Chapter 898: The New Good Friend You Just Met
On the train, Xu Huo had looked up information about this district. The overall situation was similar to what the game background described, but those base cities abandoned as quarantine zones weren't completely dead ends. Before contact with other cities was cut off, a large number of people were trapped inside. Most died from various causes, but some barely managed to survive.
Xu Huo believed the person who had just appeared was a survivor from W18, and the signs of human activity in the building confirmed this.
He didn't remove his invisibility cloak, instead using "Gentleman's Poise" to descend the stairs, stopping on the fifteenth floor.
There were small traps set by others in the stairwell, so Xu Huo simply grabbed the strings and moved through the air. However, he had clearly underestimated the other party's intelligence. Just as he reached the corner of the corridor, the electronic surveillance eye attached to the wall flickered—all the electronic monitors he had passed before were unusable, but this one seemed to be a modified trigger-type monitor that had been in a static state before he appeared.
Good choice of location.
The person hiding in a residence on this floor had already been alerted and was fleeing through the outer balcony passage. Xu Huo pulled off his invisibility cloak, directly cut through space to intercept the room ahead, broke through the door, and stood on the balcony!
At that moment, the young boy wearing animal skins, who had been jumping across the balconies, slammed on the brakes, turned, and leaped straight down from the balcony!
The residential balconies weren't perfectly aligned, so he nimbly jumped to the floor below and quickly ducked inside.
Xu Huo followed him down. Just as he reached the windowsill, several beast teeth flew toward him. He casually caught one, used it to knock away the others, and slashed through the large net spreading toward him. When he looked up, the young man had already disappeared.
He passed through the room into the corridor, only to see the other party peeking from the end of the hallway. Their eyes met for just a moment before the boy rushed to the open gap in the middle of the floor and jumped down!
On the fourteenth floor, there was a deep hole about fifteen meters in diameter. The cause of its formation was unclear, but deep inside the cave lurked a sizable living creature.
Xu Huo appeared above the hole, threw down the "Balloon String" to catch the person, and while pulling him up, cut the rope tied around his waist. Just as the boy pulled out a glowing orb and was about to throw it down, Xu Huo spoke up to remind him, "Turn around and look."
The young man spun his head around sharply, but instead of being shocked that the rope behind him had broken, his face was filled with terror and despair—though not because he had been caught, but because of the giant mutant beast drawn by the noise!
In the blink of an eye, the eight-legged mutant at the bottom of the cave had scurried up to the twelfth floor. Its massive mouth let out a hoarse hissing sound like the wind, and it leaped to bite the person hanging in midair!
The balloon string retracted rapidly. As the young man rose, a sword flash streaked past, accompanied by a scream of pain. The injured eight-legged mutant fell back down, while Xu Huo swung "Hurt Others, Not Yourself" toward a pillar across the way, wrapped it around twice, and turned it into a rope blade!
The boy, now safely out of danger, quickly said, "Let's go! You're no match for it..."
Before he could finish, the eight-legged mutant charged up to the fourteenth floor and slammed headfirst into "Hurt Others, Not Yourself"—Xu Huo couldn't hold it back with his strength, but he stood far enough away. As the creature plunged into the fifteenth floor's flooring, he was carried along by the arched rope blade. With a cold sweep of "Eye of the Dead," half of the eight-legged mutant's abdomen was sliced open!
Stinking green innards poured out like water. Xu Huo blocked with an air barrier, stepped back to mark "Dead End," severed several giant legs, and then tore down the ceiling.
The collapsing floor debris kept falling, knocking the injured mutant back down to the fourteenth floor. But just as he was about to finish off the monster in one go, he suddenly sensed many creatures rapidly approaching from all directions!
"The smell of blood will attract the scavenger swarm! They'll devour every living thing they encounter!" The young man's voice carried anger and regret.
At this point, even the eight-legged mutant forgot about hunting its prey, dragging its wounded body and burrowing underground.
Xu Huo moved to the balcony. The outer walls of several nearby buildings were crawling with hard-shelled beetles the size of a human head. They moved quickly, surging in from all directions, heading straight for this building!
Grabbing the boy who was about to turn and run, he leaped into the air, pushing "Gentleman's Poise" to its maximum distance. After clearing the rooftop, he used the strings to climb another fifty meters, completely putting distance between himself and the city.
The boy dangling below slowly floated up like a balloon. As they passed each other, Xu Huo smiled. "You stopped me from killing the mutant earlier to avoid attracting the scavenger swarm, but with mutants active here, it's impossible to avoid bloodshed, isn't it?"
The balloon string pierced the boy's back. With his limbs hanging downward, he couldn't remove the prop or grab the rope to turn over. He could only dangle in midair like a piglet, saying as he floated upward, "The scavenger swarm only hunts once a month. Their sense of smell is incredibly sharp. Even if a bird falls dead in the city, they'll crawl up from hundreds of meters underground to eat it!"
"Then they probably can't fly." Xu Huo looked down at the mutants on the ground being chased with nowhere to run. Once caught by the scavenger swarm, they were devoured within half a minute, not even bones left.
Someone appeared on the rooftop of a neighboring building. He turned to look and saw Shangguan Xi, standing about a hundred meters away, shouting excitedly at him, "Brother Xu! Brother Xu! I'm over here!"
"Yelling will attract flying mutants!" the boy immediately said.
"Brother Xu! It's me, your new good friend Shangguan Xi!" The scavenger swarm was practically biting at her heels. Shangguan Xi couldn't think about that anymore. Seeing that Xu Huo showed no sign of moving, she kept shouting, "My flight prop timed out! Can you give me a hand!"
"Make him shut up!" the boy growled.
"You shut up first." Xu Huo glanced at him, took out "Destination Arrival," and brought him through the glass-like door to Shangguan Xi's position. He dropped "Hurt Others, Not Yourself" from a distance, signaling her to climb up.
The scavenger swarm had already surrounded the top floor. Shangguan Xi quickly grabbed the prop, slid up the rope to Xu Huo's feet, and said, "Brother, can you go a little higher? These damn bugs can still jump!"
Xu Huo moved the strings, hovering between the two buildings.
"Are there other players who got off here?" Xu Huo asked.
"Yes! That book-carrying Ding Wei!" Shangguan Xi said indignantly. "On the train, she came up to chat with me. I thought we could at least be teammates, but when we ran into mutants, she kicked me out without a second thought. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have used up my flight prop so fast!"
"No wonder she carries that book everywhere. Turns out flipping through pages is just practice for flipping on people!"