IWOL Chapter 173: SCP-914

“I won’t do anything to women. After all, it’s still important to have a gentleman’s demeanor.”

Cui Zuojing took a drink of mineral water and exclaimed heartily, “If I remembered correctly, there are many conversion machines in this workshop. If you’re hungry, you can try throwing something in. Maybe you’ll get food. After all, the factory wouldn’t starve us to death, right?”

“…….” The two stared at Cui Zuojing, then he saw the large woman and her companion looked at each other, as if doubting him. 

A smile lifted the corners of Cui Zuojing’s lips. He spread his hands and said, “You go and try. You won’t lose anything. Anyway, I’d already eaten this meal. You won’t get anything even if you grab it.”

Cui Zuojing said everything very lazily. Maybe it was his careless attitude that made them determine that his strength was too high, or it might have been that they had no intentions fighting to begin with. 

Whatever the case, the woman narrowed her eyes and waved her finger at her companion. 

The thin woman melted into the shadow, disappearing as quietly as she appeared. 

“There aren’t many people who will think of this now, so you have to act faster,” Cui Zuojing kindly reminded her. 

Hearing the young man said singular “you”, the large woman’s expression shifted. Finally, she took one last glance at Cui Zuojing and turned to leave. She jumped away from the container, making a loud noise when she landed. 

Manipulating shadows and turning it into a human form?

Another interesting ability. 

Cui Zuojing took a drink of water and used the remaining half bottle of water to wash his face. 

He went back to the mouth of the pipe again, knocked on the pipe, and said shamelessly, “Give me some more water.”

The pipe was silent. 

“More water.”

A piece of paper fell out, and the word “no way” was scrawled down with red ink.

Cui Zuojing could imagine the clown’s helpless expression.

—Before, I obviously gave you water and yet you used this precious resource to wash your face?!

How stingy not to give it. Cui Zuojing curled his lips and was just about to get up and leave when he heard something rolling down the pipe. 

An unopened bottle of mineral water rolled to his feet. 

He laughed. “I was about to say, what kind of friendship do we have between us? How can you make me go thirsty?”

He bent over to pick up the water bottle, completely forgetting about his complaints five seconds ago, and left happily.  

As for why he didn’t try to get supplies according to the method he’d given the large women, the reason was simple: there was no need. 

Since he obviously could go through the back door, why take unnecessary risks? 

After all, connections were also a part of strength. 

The news that the conversion machine may be able to provide needed supplies wasn’t something Cui Zuojing had made up. As he wandered through the industrial plant, he saw conversion machines placed in the corners of various factories. Upon seeing the five options of “Coarse,” “Rough,: “1:1,” “Fine,” and “Very Fine” on them, he was certain that he knew what they were.

SCP-914 was a Universal Conversion Machine, a legendary project in the SCP Foundation. In the game SCP Containment Failure, 914 could produce outputs based on the type of item inputted and on the setting. For example, when you select the Very Fine setting and put in 1kg of steel, you would get some gas that quickly dissipated in the air and 1g of an unknown metal that could withstand high temperature up to 5000 degrees, that could not be bentn or damaged by external force, and that had an almost perfect (1.6×10- 75 ρ) conductivity.

Meanwhile, using the Rough setting on the same steel would only result in a pile of unevenly cut steel blocks of various sizes.

According to experimental data, when a tuna sandwich was Super Fine, it was converted into a small piece of bread baked into a very realistic shape of a tuna. The moment the door was opened, the tuna bread immediately began to “swim” around the room until it got out. Presumably, the subject had been missing since. 

The conversion machine here definitely wouldn’t have the power of 914’s heaven-defying function; otherwise, the clown wouldn’t stay in the circus and would be ruling the world long ago.

In fact, Cui Zuojing tried it. He put in a screw and selected the Fine setting. After a long wait of nearly half an hour, all he got was a broken pistol with a knotted barrel.

….The randomness of conversion was still quite large.

