Someone had run into danger, and the examinees nearby were summoned to provide emergency help.
They had to respond to these cries for help, or else a lot of points would be deducted from their final score. If the situation was serious and they refused to save someone even when they saw that they were in danger, they would be chased out of the test area and all their points would be taken away.
Of course, if they responded to the call enthusiastically, they could get even more points as a reward compared to a normal hunt.
The group became filled with vigor. With the help of the communicator, they quickly ran to the riveting and welding department that was around forty meters away.
It was a place where a lot of Rapid Biting Rats and Illusion Cats were released, but a lot of chemicals to chase away snake-type monsters were sprayed here.
Hence, more than one hundred examinees with only average strength had gathered there. They believed that this was a safe zone where they could get a lot of marks without having to worry about running into “bosses”.
But now, half of the riveting and welding department had collapsed.
A dark crack was on the ground, and it looked like a huge, gaping mouth that swallowed the building and humans inside it. Fog of all sorts of colors gradually covered the area.
The humans’ pained screams and monsters’ roars rang nonstop in the ruins.
“What’s going on? Even if there are Blade Shattering Pythons in there, this shouldn’t have happened!” The reinforcements looked at each other.
“No! That’s not the cries of Blade Shattering Pythons or Illusion Cats!”
Meng Chao was observant, and he saw a monster chomping down on a torn human hand at the bottom of the ruins. It looked perfectly calm.
The creature resembled a jackal from Earth, but it was around three times larger. Its muscles bulged up, and it looked like an unreasonable bull that lacked muscles and whose genes were suppressed.
Its fur was short, like steel needles, and there was a patch of red fur at its chest that looked like a crescent moon. Its fangs and sharp claws were as sharp as daggers. When it grinned, it looked like it was wearing a savage ghost’s face.
It was surrounded by a faint layer of bloody fog. It looked like a dark ball of flame that was burning gloomily.
“A Demonic Bloody Moon Wolf!”
Meng Chao sucked in a sharp breath.
Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves were the kings of canine-type monsters.
They ripped apart their prey with great brutality, often launched ambushes on unsuspecting prey, and were generally elusive creatures… Based on this, there wasn’t even a need to explain just what good hunters they were.
They also had two terrifying features that made feline-type monsters not dare to treat them as their enemies.
First, they usually moved in packs, which contained dozens of creatures. If a pack was large, they could even go above a hundred. They were like a well-trained military unit and possessed great collective intelligence.
Second, Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves were omnivores. They liked to lick a unique bloody moss that grew in the wild. After digesting it, they could secrete a unique hormone that would form a faint bloody fog.
This bloody fog possessed mild poisonous properties. It could affect a person’s hearing, and they would react greatly to the wolves’ howls.
Those who were originally strong of heart and courageous would feel as if they heard the moaning and groaning of ghosts from the depths of hell after inhaling the bloody fog. Terror would take hold of them, and their mental strength indices would instantly crumble.
‘How could the national college examination set up two boss-level monsters? The second type is even the Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves, which are ferocious creatures! This is impossible! Something must have gone wrong!’
The Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves were not lazy creatures like the Blade Shattering Pythons, who would bind and swallow their prey, so it took them half an hour to eat something.
The wolves were very fierce and skilled in pack tactics. In an instant, they could snap a person’s neck and dig out their heart. The other examinees, invigilators, and the military would not have the time to save the victim.
No matter how hard the practical test for university entrances were, it was impossible for such fearsome creatures to become part of it.
As Meng Chao stared at the fog that kept gushing out of the underground, his expression changed swiftly. “This is bad!”
At the same time, everyone’s communicators let out even shriller beeps.
A large group of unmanned aerial vehicles gathered in their direction while letting out piercing alarms.
“Students, the test has been halted! Run!”
Meng Chao saw Principal Sun shouting while he ran toward them at the speed of lightning.
But it was too late.
Crack! Crack!
