A brutal apocalypse

It was a highway stretching across the mountains. Xiao Hao recognized it as the site of the battle against the Giant Tree earlier that day.

Only because the livestream camera had caught a highway sign had Xiao Hao had time to prepare a change of clothes. Otherwise, he would have been exposed whether he wanted to be or not.

Giant insects crawled all over the Giant Tree's remains. Xiao Hao realized they had mutated after feeding on its wreckage.

Still causing fucking trouble even after you're dead!

Military trucks, tanks, and helicopters arrived one after another, while the roar of gunfire and shelling never stopped.

At the heart of the battlefield, Xiao Hao clearly saw the monsters rip open tanks and disembowel the soldiers inside.

Dense volleys of bullets struck the insect monsters, but most ricocheted off their armored hides, producing only a few sparks.

Only the few bullets that struck gaps in their armor inflicted any damage.

But the insects' vitality was so tenacious that only by concentrating their fire on a single monster could the soldiers barely manage to kill it.

Even tank shells could only kill the Insect Monsters with direct hits. The blasts and grenade shrapnel did little damage.

Human bodies severed into several pieces littered the ground, along with white brain matter and red viscera. Some had died so recently that Xiao Hao could still see their internal organs twitching.

Some scorpion monsters snipped soldiers in half with their massive pincers, while others pierced their hearts with their stingers.

Soldiers severed at the waist dragged their spilling intestines as they crawled. Sharp stones pierced their fingers one after another, and before long, they died.

The mosquitoes' enormous bloodsucking needles, the centipedes' flesh-shredding mouthparts, the spiders' corrosive webs, the rhinoceros beetles' massive antennae...

Some insects even pierced a soldier's thigh and dragged him back to their nest, then let him go, only to drag him back again. They seemed to be toying with their prey, chirping triumphantly.

At the center of the Giant Tree's remains lay an enormous milky-white insect. A gaping opening nearly half a meter wide at the end of its abdomen squeezed out egg after slime-covered egg.

Giant caterpillars tore through the soft membranes of the white eggs, spilling disgusting slime everywhere. Eggs filled the hollow remains of the Giant Tree, and countless giant caterpillars squirmed against one another, enough to trigger anyone's trypophobia.

"Charge!"

"For the Dragon Kingdom!"

"Long live the Dragon Kingdom!"

The soldiers were being slaughtered, yet they refused to retreat a single step.

Squads of soldiers formed circles back to back, their faces sticky with sweat. They clenched their submachine guns and fired without pause, the recoil shaking their hands. The monsters roared, and the soldiers roared back.

Their voices had long since gone hoarse and failed them. Sparks kept bursting from their scorching muzzles as the soldiers braced their bodies against the violent recoil. Blood seeped from the corners of their mouths, but they had no time to wipe it away.

Smoke stood out starkly beneath the powerful floodlights, punctuated by fleeting flashes of fire.

Xiao Hao could see the fear in the soldiers' eyes.

Among the squad leaders, Xiao Hao spotted a familiar face.

Wang He, captain of the Criminal Police Team.

"Bring him back!"

"Captain! He's too far away! We can't get him back!"

"Then try anyway!"

Wang He stared at the soldier being toyed with by an Insect Monster hundreds of meters away, his eyes wide with fury.

The soldier said nothing. Both his legs were mangled masses of flesh and blood, but he still pushed himself forward with his arms, crawling back.

He wanted to retrieve his weapon and take those monsters down with him!

The soldier's palms were covered in blood, especially his left, which had been pierced by a hard branch. White bone was faintly visible beneath the clinging flesh.

His weapon lay right before him. Just two more meters, and he could reach it.

Unfortunately, the Insect Monster had already come up behind him.

It was a giant mantis-like monster.

It chirped excitedly, then thrust a sharp forelimb at the soldier's thigh!

The soldier thought he was about to be dragged away again. Instead, the mantis's sharp forelimb struck a pitch-black Reaper's Scythe!

As though copied and pasted, the single Reaper's Scythe suddenly became five, slashing viciously at the mantis monster!

Five bloody lines suddenly appeared across its body, and the entire insect was hacked to pieces in an instant!

The aura of the Ghost Scythe Ring spread outward. The monsters stopped attacking and stood trembling where they were.

