Chapter 8-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player
Chapter 8
The bicycle raced through the downtown streets. Advertising billboards flanking the shopping malls radiated a bustling, lively energy that only made the deserted streets feel more desolate.
A shopping bag spiraled in the wind before falling. The wheels rolled over it.
The government had imposed a partial lockdown under the guise of an epidemic. For the past month, the city had been quiet. She wasn't sure if she was overthinking it, but she always felt something lurking beneath the calm surface.
Not far ahead, an office building had somehow been struck and toppled sideways into the neighboring tower, its body punching clean through four floors of offices.
...She hoped both companies had followed government regulations and that no employees had come to work today.
Bai Shan glanced at it and looked away, but when she saw what lay ahead, her eyes flew wide open.
Too late to brake. She leapt straight off the speeding bicycle, staggering several steps before steadying herself. The bike shot forward on momentum and was sliced clean in two by an impossibly thin wire!
"Sharp eyes you've got there, spotting my [Kite String] and all."
"Too bad though—I really wanted to see what it'd look like if you'd hit it, hahaha!"
Three people climbed out of a black car parked by the roadside. They looked to be in their twenties, laughing and jeering loudly enough to hurt one's ears.
The fat man retracted his Kite String and patted his two companions. "My [Kite String] needs to cool down. The kills are on you two."
"Obviously! You already got a pentakill at the supermarket. Let us have our turn!" The pimple-faced man cracked his knuckles eagerly, and the tall man nodded, itching to go.
"Hey, if it weren't for the lockdown leaving the supermarket practically empty, I could've gone on a total rampage with this thing!" The fat man was clearly still savoring the thrill.
The tall man said indignantly, "I've got a wide-range AOE skill, and I haven't even seen a single bird this whole way! Otherwise I'd be at least Level 10 by now!"
"Pentakill? What level did you reach?"
Bai Shan interrupted their chatter and looked at the fat man with curiosity.
Her right hand was quietly toying with a dart.
Only then did the three bother to look at her properly—like they were looking at a fish that had already swum into the net. A stupid fish that had blundered in on its own, no less. Riding a bicycle through the streets at a time like this, practically begging to be targeted.
"Level 7." The fat man answered, eager to announce it to the world. "In a normal game, two or three hours of grinding would get you at least Level 10, but this is a real-life game, so Level 7 is decent enough."
His two companions wore subtle expressions. The pimple-faced man had scavenged his way to Level 5, while the tall man was still at Level 1.
"Killing one player gets you to Level 5, but killing five only gets you to Level 7."
Bai Shan mused aloud. She guessed every five levels was a threshold, with the difficulty increasing exponentially after each one. Perhaps reaching Level 10 required killing at least ten players.
"Than—"
Before the "ks" could leave her mouth, scorching air swallowed the surrounding space, and flames surged toward Bai Shan in an instant.
The moment the tall man heard Bai Shan's words, he realized she had at least one kill under her belt. Not daring to underestimate her, he struck immediately.
From his perspective, the flames had already engulfed her. She seemed frozen in shock, not moving an inch. His flames weren't particularly powerful, but ordinary fire was more than lethal enough for a normal person. Unless she had a water-type ability to counter him, she'd be burned alive!
"Burn, burn..."
The tall man murmured, not realizing he could no longer produce sound—only faint wisps of breath escaped his lips.
He fell backward. His severed carotid artery was still spraying blood from his slashed throat, splattering across his two companions' faces and clothes.
The flames vanished, leaving only a charred streak on the road. The blood-stained boomerang dart returned to Bai Shan's hand.
The remaining two stared at each other's faces, still warm with fresh blood. When they snapped out of it, the fat man pointed at Bai Shan and screamed, "You—you killed him!"
Bai Shan was amused by the sheer stupidity of the remark. "Well, my dart was just a bit faster."
"Those are the game rules, aren't they? You all seemed to be having a great time with them earlier."
Both had noticed the boomerang dart in Bai Shan's hand. That single dart had killed their companion instantly—so fast that no one had even seen it.
They exchanged a glance and were horrified to realize they had absolutely no means of defense.
The pimple-faced man immediately threw his hands up in surrender. "Sis, please don't kill me! I don't have any blood on my hands, I swear! I regret everything. It was all this fat pig forcing us to follow him!"
"He's a heartless animal! He set up Kite String at the supermarket exit, then pretended there was a monster and yelled for everyone inside to run. The people who ran out front all got decapitated by the Kite String at the exit..."
Mid-sentence, the pimple-faced man's feet suddenly turned into springs, and with one push he launched himself over ten meters into the air.
Bai Shan had anticipated he'd try to flee, but hadn't guessed he'd take such a bizarre escape route. For the moment, she genuinely had no way to deal with him—his altitude had exceeded the dart's attack range.
Fortunately, his companion had anticipated it.
Impossibly thin Kite String had been set up in the air at some unknown point. The pimple-faced man was still gloating over his ability when he was sliced in half mid-air, his grinning face cleaved into left and right halves.
Bai Shan looked up against the sun. All she could see was a drizzle of human tissue and a shower of blood raining down like garbage, scattering across the ground.
The fat man was drenched from head to toe. Beneath the gore, his eyes glared at Bai Shan with vicious malice.
"Your Talent ability is at least A-Tier."
"But you haven't killed many people. I can tell."