The ground near the riveting and welding department cracked again, and fog gushed out like raging flames. It devoured quite a number of examinees.
Principal Sun reached out to grab them, but he missed.
The shrivelled old man gritted his teeth and took a few steps back. Then, with a large amount of guns and ammunition on his back, he jumped into the fog by himself.
Meng Chao, in the meantime, was knocked over by a Demonic Bloody Moon Wolf who had a human hand in its mouth and was built like a calf.
The creature was ten times more brutal than an Illusion Cat. Even though it had food in its mouth, when it saw a human, it still could not hold back from attacking.
Meng Chao and the wolf became entangled with each other.
The creature left behind three wounds on Meng Chao’s shoulder. They were so deep that his bones could be seen.
Meng Chao seized that moment to grab the wolf’s eye sockets and bit down on its neck. He yanked out half of its wind pipe with his teeth.
But its struggle in death still knocked Meng Chao into a crack underground.
The world spun. Meng Chao felt the shadows and light flicker around him as if he had been swept up by an invisible wave. One moment, he was flung into the sky, and at another, he fell into the depths of the ground.
His fragile brain knocked against his sturdy skull. All he saw was white light that he could not get rid of no matter what, and the smell of blood became stronger in his nose with each passing moment.
“It’s the space-time torrent!”
The expressions of countless powerful fighters in the monitor center changd.
Three days ago, an abnormal, large-scale space-time torrent had just appeared. The fog shrouded the entire city, and space-time rifts showed up everywhere. Monsters also came charging out of thin air.
But the specialists analysed the situation and came up with the conclusion that the descent of the fog that time was due to it releasing all of the unstable energy in its dimension.
A second space-time torrent should not appear soon.
But against their expectations, the Dragon City had horrid luck. In just three days, they experienced two descents of the fog.
Even though the fog did not arrive upon them in a wide scale this time, it had appeared right at the center of Dawn Machine Factory.
The torrents tore apart space, creating rifts, and a dimensional tunnel was opened at the center of the test area, connecting it to the wilds.
But unidentified monsters suddenly charging out was not the most terrifying thing about this. After all, the examinees were surrounded by the army, and there was a large group of powerful fighters on standby.
The problem was that the transfer worked two ways. When the fog descended, all monsters could charge into the test area from the wild, and the panicking examinees could enter the space-time rift by accident and be transported to the terrifying land outside!
“The exam in Test Area 5523 will be suspended for the time being!
“All examinees, immediately retreat to the perimeter. I repeat, the fog has descended, all examinees, immediately retreat to the perimeter!”
“We have to hurry and save them!”
“Red Dragon Army, superhumans, come with me!”
The powerful fighters in charge of protecting Test Area 5523 rushed into the air and turned into sharp weapons that shone brilliantly.
The military’s super-high powered crystal searchlight also lit up the night until it was as bright as day. The pillar of light cut into the fog like a saber.
The Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves who invaded the area through the space-time rift were naturally not their opponents. Most of the examinees managed to survive.
But there were still more than one hundred examinees who were devoured by the fog and transported to a mysterious patch of darkness.
When the powerful fighters killed all of the Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves, which had invaded the test area, the space-time rift that had appeared randomly had long since disappeared!
Crack.
Meng Chao sucked in a deep breath and corrected his dislocated right collarbone.
He stepped on the foul-smelling humus as he looked at the threatening forest around him. He could see lights scattered about in the distance. He licked his cracked lips and spat out a mouthful of putrid wolf blood.
He kicked away the Demonic Bloody Moon Wolf’s carcass and found Luo Hai, Fang Da, and Xie Feng nearby. They were highly confused.
The fetid python blood on their faces helped them to clear their minds a little.
“What’s going on?” The trio’s voices trembled a little.
Their communicators and all their electronic devices had either stopped working or were letting out sizzling sounds, signalling interference. They had completely lost their function.
“We ran into a space-time torrent, and we’ve been flung to the perimeter of the city,” Meng Chao answered crisply.
