After Bai Chen finished off the last Demon, he was still reveling in the thrill of the hunt when he finally caught the intermittent whimpering beside his ear.
"Mm, mm, mm..."
Only then did he suddenly remember that Lin Luoluo seemed to have been telling him to slow down the whole time.
He had gotten so caught up in killing that he had forgotten all about it.
Oh no!
I didn't really shake Xiao Luoluo silly, did I?!
A wave of panic hit Bai Chen. He hurriedly extended several tentacles and carefully lifted Lin Luoluo down from atop his head.
When he saw what she looked like, he froze.
He had found the reason Lin Luoluo could only whimper.
He had been moving so fast and shaking so violently that the zipper on her loose school uniform had come undone at some point.
The upper half of the uniform had flipped straight up over her face.
To keep from being thrown off, she had been forced to cling tightly to Bai Chen's tentacle with both hands, leaving her no hand free to fix it.
Bai Chen's perception instantly picked up a patch of delicate, snowy-white skin and the curves that rose and fell slightly with her rapid breathing.
He could even see the girl's face beneath the clothing, flushed bright red from lack of oxygen.
This...
The tip of one of Bai Chen's tentacles trembled involuntarily.
He hurriedly directed another tentacle to give her uniform a gentle flick, lifting it off Lin Luoluo's face.
"Pwah—"
Lin Luoluo drew a huge breath, her little face flushed bright red and a few tears still clinging to the corners of her eyes.
It took her several seconds to recover. Then she glared fiercely at Bai Chen with her big, watery eyes, her little mouth puffing into an angry pout.
"Xiao Bai!"
"If you keep doing that, I won't like you anymore!"
The girl had delivered the sternest rebuke she could think of.
She was a Contract Spirit Master with an S-Rank spiritual talent. If word got out that her own Contract Spirit wouldn't listen to her at all, how could she show her face again?
So Lin Luoluo's expression was very serious and solemn.
However, she had forgotten the most important thing.
Her school uniform was still unzipped.
A chill swept across her chest. Lin Luoluo looked down, and her face turned so red it looked ready to drip blood.
She turned around in a fluster and quickly pulled the zipper all the way up.
Bai Chen, meanwhile, chuckled inwardly. He had discovered just how convenient his current body was.
He had no physical eyes, and his perception covered all 360 degrees.
Lin Luoluo thought he couldn't see her if she turned around, but in fact, he could see even more clearly.
"Ahem."
Bai Chen extended a tentacle and gently patted Lin Luoluo on the head.
"All right, all right, my fault. I'll be more careful next time."
"Oh, right, we killed so many Demons. What's our rating now? Have we surpassed that Jiang Ruoxue?"
"Don't try to change the subject, Xiao Bai!"
Lin Luoluo turned around angrily, but when she heard Jiang Ruoxue's name, her attention was successfully diverted.
She huffed, but obediently checked the points on her wristband anyway.
"...Fine, I'll forgive you this time.
"We have a B- rating right now. We're still a long way from Jiang Ruoxue's S-Rank.
"To surpass her, we need at least an S-Rank rating. That means we have to take care of the last big one."
Lin Luoluo analyzed the situation:
"Once we get through this mine tunnel, we should see the Cave Crystal Scorpion guarding the rare crystal."
"Cave Crystal Scorpion?"
Bai Chen's tentacles waved excitedly.
"What are we waiting for, then?!"
"Xiao Luoluo, hold on tight! I'm speeding up! Today, we have to show that woman who the real number one is!"
"Hey, hey, hey... I'm not ready yet... Xiao Bai, slow down... waah—"
Lin Luoluo's shriek stretched into a long, drawn-out cry through the dark mine tunnel, then quickly vanished into its depths.
Inside the Contract Spirit Master Hall, a piercing alarm suddenly rang through the main hall without warning!
Immediately afterward, two people in medical uniforms rushed toward the Simulation Room used for the assessment, pushing emergency equipment.
Before long, a man and a woman were brought out, strapped to stretchers.
The sudden sight drew every eye in the hall.
"What happened?"
"Someone was carried out of the Simulation Room? Weren't we told the simulated assessment was one hundred percent safe?"
Someone in the crowd soon recognized the people on the stretchers.
"That's... Class Monitor Chu Feng!"
"The one next to him is Hu Yue'er from the next class!"
"How did they get hurt so badly?!"
Something had gone wrong in the simulated assessment!
Something like this rarely happened even once in several years.
Everyone looked closely. Chu Feng and Hu Yue'er were covered in ghastly wounds, clearly inflicted by the cave scorpions in the South Mountain Mine Tunnel.
