Instant Kill Squad

Closing the personal information interface, Zhang Yang continued to scour the containers in the room without pause, placing high-value items into his backpack while discarding lower-value collectibles to save space.

Having searched half the room, Zhang Yang arrived behind the dean's desk. He pushed aside the wide chair and, upon looking down, spotted a square, heavy-looking box with an archaic design.

So this is what the large safes in this game look like.

A system prompt appeared. Zhang Yang selected "interact," and the next moment, he pulled a set of delicate lockpicking tools from his pocket.

As he inserted the tool into the keyhole, Zhang Yang instantly felt his tactile sensitivity sharpen.

Simultaneously, five empty boxes appeared before him, the edges of the first box glowing with a faint white light.

"Click... click... click... clack."

With that final clack, Zhang Yang felt a flash of intuition—this was the spot.

He gave his right hand, which held the lockpick, a subtle twitch, and a green "√" appeared in the first box.

Immediately after, the border of the second box began to glow.

"Opening a safe isn't so hard after all."

Zhang Yang thought to himself with a sense of pride.

Following a series of continuous clicks, Zhang Yang quickly secured all five checkmarks.

As the five "√" symbols filled the empty boxes, the latch sprang open, and the tightly sealed safe door revealed a crack.

Zhang Yang tucked the lockpicking tools back into his pocket and gave the door a pull, causing the large safe's search interface to pop up.

Zhang Yang took a glance: one 1x1 slot and one 1x2 slot.

"Ding!"

"Ding!"

With two soft chimes, the collectibles inside the safe revealed their true forms: two gold-tier items.

"Gold, Merit Medal, value 80,229."

"Gold, Heding City Academy Map-1, value 10,759."

It wasn't a red-tier collectible, but Zhang Yang wasn't disappointed. If red items were that easy to find, they wouldn't have their own unique inspection animations. Getting two gold items from one large safe was well worth the effort.

Besides, this academy map had a little something special to it.

Gold, Heding City Academy Map-1
Value: 10,759
Information
0.05KG, 1x2 slots
The first part of the Heding City Academy map.

The description was simple, but it reminded Zhang Yang of something else.

Tidal Prison Map-1.

That was a gold-tier collectible in the game; it took up 1x2 slots in the backpack but was only worth a little over 10,000, the kind of item even a dog wouldn't want.

However, its sibling, Tidal Prison Map-4, was a 1x2 "small red" worth over 300,000.

By now, Zhang Yang already knew that red-tier collectibles possessed special effects.

I'll hold onto it for now; who knows, it might have a set bonus later? Zhang Yang thought, casually stowing the Heding City Academy Map-1 into his secure container.

With the large safe emptied, Zhang Yang was just about to stand up and finish looting the remaining containers in the room when a "click" sounded, and the door was pushed open.

"!"

Zhang Yang didn't move a muscle, but he instantly manifested Lord M14 in his hands.

With the weapon in his grasp, Zhang Yang felt a slight surge of confidence.

Using the large, thick desk in the dean's office to hide his six-year-old frame, Zhang Yang pricked up his ears to listen, preparing to seize the chance for a backstab.

As Zhang Yang held his breath, two men and one woman walked into the dean's office one after another.

Standing at the entrance, the trio scanned the room as if no one else were there.

"Is this the dean's office of Heding City Academy? Why does it look so shabby? It's not even as good as a private room in a club."

Looking at the decor, one man curled his lip in disdain.

"The academy is a place for education, after all. No power, no money—how good could the renovation be?" a female voice explained.

Seeing the two still had time to chat, a steady male voice cut in: "Enough, hurry up. If we drag this out any longer, we'll be discovered."

With that, the man headed straight for the desk, while the other two stopped talking and began searching the nearby area.

Behind the desk, Zhang Yang listened to the footsteps drawing closer, gripping Lord M14 tightly.

The documents on the desk were given a cursory glance and dismissed as worthless, and the man walked directly around the side of the desk.

"Squeak~"

The large solid wood chair blocked his path. The man gave it a casual shove, pushing the chair aside and revealing Zhang Yang, who had been hiding behind it...

And the pitch-black muzzle of Lord M14, already primed and ready in his hands.

"!"

"Bang!"

The gunshot rang out, and the man took a bullet straight to the face, flying backward.

"What!"

The two people inside the room turned around in shock at the sudden noise, just in time to see their leader fly backward and slam hard into the ground.

Soul power erupted, and their martial souls appeared in their hands.

The next moment, a pitch-black gun barrel emerged from behind the desk, along with a face that still looked very young.

"A kid?" the female soul master frowned, disbelieving.

The male soul master didn't care if he was a kid; he brandished the long staff in his hand and charged at Zhang Yang.

"Bang! Bang-bang!"

Three consecutive gunshots rang out, the male soul master's martial soul vanished, and his entire body slumped to the ground.

"Ahhh~~~"

Seeing two teammates die right before her eyes, the female soul master broke down.

Her martial soul dropped to the floor, and she raised her hands high and turned her head away as if to escape reality.

It seemed that as long as she didn't look there, she could escape her fate.

"However..."

"Bang!"

The gunfire gradually subsided, and Zhang Yang stood up from behind the desk.

Zhang Yang showed no mercy to enemies who had already lost their will to fight.

Who told them not to give the signal?

As for the fact that they didn't have guns and couldn't give a signal...

So what?

Dragging the three boxes behind the desk, Zhang Yang crawled back down and began to feast.

"Huh, it's a 20-slot backpack, five slots bigger than mine. Delicious."

He swapped his backpack and stuffed the most valuable items from their boxes into his own.

Additionally, Zhang Yang saw the dog tags in their boxes.

Having dog tags meant they weren't bots, but enemies who had respawned from other spawn points.

After eating, Zhang Yang stood up and scanned the Academy Dean's Office.

The filing cabinet had been pulled open, and the files inside were scattered all over the floor.

The storage lockers were open, and the items that had been neatly arranged inside were now piled up in a mess.

Seeing this, Zhang Yang couldn't help but tilt his head and say, "I remember these containers were supposed to be non-interactive."

Zhang Yang remembered clearly that these storage lockers and filing cabinets near the door were originally non-interactive.

In other words, there was a difference between the containers other teams could search and the ones Zhang Yang could search.

"I wonder if the difference is significant. Is it that they can't search any of the containers I can, or can they also search some of the ones I can open?"

He couldn't figure this out for the moment, so Zhang Yang just made a mental note to study it later.

After looting the rest of the items in the Academy Dean's Office, Zhang Yang looked back at an ordinary door before leaving.

It was a keycard door, and when Zhang Yang tried to interact with it, he was reminded that he needed the "Academy Dean's Office" keycard.

For no reason, Zhang Yang suddenly thought of Old Sai's "East Building Manager's Office".

Could this also be a red card? If so, when on earth would I ever get it to drop?

If I could just open it, given my drop rate in my first newbie match, maybe it would give me another red item inside.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yang shook his head with regret and turned to leave the Academy Dean's Office.

The next stop was the Academy Restaurant.

After all, Zhang Yang had just pulled out an "Academy Restaurant Storage Room" keycard; it would be inexcusable not to go and open it.