Bai Shan said, "You seem quite experienced at killing."
"I've known a lot of murderers. You can read how ruthless someone is from their face."
The fat man wiped his face. The folds of flesh twisted with his expression, making him look even more ferocious.
"You're a juvenile offender." Bai Shan tilted her head slightly and quickly reached her conclusion.
The fat man didn't answer. He produced a glass orb from thin air, then crushed it.
D-Tier item [Protective Shell]—dropped by one of the people he'd killed at the supermarket. He hadn't told anyone about having an item.
A transparent spherical shell encased the fat man, and he bolted!
The protection lasted only one minute with a one-day cooldown. At maximum range, it could cover him and a car together. He needed to get to the car and drive away immediately. He refused to believe this person's ability had no range limit.
The boomerang dart grazed the Protective Shell to no effect and returned to Bai Shan's hand. Frustrated, she immediately gave chase on foot.
The fat man glanced back as he ran. Seeing Bai Shan right on his heels, he looked as if he'd seen a ghost. His physical abilities had improved significantly with his level—how could she keep up so easily?
Before his adrenaline could even kick in, his entire body—Protective Shell and all—was tackled and pinned down by Bai Shan.
Bai Shan hugged the ball-like Protective Shell. The fat man inside pushed desperately in the opposite direction. The shell's surface ground fiercely against the pavement, but it wouldn't budge.
"What the hell kind of monster are you?!"
Inside the Protective Shell, the fat man couldn't believe it. She only looked slightly taller than him, but he far outweighed her. How could she have this kind of strength and speed? What level was she?!
"So that dart was your item? Your actual ability is strength-based?"
Bai Shan was a bit surprised herself. She felt like her adrenaline hadn't even kicked in yet, and she'd already caught the fat man.
It seemed she could now do more than just win a gold medal at a school sports meet—she could represent the city at the provincial competition.
Even more exciting, when she touched the Protective Shell, the Tyrant's first Talent Skill [Inspection] had actually activated.
[Protective Shell (D-Tier) Effect: Protects the user from harm for 1 minute within tolerable limits. Cooldown: 24 hours.]
She'd thought [Inspection] could only view a player's Talent through physical contact. She hadn't expected that touching an item would also reveal its details.
"Less than half a minute left on your shell. Have you thought of your last words?"
"...How do you know that?!"
The fat man's psychological defenses crumbled completely. He couldn't even muster the thought of running. Superhuman physical abilities, a freely controlled dart, the power to easily read information... these three things combined meant that aside from her Talent ability, she had at least two items!
After the game started, he'd killed five people in the supermarket plus two at home—seven people total—and only gotten one item.
The game had been officially live for less than three hours. What on earth had this woman done to end up with two items?
"You—you're the real monster. Those people who cursed me online should see what you've done. You must have killed tons of people before the game even started..."
The fat man was babbling incoherently. From his jumbled words, Bai Shan couldn't pinpoint his exact identity, but she was certain he'd committed a horrifying crime—only released in his twenties because he'd been underage at the time.
Feeling the shell in her arms beginning to soften, Bai Shan lowered her eyes and thought for a moment. When she looked up again, her gaze carried a cold, ruthless edge.
"I've only killed one person."
"Impossible! Then where did your items come from? You just got lucky and found them?"
Bai Shan smiled. Through the spherical Protective Shell, her smile was clearly reflected in the fat man's pupils. "I am indeed very lucky."
"Otherwise, how could I have run into you?"
Her words landed in the fat man's ears. The Protective Shell he was enclosed in dissolved like foam. He spun to run—
The instant the Protective Shell vanished, a dart materialized in each of Bai Shan's hands. With the momentum of an embrace, she swept both arms inward and personally drove the sharp darts into both sides of the fat man's neck.
Squelch.
Bai Shan spread her arms wide, pulling out the darts. Blood sprayed from both sides of the fat man's neck!
His eyes bulged as he collapsed beside the car.
Good.
Bai Shan stared at the fat man's corpse and thought—the first group she'd been forced to kill was cruel and disgusting enough that she could strike without hesitation, without bearing the moral guilt of taking a life.
How fortunate.
Bai Shan suddenly covered her mouth, suppressing the wave of nausea rising in her throat.
Strictly speaking, this fat man was the first person she had killed with her own hands.
It wasn't like a computer game where you launched an item and casually dispatched a life. When she'd gripped the darts, her hands had already touched the warmth of his skin. The weapon vibrating in her palm had seemed to sprout veins and become an extension of her hand. She had personally felt how flesh pulsed—and how it ceased.
From now on, she would grow more and more accustomed to this.
Bai Shan surveyed her surroundings. She sensed there were still some people hiding nearby—people without killing intent.
Her bicycle was destroyed, but her destination wasn't far. Walking might actually be safer.
She just had to cross the bridge ahead.
Bai Shan circled around a shopping mall and reached the riverbank. The last time she'd been here was to chat with Lin Huijun. This time, the riverside was even more desolate.
Apart from the corpses floating on the river's surface and the catfish crawling along the road, she seemed to be the only living person.
Standing by the river, Bai Shan watched a sports car drive across from the other side of the bridge. Just as it was about to leave the bridge, a massive fish leapt from the water and knocked the car off the bridge.
Another fish on the opposite side of the bridge opened its enormous mouth, caught the car, and dove back into the water. Ripples spread across the river's surface.
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