Chapter 360: Dealing with Tolson, Finding Joy in Hardship

Chapter 360: Chapter 360: Dealing with Tolson, Finding Joy in Hardship

"Hahaha! What luck! What incredible luck!

To think I’d run into three Divine Favored at once!

I’d love to see just how strong these Divine Favored really are."

A man’s voice, filled with elation and excitement and thick with an accent, rang out.

Accompanying the voice was a man nearly two meters tall.

His build was as burly as a brown bear’s.

He was a Western man, clad in damaged leather armor and wielding a giant, one-handed warhammer that crackled with blinding arcs of electricity.

The man leaped out from behind a broken wall, appearing before Seraphina Sullivan.

His short golden hair stood on end, and his azure eyes were bloodshot with excitement.

He greedily scanned Seraphina Sullivan, Sean Chandler, and, in the distance, the still-"recovering" Yates Ghoul.

In his eyes, the conspicuous pillars of white light emanating from the three of them were like three glittering gold mines!

"Killing just one Divine Favored lets you return immediately! And now... I’ve got three of them in front of me! Is the God of Fate smiling upon me?!"

Laughing wildly, he raised his Thunder Battle Hammer high.

"For my return! Die, my lucky sacrifices!"

Before the words had even faded, he slammed the warhammer into the ground!

KRA-KOOM—!

Three bolts of frenzied, bright-blue lightning, each as thick as a child’s arm, burst forth from the warhammer’s point of impact like writhing thunder serpents.

They shot out at astonishing speed, striking respectively at Seraphina Sullivan, Sean Chandler, and... the slightly more distant Yates Ghoul!

The guy was actually trying to take them all out in one go!

The lightning was incredibly fast. A blinding blue light filled Seraphina’s vision, and she knew it was too late to dodge completely!

In that hair’s breadth of a moment, Sean Chandler stepped forward again without hesitation, completely shielding Seraphina Sullivan behind him.

At the same time, he activated his Skill, [Crystalization]!

His brilliant, crystalline diamond body formed in an instant, reflecting a dazzling, cold light under the sun.

CRACKLE! SIZZLE—!

Two bolts of frenzied lightning struck Sean Chandler’s crystallized body head-on!

The blinding electricity leaped and coursed wildly across his body’s surface.

It let out a series of crackles that would make one’s skin crawl!

However, the expected charring and shattering never occurred.

Diamond, being an excellent insulator, possesses an extremely high resistance to electrical currents.

The vast majority of the frenzied electrical energy from the attack was dispersed and consumed by the translucent crystal surface.

Only a minuscule fraction penetrated through, causing negligible damage to Sean Chandler’s actual body!

Sean Chandler’s body merely trembled slightly.

Not a single new crack appeared on his crystalline surface!

"What the f**k?!"

Seeing this, the burly Westerner’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

He forgot to keep swinging his Thunder Battle Hammer, his face a mask of utter disbelief.

"My gods! You... What kind of monster are you?! How are you not afraid of lightning?!"

His signature thunder attack, the very one that could instantly reduce a special-grade zombie to charcoal, had absolutely no effect on that "diamond man"?!

In the instant he was lost in shock.

Seraphina Sullivan had already seized the fleeting opportunity!

She didn’t even need to aim deliberately, relying only on her instincts and the passive correction from [Hundred Shots Hundred Hits].

Leaning out slightly from behind Sean Chandler, she poked the muzzle of her rifle over his shoulder and instantly locked onto the still-dazed brute.

She pulled the trigger.

FWOOSH—!

[Space Bullet].

*Thump.*

A smooth, spherical cavity appeared precisely in the center of the brute’s chest, his heart and a portion of his spine vanishing along with it.

The elation and astonishment on the brute’s face froze instantly.

He looked down at the large hole that ran straight through his chest.

Then, he looked back up at Seraphina Sullivan in disbelief, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something.

But only a guttural, rattling sound escaped before his massive body crashed to the ground.

His Thunder Battle Hammer fell to the ground with a CLANG, its electric arcs flickering a few times before dying out completely.

[Ding! Player ’Tolson’ (Level 3) has been killed! Current kill progress (1/5).]

The cold notification sound echoed in Seraphina Sullivan’s mind, but it carried a strange reverberation unique to the new system.

Without a second glance at the fallen corpse, Seraphina immediately turned and aimed her rifle back at the spot where The Yates Ghoul had been.

However—

the spot was now empty!

Only some residual black slime and bits of flesh on the ground marked where it had once stood.

In the distance, a conspicuous pillar of white light was moving at high speed toward the deeper parts of the city, rapidly receding from their line of sight.

Seraphina Sullivan froze for a moment, then understood.

’This thing... did it sense that I really have a way to threaten or even ’Purify’ it, so... it ran away?’

She watched the rapidly receding point of light with a sense of helplessness.

After merging with the Divine Favor of the God of Viruses, it seemed The Yates Ghoul hadn’t just retained some of its combat instincts and evolutionary abilities, but its intuition for danger had also been heightened.

’It knew it couldn’t win, so it made a decisive escape?’

’Smart move...’

Still, Seraphina considered it a threat and put away her sniper rifle.

While it was a pity that this potential danger had escaped, the more important thing now was to adapt to the new game rules, meet the kill quota, and ensure the safety of herself and her team.

She walked over to the corpse of the Player named "Tolson" and quickly checked for loot.

She collected the warhammer—which had reverted to an ordinary steel weapon after losing its master’s energy to sustain it—and some useful supplies.

"Let’s go. We’re going after Solomon Ennis. If we can return sooner, I’d rather not stay here any longer."

she said to Sean Chandler and Flora Sullivan.

"We made too much of a commotion here, and the pillars of light are too conspicuous. More people will be drawn here soon.

We need to find a new spot and come up with a new plan."

They quickly left the volatile area, leaving behind ruins that were gradually being filled with the roars of zombies and unknown dangers.

However, every coin has two sides.

The forced intervention of the God of Viruses and other higher beings had turned this "Civilization Trial" instance into a bloody mess, but it wasn’t entirely without its "benefits."

At least, in Seraphina Sullivan’s view, one enormous potential threat had been temporarily neutralized.

The system had initially warned that "if the overall mission completion rate of all Players is insufficient, it will result in the ’Zombie Virus’ descending upon Azure Star as a new cataclysm."

Now that the system itself had been "hijacked" by an unknown existence, the rules were completely unrecognizable. The original mission settlement and penalty mechanisms, which were based on the old rules, had naturally vanished into thin air.

The survivors on Azure Star no longer had to worry about receiving the "Zombie Siege" gift package just because the Players over here "failed their exam."

’I guess that’s a silver lining...’

Seraphina thought, finding a moment of bitter amusement, then quickly composed herself.

The primary mission now was to survive.

She took out the [Three Realms Compass] again, focusing her thoughts on finding Solomon Ennis’s Life Mark.

Even though the guy had become a ghoul that was neither human nor ghost, as long as the mark she’d placed on him before was still there, the Compass should still be able to track him.