Chapter 865 - 735: Escape

Wanli Sealed Blade, his chest still wide open, sprinted off like a lone rider leaving everyone in the dust, vanishing around the corridor corner in the blink of an eye.

Not only White Horse Tombstone and Midnight Dad were dumbfounded; even Iron Bar Can Win and the others, who shared a faction and had signed a Rules contract, were all staring, eyes about to pop out.

Brother Blade, you really are the killing field running man. So damn shameless.

But Brother Blade bolting early also woke everyone up: yeah, Demon City has some unknown mutation going on, this batch of black-eyed people that just popped up are neither the original monster patrols nor Players,

obviously coming with bad intentions, and the reward for risking it to kill them is highly questionable.

After an extremely brief pause, Iron Bar Can Win flipped his hand and pulled out more VCD machines from the void. Each machine spat out hundreds of yellow gold-discs with leopard prints that dove straight at the black-eyed freaks, stalling them for time.

Then he raised his arm, letting Gao Chenluoxing, who’d been sprinting like mad, scoop him up princess-carry style and drag him away, hurrying to catch up with Wanli Sealed Blade.

Li Cheng simultaneously activated [Fog Concealment Skill] and [Riding the Tide, Wind, and Waves], rolling up thick, billowing fog. His scorpion tail whipped downward—Gray Rain instantly understood, grabbed Hansel along with the tail, and bugged out together.

Even Midnight Dad and Ω temporarily set aside their grudge—the former released Voodoo Blood Magic different from Claudia’s version, seeping into the black-eyed people’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears,

while from the gaps of Ω’s fishbowl head, his soul leaked out to form a floating cape that hauled Midnight Dad away with him.

In the blink of an eye all the Players had run off clean, while the black-eyed people stayed put, clawing off the gold-disc leopards and voodoo filth clinging to their bodies.

"Faster, faster!"

Gao Chenluoxing’s cyborg legs were throwing off sparks on the marble floor. "Whoever runs slow now gets left as rear guard. At my cyborg speed I should be safe... huh?!"

He saw a 20-meter-class Late Bell Mecha sweep past him—freed from the Sealing Array’s shackles, Hansel summoned the Late Bell Mecha at the first opportunity,

dropping to one knee, lowering its profile, and using the leg-mounted hovering thrusters to drift at high speed down the corridor.

Standing on the mecha’s shoulder, Li Cheng slowly exited Insect Transformation Form, casually grabbed a curtain and wrapped it around himself as if it were the outer robe of an Ancient Greek Philosopher.

At that moment, the black-eyed crowd showed up again at the corridor corner, including that converted Prometheus Player, scrambling crazily with both hands and feet along the walls and ceiling, occasionally Instant Teleporting short distances as they chased.

The curtain-robe flapped wildly. Li Cheng pulled out the battery-shaped Perfect Quality Item [Hidden Backup Energy], twisted the handle to draw Spiritual Power, and at the same time used his Information Integration Glasses to scan the black-eyed people, especially the leading Medieval Knight.

[Name: Mordred]

[Gender: Male]

[Age: 18 (years of birth and death B.C. 510–528)]

[Cause of Death: long spear impalement]

[Current Status: Mythic Era Survivor/Cthulhu Fanatic/Chaos/Chaotic Frenzy/High-Speed Self-Healing/Immune to Spiritual Control/High Physical Resistance/High Magic Resistance]

The other black-eyed ones had different names, genders, and causes of death, but the [Current Status] column was freakishly consistent—everyone had resistance tags.

Hansel piloted the Late Bell Mecha, swung both arms back, and fired all Weapons at once.

The 3000-round-per-minute large-caliber CIWS barrage only made the black-eyed crowd stagger slightly. The 500-kilo high-explosive charges that could heavily damage and sink Battleships merely blew off their limbs, spraying blue-green gore,

which they just picked up off the floor, pressed back onto their stump joints, and regenerated in moments.

Their Magic Resistance and Spiritual Resistance were equally insane. Ω strained himself to the limit casting Evil Science Alliance Soul Magic, his fishbowl head bubbling like crazy, and the black-eyed people at most got nosebleeds out of it.

The only silver lining was that their Flash Ability had a range limit and Cooling Time—each Instant Teleport topped out at about 1200 meters.

Thud!

Heavy footsteps suddenly echoed from ahead at a four-way junction. Wanli Sealed Blade had turned around and was now sprinting head-down, then suddenly made a right at the junction—turns out further ahead, more than a dozen black-eyed people and a whole pack of converted black-eyed Players had also appeared.

