero-One, but it couldn’t do it.

Zero-One still looked earnestly at Little small fry. After listening to its question, it slowly spoke:

“The fish swarm standing here is the meaning.”