Still concerned, Chen Chen pried open the skull of the corpse again. He saw that the brain inside the skull had shrunk into substances resembling a walnut and there were no signs of external damage to be seen.
Chen Chen spent several minutes performing an autopsy on the corpse but still was not able to find any vivid signs of injuries. There were hardly any scratches or bruises to be found.
There were no signs of organ or brain damage inside the corpse either. This suggested that these corpses may have died an abrupt death.
Otherwise known as sudden death.
In common terms, the definition of sudden death referred to cases where an otherwise usually healthy person suddenly succumbed to a natural disease within a short period. There were two types of such natural diseases:
Sudden Cardiac Death and Non-sudden Cardiac Death.
However, it had to be noted that these corpses had dried out for extended periods. Their organs had displayed signs of corrosion prior to drying out, but without access to professional equipment, Chen Chen could not determine the precise cause of death of these corpses. He could only conclude that they had died of sudden death.
“Could this mean that this is something that causes sudden death just by ‘seeing’ it?”
Chen Chen furrowed his eyebrows. He considered for a moment before switching the PK Armor to thermal imaging mode, which gave him vision similar to what was seen in Predator.
Unlike regular thermal imaging which only displayed heat radiation in large blobs, the thermal imaging of the PK Armor provided finer details, even surpassing details that were otherwise glimpsed by the naked eye.
Under the effect of the NZT-48, it only took Chen Chen several minutes to adapt to this vision system.
The only question was, would this be able to help him negate the “instant death upon sight” rule?
As Chen Chen followed down the path, he felt a crushing weight set upon his once relaxed mood.
Of all the large dimensions he had been to, the dimension of Gantz was the strangest of them all. It was somehow stranger than Elysium.
Furthermore, this dimension was unlike Elysium which was equipped with advanced technology and used a “central system” AI to oversee the day-to-day activities of humans, where he could get a grasp of all of the ongoings by taking over the central system.
This dimension was hardly any different from the real world.
While Chen Chen was occupied with his thoughts, he suddenly saw a corpse holding onto a phone. He immediately lit up at the prospect and took the phone while he had the Black Knights continue searching the room. Meanwhile, he returned to the Bugatti Spaceship where he used a cable to connect it with the spaceship.
After charging it for a short while, he managed to reboot the phone that had been shut down for many years at this point.
The moment it was turned on, X-112 immediately infiltrated its system and quickly lifted all permission restrictions while also thoroughly inspecting it.
“Successfully extracted social media software chat logs, currently scanning…
“Message scanned, filtering content for valuable information… The phone was powered off on 3 June 2025.”
“When was the calamity?”
Chen Chen asked without skipping a beat. By calamity, he was referring to the time which the aliens officially invaded, which happened in the latter half of the comic plot.
“It was in 2000.”
X-112 replied, “According to the chat logs extracted from the LINE software, the aliens invaded during the year 2000. They would later be defeated by Kei Kurono and the other black sphere forces who would go on to restore the peace of mankind. The peace lasted for twenty-five years until the moment this phone was powered off. This is all the information I was able to extract from the chat logs. I cannot investigate any further due to lack of Internet.”
“Can you communicate with the satellites?”
Chen Chen asked again, “Even if mankind vanished, some of the satellites should still be operating for several years at least.”
“Unable to establish a connection with any satellite signal, they may have malfunctioned,” X-112 replied again.
Chen Chen tipped his head in response before continuing. “In that case, dispatch the drones to be on the lookout for a data center in Tokyo. If we can find a data center, we should be able to acquire plenty of information.”
“Understood.”
X-112 responded, “I’ll remain alert.”
After that, they uncovered more corpses. The Black Knights went through every nook and cranny of the office building, finding more than hundreds of corpses in the process. Most of these corpses had dried out while some of the corpses in poorer condition had long since corroded and turned into skull remnants.
One thing Chen Chen could be sure of was that they all had died at the same time. The instrument of their death was a shocking one. They must have seen something outside the window at the same time which instantly triggered this sudden death phenomenon.
Returning to the spaceship, Chen Chen went through the diary again while he further contemplated his findings.
Based on his current observations, all of the corpses discovered so far had died at the same time. The only exception was this Ando who left behind the diary.
Based on the contents of the diary, the downfall of human civilization began since “it” came to the world. Could this be a strong indication that the “it” mentioned in the diary was directly connected to the sudden death of the people in the office building?
Meanwhile, Ando had survived the first wave of death and had become one of the “survivors” as he had described themselves in the diary.
These survivors even managed to form a small group to survive together in the end times.
After that, there was a chronicle of Ando’s nightmares.
Chen Chen knitted his eyebrows together. He could not find any mention of the source of the nightmares in the diary. However, upon reading between the lines, he figured out that the group was also aware of this frequent nightmare phenomenon. They had mercilessly expelled Ando from the group once they found out he was having these nightmares.
“Why would they exile him, was it out of fear of…”
Chen Chen suddenly thought of something, he flicked an eyebrow. “Infection?”
However, Chen Chen debunked his theory as soon as he had conjured it. “Impossible, I’ve never heard of such a thing as a contagious nightmare. But Ando didn’t mention anything about why he was having these nightmares nor did he try to look for the source of these nightmares and how he rid himself of them. Could it be that they believed there was no cure for these nightmares?”
Unfortunately, Ando did not have a phone with him. Still, that was to be expected since despite having survived several years longer, Ando was already living in the end times. It was the post-civilization world where all electronics were rendered useless since they had run out of battery. Mobile phones were no exception to this rule.
Except that there seemed to be something too peculiar about this devastating world…
After the Black Knights surveyed the entire office building, Chen Chen had them continue searching further down the street. Shortly after, they arrived at a high-rise residential area.
Searching the residential area took more effort than the office building but the findings were more worthwhile as well. The Black Knights produced new findings very quickly.
When Chen Chen received the Black Knight’s report and walked into one of the units, he immediately saw the state of the mess the house was in.