Chapter 57-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player

Chapter 57

"What a plump great tit... AAH, it's ramming the window! I got the shot!"

Inside an old residential building, Huang Yuci shoved her bird-obsessed roommate's head down with one hand, then propped a metal plate — scavenged from who-knows-where — against the windowsill. Her roommate's camera accidentally clunked against the sill, eliciting a yelp of pain.

During the first few days after the game's descent, everyone had wanted nothing more than to seal their safe rooms shut, leaving not a single crack for the mutated creatures or ill-intentioned people outside. But over two weeks had passed, and the situation within Nanzhou City's urban area had been largely brought under control. Humanity had reclaimed dominance. As a result, people's vigilance had slackened.

No one had expected a disaster of this scale to strike without warning.

Bang bang bang! The moment the steel plate covered the window, a barrage of heart-stopping impacts rang out — as if a machine gun were strafing the other side. The plate shuddered nonstop.

Huang Yuci braced the plate with both hands, then turned and ordered her roommate to bring furniture over to barricade the window. Her roommate scrambled off in a panic.

When she looked back, she was horrified to see a small spot at the center of the steel plate already denting inward — the fat bird outside was about to peck through!

"Coming, coming!"

Her roommate struggled to drag over a sofa and a wooden table. The two worked in practiced tandem, managing to brace the table, chairs, and sofa against the windowsill just before the plate gave way. Shortly after, the piercing pecking sounds outside ceased.

"This is incredible — this is the photo of a lifetime!"

The two leaned against the heap of furniture piled before the window. The roommate scrolled through the precious photos she had managed to capture, hands trembling with excitement.

An exhausted Huang Yuci rolled her eyes. She leaned over with every intention of being judgmental — and found the photo was actually quite good.

Birds were highly ornamental creatures. From their appearance to their exquisitely engineered anatomy, they had provided humanity with endless inspiration in both art and technology. Though the mutations had made them somewhat fearsome, perhaps owing to their natural beauty, their vibrant plumage draped over streamlined bodies still produced a kind of bizarre, striking elegance.

"Don't let that pudgy great tit fool you — they'll peck at small animals' brains when hungry. Their beaks are very sharp..."

The image instantly warped in Huang Yuci's mind, becoming far less endearing. Who knew whether the bird outside had gotten so fat from eating human brains?

The roommate was still waving her camera around, passionately lecturing: "Great tits will peck out the brains of field mice and smaller birds. But above great tits there's the shrike, which can easily tear apart small birds. And above that are owls and eagles — the true raptors—"

The pile of furniture behind them lurched violently. Huang Yuci's back jolted with it. The roommate broke off mid-sentence. In each other's eyes, they saw panic.

This time it wasn't a single giant monster descending from the sky, the kind someone like Cheng Yue could single-handedly oppose. The mutated bird flock had become a widespread, sweeping natural disaster that touched everyone's doorstep. There was no savior to wait for — they could only rely on themselves to weather it.

Huang Yuci and her roommate: one with a C-tier Talent, [The Rabbit's Three Caves]; the other with a D-tier Talent, [Magic Bubble].

The roommate set down her camera. In her hand appeared a yellow bubble machine. Any bubble it blew that touched an enemy would slow the target's attack speed, buying time to either strike or flee.

For a D-tier Talent, this was actually quite useful. Huang Yuci had once met someone whose D-tier Talent was changing body color — in her opinion, that was practically the same as having no Talent at all. Utterly hopeless.

Yet it was precisely such near-useless Talents that were the norm.

Huang Yuci had made a rough estimate: the majority of people occupied the lower and middle tiers of the pyramid, D through B. A-tier Talents were one in ten thousand. S-tier might appear once per hundred thousand. And SS-tier — perhaps one in several million.

She and her roommate, unfortunately, belonged to the denominator.

A stool tumbled from the top of the pile, nearly hitting Huang Yuci. She stopped overthinking. The two of them threw their body weight against the barricade, fighting back the brute force trying to break through the window.

"What the hell kind of bird is this — it's so strong!" Huang Yuci yelled, on the verge of a breakdown.

