Launching an All-Out Assault / Shirou and His Female Companions ...
"Liz, don't be stunned, be careful." Shirou was alert and Projection the Rho Aias to block the attack for Lizbeth.
Lizbeth sank it, but alas... the favor she had just owed was immediately repaid.
"Waaaaaah!! Give me back... (my dream of becoming the female lead)!!!" Lizbeth raised her giant hammer and roared as she charged into the horde of Transformers robots.
Seeing the girl's berserk state, Shirou felt that all the girls around him, except for the young Silica, seemed like berserkers, and in a very abnormal way at that. For some reason, Shirou felt a chill run down his spine.
Chapter 683 Launching a General Mobilization Attack
"Assess the enemy's strength in land warfare and make tactical changes."
"The enemy consists mostly of terrestrial humanoid creatures; air-to-ground mode is recommended."
"The suggestion is reasonable; I second it."
I second that.
During the battle, the eyes of the Transformers flashed brightly as they communicated with each other by transmitting radio signals.
Optimus Prime, at this moment, made a decision and announced, "Air-to-ground combat mode, officially activated!"
Optimus Prime made the first change; his enormous body transformed into a large aircraft with two jet thrusters, and he flew straight into the sky.
As one-time collaboration items, Transformers possess AI intelligence enhancements, with each one essentially having weakened low-level artificial intelligence. In combat, they have thinking abilities comparable to humans. When they realized they couldn't gain an advantage in land battles, they changed their battle plans.
At this moment, the Transformers, led by Starscream, all transformed into the most advanced F-22 fighter jets, constantly spitting fire and strafing the ground. The fighter force composed of Transformers possessed the destructive power of top-tier combat machines, and for a time, it launched a suppressive attack on the battlefield.
"Whoa!" Silica, flying through the air, suddenly saw more than a dozen fighter jets appear around her, their empty machine gun ports pointed at her. Even with the protection of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon variant that Bina had transformed into, she was outnumbered.
"Yay, yay, it's finally our turn to shine!" a boastful voice rang out.
"Brother Emiya! Celie-chan~! Our Dragon Tamer army is here!" One after another, dragon roars echoed from the sky as dragons carrying players flew towards them.
Among the leaders was Yipingzhi, whom Shirou and Silica had met before. These players owed Shirou the favor of telling them how to clear the first stage, and now they had brought the dragon riders here as reinforcements.
"Thanks, friend! Be careful flying, don't enter the range of the mage's anti-flying array, or you'll fall!" Shirou said.
"Roger that! Dragon Knight Legion, follow me!! Smash those American-made little planes!" Yipingzhi shouted, raising his arm.
Hundreds of Dragon Knight soared into the sky, unleashing their signature attacks to besiege the fighter jets transformed from the Transformers. Together with Silica's Blue-Eyes White Dragon, they defeated the Transformers one by one.
The game department manager gritted his teeth, pulled out another bunch of humanoid models, threw them out, and shouted, "Again! X-Men, move in! Marvel, move in! DC, move in!"
Like beans conjuring soldiers, superheroes dressed in various bizarre combat suits appeared on the battlefield. Like the Transformers, they were special items from the computer AI, the only crossover version in the Oasis World, and all of them possessed boss-level abilities.
Silica's white dragon Bina, dodged the laser eyes' laser. At that moment, an archangel dressed in steel flapped his wings and silently flew towards Silica. Every feather on his body was like a sharp dagger, launching an attack on Silica on the dragon's back.
At that moment, a blue-skinned Nightcrawler who looked somewhat like an Avatar suddenly teleported behind the girl and stabbed her in with a short sword.
Silica had to stop playing and begin to parry and defend, and the alien monsters began to move again.
"What do we do now, Asuna?" Lizbeth asked anxiously through the team communication.
The muscular superman wearing red underwear on the outside— Superman, and the man in red with yellow stripes—The Flash, launched a pincer attack on Shirou!
"Hold on a little longer! Reinforcements are almost here!" Asuna shouted.
With his flowing hair and beard, God of Thunder raised his hammer, displaying boundless power as he relentlessly annihilated free-roaming players.
"You bastard! Norse mythology isn't just something your America owns!" Lizbeth gripped the giant hammer of the same origin and smashed it down on God of Thunder. The extraordinary power between the two collided, and they were evenly matched.
However, the Aquaman, clad in golden scale armor and wielding his trident, charged forward and stabbed at Lizbeth, forcing the girl to retreat step by step, overwhelmed by the two top-tier superheroes.
