Players, Please Board the Train

[Please note, it can only steal one item from a single person. Of course, as a marvelous item, it sometimes steals items according to its own whims.]

Xu Huo took out the item and found it was a black metal snake as thick as a little finger. He glanced at the things he carried on his person and placed the snake on the umbrella handle. The moment the small black snake made contact with a physical object, it attached itself, coiling its body around the handle with its head pointing towards the ribs of the umbrella, clinging to it as if it were originally a decorative piece on the handle.

He casually gripped it to test the feel, finding nothing awkward or uncomfortable. He set the umbrella aside and proceeded to examine the D-grade item.

[Mona Lisa’s Veil: The smile of the Mona Lisa possesses a captivating, mysterious beauty, and mysterious things are often impossible to grasp. When you think you see it, it is as illusory as smoke; when you think you can capture it, it is as ethereal as mist.]

True to its name, the object in hand indeed resembled a veil. When casually placed, it would slowly blend into the surroundings, even simulating light and shadow. To the naked eye alone, it was almost impossible to detect any difference. Accidental scraping or stroking wouldn’t dislodge the veil either. In summary, if one didn’t examine it carefully, this veil was like an invisible handkerchief, taking root wherever it landed.

Xu Huo tried it on the umbrella handle. After wrapping it around, the Greedy Snake was completely invisible. Looking at it from different angles under various lighting conditions revealed no abnormalities. Only when gripping the umbrella handle could one tangibly feel there was something on it.

He simply left the gauze on it and proceeded to check the potions one by one.

The Evolution Agent, healing potion, and cleaning solution were the old familiar trio. There were also a few bottles of strong painkillers, hallucinogenic spray, and mood-enhancing potions, among others. Particularly the strong painkillers, which could numb a person’s nerves, making them unable to perceive any pain for five minutes, fell into the category of emergency medicine.

Additionally, there was one more D-grade train ticket, ”Sea World.”

Xu Huo noticed that after each dungeon concluded, the game’s rewards would have a certain emphasis. If the items and characteristics were relatively good, other aspects would correspondingly be weaker. For this dungeon, he received an S rating, but the potions, train tickets, and money weren’t plentiful. However, obtaining one Major Characteristic and one Special Item was considered worthwhile.At that moment, several broadcasts popped up on the game panel:

[The exploration of the legendary figure Carmen Fielder’s ruins has concluded. The Super Item ”Fielder’s Battle Angel,” rumored to be what earned Carmen Fielder the honorary title of ”Morning Star,” is suspected to have been obtained by the super player Paper Artisan.]

[Recently, a batch of the latest weapons valued at five hundred million White Bills was hijacked from Platinum Eye, renowned for its precision instruments. It is reported that after all the armed personnel responsible for transporting this batch of weapons were killed, the dimension cruiser costing ten billion was subsequently lost in the spatial rift.]

[Recently, war has erupted in Zone 012. It is estimated that this conflict cannot conclude within thirty days.]

Regarding the matter of the Fielder ruins, Xu Huo had roughly glanced at it before entering Rose Castle but hadn’t examined it in detail. Now that he received the broadcast, he simply sat down and looked up the course of events.

News about such major events concerning the entire wormhole point wasn’t hard to find. Using Shi Youzhi’s communicator, he could search out hundreds of millions of messages, including reports from official organizations in District 011.

It was said the Fielder ruins were the place where Carmen Fielder resisted external enemies from other wormhole points. He himself perished there alongside three super players from other zones. The relics of those three external players had long been recovered; only Carmen Fielder’s Super Item remained missing.

Over the years, the Fielder family had dispatched many people to search for the whereabouts of the ”Battle Angel,” but to no avail. It wasn’t until half a year ago, after Carmen Fielder’s grandson, Karlon Fielder, took control of the family, that the decision was made to publicize these ruins, allowing players from the entire wormhole point to search for the Super Item.

This matter had been brewing since half a year ago and only recently concluded. The results weren’t as the game announcement suggested, merely mentioning one super player, Paper Artisan. Many high-level players with names and reputations had made appearances. Before the formal search began, numerous small-scale conflicts had also erupted among players.

Super players and Super Items might still be too distant for a D-level player like him. However, Xu Huo felt that the reason the previous player invasion of Zone 014 didn’t fully escalate into a global catastrophe, aside from the game’s restrictions on the number of times high-level players could enter low-level dungeons and the special items required to enter Zone 014 from a dungeon, the Fielder ruins incident was also a significant factor.

Zone 014 hadn’t fully integrated with the game yet; dungeons and the real world were in a state of isolation. Therefore, for players to enter Zone 014 from a dungeon required special methods and channels. Xu Huo had already verified this method previously; a single message cost two hundred thousand White Bills, indicating the price wasn’t low.

However, these costs probably weren’t particularly difficult for high-level players, even super players. With so many partitions in the E27 wormhole point, how many players wouldn’t be interested in a Super Item?

Looking at it now, the Fielder ruins attracted the majority of the firepower, which allowed Zone 014 to narrowly pass through the crisis. If a few more external players had come, killing a few more players, Zone 014 might very well have followed the old path of Building Block Fairytale City Station.

Being targeted by other zones over a Super Item was a calamity for Zone 014. Yet, due to the tug-of-war between the game and current events across various aspects, Zone 014 was given a chance to survive. Such fluctuations in fortune are unpredictable and hard to define.

”...Super Items often possess special abilities that transcend time, space, and life itself. Such abilities are key factors in determining the outcome of large-scale wars.”

Xu Huo looked at the information about Super Items on the projection. The forms of Super Items were also diverse, not limited to rewinding time or altering space. It was rumored that the Super Item of the renowned super player Paper Artisan of E27 was paper. Compared to those abilities invisible to the naked eye, Super Items are more direct in terms of range and impact.

Ordinary items and Special Items have stringent usage conditions and limitations, and their effects are not absolute. However, the range of a Super Item is impossible to estimate, and within its effective range, any person or object is encompassed by its ability.

Xu Huo recalled the time in Decibel Town. ”Three Seconds of a Life” seemed to merely save his life by rewinding time three seconds. But afterward, he compared some clocks. The three seconds rewound by the Super Item did not appear on other timepieces, and other players were completely unaware.

In other words, during those three seconds when he rewound time and was reborn, everything within Decibel Town also rewound three seconds along with him. In the game world with its advanced technological development, three seconds could indeed change the fate of a partition.