Fate Play (V)

The entire subway car was packed with people. They stood in absolute darkness. No one looked at their phones, no one moved, no one spoke. Everyone gripped their own spot on the handrails, like commuters on an early train, careful not to disturb one another.

This passenger-packed car was deathly quiet. There were no lights inside, and even after the doors opened, every passenger remained motionless within their own standing area.

"Good evening, everyone. Standing instead of sitting... do you all have herniated discs?"

Once Lu Mingfei sat down by the window with the best view, sword in hand, he felt immensely comforted at the sight of something familiar from a game. In an instant, his mindset and his touch returned. Back in middle school, he had only occasionally felt this way while watching the sunset from the rooftop.

Pairs of lifeless eyes, yearning for fresh flesh and blood, turned toward him.

More than twenty pairs of greedy predator eyes lit up like a pack of beasts in the night. They were naturally no passengers or office workers. The Deadpools slowly closed in as if by unspoken agreement, yet none wanted to be the first to leap forward, tear open this calm prey, and drink his alluring blood.

Waiting was the most torturous thing.

After the first Deadpool could no longer resist temptation, every Deadpool extended pale, withered claws. Like fanatics on a pilgrimage, they crowded forward with hoarse shrieks, eager to embrace the young man who had wandered into the land of the dead. Before long, black Deadpool blood splashed against the train windows.

The night of slaughter was about to begin.

A massive human-shaped dent appeared on the outer shell of the subway car. Then the window shattered, and a heavily wounded Deadpool was smashed through it and sent flying outside, followed immediately by a second.

Black blood was like thick ink, each swing of his blade adding another stroke. The entire car became an inkstone pool permeated by the stench of blood.

"...If we hadn't seen it with our own eyes, who would believe this?"

After a deathly silence in the surveillance room, the black-haired ninja seated on the left was the first to speak with a sigh.

Su Enxi's gaze froze. Her mouth fell open as she stuffed two liquor-filled chocolates into it.

"We haven't seen him for only a few months, right? Fine, we can explain him getting faster... I knew Cassell College was good at training dragon slayers, but I didn't expect them to be this good at tailoring education to talent. Mai, why don't you apply to the Boss for further studies too? I'd empty out every securities firm on Wall Street and trigger a fourth shock to the financial system just to send you back to college."

"Leave the pleasant work of playing with children to the Three-Nothing Girl. If an older, charming woman like me went in, I'd only bring disaster to the country. It's just college; you don't need to create a 'Subprime Mortgage Crisis' or 'Black Monday' for me."

On the monitor, Lu Mingfei slaughtered with cold, violent efficiency. The two dragon-slaying blades, one long and one short, were like twin roaming dragons dancing a bloody nocturnal waltz with him.

Leaning forward slightly, Shuuder Mai clapped softly. "Excellent. Our Little White Rabbit Number One has officially adapted to the Nibelungen. Group D, switch to Camera Position 29. Once the signal clears up, I want a full-body tracking shot. Loser Little White Rabbit must have been terrified when he fought back. I could see his hands shaking nonstop as he swung his sword, so this was beautiful, heroic self-defense."

"Terrified, my ass. I'm not blind; he was obviously excited. Deadpools have no human rights, so stop playing loyal-dog defense attorney here." Su Enxi rolled her eyes. Wake up. You might as well write 'covering for him' across your face. It's fine to be a nanny, but don't actually start thinking you're his mother.

"Besides, we generally don't call things like that Loser Little White Rabbit over here," she added, pointing at the person slaughtering everything on the screen.

"Then should we call him... Super Little White Rabbit from now on? He's so fierce. Will our nanny team lose our jobs and get kicked out by the Boss someday?" Shuuder Mai took an interest in naming monsters. After a sweet smile, she popped a Calvados liquor-filled chocolate into her mouth.

She spoke as though worried, but her face was full of anticipation.

Su Enxi righteously objected. "Did Little White Rabbit eat your rice or something? Why must you use it to describe this kind of monster? Rabbits are herbivorous mammals. Super Murderous Little White Rabbit would be more like it. So many Deadpools are practically acting like a huddled flock in front of him."

"You didn't spare Little White Rabbit either. It doesn't sound as good as Ultimate Tyrannosaurus Warrior Little White Rabbit."

"Ultimate Tyrannosaurus Warrior Little White Rabbit actually does sound pretty good."

Not long after, Lu Mingfei had wiped out every Deadpool in the car. Standing in a pool of blood, he hummed the StarCraft theme, "Terran Two." He had suffered only two minor injuries.

