Chapter 1514: The Tragic Chain Reaction
Aside from the players who had been killed or had fled, only seven players remained in the entire base. After the young man spoke, the others chimed in agreement. To them, it made no difference who they partnered with—they were all there to stock up.
Xu Huo was clearly an outer zone player as well, so there was no reason for him to pass up such a good opportunity to make money. Moreover, before the super item incident ended, this method could be used multiple times.
Low cost, low risk, minimal resistance—what faster way was there to make money?
Of course, the main threat in Zone 017 came from players from other districts. Cooperating with someone like Xu Huo would be safer for them as well.
However, Xu Huo had no intention of cooperating with them. He sheathed his Black Blade and said to the young man and the others, "You can use your tickets to leave now."
This was a notification, not a negotiation. Their expressions changed, and the short-haired female player said, "Are you kidding?! We spent so much money to get to Zone 017, there's no way we're leaving empty-handed..."
Xu Huo sent her on her way.
After the woman fell to the ground with her eyes wide open in death, he looked at the remaining six.
Actions spoke louder than words. The young man and the others could only retreat. Though they didn't understand Xu Huo's motives, since things had come to this, they had no choice but to leave.
Four of the six left. The other two tried to be clever, using teleportation items to hide outside the base, probably planning to come back after Xu Huo left. Instead, they ran straight into the Ma siblings waiting outside.
After the players inside the base were cleared out, Xu Huo opened the warehouse door and let the people out, along with the five survivors from the container item "Cinema."
Having received Xu Huo's goodwill, the base commander stood up and saluted him. Having seen too many outer zone players committing crimes in Zone 017, being suddenly rescued left everyone with a sense of unreal disorientation. Many didn't even dare to come out of the warehouse.
The Ma siblings also entered. Ma Yu had been lurking nearby earlier and knew the whole process. After discussing it, the two also felt it was a bit of a pity. As long as one wasn't going after the super item, the middle-aged man's method was extremely effective.
But soon, the base commander shattered their illusions.
"Back when the base players were being transferred away, our base was already prepared to sacrifice itself."
"Aside from taking in refugees and carrying out necessary search and rescue operations, the base will not accept any form of rescue."
In other words, even if that group sent the ransom demand to A9 Safe Zone, the safe zone wouldn't pay. Moreover, to avoid being attacked, they might even preemptively strike T6 Safe Zone within their firing range.
"Given the current situation in Zone 017, no amount of money would be enough to pay off all the ransoms, and extortion is endless," the base commander said resolutely.
Furthermore, even if they paid the ransom, they might not get the people back. Earlier, the two cities in another country that were covered by nuclear weapons had offered huge ransoms to buy their lives after failing to produce a super item. But after receiving the ransom, those players still showed no mercy.
"They're not trying to get lucky with this method, are they?" Ma Yu found it unbelievable. "Nuclear weapons are powerful, but isn't it easy for players to enter the game? Players holding super items aren't fools—they can dodge bombs when they come, can't they?"
"What if they do get lucky?" Ma Zhi said. "No one can guarantee that the player holding the super item is currently free or uninjured. If that person is still in Zone 017, this method might actually work."
However, the probability of this method succeeding was extremely low, and it could also have the opposite effect.
If the player holding the super item didn't care about the lives of people in Zone 017, they would have already escaped into the game. But if they stayed due to some external reason or because they still cared about Zone 017, seeing outer zone players using such genocidal methods to force them would naturally make them realize that handing over the super item would still lead to death, thus strengthening their resolve not to give it up.
"To slaughter tens of millions of people for such a low probability..." Ma Yu frowned. "Are those people even human anymore?"
"At this point, it all depends on the conscience of the super item holder," Ma Zhi said. "If they can't bear to see their homeland destroyed, they should hand over the super item early. Only when the super item leaves Zone 017 will the outer zone players gradually leave."
Though he said that, there was a scale to consider. Now, many outer zone players, regardless of their level, wanted to try their luck. Before the super item appeared, occupying cities and coercing the government was a relatively quick method, because the government might know the item's whereabouts, or the item might have been handed over to the government, or the holder might be hiding in a certain city that happened to have their family and friends.
Everyone was waiting.
But if the super item was snatched by a player, then the players who had spent a lot to enter through various channels would run rampant to recoup their losses. Usually, players with a bottom line wouldn't go on a killing spree, but such players were generally easier to communicate with. Regardless of where the super item went, whether they stayed or left, they probably wouldn't continue to disrupt the situation in Zone 017. The same couldn't be said for the most vicious ones.
The outer zone players flooding in now had actually formed a tacit standoff. Everyone was controlling the situation to prevent it from completely collapsing and dragging them down, because for some players, directly killing high-level players was easier and faster than extorting the local government.
"Either way, it's a dead end. Zone 017 is just unlucky, caught in the wrong time," Ma Yu said.
From the base commander, they learned the general sequence of events before and after Zone 017's fall.
At the beginning of the evolution, the governments of various countries could still control the overall situation. The trigger for the chaos was the large number of cannibal incidents that erupted in localized areas.
Based on overall evolution data, there wouldn't be a sudden surge of cannibal evolvers in any one place. Before boarding the initial review train, some evolvers would try their best to control themselves, so the number of evolvers losing control and attacking others wouldn't spike. However, according to reports from various countries in Zone 017, at least twenty places had experienced such abnormal situations. After investigation, governments focused their attention on fast food processing plants, especially those that had previously experienced a high frequency of missing person cases.
Tracing back to the source, they discovered that some meat processing products had been mixed with human flesh. This caused those evolvers who dared not go out and tried to use canned meat or other items to resist their gluttonous desires to completely degenerate into cannibal players. The subsequent result was that the gluttonous desire became even harder to control, leading to a surge in attack incidents.
The root cause wasn't hard to figure out—certain powerful and wealthy individuals had become cannibals and were trying to expand their kind. But the damage this could cause was limited, because during this special time, a sudden large number of missing persons in any area would quickly attract government attention.
The real problem was that one country used this as an excuse to start a war.