Midnight, 12:30 am, the ground floor of Everything Supermarket, frozen food aisle.
The fridges that contained the dairy product and drinks were lined against the wall and their edge was about one meter above the ground. At that moment, as the leading member, Feng Bujue and Wang Tanzhi were walking on this edge.
From their perspective, the path wasn’t that narrow, it was about the width of a bridge that was passable by two people walking side by side. The left side of the bridge was the chilling low-temperature storage fridge. The many cartons of milk looked like buildings that lined the road. To the right side was a steep cliff. It was a meter drop, about ten times their body size.
The light from the fridges ensured the visibility of the area, but of course, since they were not actual devices meant for lighting, most corners were still shrouded in shadows. Standing at the edge looking down, one could see the entirety of the Classic’s Nintendo assault team. The toys from Nintendo, other than the bigger ones that looked like artillery machines themselves (like B.O.B.), most of them were seated on console tanks.
There were three models to these tanks, the first one was NES (The American version of the Family Computer or aka Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a gaming console designed in the 90s, but the name sounded more high class than some of the consoles today). The tank was square, and the base layer was a few centimeters narrower than the top. The color was white at the top and gray at the bottom. The cartridge was inputted horizontally.
The second model was FC (or Family Computer), it had the appearance of FC but slightly smaller than NES and the cartridge was inputted vertically.
The third model was Xiao Ba Wang (A Chinese ripoff of the NES Handheld Device, it sold more than the actual Nintendo device in China). It had an all-black appearance, golden Logo (two punching boxing gloves) and the size was between NES and FC. It had a unique circular return button and a dust-protection cover that could be opened and closed to prevent… the leakage of who knows what.
At that moment, about thirty to forty console tanks were moving in a wild geese formation, slowly moving forward. Of them, NES and FC took up half of the number and there was only one Xiao Ba Wang. It was at the back of the army, controlled by the brothers Mario and Luigi. And the control method of these ’tanks’… were through the toggling of the handle by the characters that sat on them. How they worked… was a complete mystery.
“Your sleuthing mastery is better than mine so you should be able to look further down the distance.” Feng Bujue walked at the front and told Xiao Tan without turning back.
“Hmm, I’m trying to look,” Xiao Tan replied, but his sight was limited. He could only see the limited range of area before his eyes. “No hostile forces in sight for now.”
“Honestly, we are in a very dangerous situation,” Feng Bujue said. “The scouting team going through the upper ground to spy on the hostile forces. That is to be expected, but…” He paused. “We are exposed so close to the light source and we’re so high up with no cover around us… What if we’re spied by the enemy snipers?”
“That’s right!” Xiao Tan reacted fast this time. “And Laughing Soul knows you have Artemis’ Embrace and she wouldn’t one-shot you so she will definitely aim for me!”
“Other than that, there is one thing that I care about… From the beginning, we have been pushed down in an inevitable plot, slowly being the cannon fodder for the Classics.” Feng Bujue commented, “This arrangement of sending us ahead is basically sending us into our death.”
“What can that explain?” Xiao Tan asked.
“Hmm… If Passing Rain and Laughing Soul has the same experience at Novel, then I am possibly overthinking this.” Feng Bujue speculated, “But I heavily suspect that… the both of us have been given special ’attention’ by the system.”
Xiao Tan added, “You mean… the reason the NPCs treated us so badly is due to the system?”
“No, it’s more than their attitude…” Feng Bujue waggled his finger. “To look from a wider concept, the thing that the system controls… is the so-called ’internal resource’.” He explained, “It can allow the players easy access to the resources in the scenario or can create problems for the players so that they would waste more time and energy to get them.”
“Then…” After hearing that, Xiao Tan came to a curious conclusion. “You have made an enemy of the system?”
“I’m too lazy to answer such a stupid question,” Feng Bujue mocked. “What I want to say is… this reminds me of a thread I’ve read on the forum. The topic was something like ’the hidden exploratory rules within the scenarios’ or something like that.”
“Can those threads be trusted?” Xiao Tan asked.
“It’s just the conclusion of a player’s experience, not an academic essay. Valid or not, that depends on the reader.” Feng Bujue used a lecturing tone to tell Xiao Tan, “One can value action over thought. They have to be balanced.”
“Okay… then what does the thread say?” Xiao Tan asked.