"That's it! Surround and annihilate them! Superheroes, charge! Kill them all! Hahahaha~!!!" The game department manager laughed arrogantly and shouted the order.
Just then, artillery fire came flying from afar.
Chu~!!!
The cannon shot through the air in a long arc, crashing down on the mech shieldbearers, followed by a deafening roar from behind the surrounding hills.
"Wha... what's going on?" The game department manager, still smiling, looked around in surprise.
"Hahaha!!! A 360-man legion has arrived to our aid! The Oasis World should belong to the players!"
"YiNet is here to help! We absolutely do not condone Tencent's hegemonic behavior. Do they think they're like the hegemonic Americans? Games should be fun because you can't necessarily get stronger even if you spend money, you can only get stronger by grinding!"
"The Baidu Legion is here to help! Resist all of Tencent's 'little brother' behavior!"
"Facebook is here to help! We plagiarized, stole, monitored users, and sold data, but we will never allow Tencent to surpass us!"
"Great! Everyone! Reinforcements have arrived! Our chance has come!" Asuna said with a smile.
Besides independent players, Asuna also contacted other large business groups that had established operations in the Oasis World, such as 360 People and the Forty Thieves. Her business philosophy was that making enemies unhappy and weakening their power was a path to victory.
These competitors also joined forces, forming an army of five thousand men that charged towards both flanks of the penguin army. This forced the penguin army to attack from three sides, leaving them no way to send reinforcements to the other side.
Who can withstand this?! Who can withstand this?!
"We're about to break down!" The game department manager scratched his head, almost bald from exhaustion, and quickly contacted Boss Ma to say something.
Enraged, Boss Ma roared, "Then ban Emiya's and their accounts! Get the hacking team to do it right now!"
"Boss, we already stole the Holy Sword fragments before, but we had no other choice. However, given that Oasis Corporation is currently transitioning to our company, if word gets out that we did this, it could affect the market value of both our companies' shares."
"Go for it! Now is not the time to worry about market value! As long as we get Oasis World, we can give out more compensation, and the players will naturally shut up! I'll make sure that I'm the only one on Avalon Island!" Boss Ma, as expected of a business tycoon, said without hesitation.
"Yes! I'll take care of it right away!" the game department manager replied.
The game department manager contacted the hackers waiting at the Oasis Corporation headquarters in the United States. They had bribed the management since last night and had been hiding in the control room waiting.
"Ban the accounts of Emiya, Asuna, Kiriko, Shino, Lizbeth, and Silica —all six of them! The boss wants them permanently banned from Oasis!" the game department manager said in a sinister voice.
"Roger that! Execute the mission immediately." The hacker team replied and began their work.
The hackers used laptops and password crackers to forcibly bypass the console's defenses, gaining basic GM privileges and partial administrative access to the Oasis World. One of these privileges was restricting logins to specific accounts.
The hackers quickly found Shirou and the girls' IDs, moved them to the blacklist by hovering the mouse over them, and once they pressed enter, Shirou and the girls would be disconnected and unable to log in again.
Chapter 684 Shirou and His Companion Girls
Without any hesitation, the hacker group leader pressed the Enter key!
For them, the game is meaningless; it's just a bunch of code they've written. They're simply doing work assigned to them; ultimately, they're just a group of data engineers.
The world of engineers seems more relaxed and free. For example, they have the freedom to choose their working hours and can leave as long as they get off work the required hours. They also have freedom in their attire, like the many tech geeks in Silicon Valley wearing casual clothes and flip-flops. Large companies even build them various game rooms and casual cafes to help them develop their thinking skills.
But people have forgotten one fact.
That is to say, being a programmer is a profession that consumes a lot of energy every day, involves a lot of unexpected situations, often requires overtime, and has no discernible pattern.
Even factories, which are considered the last line of morality and are blatant exploitations of the people by businessmen, at least give people a chance to breathe if they are given some holidays.
However, while these companies tout their "wolf pack mentality," diligence, hard work, and striving spirit, they place increasingly higher demands on programmers. Systems like the 996 work schedule were first introduced by these emerging companies in the internet age, making it as appalling as the unethical practices of some Japanese companies that force employees to work overtime without pay. A significant number of programmers have died from overwork after several consecutive nights of working overtime.
Moreover, software like computers updates too quickly, and the skills required of programmers are constantly being updated. In addition to their busy work, they must keep learning, otherwise they will be left behind by the times. There is no such thing as being experienced. This is also an industry that relies on youth. When they reach a certain age and cannot keep up with new technologies, they either have to change careers or change positions, otherwise they simply cannot stay.
