Dual Worlds: I Have a Doomsday World

After returning to the 6th-floor conference room, Lin Qi placed the box containing the medal in a corner of the room.

He didn’t treat it with any particular care; after all, he hadn’t even figured out what the thing did yet.

’I’ll give it half a month. If it doesn’t show any effect by then, it’ll be just in time to become my final Decomposition Object for Tier Three.’

Although the item’s effect might be powerful, Lin Qi was, in the end, a person from the Cyber World.

It was like the buff he’d received before: immunity to Spiritual Power attacks seemed formidable, but it couldn’t be brought back to the Cyber World and only worked in the Doomsday World.

In half a month, Lin Qi would need to complete his final advancement for Tier Three. If it didn’t demonstrate sufficient value by then, he couldn’t be bothered to go looking for other Extraordinary Items.

He closed his eyes and continued his Meditation.

Even if forced Meditation was less effective than a regular session, half of its effect was still dozens of times more potent than meditating in the Cyber World.

...

「4:40 AM, March 30, 2089.」

Lin Qi opened his eyes in his bed.

A Tier Four from the Assassin Alliance was standing guard outside, but even at such a close distance, they couldn’t detect that Lin Qi had just made a round trip to the Doomsday World.

Furthermore, since the Wizard Profession focused on enhancing Spiritual Power, the other party was also unable to detect that Lin Qi had quietly achieved a breakthrough.

Lying in bed, Lin Qi closed his eyes again—not to sleep, but to experiment with his newly acquired Ability.

Back when he was in the Doomsday World, Lin Qi had already figured it out: the best nourishment for his new Ability was not in the Doomsday World.

After being ravaged for so long, less than one percent of the Doomsday World’s original population remained.

And enhancing the "Emotion Weapon" Ability required one thing above all else: a large population.

Only a sufficiently large population could provide enough emotions to make the weapons Lin Qi could forge even stronger.

The Cyber World’s Extraordinary resources might not compare to the Doomsday World’s, but when it came to population?

Even the Doomsday World before its apocalypse couldn’t compare to the Cyber World.

The population of the Cyber World had already surpassed ten billion, and humanity’s footprint had reached the Moon and even Mars.

According to rumors, some Intercontinental Giant Corporations even had plans to build orbital space cities around Earth.

This was not only to accommodate the Cyber World’s population but also for the corporations to acquire a supply of sufficiently obedient cyber workers.

And beyond population, there was the matter of the emotional energy Lin Qi needed.

Anxious emotions. What could be more suitable as fodder than the cyber workers of the Cyber World?

Crushed by various pressures, the cyber workers of the Cyber World were generally overflowing with anxious emotions.

There was a reason Lin Qi had chosen anxiety as the foundational cornerstone for his Emotion Weapon.

Even Lin Qi couldn’t escape the affliction of anxiety, let alone other people!

His Spiritual Vision unfurled, and every movement within a thousand-meter radius fell into Lin Qi’s senses.

This included the Tier Four Powerhouse outside the Prosthetic Clinic, and even more so, the cyber workers living in the Edge-12 District.

Gang members, small-business employees, megacorp cyber workers...

There were even a few cases of cyber psychosis with less obvious symptoms.

The Impatient Knife—a weapon that was colorless, invisible to the naked eye, and difficult to detect even with Spiritual Power—silently roamed and reveled within the coverage of his Spiritual Vision.

It was as if Lin Qi had mastered an ability akin to the Sword Control Technique from a Cultivation World, piloting the emotion-knife back and forth between private residences.

The blade of the Impatient Knife silently slipped into the body of a cyber worker.

This cyber worker, equipped with a set of low-quality prosthetics and already sleeping fitfully, immediately furrowed his brow.

"Overtime! I’ll do it, I’ll work overtime! Don’t... don’t dock my pay, I still have to pay off the loan for using the washing machine..."

"No, I can’t, I absolutely can’t... my son still has to go to the academy. I have to keep going..."

A terrifying nightmare instantly formed in his mind, and a dense cloud of anxiety enveloped him.

At that moment, he was on the verge of a complete breakdown.

Through the feedback from the Impatient Knife, Lin Qi could clearly sense that he could unleash the blade’s fatal attack at any moment.

His psychological defenses were shattered, his emotional state pierced in an instant!

The Impatient Knife now hung silently over the ordinary cyber worker’s Sea of Consciousness. A single thought from Lin Qi was all it would take to make it plunge down and shred the man’s soul.

But Lin Qi’s goal wasn’t to kill. He was after the cyber worker’s anxiety, and he was also conducting an experiment.

’Now, this is more like it!’ Lin Qi thought to himself. ’This is the Ability of a Tier Three Wizard. Even if it’s a growth-type that needs to be nurtured, it shouldn’t be so weak that it can’t even one-shot a normal person. Wang Ziru was just an exception.’

The Emotion Weapon might not be as effective against people with a strong inner core, or those adept at converting their emotions into motivation.

But people like Wang Ziru were definitely a minority.

And from the feedback he received using the Impatient Knife this time, Lin Qi was certain that Wang Ziru’s ability to resist had been mostly a matter of luck.

Back then, the Impatient Knife had only carried Lin Qi’s own emotions; it was merely the seed of an Emotion Weapon.

But now, the Impatient Knife carried more than just one source of emotion; it also held the anxiety he had stripped from Wang Ziru.

That was a twofold difference in power.

An ordinary person—a sleeping one, at that, already suffering from neural erosion from his low-quality prosthetics—had virtually no power to resist the Impatient Knife.

Lin Qi didn’t let the anxiety affect this unlucky cyber worker for too long.

After all, this was a Tier Three Extraordinary Power. If the emotions became too extreme, the man could be left a drooling idiot even if he survived.