Players, Please Board the Train

Despite the strange taste, Yan Jiayu still finished the jelly potion, popped two fried insect pupae into her mouth, and enthusiastically recommended them to Xu Huo: ”The fried pupae burst with juice the moment you bite into them, sweet and thirst-quenching, they taste great. Even my Master loves them.”

Xu Huo looked at the pupae, which were clearly mutated insect species, and tried one without changing his expression. ”Not bad.”

Yan Jiayu gave him two packs. ”These are much better than eating dry rations. I’ve heard some people get trapped in random dungeons for ten days to half a month, having something tasty makes it less miserable.”

If you hadn’t cleared the dungeon in ten days to half a month, you probably wouldn’t even have an appetite, let alone care about how things tasted.

But Yan Jiayu didn’t have that kind of worry.

The two of them took a lap around the mall. Most of what Yan Jiayu bought were snacks and potions, or cheap but strange little gadgets. Xu Huo bought some food along with her, and also purchased a few weapons.

Guns couldn’t be brought into the station, but they could be used during their two days in Zone 009.

They came out of the mall in less than half a day, just in time for the big screen on the street to be broadcasting a fairly large-scale player fight. Xu Huo suggested going to watch. Yan Jiayu pulled out a hot air balloon item, and the two of them flew directly toward the scene of the action.

Live broadcasts weren’t exclusive to player organizations. Organizations would pick battles they were fairly confident in to broadcast, first to show off their strength, and second to expand their reputation and attract more players to their side. Unaffiliated players were much more casual, they’d gather on video streaming sites to livestream, mostly out of personal interest, without taking any obvious side.

Player battles took place on the ground and at low altitudes, high altitudes were still hard to reach. So besides hot air balloons, quite a few nearby players had deployed items, or simply hung in the air themselves, watching as they drifted along.Though the wind was strong, not as comfortable as a hot air balloon.

”These players don’t seem to have very high ranks,” Yan Jiayu said after watching for a while. ”At most B-rank players.”

”High-rank players either solve their problems before leaving a dungeon, or they don’t care about ordinary items. It’s no surprise they wouldn’t waste their time here.” Xu Huo paused and shifted his gaze to a corner on the left. ”Unless they have ulterior motives.”

Yan Jiayu noticed where he was looking and followed his gaze. She saw several people who seemed to have undergone unified training dispersing from in front of a large building with extremely similar movements, weaving through the chaos, running from different positions toward a low-rise building due north.

”That looks like a government office building,” she said. ”The Capital Safe Zone’s government offices have basically pulled every elite player they could muster from across the country. Are these people trying to rob it?”

They soon got their answer. Those few individuals positioned themselves on four sides of the building, each releasing a black sphere. The spheres were the size of a human head, flying toward the top of the building at tremendous speed.

At that moment, the players inside the office building moved as well. Several groups split off to intercept the black spheres and surround the sneaking attackers. Three of the four black spheres were stopped, but one smashed straight through the elite players’ safety net item and slammed violently onto the office building!

A sphere the size of a human head, falling in a way completely inconsistent with the laws of physics, cracked half the building apart. The top split open, the sphere dropped, and a building of over a dozen floors collapsed layer by layer, crumbling straight to the ground, even sinking the foundation several meters into the earth!

The elite players couldn’t possibly have predicted this. After the initial shock, more than half of them turned around to mount a rescue. The building collapsed too fast. In that time, only two or three players managed to get people out, while many more were crushed beneath the rubble, including several players!

One sphere had collapsed half a building, and the other half still stood there. As screams and cries for help rang out, the elite players fell back to defend the building, guarding against the sneaking attackers continuing their black sphere assault.

With this kind of commotion, nearby player organization members rushed to support at the first opportunity. But the sneaking attackers had no intention of getting tangled up with them. One of them darted between players like lightning, arriving at the collapsed ruins, and casually flicked out several throwing darts!

The darts, with tail ends blinking in different colored lights like landmark beacons, curved in midair after leaving his hand, autonomously flying to different spots on the ruins. Once they stuck, the blinking color on each light fixed to a single hue, some yellow, some green.

After taking a look, the sneaking player shifted to the rooftop of the other half of the building.

Five players swarmed in to attack!

Watching the building collapse from above was especially spectacular. Even Yan Jiayu let out an exclamation. ”They’re looking for something, aren’t they? Those landmark darts are probably detectors.”

”Zone 009 shouldn’t have weapons with technology that advanced. They must be fighting over an item.”

”But killing this many people for one item, they can’t possibly be good people.”

Xu Huo’s gaze remained fixed below. ”Looks like some kind of organization.”

The two weren’t high rank, but they dared to stroll around the game district outside of dungeon clearing, and that said something. Generally speaking, player organizations weren’t a positive term. Cases of player organizations stirring up trouble and killing innocents were far too numerous to count, especially those organizations with brainwashing cult undertones. They killed without batting an eye, and their motives might only be some tiny, absurd reason.

At this moment, the speedster player had already been knocked off the rooftop. While one group held the office building, three other groups of players came pouring out of the remaining half of the building, like fireworks bursting open, instantly flooding into the streets and alleys.

With this many people, the sneaking attackers couldn’t possibly chase them all. They seemed to have placed their bet on the building. Under the cover of their companions, one of the players pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it with a pen. The next second, two players on the rooftop dropped dead!

”They’re dead!” The surrounding players were horrified, simultaneously using face coverings, body protection, putting distance, and defensive items to guard against that player’s ability.

But it was useless. Players at varying distances fell one after another, two more went down!

”He wrote my real name!” One player used an item to see the writing on the paper, roaring in fury. ”Who leaked our information!”

As another name on the paper was crossed out, that player collapsed too.

”Run!” The remaining players weren’t about to stand there and wait for death. Several of the main forces dove into dungeons without hesitation. The others who hesitated lost a few more to death, and when they realized that even if the opponent couldn’t see them, even if they were far enough away, it didn’t stop the item’s effect, a massive wave of players began entering dungeons.

The man didn’t stop until he’d killed over a dozen people in one breath. By then, the surrounding players had already changed shifts. Since they knew the government elites inside out, who knew whether they knew the players from other organizations!

And indeed that was the case, the few sneaking attackers were preparing to leave.