Chapter 102
Invisible? It's her.
The Demon Eye can't actually see humans. He just keeps moving forward like a certain captain, and the road will automatically extend. But he always stays highly vigilant, dodging immediately when attacked, and then recalling the opponent's information in his mind.
Luckily, she took the initiative to attack.
Armless that if he stood still, Yuki would brush past him, charging aggressively with eyes that clearly indicated something was wrong, how could he dare let him get close?
The dust kicked up by the plasma ball filled the air. The woman frowned as she looked ahead; this blast would surely attract the attention of other players.
A second later, the muzzle turned into a honeycomb pattern.
Energy Shotgun.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh...
A dense barrage of bullets tore through the air, scattering dust but no sign of Yuki could be seen. His brown eyes scanned the surroundings, spotting a shadow moving through the ruins.
She retreated to the middle of the road, trying to ensure her shooting range, fully aware of the current situation:
For melee players, I must stall for time!
As the information suggests, the vast majority of upgrade points were used on the robotic arm, making him a pure item-based player.
Yuki's legs left afterimages as he ran, scattering fragments of debris from the ruins around him. He dared to open this random instance based on intelligence.
Specializing in one area is too narrow; once you grasp the basics, you can't achieve significant progress in a short period of time.
"So, you're dead!"
With a sudden stop and a change of direction, Yuki burst out of the ruins and charged headlong into the humanoid turret. As soon as he broke free of cover, the mechanical arm that had transformed into a cannon moved toward him as if it were automatically locked on, and the red-haired woman revealed a sneer.
Charging into yourself in an open area—isn't that suicide?
A dozen meters away, with no cover whatsoever, fist-sized plasma balls came hurtling towards him. Yuki made no attempt to dodge, simply raising his sword.
Physical Enhancement. Extreme Speed.
Physical Enhancement. Hawk Eye.
Excellent-level Reinforcement Magecraft can simultaneously focus on enhancing multiple parts of the body, unlike in the Demon Hospital where it only enhances the strength of the hands or the speed of the feet, and the intensity of the enhancement is also increased.
I can see it, I can see it.
With his dynamic vision, he saw the trails left by bullets in the air. He pushed off with his legs, instantly accelerating and cracking the ground. Combined with his extraordinary physical strength, he was as fast as if he were teleporting.
Bang bang bang bang!
The ground was blasted into craters, and the man's Back-and-Forth Dodge made his trajectory unpredictable. Armless gradually sensed something was wrong, and in the blink of an eye, the other party closed to within ten meters.
That's incredibly fast; that's definitely the level of someone with experience in at least four dungeons.
Watching the enemies dance in a hail of bullets, she began to slowly retreat. The barrage of bullets paused, and her mechanical arm turned red and heated up as if overloaded.
Since I can't hit it, I'll choose to cover it.
Plasma Tidal Wave!
Boom--
A fan-shaped tide of energy surged out. As a veteran player, she knew exactly how to deal with enemies who possessed dynamic vision and were fast. She wasn't aiming to blast them apart; forcing them back would suffice.
Delaying time? Sorry, I'm racing against time.
Energy is released.
Yuki did not retreat, but instead took a lunge, raised his long sword shrouded in reddish-gray mist, leaned forward, and slashed at the waves.
Swish--
The soul energy was concentrated at one point, and combined with the simple and unadorned longsword, the collision of energy made it sound like a thousand birds Yuki's ears.
A moment later, a gap appeared in the giant wave that had carbonized the ground, and through this gap, Yuki saw a woman with a horrified expression.
This guy can shatter energy in one go, is he a veteran player???
She tried to retreat, but Yuki, who was attacking with all his might, did not stop. His compressed knee propelled his body forward, like an arrow released from a bow, instantly covering the remaining ten meters.
As he got close, Yuki saw the somewhat bewildered enemy reflected in his red eyes, and he had a strange feeling.
He was once driven to despair by Li Dan, exhausting all his mental energy and using every means to barely win, but this woman's fighting power is definitely above Li Dan's.
And she couldn't hold on even before I used my full strength?
Yuki revealed a cruel smile, slapped the incoming mechanical arm away with his longsword, leaned forward and thrust the blade accurately into the opponent's chest.
This stab, after all the bitterness, brings sweetness.
Chapter Sixteen: Time-Space Distortion?
Splash--
The houses turned into rubble, and the rubble was then completely dissolved in the thick fog.
