Chapter 2594: No Place to Escape
"In order to understand the instance, some members of the rescue team entered with tickets. I heard that the restricted areas ticket players and accidentally involved players enter are different, and they face greater danger."
The contract staff hesitated for a moment before speaking: "Before I came in, I heard rumors that the rescue squad sent to Blue Water Wu had been completely wiped out."
"Bang bang bang!" The flying shuttle kept working diligently, tirelessly driving away the head covers that appeared nearby. With the painting woman filling in the gaps, this conversation remained relatively stable. Judging from this stretch alone, the restricted area didn't seem as dangerous as the outside world claimed.
At least it shouldn't be that dangerous for A-rank players.
"I'm not a ticket player." Xu Huo's main purpose in entering was to fish out that little old man. Taking a ticket meant he had to clear the instance and couldn't leave until the instance ended, but non-ticket players weren't necessarily bound by that. With the current situation inside the instance unclear, and whether new changes would appear deeper in the restricted area unknown, non-ticket players naturally had an easier time escaping than ticket players.
Learning that he had come in to rescue someone, the contract staff looked at him with considerable admiration, then added: "Let's search other places. We might run into your friend."
Given that the place where these two entered wasn't too far from the theater, Xu Huo simply expanded his spiritual realm, using the spiritual gate to change positions and conduct searches. But what he didn't expect was that just as he was about to leave, the door of a shop behind the mall suddenly burst open. A young woman carrying a child stumbled out from inside, running and screaming for help.
Xu Huo used his materialized object to trap that head cover, then brought the woman out. After calming the terrified person, he took out two defense masks and put them on her and the child.
The young woman calmed down considerably, but her body still trembled uncontrollably. Especially when she saw the head covers suddenly appearing and lunging at her face, she could only stumble backward.
The painting woman stood behind her, supporting her back with one hand while using her sword to "smack" open the head cover in front of her, then pointed at the box on the ground, signaling the woman not to step on it.
The young woman quickly apologized. After regaining some composure, she hugged the child tightly in her arms and lowered her voice: "So many people died! All ten-plus people who came in with me are dead!"
The mall door had already closed, but not just Xu Huo—even the contract staff could sense that behind that door, there were only the young woman and child left!
It seemed that this restricted area not only had partitions but also doors everywhere.
"Let's go!" Xu Huo didn't plan to go check, because as their numbers increased, more head covers gathered around them. Although using the spiritual realm could quickly and briefly shake off the ghost face head covers, there was still plenty of time, and spiritual power couldn't be consumed endlessly.
Fortunately, they had enough instruments on hand. The group shifted positions over short distances, but after just two or three moves, new people appeared again.
A player was dragged out by silver-white thin threads spread across the ground. When his body crashed through the wall, it had already been cut into several pieces, trailing messily across the floor... Such a scene would make anyone's stomach churn, but this wasn't an exception. Because people were gradually appearing in the originally empty city, materializing out of thin air just as they had disappeared into the instance restricted area. Some were in the process of dying, some were already corpses, and others were screaming and fleeing, as if they hadn't had much time to run either...
"Help... help me..." Someone spotted Xu Huo and the others in the distance and desperately ran toward them. But before they could get far, a head cover swooping in from the side covered their head, dragging them several meters into the air before their body fell. The head disappeared along with the flying head cover.
More and more people were appearing in the restricted area space, and naturally, more and more head covers appeared too. Some people whose heads were covered died instantly, but others walked around wearing head covers just like outside. Some of them desperately tore at the head covers, while others begged others to kill them. But killing someone would cause the head cover to transfer, and no one was willing to help with that. Accompanied by a scream—whether from someone seeking death or just panicking—a man wearing a head cover jumped from the twentieth floor.
As time went on, some people wearing head covers began hunting down those trying to escape, working together with the head covers themselves.
Xu Huo's group even encountered a player who was killing indiscriminately, apparently having lost all reason, completely ignoring the contract staff's loud warnings.
Xu Huo didn't intend to kill him, just struck out to break his limbs. But when the man knelt to the ground, the head cover on his head suddenly lifted up, directly taking his head!
A blade flashed through the air, and the head cover, along with the head, was split in two and fell to the ground. Inside the separated head, root-like tubes could be seen writhing like worms, but they lost vitality in moments, hanging limply like fake prop tubes.
Xu Huo pushed aside the head cover to examine it and found that most of the root tubes underneath were only suctioned onto the scalp. Only a few had pierced through the brain, and it was these few that had killed the man.
The flying shuttle knocked away a head cover descending from above. He stood up, and the shadow beneath his feet flowed rapidly, turning into long whips that knocked away more and more head covers.
"We can't stay here! Find a place with fewer people first!" the contract staff shouted.
Compared to the entire city, this number of people really wasn't much. But everyone appeared randomly, so there was no telling where there were more or fewer people. A building that was empty one second might suddenly have several people inside when you walked over.
Not to mention they didn't have enough props to respond every second, even their energy couldn't keep up. But those head covers never stopped for a moment, and one lapse in attention could mean getting covered. This way, they had almost no time to rest at all!
"Hiding in cabinets..." Before the contract staff could finish speaking, someone screamed as they burst out of a wardrobe in the furniture store. It was a very small wardrobe, barely enough for a person to stand inside, with display gowns hanging in it. Logically, such a narrow space shouldn't have had a head cover, but there it was, sticking to the side of that person's head like fabric. When they fled in terror, it quickly covered their entire head. Before they could take a few steps, a headless body fell to the ground.
Hiding in cabinets clearly wouldn't work. The contract staff tried using a location item, but when the door opened, head covers also flew in. And when he cut open that head cover, just like the instance area spreading, his location item also became part of the instance, and head covers could come and go freely.
If wherever a person went, they brought the instance with them, hiding in a location item was useless.
Watching one head cover open only to have another appear, cutting one down only to have more emerge, the contract staff said with some despair: "We can't hold out much longer like this."
They couldn't possibly deal with these head covers' attacks continuously for seven whole days!