Her roommate listened to the commotion outside and replied, "Sounds like more than one! It's dark out — a lot of nocturnal birds are coming out too!"

"...Do you think Cheng Yue will step in and deal with them?" the roommate suddenly asked.

Huang Yuci went quiet for a beat. "Better to count on ourselves."

Then the roommate started rambling about her beloved birds again. Huang Yuci could tell she was truly panicking.

Huang Yuci looked more frantic than her roommate on the surface, but internally she had stayed calm. [The Rabbit's Three Caves], as the name suggested, was an escape-artist skill. She had three teleportation points set around Nanzhou City. Even if this room were breached, she could instantly escape to safety.

The caveat was that this bird disaster couldn't last too long. If it dragged on, her cunning rabbit would turn into a cornered donkey.

Damn it! What were these birds doing barging into human territory? Weren't the Wetlands and the surrounding uninhabited zones enough for them to crap all over?

Riiip — a long beak pierced through a gap in the barricade. The cold, smooth hard surface grazed her shoulder. Huang Yuci screamed. Without daring to look, a circular pattern suddenly appeared beneath her feet. She grabbed her roommate and the two of them vanished.

The instant they disappeared, the tottering barricade collapsed. Coo-coo-coo — the sounds flooded into the room.

After circling the room, the mutated bird flapped its wings and exited through the window, seeking its next target.

Shot-put-sized songbirds sat in a row atop the roof, their fluffy round bodies squishing their eyes into tiny slits. Yet those small eyes commanded nearly 300 degrees of vision. The moment they detected movement, their solid bodies would drop like bombs, their rock-hard beaks easily cracking open an unsuspecting human skull.

Inside one apartment, a brown-backed bird's beak punched through a young man's neck. It carried the corpse over the rooftop to the complex across the street.

The opposite complex had iron fences, already impaled with several bodies — mostly human, plus one or two mutated animals. The mutated brown-backed shrike hung yet another corpse on the railing. The area had become its makeshift little larder.

A construction site at the city's edge.

As darkness fell, the agile mutated birds grew bolder still, circling high or lurking in corners, waiting to strike.

Already at Level 50, Bai Shan possessed a degree of night vision. Combined with heat imaging, the birds' swift and unpredictable tactics didn't pose much of a challenge for her.

She dispatched a few that charged directly at her, and the nearby birds stopped being reckless.

The sole problem was their sheer numbers. If they swarmed all at once, Cheng Yue's Talent [The Absolute Center] could hold them off for a while, but the flock's overwhelming numbers might eventually break through.

Bai Shan stood on the twentieth floor, surveying the flock above. The birds had dispersed across Nanzhou City. Finding the leader among them was like trying to locate a specific corpse in a mass grave. After a moment of thought, she made her decision.

"Lin Huijun, monitor the channel. See if there are reports of an especially powerful mutated bird."

"Cheng Yue, hold the perimeter here — I'll try to lure it out."

In the short term, she had no leads on the flock's leader. Her only option was the reverse approach: make it come to her.

Bai Shan placed one foot on the scaffolding outside. Lin Huijun suddenly called out:

"Wait, Bai Shan. Hold on a second."

Bai Shan withdrew her foot and tilted her head toward Lin Huijun. But Lin Huijun turned to Cheng Yue instead:

"Cheng Yue, what is this area? Is there anything notable nearby?"

Cheng Yue thought for a moment, then answered carefully: "This is Jiang'an District, on the outskirts of Nanzhou City — not very developed. Nearby there's a university district, a fairly well-known estuary viewing platform, and the highway to Hai City."

With Cheng Yue's answer, the furrow between Lin Huijun's brows didn't ease. She held a few puzzle pieces in her hand but couldn't yet assemble an accurate picture. All she could do was lay them out for everyone to try together.

"I don't know much about birds. Since Bai Shan says this flock has high intelligence and strong group coordination, I think we can try to understand them from the perspective of humans as fellow social animals."

"When you two were at South Lake, I spotted them and chased them all the way here — if the mutated birds deliberately chose this moment to take advantage, wouldn't they have scouts and sentries within the city?"