The towering man stood in the middle of the road, his fists clenched, his head slightly raised, and he could see a woman sitting at the base of a wall not far away.
Her red hair was flowing freely, and the blood flowing out stained her clothes, pooling beneath her. Her left hand was empty; the mechanical arm had vanished.
She was dead, dead before he could arrive at full speed. The Smoker took out a cigarette, lit it, and his bearded face showed little expression.
It's just a purely physical relationship with little emotional connection. Even when they're assigned to the same team, there's always a lot of scheming and backstabbing. Even when they're having sex, it's just a matter of mutual benefit.
But he was still very annoyed.
A tedious Reconnaissance mission, inexplicably attacked, and with teammates killed in a short time—anyone would be furious.
The Smoker hadn't lost his mind. After an epic lung-bursting, he stubbed out the cigarette, walked to the corpse, tore his clothes, looked at the wound on the huge sphere, and then glanced back at the cracks left on the ground.
"His sprint speed was extremely fast; he broke through her Plasma Tidal Wave head-on and then delivered a fatal blow. This is the work of a master swordsman."
The image flashed through my mind: the attacker collided head-on with the Armless creature, used some kind of Reconnaissance skill to see through its invisibility, and then used the ruins as cover to close the distance.
Her response Armless was textbook perfect. She first retreated to the middle of the road, forcing the opponent to emerge from the ruins, and then unleashed her full firepower advantage.
"But the difference in strength between the two sides was too great. Without my cover, she couldn't concentrate on shooting."
Players need to cooperate, especially those who specialize in a particular skill. He also had a feeling that the attacker knew that the Armless lacked melee combat ability.
"Heh, anyway, all your enemies are dead, so you have no regrets about dying now." The Smoker reached out and closed the woman's wide-open eyes.
There was no need to go to the trouble of burying him; it was normal for players to die in dungeons. He simply stood up, turned his head, and glanced into the distance.
To the west, several hundred meters away on a sloping rooftop, two teenagers stood silently, with a gruesome corpse beside them, as if any negotiation would seem futile.
With just one glance, Kanai and Tetsuto tensed up. The other party was like a ferocious beast, completely different from students like themselves.
The props were activated, the skills were ready, and thankfully, a few seconds later, thick white smoke rose, and the towering man vanished into thin air.
"Phew, looks like he knows we weren't the ones who did it. Luckily, I chose to come out and confront him." Kanai let out a long sigh of relief and adjusted his glasses.
He knew things were in trouble when the aftershocks of the battle started, as the attacker in his own school uniform beat him to it. So he made a quick decision and chose to confront the angry man head-on.
This courage demonstrates their stance; if they had hidden themselves and refused to come forward, things would have remained unclear.
"Since you know it wasn't us, why don't you talk?" The purple-haired boy looked puzzled; the two of them had wasted too much time meeting up.
"Because the attacker was wearing our school uniform, what if it was part of a larger scheme?" Kanai glanced at the athletic student with low academic ability and shook his head helplessly. "No player dares to gamble, especially with one person already dead."
The Tetsuto licked his lips, realizing things had gotten complicated; the Smoker was far more formidable than he had been.
"Then what do we do?"
"We have to go back, tell the truth to our senior, and leave the instance now."
"Now? Why don't you try hiding?"
"We can't afford to mess with either of these two, and we don't have any stealth skills to hide. Let's find a car, I'll fix it, maybe then we can escape." Kanai Jing didn't dare to wander around the city. He was confident in his academic abilities, but after only two dungeons, he didn't have much Transcendental Grade power at all.
Moreover, he knew nothing about the enemy; how could he possibly have the capacity to formulate a detailed plan?
The Tetsuto swallowed hard. He wasn't very bright, but he knew that this battlefield was deliberately set up by someone. How could they dare to bring in four players all at once if they weren't confident?
"Okay, let's run!"
The issue now isn't what those people want to do, but rather that they've seized a weapon.
Kanai glanced at the lone corpse and gritted his teeth.
"This knife is also incredibly sharp."
"That's clever. As expected, there are no impulsive idiots among veteran players."
A kilometer away to the east, amidst the collapsed ruins, Yuki lowered his binoculars; things hadn't developed as he'd imagined.
If the two sides go to war, he'll go and take advantage of the situation. This random mission can be completed in two hours, which is considered a speedrun.
Unfortunately, one side bravely stepped forward, while the other suppressed their impulses and did not start a war as they had planned.
