Chapter 988: Side Mission
Translator: Sean88888 Editor: Elkassar1
There was no need for Sheyan to issue any order.
Zi was the first to move upon witnessing the situation. She did not seem to be moving fast, but her movement contained a kind of grace and sexiness. She suddenly vanished into thin air soon after. When she reappeared, she was already tens of meters away.
Zi approached so fast that it did not give the opponents any time for preparation. Her ceremonial gown danced elegantly in the air, and a magic barrier wrapped around her tightly. In the inner part of the magic barrier was a very solid steel mesh which seemed indestructible!
Wherever she went, the angry wails of evil spirits could be heard, but all those spirits could do was attack the titanium mesh magic barrier in vain. She reached the room Vincent was held in in almost no time at all, and proceeded to exchange blows with the contestant holding Vincent hostage.
Although Zi was a mage type contestant, she had always been fond of attacking up close, so even after transforming, she still focused on close combat.
With the strong frontal defence of the dark green Ndipaya set plus the protection of the terrifying 'Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier', she possessed a defence comparable to a high-rank MT. It enabled her to fight in her favourite combat method of trading blows with the enemy.
It was also the kind of combat that opposing mage type contestants hated the most.
In the short moment the two had engaged with each other, the windows, glasses, computer screens, mirrors and all glass products on the whole 13th floor - or rather, in the whole building - cracked and shattered, sending glass fragments flying everywhere. There must had been a lot of people injured due to this.
Zi was forcefully expelled from the room, leaving a trail of black smoke in her wake. A lump of sticky, surging blackness could be seen on the top left of her 'Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier'. The lump looked like burnt plastic and emitted a foul smell. Even the titanium mesh inside the barrier showed signs of contamination.
But the opponent did not get off easy either. There was a series of rumbling sounds in the room, rather similar to the deafening noises a train made when it passed through a tunnel. What could possibly make noises like that?
When Brother Black and Reef rushed in, they found the room to be quite empty, but there was a faint illusionary image of a tree disappearing in the air. Vincent was tied to a chair. His pupils had shrunk to the point of a needle, a dull smile plastered on his face. He kept murmuring the same sentence.
"Death in full bloom...."
On the wall next to Vincent, there was a strange black passageway. Presumably, the thickness of the walls in such buildings would not exceed a metre, but the dark black passage was clearly as deep as a cave, inclining downwards in twists and turns.
Reef and Mogensha immediately tried to give chase, but from the inside of the blackpassage shot out a large number of pink cherry blossom petals. A more careful observation would reveal patterned veins akin to human blood vessels on all the petals, as if they had sucked on human blood. Small pieces of short pink hair could also be seen floating through the air.
The two men were only momentarily halted by these things, but it was enough of a delay for the black door to close. They could only rush towards the window and look down. What they saw was Sheyan, who was somehow on the eighth floor, crashing through the window there. He leaped down and smashed into the car directly beneath him, turning it into a heap of scrap iron. A black portal was silently opening right in front of him.
Reef and Mogensha were overjoyed. They both knew that it was not a problem at all for Sheyan to tie down the enemy for a few dozen seconds despite his injury. But when they rushed downstairs, they found Sheyan standing there, his face as calm as the surface of a quiet lake. He did not look like someone who had just gone through a battle.
"Did that person run away?" asked both of them in amazement.
Sheyan shook his head.
"It would be more accurate to say that I let him go on purpose. Have you forgotten why the mastermind behind the scenes slaughtered all the contestants on his side? We might actually need to collect the souls of contestants in the near future. If that's the case, I would rather let him go.
If it was any other party, even if Sheyan was the party leader, a statement like this would surely have led to a division within the team. The reason was simple - killing could have procured benefits for the team. Sheyan's decision to let the enemy go was tantamount to harming the benefit of the team for the sake of his personal interest.
But there was no such problem for Party Ace because they all know that Sheyan was not a selfish person. They were willing to make a little sacrifice now. When Sheyan got stronger, these small losses would be nothing in their eyes.
At this moment, Zi suddenly asked, "How did this contestant escape from the mastermind? Could he be a new addition to this world - someone who has no connection to our previous main mission?"
"If that's the case, that's great news for us. New contestants entering the world to complete a new main mission after the mastermind had left - that's definitely not normal," remarked Sheyan.
The idea sent Sheyan into deep contemplation.