As for whether they could find raw material that could be converted into food…Cui Zuojing didn’t know. 

Regardless, he wasn’t concerned about it. If he was thirsty or hungry, there was someone to serve him.

**************

Two hours seemed to pass in an instant. 

When the bell signalling the start of jailbreaking rang out, the tracking collar on Dong Zheng’s neck went out, indicating that they could no longer track his position nor could they directly cause him to explode should the situation become uncontrollable.

All the prisoners in the jail sprang into action.

Dong Zheng held his breath and focused his consciousness on the shackles on his hands. Ten seconds later, the electronic handcuff opened by themselves. Letting out a long sigh of relief, he rolled his wrists to loosen them, and bent down to unlock the shackles at his feet.

He stood up and glanced at the surveillance camera. Not wasting anymore time to interfere with the screen, he pressed one hand on the door of the confinement cell. Data passed through his firewall and travelled along the metal wall. The data breached the chip deeply buried in the doorframe and immediately swam in like water.

Didi.

Accessed approved.

The five explosion-proof doors opened in front of him, and Dong Zheng walked out. There was no one in the corridor yet, no guards, not prisoners.

But there were successive bangs coming from inside the closed doors.

The other prisoners should have their own ways of escaping. If they couldn’t even get out of their cell, there was no point in trying to break out.

Thinking this way, Dong Zheng took a step forwardー

Boom!

In front of him, a cell door five meters away from him directly flew out and slammed into the wall, awashed in flames. The force of the collision caused a hollow depression in the wall. White steam gushed out from the cell, and a nearly 2.5 meters tall, pink-skinned man bowed out . His triangular eyes flashed with an excited, bloodthirsty gleam. 

Dong Zheng took a step back. 

Sparks was still exuding from the corners of the pink man’s lips, but it magically didn’t burn his beard. He tilted his head and happened to see Dong Zheng. 

Dong Zheng took another step back and nodded to him calmly and mildly. “Congratulations, happy escape.”

“Same to you!” The pink man’s voice buzzed loudly in his ears. He seemed to be completely wrapped up in the exultation of imminent freedom and had no interest in another “prisoner” like Dong Zheng. He laughed and ran toward the exit on the other side of the corridor. In a flash, his pink back disappeared.

Before Dong Zheng could let out a breath of relief, he heard another loud noise!

A big hole opened up in the wall of the entire confinement cell. A six to seven-year-old girl crawled out and smiled sweetly at Dong Zheng, revealing two werewolf fangs at the corners of her lips.

“Big brother” she asked Dong Zheng, blinking large, blue eyes. “Can I eat you?”

Dong Zheng:……………

Black viscous liquid condensed into the shape of a sea urchin squeezed out from within the cracks of another door and bounced between the two of them.

Large tentacles emerged from its head and violently smashed into the surveillance cameras in the entire corridor, destroying them completely.

The parts brushed past Dong Zheng’s shoulders, still sparking with electricity. 

More and more strange creatures broke through their imprisonment in unexpected ways, using various things like ice, fire, thunder, or lightning, turning the corridor full of smoke. This scene was simply something straight out of an SCP containment failure!

Now, Dong Zheng finally understood what this [Space] arena meant for pilgrims who wanted to get admission tickets.

Among this group of highly dangerous alien creatures, they were simply like little white rabbits who had strayed into the den of beasts!

Dong Litte-White-Rabbit Zheng raised a kind smile at the werewolf girl and threw a flood of data from countless spam components into her brain. 

Her eyes turned dull in an instant, and Dong Zheng dodged a winged fish flying over his head and made his escape. 

**************

“Ahー!”

“Sorry, just looking to borrow something.” Cui Zuojing sat on the back of a youth, went through his pant pockets, and pulled out a card.

Seeing that the image on the card was that of an upgraded bird, reminding him of the wonderful memories in Dusk Island, Cui Zuojing pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave it back to him. “Forget it. I’ll allow you to keep it.”

