“You are… Feng Bujue?” The Repentant asked in her ventriloquist ways.
“Looks like I am more than a little popular…” Feng Bujue grumbled before continuing the conversation with this undead creature of strange appearance. “Beautiful lady, before that… may I know who are you?”
“I am the Repentant.” She used her weak and coarse voice to reply, “I am one of the 9 Phantoms under the King of the Abyss.”
“Oh?” When Feng Bujue heard the term ‘King of the Abyss’, his interest was piqued. He said loudly, “It’s my pleasure! Your name precedes you.” Before this creature whose eyes were sewn shut, he was fawning over her and tried his best to flatter her. “Your group is my idol. It is such an honor to meet you in person.” At that moment, Xiao Tan and Matcha Cookie narrowed their eyes and shot daggers at Brother Jue.
“Looks like he refer to all female characters as beautiful ladies, huh…” Matcha Cookie’s lips twitched as she grumbled softly. Brother Jue did call her that several times earlier but now, the compliment fell rather flat on her ears.
“Not necessarily.” Xiao Tan explained, “He has always claimed that he has an eye for beauty that is beyond the limitation of race and the restriction of culture…”
“You mean he is into kinky stuff?” Matcha Cookie asked.
“Not that. Hmm… how shall I explain this… for example, we are easily confused when we meet more than one foreigner and vice versa.” Xiao Tan tried to explain, “But Brother Jue was another extreme, he is the kind of person who can differentiate between the many different minions (from Despicable Me) and name them individually… If you place two porcupines of similar species before him, he can tell you which one is more handsome based on his own standard of judgement…”
“Okay…” Matcha Cookie glanced at Feng Bujue for a few seconds before shrugging, “I’d rather accept the conclusion that ‘the compliments from Feng Bujue are all cheap and meaningless’.”
Xiao Tan sighed. “Actually, real cheap and meaningless thing to him is his sense of shame. He can kneel down to anyone at any given minute… But either way, your conclusion is not wrong either.” While the two were lampooning Brother Jue behind his back, Feng Bujue had ended the conversation with the NPC, he went back to pull the side door open. Once he opened the door, he said, “Two things, I need to say.”
Xiao Tan and Matcha Cookie looked at each other, the confusion was reflected on their faces and both of them had a bad feeling rising in their stomachs…
“First, there is some problem with your body.” Feng Bujue told Xiao Tan. “That the Repentant thought you were one of the time wardens…. That’s why she appeared like that. Thankfully, she realized you are just a traveller from another world at the moment before she attacked and we escaped death narrowly.”
“Wait wait!” Xiao Tan’s face was blanched and his forehead was drenched. He turned his head to look at the Repentant, “What problem you’re talking about? I don’t feel anything.”
“Oh, it’s nothing serious. Remember the time dust that slipped into your body more than a month ago, it has now travelled all over your body, something like that…” Feng Bujue shrugged. “Speaking of which… in that Death Quiz, that person called Hephaestus did say something like “The ‘time’ that belong to your left hand has been exhausted. If you do not deal with it, the hand will soon disintegrate into sand,” didn’t he?”
“But I am feeling fine!” The more Xiao Tan heard about this, the more his Terror Points continued to climb.
“Well you’re the doctor here… You should know many disease has latent symptoms.” Feng Bujue shrugged.
“But didn’t that Hephaestus say something will happen ‘soon’ if I don’t deal with it? But it has already been more than a month that has passed in real life and my hand did not turn into dust!” Xiao Tan said urgently.
“Hmm… to explain that, we have to consider this. First, Hephaestus is a God from the ancient Greek Pantheon, they have a lifespan much longer than a human. So their understanding of the word ‘soon’ might have a different connotation compared to us…” Feng Bujue replied, “Secondly, how the ‘system’ will affect you is unpredictable by anymore. When you return to the log-in lobby, perhaps the wound will seal and the effect of the Slowing Sands will be temporarily suppressed but the debuff is still there.”
“Then what should I do now?” Xiao Tan asked.
Feng Bujue passed him a SCP-500 and said, “This might not be a bad thing. At least for now we cannot tell how the Slowing Dust will affect your body so I suggest we wait and see… In any case, I’ll give you the antidote now and you decide when to use it.” He was cautious to not call the item by its name and replace it with a common ‘antidote’, in case Matcha Cookie had some ideas about stealing it. Of course, Brother Jue was again being too cautious. Matcha Cookie knew nothing about the whole SCP foundation. Even if he said SCP-500 outloud, she wouldn’t know what it was.
“Okay, now the second thing.” Feng Bujue changed the subject. “I’m leaving.”
“WhAt?” Matcha Cookie creased her brows. “Where are you going?”
“I managed to convince the Repentant to bring me to meet the leader of the 9 Phantoms. If there’s no accident, after this scenario, I will officially side with the forces of the Neither Abyss, kingdom of the undead…” Feng Bujue said this with an admiration and adoration on his face.
“Haha…” Matcha Cookie coughed. “Earlier, you spent so much time to convince me into an alliance but now we haven’t even met any enemy and you’re already leaving?”