The overall quality of the Deadpools in this Nibelungen was not high. They could not compare to the carefully bred, 2.75-times-enhanced Serpentine Deadpools in Genji Heavy Industries. He had found the enhanced Serpentine Deadpool swarm extremely troublesome to deal with, while this group of Deadpools posed genuinely limited danger.

Having dealt with the Deadpools, Lu Mingfei felt a little more relaxed. His unease at having to face a Dragon King had unknowingly faded somewhat.

So there really wasn't any torrential rain outside the beginner village.

If the underlings he could use were all this pathetic, how strong could the boss be? No wonder Chu Zihang had never mentioned the details of facing the King of Earth and Mountains directly at Genji Heavy Industries. He must have considered such a fraud beneath mention.

Lu Mingfei found himself a reason to deceive himself. When facing fear of the unknown, people had to learn to fool themselves... to disguise themselves as fearless hero Nosenar, and dismiss their enemy as an ignorant clown too timid to act.

That way, if he failed, he would still have a reason to smile bitterly. When leaving last words for his teammates, he could say it was not that he lacked courage, but that the enemy was too cunning.

Just in case, another five vials of Evolution Potion.

As the Evolution Potion flowed continuously into his body, it was as though molten iron slowly ran through Lu Mingfei's pupils.

After five vials, another five. After all, he was about to face a Dragon King. Maybe he could enter Pseudo-Dragon Bone State again, like last time.

Then something unexpected happened.

The alchemical dagger "Lust" slipped from his hand with a clang and fell onto the subway's PVC floor.

After using the ten vials of Evolution Potion he had taken out, sudden, unbearable pain forced Lu Mingfei down onto one knee. He barely supported himself with the long sword "Pride."

"Cough, cough... cough, cough cough..."

He had only used a total of fifteen vials of Evolution Potion before and during this instance, and he had taken them separately. Last time, he had swallowed nineteen vials at once without such a severe reaction.

He had died hundreds of times and suffered more serious injuries than he could count. He should have had an extremely high resistance to pain, yet this agony seemed to strike directly at the depths of his mind. It was entirely different from physical pain.

Fine white scales emerged across the surface of Lu Mingfei's body, quickly followed by black scales. The accumulated effects of the medicine had erupted.

Damn it. So the side effects of Evolution Potion had been lying dormant and piling up... Cold sweat dripped from Lu Mingfei's forehead.

The situation he feared most had still happened. He should not have clung to luck.

How could there be a way to gain power in this world without paying a price?

Over the past three years, he had used more than a thousand vials of Evolution Potion. Back when he was not strong enough, refusing to rely on Evolution Potion would only have made him dead weight to his teammates.

He knew perfectly well that Evolution Potion's enhancement of his bloodline had always been temporary. But what he could not and did not want to confirm was that the vast majority of each injection's medicinal effect had been suppressed by his bloodline and left dormant.

Like a volcano awaiting eruption, relentless accumulation would eventually explode one day.

With such an outrageous dosage, even a blue whale might have been medicated to death several times over. Yet in Lu Mingfei's case, it had merely begun to reveal traces of side effects.

More accurately, this was not even a side effect. It was dragon blood becoming active.

"Ultimate Tyrannosaurus Warrior Little White Rabbit's body is going wrong?" Su Enxi, watching the surveillance feed, immediately sensed trouble.

They could not control this old subway train, so whether the two trains collided could only be left to fate.

They had originally stopped the other train on this line at the tunnel entrance of the Eight Kings' Tomb subway station. If Lu Mingfei got off after dealing with the Deadpools and jumped onto the adjacent platform, he would be perfectly safe. As for the three unlucky people on the other train... sorry, the nanny team only nursed Lu Mingfei.

But in his current state, Lu Mingfei might not make it off the train in time.

Ultimate Tyrannosaurus Warrior Little White Rabbit had no idea the two subway trains were about to collide.

In an extremely short time, Lu Mingfei's messy black hair continuously grew longer and lighter. Once it reached a certain critical point, it was restrained again, while more black scales rapidly surged forth and covered the white scales.

His heart beat violently. What it pumped now was no longer blood related to humans.

Without realizing it, he entered Spirit Vision.

Countless layers of deeply sealed bronze doors opened one after another.

The frozen sea churned, and blood splattered across enormous banners that had once towered into the clouds.

A mutilated, colossal white dragon was bound to a bloodstained bronze pillar.

A throne high in the heavens burned fiercely.

Dragons surrounded the old king's corpse and ascended to the summit of the world...

The dragon that should have been dead opened its eyes. Pale membrane wings covered the shattered priestly hall as it let out an earth-shaking roar at the withered world.