The trio looked at the forest around them and listened to the howls from the depths of the fog. Their expressions turned incredibly sour.
“How could this be? Three days ago, didn’t we just experience a large-scale descent of the fog? Didn’t they say that the energy that caused the tremors in the dimension has all been released?” Fang Da said.
“Besides, before the space-time rifts manifest, a lot of fog appears and tumbles about the area. The high-energy reaction would increase by leaps and bounds, so the weather forecast station can easily monitor it!”
Meng Chao shrugged.
What Fang Da said was something that only worked in the past.
In the memory fragments from his previous life, after his national college examination, the dimensional vortex around Dragon City became active again, and small-scale space-time rifts often appeared without a single sign.
This was the final afterwind before Dragon City and the Other World completely fused.
This was also one of the smaller reasons behind why the Monster War became more intense and why the form of the war gradually changed.
Meng Chao looked far ahead and pointed into the distance. “Don’t worry, the space-time torrent this time came suddenly, so the energy it contained wasn’t powerful. It didn’t toss us far away. Look, that’s the city over there,” he said calmly,
The trio looked in the direction he pointed and saw brilliant lights shining there. Their eyes lit up.
“Then we have to run back, quickly!” Xie Feng said anxiously and impatiently.
The youngsters who lived in the city had an inborn fear toward the forest and the wilds behind it. They did not want to stay here for even a second longer.
“Don’t be in such a hurry. Horses die of fatigue when they try to run into the mountains, you know? Even though the lights seem near us, they’re at least ten kilometers away.
“Besides, we’re surrounded by fog. No one knows just how many trenches and mires are on the way. There are also monsters patrolling in the dark. If we run around recklessly, we’ll end up dead.”
Meng Chao massaged his temples gently as he read the notifications that popped up in front of his eyes.
[Will you activate the Flee to Safety Quest: Bloody Moon Murderer?
[Quest Objective: Survive the hunt of the Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves and try to motivate as well as save as many examinees as possible.
[Quest Reward: Based on the number of examinees you motivate and save, you will be rewarded from 5,000 to 10,000 contribution points.]
‘Ten thousand contribution points? Whew, that’s a large sum.’
Naturally, Meng Chao chose to activate it, but he did not remain excited for long.
The more contribution points he was offered, the harder the quest was, and it was also very dangerous.
He did not think that it was a good idea to lead a group of panicking examinees to fight against a wolf pack in the dark lands outside.
He bit the tip of his tongue and used the pain to make himself calm down. He then searched through the memory fragments for any information regarding this incident.
Nothing came to his mind.
But it made sense. In his previous life, he did not join the practical test for university entrance. It was his lowest and darkest point in life, and he was even using every second that he had to cure his mother’s injuries, so there was no way he would have had any energy to pay attention to the affairs of those taking the tests for university.
As the Monster War continued growing in intensity, tragedies of an even larger scale happened one after another. This accident was just an “appetizer”, so it was impossible for his previous self to have put it to memory.
Meng Chao was not in a good mood to have been involved in the “appetizer”.
However, he managed to obtain some information from the notification of the quest.
‘Motivate and save? I can understand the second part, but what’s the meaning of the first part?’
His thoughts raced, and he soon thought of something. ‘That’s right. The Demonic Bloody Moon Wolves frequently use the bloody fog to stimulate their prey’s nerves. They use fear to create chaos and terrify their prey into running around everywhere. Then, they tear them down one by one easily. This is the strategy they often use.
‘Even if the examinees come from First High School, Second High School, and Construction High and possess certain fighting abilities, they don’t really have experience, and it’s very easy for their mental strength index to collapse.
‘When they see the lights not that far away, they will definitely think that they mean survival. They will run blindly in the direction of the city and will end up in the wolves’ hunting range.
‘I can’t let them scatter and run into death! I have to motivate them to stay here and fight against the wolves!’