Grant from [Mechanical War Thunder] was standing right among them.

"Grant?!"

In the Late Bell Mecha’s cockpit, Hansel personally saw her brother Grant’s pupils pitch-black, blue-green vomit stains still clinging to the corner of his mouth, and her eyes instantly went bloodshot.

"Calm down, girl."

Standing on the mecha’s shoulder, squinting into the howling wind, White Horse Tombstone barked in a low voice: "He’s not in a normal state right now. Killing him might not even let him respawn on the upper levels of Netherworld Purgatory!"

Hansel and Grant were twin siblings, born into a wealthy family in Canada, with both parents being artists.

Artists tend to be more emotionally intense, just like the two Wachowskis who shot The Matrix (born brothers, later transitioning to become a brother-sister pair, and ultimately sisters),

Hansel and Grant’s sibling bond wasn’t exactly typical either—it had that soul-twin, one-cannot-exist-without-the-other vibe. So when they picked their killing field IDs, they deliberately swapped the genders and Names of the two protagonists from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

But Hansel also knew perfectly well that it was absolutely impossible to charge into the black-eyed crowd right now, snatch Grant out, suppress him, and carry him off.

Blindly charging in would just get herself folded too, so even with her eyes about to split open, she still pulled the control lever, piloting the mecha to hook onto a beam and wall-skim in an extreme drift, keeping pace with Brother Blade’s getaway run.

The Late Bell Mecha at full speed barely managed to open up some distance from the black-eyed people, only for that gap to shrink again with each short-range Instant Teleport.

Li Cheng turned his head toward Gray Rain. "Where’s the [Crown of All Machines]? You’ve issued overload orders to the drones, right?"

"Oh, oh."

Gray Rain pulled out a dark green crown soldered from circuit boards out of his chest and put it on his head, then barked at the drones Li Cheng was deploying one by one: "Quit sleeping, up and work!"

The Special Effect of [Crown of All Machines] is forcibly commanding Mechanical objects, kind of like a word spirit.

The recon drones receiving the order flared their lights and overclocked their motors, blasting off with a whoosh at 180% of their designed maximum speed.

Forced overload wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. The drones spread out along the winding corridors, scouting the terrain,

while Li Cheng closed his eyes, taking in the returned data through his headset, then snapped out orders: "Left, right, right, left!"

At the front, Wanli Sealed Blade hesitated for a beat, then at the next four-way junction decisively swung left, and everyone else just buried their heads and followed.

White Horse Tombstone’s expression turned hesitant. "This is..."

"The Maze Map."

Li Cheng kept it short and sharp: "I mentioned it before—Demon City’s layout is generated according to videogame maze logic. Monster patrols are basically challenges, and Extraordinary Items are the treasure chest rewards.

Demon City only stokes greed; it doesn’t cloud the Players’ logical thinking.

The reason so many red-eyed Players got toyed with and spontaneously formed gangs to rob each other was entirely because of the Maze Map’s design,

which keeps pushing Players to challenge monster patrols, collect chests, feed their greed, and then, at just the ’right timing,’ run them into other gangs so they slaughter each other,

ensuring no one goes to explore Demon City’s real secrets.

Following that logic in reverse, the paths with fewer monster patrols, fewer forks, more remote, and less likely for Players to traverse..."

"Are exactly what Demon City doesn’t want Players to see."

White Horse Tombstone and Midnight Dad’s eyes lit up as they spoke in unison; bubbles puffed up inside Ω’s fishbowl head too.

Gao Chenluoxing’s face froze. "In other words, we’re actively running into a dead end."

"Only in death can we find life. It’s not like we have any Charm System Players who could communicate with this batch in a Chaotic Frenzy state."

Li Cheng glanced at Gao Chenluoxing, who was currently princess-carrying Iron Bar Can Win (the pose didn’t hamper Iron Bar Can Win’s ability to pull out items with both hands), thought of something, and said: "Isn’t your cyborg body able to freely switch faces and boost your Charm value?

Way more convenient than plastic surgery.

Why don’t you give it a try, see if you can talk to this group of black-eyed people?

The killing field isn’t about hacking and slashing. It’s about managing relationships, about older-partner dynamics, about dad types, about my old man,

about peak beauty, about prime marriage-material vibes, about dollar-cost averaging the Nasdaq 100, about the needs of the object, about subjectivity,

about High Sensitivity, about avoidant attachment, about cognitive awakening, about getting that A9 big result.

I believe in you, you can do it."

So seriously, what the hell is this "big result" supposed to be, anyway aaaaargh.