Anton and the rest walked for an entire minute, with the texture on both sides of the tunnel not changing the slightest. He held his hand up high, using his campfire skill to light up the way. Nothing but rocks filled all four sides of the tunnel. The group made their way forward. Their footsteps echoed throughout the tunnel, repeating an endless rhythm.

“Where are we…” Rebecca muttered. Anton glanced back at her. She looked like she could freak out at any moment. Well, to be fair, they were supposed to be escorting a very important person, one that can decide the future of the company, showing him around the game. She probably didn’t expect them to drag him into the depths like this. As an active employee, whose future may be decided by this one event, Rebecca would naturally be worried, a little upset, even. 

Anton didn’t comment, though. He didn’t want to let out anything unnecessary. He gave Rebecca a reassuring smile, nothing else. Rebecca looked at him, before letting out a sigh, smiling and nodding, looking much more relaxed compared to before. Anton then glanced at Barnum. 

Despite being the oldest in the group, or well, most likely the oldest because he didn’t actually know his true age, he looked forward with a slight glimmer in his eyes. Kayla, meanwhile, moved forward without the slightest hint of fear. She probably thought of this as another adventure. 

“Do you know anything about this place?” Anton asked. Kayla, who had gotten quite far from the rest of them, stopped and waited. 

“Nothing. Nothing in the database,” she said before continuing her steps beside Anton. 

“It’s one of those secret quests, I think,” she said before opening her virtual screen. Anton saw as she navigated to her quest menu. Anton got curious and did the same thing. 

“Yeah, nothing in here,” he said. The quest’s title, Lands of the Lost, still occupied the second slot. The game didn’t provide an updated objective, though. It didn’t show a single word about this quest. Anton then saw a line of lights in the distance. As they approached, it soon became apparent that those lights were torches. Anton approached it, confirming that the torches’ design matched the one they saw in the house. Torches lined up on the right side of the tunnel, making the tunnel slightly narrower. Anton turned off the campfire skill he had been using and they continued following the lights. 

The torches were distanced three meters from each other, all with the same distance between them. After another few seconds, they finally saw what seemed to be the exit. A rectangular opening at the end of their path, light pouring in from whatever sat on the other side. They quickened their pace. They arrived at the edge, looking at the point beyond the exit. A fake sky stretched above them. Large LED screens covered the rocky roof, spanning throughout the entire roof. More than half of its panels were damaged, while the rest lit up, painting a bright blue image. It made it look like the city was under cloudy skies, with certain parts being brighter than others.  

They stood on top of a large half-pyramid-like building. Nothing but rock walls stood behind them, while a large concrete city stood before them. Concrete buildings filled the city, with towers as high as seven to eight floors dotting the landscape. Most of the buildings looked to be around the same height, not many shorter than five floors. A large circular building that spanned from the floor to the roof stood beyond all those buildings, away at the other end of the city.

Anton and the rest descended the pyramid using stairs placed right in front of the exit. 

They made it to the pyramid’s foot, before taking a cobblestone path down into the city. Whoever made this, placed the pyramid in an area above the city, with trees and bushes growing on both sides of the path. Most of the trees here looked similar to maple trees. The foliage covering wasn’t dense, thus there were many empty plots of land in between the trees. 

“Is this a world quest?” Rebecca asked. 

“Probably,” Anton answered. This looked to be an entirely different thing compared to the Sumbar quest. As they descended, the desolate city felt more and more like a wasteland. They couldn’t find a single NPC.

They had no idea what they were supposed to do, they didn’t even know if they were on the right track. The eerie feeling only increased after they entered the city itself. Empty streets filled with nothing but trash and dust, cars parked at various positions scattered on the streets with not a single one moving, several knocked down street lamps and damaged pavements. Who knows when someone last lived here.

“... What now?” Anton asked. They couldn’t see a single person from their position. 

“Are we supposed to escape from this place?” Rebecca asked. Anton shook his head. 

“If all we need to do is escape, we can just reset and go back to the Rurack,” Anton answered. 

“Except we can’t, thanks to that little stunt you do,” Kayla retorted.

“Hey, I didn’t kill anyone!”

“You sure angered a lot of people, though,” Kayla folded her hands and looked away. Anton let out a sigh. 

Anton’s original plan involved him escaping the cops to spend as much time as possible with Barnum, hoping to understand his plans. He did not expect them to be stuck in an underground city.

Kayla’s words attracted Rebecca’s attention, who looked at her with great interest. 

“Aren’t you Anton’s AI companion?” she asked. 

“Yes, yes I am,” Kayla said. Rebecca walked up to her, examined her from multiple angles, before shrugging. Kayla only looked at her, confused, before walking toward a car.

She opened the front right door and entered the driver’s seat. She sat down.

“What are you doing?” Anton asked, peeking through the opened door. 

