Chapter 806: Calling Names to Claim Death
Despite the strange taste, Yan Jiayu still finished the jelly medicine, then tossed two fried insect pupae into her mouth, enthusiastically recommending them to Xu Huo: "Fried insect pupae burst with juice when you bite them—sweet and thirst-quenching, pretty good. Even my master loves them."
Xu Huo looked at the pupae, clearly mutated insects, and tried one without changing his expression. "Not bad."
Yan Jiayu shared two bags with him. "This is much better than eating dry rations. I've heard some people get stuck in random instances for ten days to half a month—having something tasty makes it less unbearable."
If someone hadn't cleared an instance in ten days to half a month, they probably wouldn't even have an appetite, let alone care about taste.
But Yan Jiayu didn't have that worry.
The two wandered around the mall. Yan Jiayu mostly bought snacks and medicines, or some inexpensive but quirky little items. Xu Huo followed her lead, buying some food and also picking up a few weapons.
Thermal weapons couldn't be brought into the station, but they'd be useful for the two days they stayed in Zone 009.
They left the mall in less than half a day, just as the street's big screen was broadcasting a fairly large-scale player fight. Xu Huo suggested they go watch, and Yan Jiayu pulled out a hot air balloon item. The two flew directly to the incident site.
Live broadcasts weren't a privilege exclusive to player organizations. Player organizations would pick fights they were confident in to broadcast—first to showcase their strength, second to expand their reputation and attract more players to join. Players without organizations were much more casual; they'd gather on video sites to stream, mostly out of interest, without clear allegiances.
Player battles were concentrated on the ground and at low altitudes, hard to reach at high altitudes. So besides the hot air balloon, many nearby players had deployed items, or were hanging in the air themselves, watching as they followed along.
But the wind was strong, not as comfortable as the hot air balloon.
"These players don't seem to be very high level," Yan Jiayu said after watching for a while. "At most B-rank players."
"High-level players either solve their problems before leaving an instance, or they don't care about ordinary items and aren't willing to waste time on this—it's not strange." Xu Huo paused, shifting his gaze to a corner on the left. "Unless they have ulterior motives."
Yan Jiayu noticed his look and followed it. She saw several people who seemed to have undergone unified training dispersing from in front of a large building with nearly identical movements, running amidst the chaos, heading from different positions toward a low building due north.
"That looks like the government office building," she said. "The capital safe zone's government office has almost all the elite players they could mobilize nationwide. Are these people robbing it?"
Soon they got their answer. These individuals positioned themselves on four sides of the building, each releasing a black sphere the size of a human head, flying at extreme speed toward the top of the building.
At that moment, the players inside the office building also acted. Several groups of players moved to intercept the black spheres and surround the attacking players. Three of the four black spheres were stopped, but one smashed through an elite player's backup item and crashed violently onto the office building!
The head-sized sphere, in a way completely inconsistent with the laws of falling objects, cracked half the building. The top split open, the sphere descended, and the ten-plus-story building collapsed layer by layer, crashing all the way to the ground, even sinking the foundation several meters deep!
The elite players couldn't have anticipated this. After the initial shock, over half of them turned back to rescue. The building collapsed too fast; only two or three players managed to bring people out in time. More were crushed beneath—including some players!
One sphere collapsed half a building, leaving the other half standing. As screams and cries for help rang out, the elite players fell back to defend the building, guarding against the attacking players continuing their black sphere assault.
With this commotion, nearby player organization members rushed to support immediately. But the few attacking players had no intention of tangling with them. One of them darted like lightning through the players to the collapsed rubble, casually throwing out several darts!
The darts, like marker lights, had colored lights flashing on their tails. Once released, they curved in the air, autonomously flying to different spots on the rubble. After sticking, the lights on the darts settled into a single color—some yellow, some green.
The attacking player glanced at them once, then moved to the roof of the remaining half-building.
Five players swarmed to attack him!
Watching the building collapse from above was especially spectacular. Even Yan Jiayu let out an exclamation. "They're looking for something, aren't they? Those marker lights should be detectors."
"Zone 009 probably doesn't have any weapons too advanced in tech. They're probably grabbing items."
"But killing so many people for a single item—they can't be good people."
Xu Huo's gaze was still fixed below. "Looks like some kind of organization."
Although the two weren't high-level, they dared to wander around the game zone after clearing instances. Overall, "player organization" wasn't a positive term. Cases of player organizations stirring up trouble and killing innocents were countless, especially some brainwashing cult-like organizations that wouldn't blink at murder, their motives possibly as trivial and absurd as a small thing.
At that moment, the extremely fast player had been knocked off the rooftop. While one group held the office building, another three groups of players emerged from the remaining half-building, like fireworks bursting, instantly spreading into the streets and alleys.
With so many people, the attacking players couldn't chase them all. The few seemed to have staked their bet on the building. Under their companions' cover, one player pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it with a pen. The next second, two players on the rooftop fell!
"They're dead!" The surrounding players were horrified, simultaneously using face-covering, body-covering, distance-creating, and defense items to guard against that player's item.
But it was useless. Regardless of distance, two more players fell!
"He wrote my real name!" a player shouted in fury, having used an item to see the text on the paper. "Who leaked our information!"
As another name on the paper was crossed out, the shouting player fell.
"Go!" The remaining players couldn't stand there waiting to die. Several main forces unhesitatingly hid inside instances, while other players who were still hesitating died one after another. By the time they realized that even if the opponent couldn't see them, even if the distance was far enough, it couldn't stop the item's effect, a large number of players began entering instances.
Having killed over a dozen people in one go, the player finally stopped. By then, the surrounding players had changed. If they knew the government elites inside out, other player organization members might not be so easy!
And indeed it was so. The few attacking players prepared to leave.
(End of chapter)