“First… if I didn’t give you a chance for an alliance, you would have turned into a point and left already… So technically you didn’t lose anything, did you?” Feng Bujue countered. “If anything, you got a super powerful vehicle and a reliable friend.” He paused. “In any case… if you trust me, you and Xiao Tan should continue to head to the centre of the blast. I will soon return to join up with you. Don’t worry, I have my methods of finding you.” He said as he quietly studied the others’ expression, “If you wish to split from us now, it’s fine. I can even gift you Golden Maggot No. 1. But our alliance is over and we’ll each walk our own path.”
Brother Jue’s words sunk Matcha Cookie into silence…
Feng Bujue had a knack at persuasion because he had a natural talent, a talent that was privy to most famed strategists through history—the ability of keeping scores. Keeping own score, boss’ score, friend’s score, enemy’s score, the world’s score… The same thing had different meaning, depending on who he was dealing with. Only by calculating all the scores, he would be able to tell the other person’s bottom line and come up with the consensus. The more he could read the other person’s thought, the greater the field of negotiation he could navigate and that was why he was such a good negotiator.
“Hmph… Fine, since you’ve tricked me to get onto your pirate ship, I’m not going to abandon ship so easily.” As he expected, 10 seconds later, Matcha Cookie said in a fake helpless voice. Brother Jue knew she wouldn’t part way. Matcha Cookie’s bottomline was about the ownership of Golden Maggot No 1. She was definitely unwilling to gift another person such a powerful vehicle but she couldn’t pilot it alone. There needed to be people in both the driving seat and the gunner turret that the thing would be useful.
“Perfect. Then I’ll be leaving. Be careful.” With that, Brother Jue left. Before closing the door, he took on a serious countenance and used a tone that he thought was cool to say, “I will be back.”
…
At the same time, inside the sealed zone, on the rooftop of a certain building. Phantom Dawn, Shiva, Uncle Worthless and Zombie Blade Victor, these 4 seed players were gathered at one spot and spied a junction faraway. The place looked not much different from other places in the city, it was piled with bones and guts, the buildings covered in strange vines and blood stains. The only difference was… above this place was a black-hole like tear in space.
“What is that? A controllable black hole?” Uncle Worthless asked.
Zombie Blade Victor said, “Neither of you focus on the battle and dragged us here… just for us to look at this?’
“No…” Shiva pointed his finger. “But to look at that…”
Uncle Worthless and Zombie Blade Victor followed his finger and moved their sight. In the street under the tear in dimension, a large monster that was half human half beast walked forward. On its shoulder was a player (due to the guild logo on the back of his clothes, that proved his identity as a player). The player did not struggle, he was practically motionless, probably he had run out of Stamina Points… Soon was he deposited under the blast tunnel.
In the middle of the junction stood a lady. She wore a grey outfit and looked normal like a pedestrian from those sandbox games, nothing stood out about her.
“Why did the monster capture the player?” Blade Zombie Victor asked, “Wait… the monster is powerful enough to knock out one of the finalists?” His expression shifted. “To be so powerful, he must be one of the direct generals of the four Divines.”
“No.” Phantom Dawn corrected, “That’s an Anomaly.”
“What?” Zombie Blade Victor turned his head around, “Isn’t that just a forum rumor?”
“Hey… That Anomaly is going in for the kill.” When Uncle Worthless used the binocular, he did not remove his sunglasses, god know how he managed to maintain his vision. Hearing that, Zombie Blade Victor turned his focus back to the street. By then Root had ended the player’s life. The method was surprisingly simple. First she aimed her right index finger at the man’s head, then the finger morphed into a silver liquid, grew extensively and pierced into the man’s skull like a chisel. It was swift and brutal.
“What is going on?” Zombie Blade asked, “Since she’s going to kill them anyway, why waste the time to capture them?” He turned to Shiva and Phantom Dawn with confusion, “Don’t tell the beastial Anomaly wants to help the human-shaped Anomaly gain experience?”
“Based on our observation…” Shiva replied. “The woman is doing some kind of selection…” His expression was severe and there was some fear between his eyes. “Her people helped her capture the players, brought them to her and she would make the final decision.”
“What is she looking for?” Uncle Worthless asked.
“Don’t know.” Phantom Dawn replied. “What we know is that… so far, no one has lived up to her requirement yet.”
Uncle Worthless said darkly, “In other words… all the captured players have been killed?”
“I hate to break up the party, but what does that have to do with us?” Zombie Blade Victor asked. “So there is a faction in this scenario that specialize in capturing and killing the players, so what?”
“They are not NPC but Anomalies,” Phantom Dawn corrected.
“Fine, fine… Anomalies.” Zombie Blade Victor grumbled. From his perspective, they were the same, they were just virtual characters in a game, “I just want to say, your action confuses me. So now you know this, what you need to do is to prevent yourself from being captured. Why do you come to inform others? Don’t you want to win…”
“You still don’t get it?” Phantom Dawn’s face was dark and his tone was oppressive as he cut the man off. He whispered, “Focus on that dead player…”
Uncle Worthless and Zombie Blade Victor turned back to the street, they saw… the player’s dead body did not turn into a pool of white light. But he crumbled to the ground. The brain matter and blood leaked out from the wound and dirtied the ground. The enhanced Anomaly conversed with Root, then he picked up the body and tossed it aside like a lump of trash.
Then Uncle Worthless and Zombie Blade King realized… the pile of dead bodies at the corners was not a decoration of the scenario. They… were all dead contestants from this Tournament for the Best…