Chapter 330: The Train-Slaughtering Monster
"How is that possible?" the blond man said first. "Xenomorphs on train tracks usually travel in packs, and they generally don't appear during the day. Besides, xenomorphs eat people."
None of the bodies at the scene were missing anything.
"Why do you say that?" another middle-aged, refined-looking man asked.
"There shouldn't be a player this strong in the same car," Xu Huo said. "These people were almost all killed by brute force. That requires considerable physical strength. Even a cannibal player of the same level probably couldn't reach this intensity."
"What he says is reasonable. Killing all the players in this car within two hours isn't easy either," the refined man said.
In fact, there hadn't been two hours at all. Strictly speaking, it might not have even been half an hour.
The skinny man had entered this car. He clearly knew some player here, which was why he was so shocked when he saw the bodies everywhere and immediately checked for survivors.
At the very least, before he returned from the tail car, the people in this car were still alive.
From the time Xu Huo fought the paper beast until that player was killed, less than half an hour had passed. In the eighth passenger car—his car—no one except the skinny man had gone to the tail car again. During that time, no players had come from the front car either. There was a staff passage next to the car, but it wasn't open to players.
"That doesn't rule out the possibility that a high-level player got on the train," the baby-faced player said, glancing at Xu Huo.
"High-level players wouldn't appear here," the female player rolled her eyes. "There are two major stations on this line, with instances of all levels available. Even if a high-level player wanted to go somewhere, they'd take the corresponding train. Although there's no explicit rule, under normal circumstances, player levels and trains are matched. Haven't you noticed this train is different from the E-level instance trains?"
"That's because the game adjusts the train's level based on player strength. If a high-level player rode this train, they might tear the whole thing apart in no time."
"You said 'under normal circumstances.' As far as I know, there's something called a temporary pass," the baby-faced player said dismissively. "It allows you to go to any station without being forced to participate in instances."
The players inside and outside the car showed varying degrees of surprise. The middle-aged woman asked doubtfully, "There's something that good?"
"I've heard of temporary passes too," the hat-wearing player said. "But among low-level players, it's like an urban legend. They say if you get one, you can go to any station and board any train at any time, making it equivalent to a universal ticket."
"If someone has a temporary pass, they probably don't need to worry about train level distinctions," the baby-faced player said.
Xu Huo had first heard about temporary passes from the Skinner during the Skinner instance.
He had also obtained a random instance authorization, so he roughly guessed that there must be some rules about which game zones random instances appeared in. The Skinner wanted a temporary pass, which meant it was probably just as the hat-wearing player described—a universal ticket that allowed free access to any game zone.
If someone really had boarded the train with a temporary pass, their player level wouldn't be low. Breaking through the window to kill people wasn't impossible.
At this moment, a trace of barely noticeable greed flickered in the wary eyes of the players sizing each other up. A temporary pass might be more useful to high-level players, but for low-level players, it was a life-saving tool.
Xu Huo was also observing the others. More than the temporary pass, he was focused on the hole in the window.
The player who killed everyone in the ninth car definitely wasn't from the eighth car. But if it was a player from a front car, why would they enter from outside the train?
After a moment of silence, the female player said, "It probably isn't someone from our car."
"Who knows," the baby-faced player shrugged. "The thunder and lightning were so loud, and we couldn't see anything. Anything could have happened."
"I think you're overthinking it," the skinny man said, pointing at the hole in the window. "I don't think this person was that strong. Otherwise, why would they break the window? Obviously trying to frame the xenomorphs."
"Look, when we first came over, we saw the hole in the window first, and the players died so horribly. Of course, we'd think of xenomorphs first," he continued. "But you know xenomorphs eat people, so this is deliberately diverting our attention."
"Not necessarily. It could also be to make us let our guard down so they can strike," the blond man said.
"So you're saying the killer is among us?" the middle-aged woman took two steps back.
"No, why are you all so sure the person is in our car?" the heavily injured strongman interjected. "Couldn't someone have come in from outside and made the hole?"
"You're so dumb," the female player shot him a coquettish glare. "If it were a player from the front car, why go to all the trouble of coming in through the window? Wouldn't it be easier to just kill people nearby?"
The other players agreed with her. So now the situation was that most believed one of the ten people present was a vicious, cunning, and powerful player.
"Did anyone really not see who went to the back car?" Xu Huo asked.
The blond man shook his head. "The lightning frequency of two hundred flashes per second was too high. Even if the flashes were far away, you could barely see anything in a tenth of a second. Especially later on, everything was black in front of my eyes."
The reason they had stopped fighting was that, deep in the thunderstorm zone, they were both blind and deaf, pointlessly increasing the difficulty of combat.
"I can only see a shadow when I look at people now," the middle-aged woman quickly said.
Xu Huo rubbed his eyes. His condition was much better, thanks to the perfect evolution. Also, later in the transition car, he had kept his eyes closed.
Just then, the car door opened, and two staff members walked in. Faced with the bloody scene in both cars, their expressions didn't change as they dragged the bodies from the eighth car into the back car.
Xu Huo noticed one of them paused slightly when he saw the hole in the glass window. He asked, "When I was passing through the thunderstorm zone, I saw a pair of blood-red eyes. Are there xenomorphs in the thunderstorm zone?"
The other players and the two attendants turned to look at him. The attendant who had been eyeing the window said, "There are xenomorphs near all train tracks."
A completely perfunctory answer. The two piled the bodies in the back car, used props to clean up the debris and bloodstains from the eighth car, and didn't bother replacing the missing seats.
Xu Huo pressed the call button for meal service. The attendant who came was the one who had shown him around the train yesterday. He first asked roughly about the situation in the front cars, confirmed that none of the dead had particularly strange deaths, and then brought up the red-eyed monster in the thunderstorm zone.
The attendant's hesitant expression turned enthusiastic after Xu Huo placed a thick stack of white notes on the table. Xu Huo put the silent figure on the table before signaling for him to begin.
"The red-eyed monster you mentioned is actually a type of xenomorph, but this kind is different from ordinary ones. They were originally players of considerable strength who degenerated, so they're stronger than normal xenomorphs and have fewer restrictions. It's not strange for them to appear anywhere."
"High-level players can degenerate into xenomorphs too?" Xu Huo frowned.
The attendant's posture was ambiguous. "Anyone can become a xenomorph."
"We usually call this kind of xenomorph 'blood xenomorphs' or 'train-slaughtering monsters,' destroyers of public property. They like to follow trains. They don't eat people but enjoy killing them—strange, isn't it? I've heard that on trains that encountered these chasing monsters in the past, sometimes not even the staff survived. Tsk tsk."