Hu Yue'er's Shadow Cat lay limp on her chest, its body still twitching slightly. It was clearly on its last breath.
As for Chu Feng's Snow Leopard, there was a huge bloody hole in its chest and abdomen, its internal organs clearly visible. It was obviously dead.
At the sight, Chu Feng's classmates stood rooted to the spot, their faces full of shock, at a loss for what to do.
The teacher in charge of the group was also stunned, unable to believe what he was seeing!
A middle-aged man suddenly rushed out of the crowd and threw himself beside Chu Feng's stretcher.
"Son!"
The man had a weathered face, and his features bore some resemblance to Chu Feng's. He was Chu Feng's father, Chu Hong.
He had only returned the previous night from exploring a new mine tunnel outside the city. Travel-worn, he hadn't even changed his clothes, all so he could watch his son take the assessment.
As far as he was concerned, with the B-Rank Snow Leopard he had risked half his life to bring back years ago, his son's passing the assessment was a nail already hammered into the board.
But now...
On the other side, a heavily made-up woman also threw herself beside Hu Yue'er's stretcher, wailing,
"My daughter! What on earth is wrong with your assessment?!
"Didn't you say it was safe?! My Yue'er's Contract Spirit is almost dead! Her face is ruined too. How will she ever get married now?! You have to give me an explanation!"
The woman's shrieks woke the unconscious Chu Feng.
He slowly opened his eyes and saw his father's bloodshot eyes.
"Son, what happened?" Chu Hong helped him sit up, his voice trembling.
Chu Feng's gaze was vacant. The next second, he seemed to break down and burst into loud sobs:
"Dad, Snow Leopard... Snow Leopard is dead!"
His body shook violently as the terrifying scene in the Simulation Room replayed in his mind.
He and Hu Yue'er had clearly taken the route described in the intelligence as the safest, yet there had been more than ten times as many Demons inside as the intelligence had said.
Even more frightening were the venomous stingers those scorpions fired.
In the mine tunnel, where it was too dark to see one's own hand, a dense mass of scorpions and spiders had swarmed in from every direction, while the sound of stingers cutting through the air rang out incessantly.
Every stinger that struck their bodies brought a burst of excruciating pain, far beyond the so-called fifty-percent limit and almost no different from being injured for real.
The pain had affected their movements and their Contract Spirits' performance.
Before long, they could no longer hold out.
The moment their vital signs dropped to the danger threshold, the helmets' mandatory safety devices activated and ejected them from the assessment.
Only after hearing his son's words did Chu Hong's gaze fall on the Snow Leopard's stiff corpse.
When he saw the bloody hole in the Snow Leopard's chest, his vision went black, and he nearly collapsed.
To get this B-Rank Contract Spirit, he had fallen out with his teammates and lost an arm before snatching it out of the mine tunnel years ago.
He had placed all his hopes on his son using this Snow Leopard to rise above the rest and change their family's fate.
Now, it was all over.
Fury burned up from the bottom of his heart. Chu Hong sprang to his feet and grabbed a nearby staff member by the collar.
"Didn't you say it was absolutely safe?!
"Why did this happen?! My son's Contract Spirit is dead! It was a B-Rank Contract Spirit!"
The staff member went pale with fright and stammered an explanation:
"This... this might have been a malfunction with the equipment..."
"A malfunction?"
Chu Hong's eyes were bloodshot.
"You think you can settle this with one word, 'malfunction'?
"I'm telling you, I know Director Tang at the Research Institute!
"If you don't give me an explanation today, I'll report this to the Federation!"
The staff member looked troubled, clearly not having expected the man to have such a connection.
Just then, a cool female voice rang out.
"It was an equipment malfunction."
Jiang Ruoxue walked over expressionlessly, and the people around her automatically made way.
"Before the assessment, everyone signed a Liability Waiver and purchased insurance.
"The insurance company will handle any compensation according to the regulations."
Insurance? Even with insurance, how much could it pay? A B-Rank Contract Spirit couldn't be bought even with money!
But faced with Jiang Ruoxue,
Chu Hong's fury was doused as though by a bucket of ice water.
His comrade's wife was a director at the Research Institute and did have some influence in the Underground City.
But compared with the Jiang Family Heiress before him, she was nothing.
He stared blankly at Jiang Ruoxue as a thought surfaced uncontrollably.
Was this really an accident?
Or... had his son offended this heiress somewhere?
Several uniformed security guards came over and forcibly dispersed the onlookers, trying to quell the disturbance.
Just then, a strong voice suddenly called out a demand from the hall entrance.
"Jiang Ruoxue, was this your doing behind the scenes?!"