Player Reload
Chapter 198 - 182: Fearow

Chapter 198: Chapter 182: Fearow

To adapt to the script task, this exploration vessel of the Global Supernatural Alliance has been modified to be able to navigate automatically and avoid obstacles with only one or two crew members, or even without any crew.

The water flows briny, like seawater. The entire city is dead silent, with not a single Security Guard in sight.

Zhao Zijing sets the coordinates and lets the ship navigate on its own, then takes out a tablet computer and a Dragon Ball Capsule, releasing hundreds of small drones from the capsule.

All the drones take to the air and fly in different directions, scanning the entire city with laser rangefinders to construct a model on the tablet computer while searching for an exit.

GOC and various major guilds have an agreement to scan and download the detected topography whenever they leave the slums to explore the killing fields and upload it to a shared database.

Some dangerous species are also captured and handed over to research organizations, with the species directory uploaded to the database.

If the drones can locate familiar landmark buildings, then they can determine the relative distance between the players and the slums.

Perhaps they might even find a signal station of the Whale Song Organization and use a landline telephone to contact other players.

(During mission execution, friend communications cannot be used, and satellite phones have no signal due to the distance and intervening rock layers. Landline phones, however, can be useful.)

Or they may even discover outposts and supply points of the major guilds and obtain supplies.

The London lady Catherine and the young black man Miles from Detroit are still in chaos, appearing extremely tense.

The Mendoza from a Philippine noble family seems to know some information about the supernatural world and nervously says to Zhao Zijing, "Miss Zhao, I promise to follow orders, and once I leave here, I will contribute the reward I receive."

"There’s no need to contribute, if you can survive until the end of the task, the guild you join will naturally pay us seasoned players a sum of money as a reward. It’s usually a thousand Game Coins per person."

Zhao Zijing casually mentioned, passing the three of them and looking towards the last patient wrapped in bandages.

He was unconscious, emitting a strong scent of ointment under the sterile gauze, as if he had just been teleported from a hospital bed.

The jolts along the way had caused his wounds to rupture, seeping plenty of foul-smelling blood.

Zhao Zijing’s brow slightly furrowed, "There’s a medical room on board..."

"No need for that hassle." Midnight Howl shook his head, and for the sake of the reward of a thousand Game Coins per newcomer, took out a syringe from the Backpack and injected it into the arm of the burn victim, pushing it all the way.

His guild, Monster Alliance, features non-human characters, and most of its members have Vampire, Werewolf, Mummy, Dragonkin, or other non-human lineages.

The emergency serum inside the syringe, which is provided by a lizardman physician of the guild (drawn from his own blood), can effectively stimulate cell regeneration and heal burn wounds, frostbite, neurological degeneration, and other diseases.

Although it significantly increases the risk of cancer in the future, as the Gen-Sys company’s advertisement says, if you can’t survive today, there’s no need to worry about tomorrow.

With one injection, the burn victim’s festering skin slightly heals, and he slowly wakes up, croaking, "Where is this?"

"You’re awake?" Li Cheng pushed his glasses up and calmly said, "Not bad, you’re the best qualified among those who came this time."

So you’re not performing as Chu Xuan but as Zhang Jie instead? And why is the last one to wake up the best qualified? Is this some sort of sleep competition?

The Red Driver held back his desire to complain, walking to the bow deck to gaze into the distance.

Seeing the bandaged man awake, Zhao Zijing routinely described the situation in a few words and inquired about his personal information and the last thing he could remember.

The bandaged man’s memory is disordered; he couldn’t recall his name, address, or even nationality, only vaguely recalling that he seems to have been a firefighter, with his memory stopping four and a half years ago. He has the longest time span among the four unlucky ones who fell into the rift.

Midnight Howl said, "Just follow us, if we’re lucky and complete the mission, you’ll become a player and return to Earth,"

The bandaged man held his head in his hands, eyes bloodshot, muttering in a daze, "Four and a half years, four and a half years..."

From the perspective of the real world, those taken away by the rift might as well have vanished into thin air. For scions of wealthy families like Mendoza, life is still comfortable upon return, but for ordinary people, four and a half years is far too long, enough to change many things.

"Is there really no way to return to the exact time when I disappeared?" the bandaged man asked hoarsely. "My family is waiting for me. I have to go back."

"Forget it, when something has happened you can only accept reality," Zhao Zijing said calmly. "Unless you’re extremely lucky and find an undiscovered, powerful Hidden Room that can grant wishes or time travel. But that probability is ten thousand times lower than winning hundreds of millions on a lottery ticket with a casual purchase."

"Everyone!"

A grave voice from the ship’s bow came from the Red Driver, "We have trouble now."

The incessant rustling noises were nonstop, and dense swarms of insectoid creatures emerged from the surrounding buildings.

These insects, nearly fifty centimeters long and with a body full of legs on each side, were extremely afraid of seawater and scrambled up the outer walls of the buildings to congregate on the rooftops.

Looking around, the tops of the remaining unflooded buildings in the entire city were crowded with these monstrous bugs, the number probably in the billions. It was hair-raising to behold.

Li Cheng rubbed his chin and murmured, "They actually look a bit like the features of the order Scutigeromorpha, a magnified version of the Pselliodidae family."

Midnight Howl said subconsciously, "You recognize these?"

"Just a little knowledge." Ever since the Multi-threaded Brain Domain Method became available, Li Cheng had read a considerable amount of entomology materials and casually mentioned: "There are three families within the order Scutigeromorpha: the Pselliodidae family, the Scutigerinidea family, and the Scutigeridae family, also known as house centipedes.

The Pselliodidae family is the only one with antennae of similar width and length. The other two families have a width greater than length."

He paused and turned to address the Pidgey next to the Red Driver, "The prerequisite of becoming an excellent Pocket Monster Trainer is having sufficient natural history knowledge and a good memory, right, Pidgey?"

"Pidgey?" The Pidgey tilted its head, looking puzzled.

"I wasn’t talking about you."

The Red Driver grimaced and awkwardly patted his Pocket Monster.

Ant, the Pocket Monster, was talking about the Pidgey from the Pocket Monster cartoon, which appeared in the third episode and left in the 82nd episode on January 28, 1999.

At that time, the protagonist Ash left his Pidgeotto, which had evolved from Pidgey, in the forest to protect some Pidgeys and said he would come back to see it after finishing his work, then he forgot about it!

More than twenty years passed in the real world, the cartoon aired countless episodes, and only in the final episode of Pocket Monster did Ash return to Pallet Town to reunite with Pidgeot. He was arguably the earliest practitioner of a career PUA.

Zhao Zijing ignored the duo’s bantering and quickly pressed several buttons on the GSA tablet, comparing pictures of the monstrous insects taken by the drone with the offline database on the computer, retrieving information about the creatures.

"Dark Centipede, a species unique to killing field entities, with jaws and claws connected to poison glands within their bodies, containing corrosive toxins capable of killing large mammals. They cluster and are classified as Level 1 danger."

Zhao Zijing spoke rapidly, "This species’ danger level is similar to the Special Affairs Bureau’s anomaly fluctuation index, ranging from zero to five, with higher levels indicating more danger. We need to evacuate."

She rushed into the cockpit and pushed the ship’s acceleration lever to the fourth gear, moving at full speed.

Unfortunately, it was too late.

The water level kept rising, more and more skyscrapers were submerged by the flood, and the water was littered with the dark corpses of the bugs.

The remaining hundreds of millions of centipedes, using the corpses of their kin as stepping stones, surged towards the ship and began to climb its hull. The toxins at the tips of their legs immediately began corroding the surface of the ship, creating dense holes.