In contrast, while the hacker group's work wasn't exactly honorable, they didn't have these worries. Even without a regular job, they could earn a substantial salary simply by conducting simulation training. Of course, all of this was predicated on their ability to complete the missions; everything they did was for a living.
The Oasis World control console received the assignment and immediately began executing the task, loading the page, just like when it stole the Caliburn fragments from Shirou and the girls last time.
A red warning light suddenly flashed on the screen.
Insufficient permissions!
Insufficient permissions!
If a user is found to have infringed upon the privileges of a senior GM, their account will be blocked. If there are any further violations, the police will be notified.
"What? Insufficient permissions? Wait a minute!" The hacker team leader's expression changed, and he exclaimed in surprise.
However, the console is a machine and won't listen to the hacker group leader's explanations.
"How could this happen!" The hacker team members' computers went completely black and crashed. The machine used to crack the password flickered a few times, then emitted black smoke and exploded with a bang.
"Whoa!" A member of the hacker team standing nearby screamed.
"Boss! What do we do now? All the computers have crashed!" a member asked the team leader with a distressed expression.
"Fine, I'll report our mission failure to the company. The Oasis World wasn't something we could handle anyway. Let's find a clinic and take A-Yi to get treatment." The hacker team leader helplessly lowered his raised fist, waved his hand, and said to his subordinates. Since the console had directly locked the GM account they had cracked, even if their computers were turned on, they would be permanently banned from accessing the console.
They would never have known that Shirou, Asuna, and the other girls' accounts had already been upgraded to GM accounts with the highest privileges; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to unleash the extraordinary power of Servant in the Oasis World.
This was precisely the help provided by Kayaba Akihiko. He upgraded Shirou and the others' accounts to limited GM accounts, with privilege levels far exceeding those of the basic accounts cracked by hackers. Previously, this level was exclusive to Kayaba himself, belonging to the level of Creator God, so the console had no way to intervene and would not do so.
Because the hackers were targeting the creator of the console, the console automatically identified the hackers as enemies, issuing warnings and penalties, which led to the computer crashing and the hacking device exploding.
"What?! It failed?" The game department manager exclaimed in shock when he received the report from the hacker team.
"Yes, I'm very sorry, Emiya and his team obtained higher administrative privileges than the accounts we hacked, which resulted in a system penalty. All our devices are now damaged, and even if we go and buy new equipment to re-hack the accounts, it's impossible to complete the task in a short time," the hacking team leader said helplessly.
"Emiya and the others have higher privileges? All six of them? Who gave them that authority? Aren't they just a bunch of casual players? Wait, they seem to be from the same country as Kayaba Akihiko? Could one of them be his illegitimate son?" The game department manager muttered in disbelief, his mind in complete chaos.
Kayaba Akihiko is only in his thirties, and not counting Shirou, Asuna, Kiriko, and others are all about to go to university. Their ages don't match up at all. Only a game department manager who has been driven to a mental lapse by the harsh situation would have such an idea.
At this moment, with the addition of various forces, the situation on the battlefield has been overturned, and the penguins can no longer spare enough troops to stop the approach of the free players.
"What to do? What to do?" The game department manager was dazed and kept scratching his head. If they weren't in a game, he would have ripped his hair out.
"Don't linger, charge with me! Break through their defensive walls!!" Asuna, her white-handled katana crackling with lightning, commanded the charge, leading her army toward the penguin army blocking other players' advance. At this moment, she was like Valkyrie, divinely inspired, leading the free players toward victory.
"Roar! Roar! Roar! Roar! Roar! Roar!" The army following behind Asuna charged forward in unison, like a cone, aiming to carve a hole in the defensive line formed around Avalon Island.
Even with the mech shield soldiers protecting them, the five fireball mages holding their staffs and constantly unleashing attacks were to no avail.
Asuna swung her treasured sword, slashing out a long path of lightning. Although the mech shield soldier's outer shell was exceptionally sturdy, the lightning directly destroyed the internal circuitry, instantly rendering it inoperable.
They were knocked down on both sides of the road by the charging army, and a series of loud rumbling sounds rang out.
Without protection, the mages and spellcasters were swallowed up in an instant by the charging warriors. Even without being attacked, they lost their lives simply from the collision and crushing. Even the pile of gold coins that fell was continuously trampled by the charging people.