"It's alright, I can use you guys as practice. I've never fought such a well-funded battle before."
Because the difficulty of the dungeons is always unusual, it's not noticeable in the quests, but when facing off against other players, Yuki suddenly feels stronger.
Even with the advantage of intelligence and surprise attack, in a true one-on-one fight, his combat strength as a level 2 player far surpasses that of the red-haired woman, a level 3 player.
Thinking about it, it makes sense. He gained much more from the same instance. Perhaps it wasn't obvious under the Crimson Moon, but as he accumulated experience, this feeling became more and more obvious.
In a single dungeon, an S-rank grants two specialization points, which isn't significantly different from a player who completes the dungeon normally. However, across two dungeons, the difference between having two extra specialization points becomes substantial.
'Then I also figured out how to get the achievement: making a fortune in the Demon Hospital.'
Yuki smiled with satisfaction, which is why he felt that his suffering had finally come to an end. There is no harm without comparison, and not only that, the test results also made him very satisfied.
'Furthermore, the player's soul energy is quite strong; it not only replenished what was consumed but also had some left over.'
As one delves deeper into the path of the Transcendental Grade, the weight of each person's soul becomes different. Dean Fukawa can still cite numbers, but the red-haired woman alone is equivalent to one-tenth of the dean's weight.
The Demon Heart is derived from the Philosopher's Stone. This thing can be replenished and upgraded, and the test results alone are worth the price.
"As expected, we still have to kill to get rich. Let's continue testing and see how much the strength of the players affects the soul. Besides, just stealing Chaos Item is also an option."
[Chaos Item: Mechanical Prosthesis (Transcendental Grade) - 1st Forging]
[The Mechanical Prosthesis gain various abilities through transformation. Plasma shooting mode: heavy fire, scattering, auto-aiming. Auxiliary abilities: electronic map, optical cloaking. Overload Mode: Plasma Tidal Wave.]
[Side effect: Requires connection to the user's arm; causes severe nerve pain during use]
[Description: This is a treasure of civilization, but you must pay a price to use it.]
It's an incredibly powerful Chaos Item —no, it should be said to be the most powerful Chaos Item Yuki has ever seen, combining attack and support functions, but the side effects are terrible.
"It's like the Sunflower Manual; you have to cut off your hand to use it. Also, why didn't it cause any nerve pain symptoms?"
Yuki thought for a moment and roughly understood that the woman had used all her enhancement points on the mechanical hand, probably because its characteristics were related to pain. She had exhausted her specialization points, and her physical strength was only at an excellent level.
This is the general state of players below level 5. Even if they can get a B grade or higher in every dungeon, it's only enough for one or two specializations. If someone finds their weaknesses, they will be at a disadvantage and can only rely on teamwork to play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses.
Should I buy it?
Yuki hesitated for a few seconds, but finally decided against it. He didn't want to become disabled, nor did he want to add any more debuffs to himself.
After retrieving his storage space, he turned his attention back to what was in front of him. Besides the murder, he also discovered some interesting things.
Yuki leaned against the wall and saw some things in the ruins that looked like fragments of a shield.
It's about the size of two palms, its surface covered in cracks, giving it a weathered look. A pattern is painted on it, which is faintly visible:
The pattern is gold-colored, with three incomplete circles intersecting, and an incomplete triangle in the center.
It looked like a fragment of a work of art, completely inconspicuous in the ruins, but Yuki felt the pattern looked familiar.
"It bears some resemblance to the Golden Tree Mark. Logically speaking, such a pattern shouldn't exist in this world."
He thought of the Tyrant and the Licker, perhaps the remains of some dungeon monster, being used as scrap by a random quest. If that were the case, turning such a large area of the city into ruins, this quest was pretty intense.
Yuki put the fragments into his storage space without receiving any hints. He then searched the ruins for another two minutes and found more fragments.
A broken spear, a sword hilt, and a dark, technologically advanced gun barrel—the juxtaposition of fantasy and science fiction elements creates a somewhat disorienting effect.
It looked like the ruins left after a battle between a player and a monster, but there was also a package inside, Yuki was even more puzzled when he saw the date.
"The production date is a year from now?"
He searched for time-related items in both the Demon Hospital and Crimson Moon City, such as the medicine the hospital gave him at the beginning, which had a production date a year ago.
That's strange, can random dungeons cause time discrepancies?