“The thread is quite long. But most of them are hypotheses that players have no idea of proving.” Feng Bujue replied, “One of them is… in a Killing Game that was intended as a challenge between two parties, there is a hidden principle of ’benefits for the accepted party’.” He paused for a second before explaining, “For example… there are two players A and B. A is stronger than B, then… When A challenges B to a one vs one Killing Game, after entering the scenario, the system would provide some ’resources’ to B or increase the difficulty for A to gain access to ’resources’. But when it is B who challenges A, the scenario will expand like normal.”
“In other words, the party that accepts the challenge will get better benefits.” Xiao Tan followed Brother Jue’s thought. “If the challenger’s party is too strong, the challenged party will get benefits; if the challenger’s party is relatively weak, the challenged party will not be hampered.”
“Yes,” Feng Bujue concurred, “So… assuming this hidden rule really exists, then as the challenger party of this two vs two Killing Game, that will explain the cornered situation we’re in right at the beginning.”
“Wait… doesn’t that mean…” Xiao Tan was surprised. “The system categorizes our team as stronger than Soulie and Sister Rain’s duo?”
“Humph… I can deal with both of them alone.” Feng Bujue used a level tone to say this.
“Hey, hey… I know it’s impressive to get onto the second place of the combat stat ranking, but don’t you think you sound a bit too presumptuous?” Xiao Tan mocked.
“Are you two done chatting?” Suddenly a voice interrupted. Turning to the voice, they saw a black silhouette appear on top of one of the milk cartons. It was Mr. Game and Match. As a 2D character, one of his powers was to move freely on all surfaces. “Anything you wish to report to me?”
“Erm… Not yet.” Xiao Tan answered as he pointed beyond the fridges. “Looks, there is no sign of other toys. Even on the back end of the first row, there is nothing but blackness.”
“Strange… We have passed the ’danger zone’ about three minutes ago…” Mr. Game and Match said before lifting his voice to say, “Fine… Keep on moving with alert. Give us a signal if you see anything.” With that order given, he slid down the wall…
“Yes, sir!” Feng Bujue answered like he was serious and watched as the man walk away.
Several minutes later, Xiao Tan said, “That was quite an obvious hint he gave…”
“Yes, I’m afraid that soon…” Before Feng Bujue finished, a loud growl could be heard coming from underneath them. “Enemy ahead!”
Xiao Tan’s Terror Point shot up as he looked around in panic. Brother Jue was calmer. He turned to look at the howling toy – Diddy Kong (A monkey wearing a red cap, different from Donkey Kong. He knows how to speak…). Diddy was bouncing on the NES and pointing his arms… up at the air!
Tatatata – at that moment, a strange noise echoed through the room. Behind a slightly tall rack from the direction of the southern east side, several helicopters appeared. There was a mini figurine inside each helicopter.
“It’s one thing that consoles can be treated as tanks… but even now even lego planes can fly… What is this…” Feng Bujue commented. Looks like he still needed some time to get used to this world… but the war wouldn’t stop because of that.
“Stop the marching speed, maintain your position! The bigger toys protect the flanks, the long-ranged units prepare to launch an anti-air strike!” It was little wonder Mario was the highest commander for the Nintendo Unit. When in war, he was not panicked and swiftly gave a series of orders.
“Roar—” Donkey Kong roared and raced to the front of the group. He pounded on his chest, exposing his strength to the enemies. From the perspective of the toy, this gorilla was quite powerful. He was obviously physically strong and moved fast.
Put, put, put…
The helicopters fired relentlessly and ’lego bullets’ cut through the sky. Samus and Rockman on the tank reacted the fastest. They raised their cannons to counter and the bullets that they fired were actual laser beams…
“Hey… this has gone far beyond the physical ability of the toys themselves!” Feng Bujue thought a war between toys would be like a child’s game. For him and Xiao Tan, the real long-ranged threat would come from Passing Rain and Laughing Soul. But when the real war arrived, that was not the case. Both Classic and Novel had reliable and continuous long-range firepower. One party even had a dedicated air force…
“Brother Jue… how about we slip away now? Since the enemy hasn’t noticed us…” Xiao Tan gave a very good suggestion.
“Hmm, that is going through my mind too… Let’s go!” As he finished, Feng Bujue leaped down the side of the fridge. With Geppo, as long as his falling motion did not overload his Stamina Points, he wouldn’t die from a fall.
Seeing that, Xiao Tan followed. With his title skill, he could run down the wall of the fridge, he had it even easier than Feng Bujue.
But as they were about to reach the ground, the high-speed ground unit from Novel arrived at the scene and rushed out from behind a large fridge before them.
It was a pool of darkness, at one glance, they were all tall and imposing Gundam Models…