Sanzi suddenly said, "Could this be a countermeasure?"
A trace of admiration was visible in Sheyan's eyes as he looked at Sanzi. "That's right. If the mastermind had employed some special means or utilised some loopholes to follow our party into consecutive worlds, injecting new contestants into this world may very well be the countermeasure taken by our Noah Realm C in response to that!"
At this time, Zi poured some cold water on their enthusiasm. "I must remind you that even if it is a countermeasure, all realms must operate within the limits of the rules. That is to say, even if Noah Realm C is trying to help us, the help is limited. It's absolutely impossible for them to send a bunch of weaklings for us to hunt down."
"You're absolutely right." Sheyan regained his focus.
Zi continued in a solemn tone, "When I rushed into the room just now, I had a brief fight with the contestant, and he was very strong. Even in a situation where I caught him unprepared, he was still able to fight back with the miasma from the world of death. I would've been in quite the predicament if I didn't have the titanium barrier. He seemed to be in the middle of a powerful summoning ceremony before I arrived. I saw the illusionary image of a huge cherry blossom tree looming in the room. The image of the tree was still vague, but it's form was already visible. Based on that, I'd say that the summoning ritual must have been more than halfway completed. We might not have won if he had completed the summoning."
Reef had returned to Vincent's room and searched around it carefully. He found Vincent's ID on the tea table, and there were some numbers and Chinese characters beside it (TL: I'm guessing the contestant from before was Japanese and he wrote in Kanji). Although Reef could understand each individual word thanks to the translating function of the nightmare imprint, he could not understand what the words mean when they were combined together, so he called Sheyan over to take a look.
"Boss, I know this word means "Heavenly", and this word means "Stems", but what do they mean when they're combined together?" Does it have anything to do with farming?"
(TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Stems )
Sheyan was at a loss on how to explain the phrase. He kept racking his brain for words that could be understood by his foreign friends.
Reef continued, "The next thing is even more interesting...."
Hearing that, Sheyan immediately snatched the thing over and carefully inspected it. "It looks like the guy from before did not come here for a mission related to the Terminator; he was merely interested in Vincent."
"Really?" asked Reef in surprise.
Sheyan explained, "Vincent actually had a reason to live on the thirteenth floor. On this piece of paper, the contestant used a unique eastern method to analyse Vincent's date of birth, and judged that he was a rare Yin person, more commonly known as a medium! That's why Vincent likes to live on the thirteenth floor, which has a higher density of negative energy. If he was born in the east, the job that suits him best would be an occult member and not a computer engineer.
After pondering for a moment, Sanzi said, "So did the contestant capture Vincent to turn Vincent into his familiar?"
"Very likely, but thanks to us, it's not that possible anymore," said Sheyan with a smile.
Sheyan knew of a way to wake Vincent up according to eastern superstition, and it was not that hard. The method Sheyan suggested was to mix a cock's blood (the cock here refers to a male chicken) with wine and pour it down Vincent's throat. Wine was easy to find, but where would they find a cock in LA? In the end, they had to settle for a male turkey (a gobbler). It's worth mentioning that there was no where to buy a living turkey around here - all the turkeys for sale were those that had been butchered and packaged - so the turkey they got was actually a pet kept by a certain family in the area....
Vincent was finally able to recover from his unconscious state after a few draughts of foul-smelling wine. He rubbed his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Sheyan's passionate face.
"I'm so happy to see you again, Mr. Vincent, but this time I'm not going to treat you to a steak or a Havana cigar. I'm just going to do a simple calculation of the debt you owe me back then, and the interest accumulated so far."
Vincent's face turned even paler. He was about to yell at Sheyan in his usual booming voice, only to find that two men with stony faces had come up to him, each pressing a hand that was as hard as iron clamps on his shoulders. The pain immediately rendered him speechless.
In the end, Vincent could only smile wryly. "Look at the state I'm in. If I tell you that I can give you a generous compensation, will you believe me?"
None of them took the bait. They kept glaring at Vincent without saying a word.
With no other choice, Vincent could only reveal his true intention. He shamelessly said, "If you can help me get back into Cyberdyne, your compensation won't be a problem at all."
As he said that, Party Ace finally received the notification they were waiting for.
[ Storyline character "Vincent" is issuing the side mission "Return". " Would you like to accept it? ]