Chapter 1061: No Way to Escape
The Holy Sword Society members had likely also released information under the dimension or contacted other companions to confirm what district this was, but receiving no news for so long, their moods were inevitably somewhat irritable.
"If we hadn't been trapped just now, at least one or two of us could have run into the station," Zhou Yuanzhu said, referring to the moment they were suddenly controlled before the spatial passage.
That moment was undoubtedly the work of a player from District 002, using a time-space item to affect their movements, thereby hindering them from using their tickets.
But in truth, even without that less-than-a-second delay, they might not have been able to escape the spatial passage. Xu Huo was proof of that. The main issue was the distance was too close. The cause and effect of the matter seemed lengthy, but it actually happened in the span of a breath. And once sucked into a high-risk instance site, it was equivalent to defaulting to participating in the instance. To get out again, they would have to wait for the ticket passage to reopen.
High-risk instances were originally the game's means of punishing players who failed to complete instances on time. Ostensibly a punishment, the difficulty of the instances was certainly high. The fact that no information had been found so far only confirmed this—most of the players who had entered this high-risk instance before were likely dead.
"I thought Snow City was preparing to attack other districts. I didn't expect this item was meant to deal with the Holy Sword Society," Uncle Guan said regretfully. "It shouldn't be just the few of us who were attacked."
The Holy Sword Society had quite a few people in District 002, along with two fixed gathering spots... Zhou Yuanzhu and the other three's faces darkened. Ruan Qiyan spoke up, "I've already sent word back through the bounty platform. If District 002's actions aren't that fast, there's still a chance for some to escape."
The others didn't speak, knowing full well that this possibility was too low. During those few minutes of falling from high altitude, they had missed their best opportunity. And District 002 didn't hesitate to sacrifice a building full of civilians to force them into a high-risk instance... It was likely that this kind of spatial passage wasn't the only one.
The Holy Sword Society members worried for their own situation, but also for their companions still left in Snow City.
Less than five minutes had passed when some of the District 002 residents who had gone out returned. They carried some food and blood-stained clothes in their arms, each silently shedding tears—the gamification of District 002 was ongoing, and they had all learned basic countermeasures for entering random instances or the wilderness like this.
Just as they were comforting each other, Uncle Guan, who had been sitting on the ground, suddenly stood up. "Not good!"
Xu Huo also sensed the unusual movement around him. He quickly took out the shelter, sent the boy and infant inside, instructing them not to open the door, then stood in front of the shelter. After using the item Tangent, he gripped his sword and looked ahead.
The first movement came from the crash site on the left. As the wind shifted, the smell of blood reached them before the screams did. Then, as if a switch for slaughter had been flipped, after the first person screamed, screams and cries of agony rose one after another without stopping.
Thirty-some people had gone out. About ten had returned just now. The remaining twenty were more scattered, some close to Xu Huo and the others, some far away. Xu Huo could sense these people desperately running toward them—but even without using his eyes, he could tell from the positions of the screams that the thing killing people was charging toward them!
The moment he spread out his spiritual power and opened his vertical pupil, Xu Huo found himself staring directly into a pair of blood-red beast eyes. It leaped into the air, passed through the vertical pupil, and bit down on two young people running ahead. A mutated beast, not too large in size but with sharp teeth, resembling a wolf in form, snapped the neck of one from behind with a single bite. With a flick of its sharp teeth, the bitten person's entire head flew off. Then the mutated beast pounced on the corpse, frantically biting and swallowing!
Several more mutated beasts that followed quickly pounced, scrambling and fighting over the prey.
But this wasn't all the mutated beasts, not even the vanguard. From the pitch-black forest surged pairs of red eyes, advancing wave after wave like an incoming tide, instantly scouring this patch of woods!
Those who hadn't been able to run fast enough all became food in their mouths. Not just flesh and blood—passing mutated beasts would even fight to bite down and swallow the broken bones!
Twenty-some people were clearly not enough to fill the stomachs of these starving wolves. Like black ghosts, they surrounded Xu Huo and the others' location in the blink of an eye!
The first mutated beast pounced on the last middle-aged man running toward Uncle Guan, biting off half his head right in front of everyone. Blood and brain matter burst out, the red and white colors stimulating everyone's eyes. The crowd, which had already been panicking since the first scream, now cried out in terror, scrambling to squeeze into the location item Uncle Guan had taken out!
Uncle Guan's location item was a bar. Unlike Xu Huo's "Only Entrance," which showed no building exterior and only a door, this bar was actually placed in the woods, about two hundred square meters in size. When it appeared, though it didn't encroach on the shelter's space, it still knocked down quite a few trees, leaving the bar's base somewhat uneven.
A sword energy barrier cut through the woods, slicing the beast that had been tearing at people in half. But in the next second, two, four, ten mutated beasts appeared, quickly surrounding the shelter and the bar. Those standing in front of the shelter, along with the few District 002 residents who hadn't made it into the bar, became the targets.
The mutated beasts let out excited cries and charged straight at the people!
The two people crowded outside the door were dragged away without any suspense. Zhou Yuanzhu, at the entrance, left the door slightly ajar and shouted at Xu Huo, "Come over quickly!"
But Xu Huo paid no attention, not even glancing her way, focusing entirely on killing the approaching mutated beasts.
Seeing that he refused to enter the bar and that more mutated beasts were gathering outside, Zhou Yuanzhu had no choice but to close the door.
The bar's windows had already been blocked off, followed by the sound of the door being reinforced.
Xu Huo didn't go to the bar, not because he thought Uncle Guan and the others had ulterior motives, but simply because he felt the bar wasn't safe enough. The target was too big. A two-to-three-hundred-square-meter building might seem sturdy enough, but the mutated beasts weren't just this pack of starving wolves. At the edge of where his spiritual power could reach, larger groups of mutated beasts had already appeared—this was likely a chain reaction triggered by the earlier crash. In other words, not only did they have nowhere to run next, but they would also have to endure several rounds of group attacks from the mutated beasts!
Beyond his spiritual realm, he couldn't see, but from the density and speed of the mutated beasts surrounding them, and their seemingly endless numbers, he could guess what the situation outside was like—this was a district overrun by mutated beasts. Forget finding a safe place to hide—it wasn't even clear if there was any territory on this land that xenomorphs hadn't touched.
(Chapter End)