Kayla searched for the key. She found them already dangling in the ignition and turned the car on. Anton leaned to the dashboard, finding the car to still have half of its tank left.

“Come on in.”

The three then entered the passenger seats. Kayla pushed the gas and drove away. As they drove down the empty streets, Rebecca pulled herself in between the two front streets. 

“...” she stared at Kayla, Kayla glancing back at her.

“What’s wrong?” Anton asked. 

“No, it’s just… she has… how do I say this… freedom?” 

“Freedom?” Barnum asked, seemingly interested in the conversation. Kayla turned the steering wheel and changed course, heading away from the pyramid.

“I told him to delete me, but he refused,” Kayla stated flatly. 

“Please forget about it,” Anton pleaded. Kayla smirked. 

“Delete that part of me, then,” she answered. Anton fell silent from her words. 

“What? You asking me to forget about things is the same as deleting my memories, isn’t it?” Kayla teased him further, but Anton shook his head.

“No, it’s not.”

“How-” Kayla didn’t complete her question when he pushed the brakes. The other three looked through the front window, finding a single NPC, evident by her yellow armband, standing behind a hotdog stand. 

“-Come…”

“Kayla, can you ask her about this?” Anton asked. 

“Sure,” Kayla brought the car closer and left the car. Once she left, Anton let out another heavy sigh. 

“She’s quite an interesting AI, isn’t she?” Rebecca commented.

“Why are you so against deleting her? Wait, why did she even ask you to delete her in the first place?” 

“Long story short… she disagrees with something I did two years ago, and asked me to delete her, as in all of her. Her memories and her personality,” he felt uncomfortable needing to explain that, but he felt if he didn’t say anything, it wouldn’t help his case with Barnum, nor would it make Rebecca any less interested. 

“That’s the personality the program decided for her. I feel if I forced her to do anything, even the smallest thing like deleting those painful memories, then she wouldn’t be the same.”

Rebecca nodded as she paid attention to Anton’s explanation. The moment Anton finished explaining, Kayla turned around and headed back toward the car. As she headed back, the painful expression of her in that forest two years ago came back to his mind. If he could, he wanted to be the one to forget it. That memory was just a small portion of his life, only a small part of the experience he gathered in his years of living, so losing that particular part wouldn’t change him. 

Or would it? He didn’t know. Unlike Kayla, he couldn’t delete a part of his memory just because he wanted to. But if he could, and if he did delete it, would he still be the same? Besides, that particular event changed his perception of Kayla drastically, making her more than just an AI companion in his eyes. Deleting that part from him would make him less of Anton, just like how it would make her less of Kayla. He wanted to preserve her memories intact. Whatever her programming decided to keep, he wanted to keep it. 

Kayla then returned to the car and opened the door. 

“She has a story to tell, you want to hear it?” she asked. The rest of the car got off and made their way toward the NPC. 

“This is my friends, Ma’am, and they’ll be helping us,” Kayla explained. She then introduced them one by one. The lady smiled, although, to Anton, her smile felt lonely somehow. 

“Thank you very much for your help. Should I explain what happened here?”

Anton and the rest nodded. 

“This story started a few years ago,” the lady looked up to the LED sky with its flickering panels. 

“Back then, I, my husband, and our daughter lived happily on the surface. Then a large calamity struck, and we were forced to evacuate…” she said, closing her eyes. 

“We all evacuated to this underground city. Life became difficult after that. The city was a thriving place before the calamity, with its own population that lived separately from the dwellers from above. When the calamity happened, at first, they rejected us surface dwellers. A war then broke out between us and the local population. The fighting lasted an entire year. Many of those who survived the calamity died from the war. After a year, after countless sacrifices, there was finally space for us… Thousands of lives were lost from both sides, my husband included,” the lady then looked toward the large circular building in the distance. 

“My daughter died last year from a disease. As she let out her last breath in my arms, she said to me that she wanted to visit several places for the last time,” the lady said. She then reached under the hotdog stand. She brought out two bags of ashes. 

“If you travelers are willing, can you spread her ashes in these two locations? The first would be her school, the second one is her best friend’s old apartment. Once you finish the task, then I can truly move on,” the lady said. Kayla took the two bags into her hands. 

“Consider it done,” she said. The lady nodded. 

“Once you’re done, please come see me again for one last bag. I will tell you the details later. The locations of both buildings should be on the bag.”

Kayla then brought the bag up to her eyes, Anton and Rebecca peeking from beside her. Anton checked the map, finding a new map on his virtual screen. He then marked the streets for both buildings. Kayla gave him the bag. The four waved toward the lady and returned to the vehicle. 

“Where to first?” Rebecca asked. 

“Let’s go to the apartment. It’s closer.”

“Okay,” Kayla turned the wheel and drove off.