In these past two days, the youth had obviously become familiar with the rules in the factory. Therefore, when Cui Zuojing took his card away, he didn’t react too drastically. He kept looking up at Cui Zuojing, his teeth clenched and his eyes filled with hatred.

“Don’t look at me like this. Even if you are eliminated, you wouldn’t have lost much, and you wouldn’t have been able to obtain an admission ticket to enter the shop anyway.” Cui Zuojing patted his shoulder indifferently, still not getting up. “And I only took your secret letter. Isn’t that kind? After all, I’m not the only person in this arena.”

The youth tried to resist but couldn’t. Cui Zuojing sat on him too easily, suppressing the most important joints on his body. If he moved too much, he would feel pain.

“In order to thank you for your sacrifice, let me provide you with some information,” Cui Zuojing said as he stood up leisurely. “There is a person with the ability to reduce his own sense of existence and he currently holds at least 12 secret letters.”

“Heizei Tetsuya?” The youth was stunned. Then he realized that this wasn’t the place to complain. He gritted his teeth and told Cui Zuojing, “In that case, why don’t you grab him?!”

“Because I prefer to see what those people who don’t have any good chips will do once the secret letters are all collected.” Cui Zuojing threw the remaining half bottle of water to him and turned to leave. “Thank you, little brother. Good luck.”

A series of curses came from behind him, but Cui Zuojing didn’t pay it any mind at all. He currently had four identity cards and five secret letters in hand. It wasn’t a serious harvest, and he planned to wait until the third day before officially putting more effort into it. 

That person was also a fat sheep to him. 

He wondered how things were going with the others.

Speaking of which, Cui Zuojing was a little worried about Dong Zheng. He came to the circus not only to get his feelings back, but also to consult with the clown on how to release their blood contract. If Dong Zheng failed to get a ticket, then even if the clown knew how to release their blood contract, it wouldn’t help that one of the parties was missing. 

But Dong Zheng certainly wouldn’t want to worry him. Dong Zheng had been trying to prove to him for a long time that he could do well even without his help.

This was the pride of a man.

Thinking of the other party, the corners of Cui Zuojing’s mouth lifted without him even realizing it, and his mood suddenly brightened. 

Maybe it was both their luck to have been able to meet each other?

Night gradually fell. 

The light suddenly turned on, and the workers in the coveralls entered the workshop through an opened iron gate. Cui Zuojing opened his sleepy eyes, stretched his waist, and held the iron rod that he had spent the afternoon refining in the processing machine. 

———————–
Xixi: SCP-914


Subscribe
Notify of
guest
6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Anonymous
Anonymous
4 years ago

Thank you for the chapters~

The settings of the boxes are very interesting as usual~ I chuckled when I read Dong Zheng mention a flying fish. It was almost like the one Cui Zuojing was thinking about escaped from there to here XD The clown is such a good friend~ For now, both Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng seem to be on top of their respective situations. I wonder if anything will challenge them.

Unknown
Unknown
4 years ago

Lmao the Clown and Cui Zoujing's friendship is really amusing 😂

MrsPoPo
MrsPoPo
4 years ago

The clown is took cute! And Thanks again for the update….

Xixi
Xixi
4 years ago

Good catch. I didn't even register the connection with the flying fish.

Qi Qi
Qi Qi
3 years ago

The clown is so funny! Their friendship is really cute and amusing 🤣
I wonder how they met and became friends until the way they are now. owo

thatonecat
thatonecat
1 year ago

SCP-914 is a favorite pastime of the writers for the SCP universe. Every so often they’ll each go to it and add an experiment entry with what they put in and what came out. I remember someone wrote one where a researcher suggested putting an incredibly dangerous monster (the old man, maybe? Or probably the lizard.) in the machine using the very fine setting (which would greatly improve the product. Iirc they had that researcher either shot or become a prisoner that’s forced to test dangerous SCPs because it was such a horrible idea.