The Dragon Kingdom's soldiers kept firing out of habit. It took them a moment to realize something was wrong before their gunfire stopped as well.

An eerie silence settled over the battlefield. Both sides stood motionless, as though time itself had frozen.

Wang He had been watching that soldier all along. When he saw the figure suddenly appear, his voice nearly cracked with excitement.

"It's the top player!"

Before the other soldiers could react, Xiao Hao had already picked up the wounded soldier. With a light leap, he cleared several hundred meters and landed directly on the dividing line at the center of the battlefield!

Boom!

The highway's concrete surface sank slightly beneath him, spiderweb cracks spreading several meters across.

The headlights of the military trucks and the helicopters' searchlights instinctively swung toward Xiao Hao. He still wore that familiar black trench coat, his face shrouded in unreadable shadows.

Before Xiao Hao stood a host of battered yet stubborn soldiers.

Behind him, endless horrific monsters bared their fangs and brandished their claws.

Where Xiao Hao stood seemed to mark the boundary between two worlds, separating the human realm from hell with a stark, unmistakable line.

Xiao Hao handed the wounded soldier to Wang He.

Beneath the Shadow Mask, Xiao Hao frowned. "Where are the other players?"

There seemed to be a trace of reproach in Wang He's voice. "Blue Dragon City isn't the only city in the Dragon Kingdom."

That was true. Most of the players had already come to Blue Dragon City's aid during the day.

They had to return to their own hometowns, too.

No one had expected another monster horde to erupt in Blue Dragon City just after they left. There was no time for them to get back now.

Xiao Hao swept his gaze over the soldiers. Blood and monster slime spattered their uniforms, and their hands trembled violently around their submachine guns.

Some soldiers had only just come back to their senses when they spat out a mouthful of blood. Only then did they realize they had kept their gun stocks pressed against their chests, the recoil battering their internal organs.

They looked at Xiao Hao with complicated expressions. Every pair of eyes held pain and reproach. Their bloodshot eyes were crimson, as though they might break down sobbing at any moment.

Beneath the Shadow Mask, Xiao Hao pressed his lips together and slowly turned around.

Smoke shrouded the entire battlefield. Xiao Hao could clearly see numerous crashed helicopters, along with tanks and military trucks already reduced to wreckage.

Amid the wreckage and across the ground, monster slime ate away at everything. Blood and severed limbs lay everywhere, and blood had even pooled in hollows in the earth.

In just a few short minutes, more than half the soldiers had died in battle.

Blood and tears marked every soldier's face.

Xiao Hao understood their reproach.

They blamed him for arriving too late.

Xiao Hao understood their pain.

They blamed themselves for being too weak.

With their defensive line shattered, the soldiers could only form a wall of human flesh to halt the monsters' advance.

After all, Blue Dragon City lay behind them.

Tens of millions of people lived there.

They knew the monster tide had erupted too quickly for the Dragon Kingdom to send reinforcements in time.

Yet they still refused to flee. They still believed someone would come to help them.

They had staked everything.

They had put their lives in the hands of that black-clad figure atop the skyscraper.

Thankfully, their wait had not been in vain.

The top player had not let them down!

Xiao Hao was an even-tempered man who rarely lost his temper.

Had the Deep-Sea Ghost not threatened his life and clung to him like a rabid dog, he would never have spent so long suppressing his rage and plotting revenge.

Even in the Survival Game, he did not anger easily. Whether facing the boss-level Prehistoric Spiny Shrimp or finding himself trapped in a desperate situation against a horde of Spiny Fish, Xiao Hao had never cursed the world or his fate. Instead, he had calmly searched for a way to survive.

But now, anger began to grow within Xiao Hao.

He was an orphan and had rarely experienced kindness from others.

Yet he had not come to hate the entire world because of it.

His sharp mind told him that even so, his peaceful life had been made possible by these people shouldering its burdens.

He did not believe that just because no one in the world loved him, the whole world had wronged him.

Without them, Xiao Hao's life as an orphan would have been more than a hundred times crueler.

Everyone was complex and contradictory.

Cold indifference and savage fury alternated ceaselessly within Xiao Hao.

The flames of anger burned in his chest, and his eyes beneath the mask were bloodshot.

Xiao Hao's shadow suddenly began to boil. At that moment, darkness descended!