Lin Huijun wasn't sure how to articulate it precisely, but continued: "Suppose the mutated birds I chased here were scouts. After finishing their reconnaissance, they should have returned to the main group."

"But they didn't head back toward the Wetlands. Several of them converged in the opposite direction — right here. They were all flying this way."

Lin Huijun pointed outside the building. The green netting had a gaping black hole in it. Across the way, countless round eyes peered from the other building's floors.

They were studying the three of them, too.

Cheng Yue's heart stirred. Her expression grew more serious. She had noticed it on the way here as well — the flock was uniformly heading in this direction.

Lin Huijun said: "The first thing you do after completing a mission is report to your leader, right? If they're flying this way, could it be that the leader bird is in this direction?"

Bai Shan listened with her head tilted. When Lin Huijun finished, she looked to Bai Shan for her take — but Bai Shan abruptly jumped to a different topic.

"The Wetlands' water connects to the Qian River, and the Qian River Estuary is right over here..."

"Birds feed primarily on fish and shrimp. Their enormous bodies demand terrifying amounts of food. The fish and shrimp in the Wetlands have surely mutated too, but not fast enough to keep up with the birds' appetites."

The last time they visited the Wetlands, there had been nothing but dense masses of birds — hardly any other animals in sight, and the vegetation was abnormally withered.

"They might not be coming for humans at all. They may simply want to relocate to a more resource-rich habitat. Estuaries, where saltwater and freshwater converge, are typically rich in resources."

The estuary was home to both saltwater and freshwater fish. Bai Shan recalled it was nearly spawning season for many species, with fish gathering at the estuary to breed and migrate.

"— They're migrating. Passing through human territory and helping themselves to a meal along the way."

From a leveling perspective, humans were the best experience material. But in terms of filling bellies, scrawny humans had extremely low nutritional value — only fit as snacks, and dangerous snacks at that. So the mutated birds' mass mobilization wasn't aimed at conquering Nanzhou City. They had merely seized the right moment to migrate.

With the flock's purpose clarified, Bai Shan's eyes brightened. Suddenly, she was in no hurry to act.

Her dark eyes fixed intently on Cheng Yue. Cheng Yue felt an inexplicable tightness in her chest.

Bai Shan said: "The mutated birds won't linger. If their goal is the estuary, it might not be a bad thing for Nanzhou City in the long run. In the future, sea creatures could easily invade the city through the estuary's river channels."

"...Sea creatures?" Confusion surfaced in Cheng Yue's eyes. "I don't think I've heard about those."

The Organization had never mentioned oceanic mutated creatures. She occasionally checked the World Channel, where all manner of bizarre mutants emerged across the globe, but no one seemed to have brought up anything from the sea. She had zero impression of marine mutated creatures to date.

Would there be giant squids with lots of tentacles? Or multi-headed great white sharks?

Cheng Yue shook her head, pursed her lips in deliberation, and slowly began: "I don't know what the future holds. But right now, a lot of people are counting on me to deal with the bird disaster outside."

The pale blue screen hovered before her, constantly scrolling with the latest messages. She knew many had already lost their lives to the mutated birds. Many were directing their resentment and rage at her.

[Cheng Yue fell out with the Xu Family so she's just going to abandon Nanzhou City? After everything the city did for her?]

[Wasn't Nanzhou City supposed to be the safest place? Why is this happening?]

[Told you — Cheng Yue was nothing but a figurehead celebrity. Without the Xu Family, she's nothing]

[Cheng Yue is the real criminal here — she destroyed the Organization and THIS is the result!]

[All of you barking like dogs — I've memorized every name. Anyone who badmouths my daughter can go die!]

[Calm down. Even if Cheng Yue showed up she couldn't handle this many monsters. Let's help each other and get through this together]

Faced with the ugly words in the channel, strangely, Cheng Yue didn't feel all that angry. The Organization had built the persona of "Nanzhou City's Protector" around her. Now that persona was on the brink of collapse. That some people were furious about it seemed almost inevitable.

