On the beachhead, Lin Ruoyu stood in a clearing relatively free of demon corpses. His towering figure, clad in blue-gray armor, resembled a silent reef, utterly out of place amid the noise and chaos of the battle's aftermath.
His gaze slowly swept across the entire beach before settling on two points.
The players whose bodies showed varying degrees of demonization, and the enormous mound in the distance that Shanghai Pirate King and the others were hastily trying to conceal, radiating an ominous aura... the corpse of the Abyssal Demon Dragon.
His eyes first fell on the mutated players. As he studied their twisted horns, altered limbs, skin covered in hardened scales, and the clearly inhuman strength and ferocity they displayed while working, Lin Ruoyu's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
"In the videos uploaded by the Second Revenge Fleet's players, I saw they were experimenting with mutations. I didn't expect it to have gotten this bad...
They barely look human anymore."
Just as Lin Ruoyu was weighing this up, a slightly hoarse, teasing voice sounded from behind him to one side.
"Hey, brother, that was a little hurtful."
Lin Ruoyu turned without betraying any reaction and saw Shanghai Pirate King approaching with a grin and a somewhat weary gait.
His breastplate was badly damaged, caked with dried blood and sand. His face showed the exhaustion of a fierce battle, but his eyes remained bright, even carrying a devil-may-care cheerfulness.
He pointed at the demonized players working in the distance.
"What do you mean, barely... all right, they really don't look very human. But look at those muscles, that strength! They can carry two extra crates of shells!"
As he spoke, Shanghai Pirate King pointed at the bulging muscles on the unusually thick arms of a player passing nearby with ammunition crates, trying