"Shirou, go! We'll take care of this!" Asuna shouted.
"Go, Shirou! I will protect you from behind," Kiriko said.
"Leave this to us, Shirou- nii," Silica said with a smile as she flew through the air on her dragon.
"Treasure, please guard it for us!" Lizbeth joked.
"Go for it! Crush all these penguins!" Shino said domineeringly, her killing intent blazing.
"Okay! I'll leave this to you all!"
Shirou looked at his companions with emotion; only with their company could he stand here. Shirou nodded emphatically in agreement and resolutely rushed into Avalon Island to engage in the final showdown with Boss Ma.
Chapter 685 The beauty in black dress on Avalon Island
Shirou had just run across the long bridge over the lake and entered the territory of Avalon Island. Here, there was a path filled with light, blocked on both sides by small hills made of stones. The only way to enter was through this path, which seemed to be separating the inside and outside of the island.
While fierce fighting rages outside, a one-on-one duel awaits Shirou here.
Shirou would never underestimate a ruthless figure like Boss Ma, who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. In a sense, Shirou felt that Boss Ma was actually quite similar to himself.
On Avalon Island, the woman in the black dress stood at the castle gate to greet Shirou. She was a woman with a beautiful figure, wearing a silver crown and a black veil that covered her face, revealing only a vague outline. She seemed to be smiling, yet not quite, giving Shirou a sense of déjà vu.
"Welcome, new warrior, to my courtyard," the smiling woman said first.
"Hello, I want the treasure that the Creator God placed there. Can you give me some hints?" Shirou asked the woman who looked very familiar yet seemed somewhat different.
"Of course, if it's you, then I'll give you the treasure I've kept here." Upon hearing Shirou's words, the woman clasped her hands together, her demeanor as elegant as a Princess, and she smiled and agreed.
"Wait a minute!" At this moment, Boss Ma stormed out of the castle. He had just completed the task the woman had given him, and in order to get the treasure as soon as possible, he had run out as fast as he could. He didn't expect to hear such a conversation as soon as he got out.
"Oh? Is there something you need, Mr. Ma?" The woman looked at Boss Ma with a puzzled expression and asked.
Boss Ma was furious, thinking, 'Witch! Stranger!' Boss Ma clearly realized how despicable this woman was; she was definitely not Princess at all!
No matter how beautiful her voice was, or how well-mannered she was, it couldn't change the twisted nature of her heart. It was because of this strange NPC that he had been delayed for so long.
Boss Ma felt Shirou's gaze and felt even more resentful. He had suppressed him so many times, but he still couldn't subdue him. This guy was too stubborn!
'Damn it! Useless thing!' But now, even if Boss Ma wanted to settle scores with the game department manager, he couldn't find him, because he had already given up on the game and quit to write his resignation letter.
"Madam! Isn't this a bit much? When I asked you, you put me through various tasks as a test, and now you're giving me a hint! Were all those tasks I did useless?" Boss Ma angrily questioned the woman in black. He had long realized that something was off about the woman who appeared here; her intelligence far surpassed that of the other NPCs.
His personality is even more unfathomable. Even after decades of experience in the business world and dealing with countless unscrupulous businessmen, high-ranking officials, old foxes, and powerful figures, he still couldn't figure out what the other party was really thinking.
"Is that so..." The woman in the black dress slipped her pale finger inside her veil and pressed it to her lips. After a moment's thought, she seemed to have an idea! She exclaimed with delight, "Then... how about you two duel? Whoever wins gets the treasure!"
Even more unexpectedly, when the other party met Shirou, they immediately broke the order of the mission and asked him to settle the matter with a Shirou.
"Reason? If I had to say... well, it's because he has a face that makes me want to snatch him away. Even though it's a baby face, he's still quite cute, and he's pretty handsome when he's serious. Don't you think so?" The woman wearing the silver crown lifted her veil, reaching out a hand to touch her face, revealing a face remarkably similar to Artoria's, only more delicate and alluring, with a sinister air about it. (Monthly fee group 694936135)
"You are...?" Shirou looked at the woman in surprise. Although she looked very much like Artoria, Shirou was certain that she was not Artoria, not even a subspecies. After all, no matter what era that king was in or what changes occurred, his inner essence would never change.
White Lily, blue Saber, black Ria —each of them is doing their best to protect humanity in their own way.
But the woman before him was different. She didn't have the unwavering authority of a king leading the people, but rather the enigmatic and unpredictable nature of a witch.