But a familiar emptiness and confusion surged back — an emotion more helpless than anger. And it was at this moment that Bai Shan handed her a choice.

Stand aside and do nothing. The mutated birds would leave soon. From a long-term perspective, it wasn't necessarily harmful — they could form a counterbalance against creatures at the estuary. Morally, she wouldn't have to bear much pressure.

Or eliminate the leader bird. Fulfill the promise of "Nanzhou City's Protector" — even though the Xu Family that had bestowed that title had fallen, and many people no longer cared.

Cheng Yue instinctively looked to Bai Shan, trying to read her preference from her expression — did Bai Shan want to fight, or let it go?

But she failed. Bai Shan was staring right back at her, seemingly indifferent to the monsters outside — far more curious about her choice.

Under that pure, undiluted gaze, Cheng Yue gradually set aside every external concern.

"I want — I want to deal with the disaster outside. Future problems can be dealt with in the future."

Even if she was no longer the Organization's anointed "Protector of Nanzhou City," she still held power in her hands — and she still wanted to do something with it.

Cheng Yue voiced the deepest, most honest thought in her heart. Then the fierce-looking young woman watched Bai Shan's expression with an almost timid carefulness, as if studying a sky that could shift from clear to stormy at any moment.

"Sure."

A faint trace of a smile hung at the corner of Bai Shan's mouth. She offered no commentary on Cheng Yue's choice, simply snapped her fingers and said: "Then keep up — you too, Lin Huijun."

"The strongest leader bird should have set out first. Heading northeast. Let's hope it hasn't gotten too far."

Bai Shan stepped onto the scaffolding outside. She turned to face the two inside, and then — she tipped backward, her body plunging from the twentieth floor—

Dropping to the eighteenth, her feet caught the narrow scaffolding rail. Her body, perpendicular to the building, raced upward along the length of the scaffolding as if it were flat ground — like a cheetah sprinting across a boundless plain, the sheer vertical surface of the building transformed into a horizontal horizon.

At the same time, the scaffolding and green netting encasing the thirty-story structure shook violently, threatening to collapse.

Steel pipes loosened. One after another, they detached, showering down clouds of dust.

The entire building seemed to sense what was coming, trembling in anticipation.

Bai Shan shot up the scaffolding and launched herself above the rooftop — clearing all thirty stories, nearly a hundred meters high. At that altitude the air turned noticeably cooler. It was the highest she had ever jumped!

At the apex, through gaps in the brilliant plumage swirling around her, she glimpsed the nearly full moon through a sliver of open sky. She reached out — it seemed close enough to touch.

"How beautiful."

The mutated birds poised to strike in the surrounding high-rises and open air seemed to hear the murmur. They finally lost their restraint and swarmed toward her!

Countless pairs of staggeringly wide wings sliced through the air. The draft they generated alone created a crushing wave of force, closing in from every direction.

Rising alongside Bai Shan was the scaffolding of an entire high-rise, disassembled into thousands of slender steel pipes. Like a savage storm of steel needles, they exploded outward from Bai Shan's sides in every direction!

For a moment, the sky was filled with agonized shrieks, rippling outward. All of Nanzhou City turned to look.

Steel pierced mercilessly, colliding with hardened beaks in sounds both crisp and heavy.

In the diffuse moonlight, blood-stained feathers drifted down — catching on buildings, catching on treetops — creating the momentary illusion that moonlight had taken physical form, cruel and beautiful all at once.

Countless mutated bird carcasses and steel pipes crashed to the ground. The empty lot below was quickly blanketed in the stench of blood.

Bai Shan seized the green safety net. Her arm whipped upward, and the net unfurled softly beneath the night sky, as if casting the moon and all the countless birds in a single sweep.

The green net caught the shower of feathers and blood descending from above. Bai Shan gazed upward through the green gauze. Overhead, a massive bird had been skewered through the abdomen by a steel pipe. A single drop of blood slipped through a tiny tear in the net and landed, warm, just below her eye.

*

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Author's Note:

In real life, please be kind to birds — that's a tradition passed down through the ages.

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