Bai Ci nodded and hesitated no longer. She pulled back the heavy door, and the overwhelming sound of buzzing wings and the stench of blood from outside immediately rushed in.
She felt a more pronounced heat radiating from the ring. Opposing this warmth was the wave of bugs lunging toward them.
But before they could reach her, a warm current spread from the ring. The bugs were blocked by an invisible barrier, slowly dissolving into liquid.
Bai Ci turned the door handle. The hinges creaked softly as the buzzing and the metallic tang of blood rushed at them. However, the expected onslaught never came. The invisible barrier radiating from the ring perfectly enveloped both of them; the black bugs rushing forward burned upon contact, instantly dissolving into puddles.
“It works!” Lin Wenyu’s voice carried an irrepressible joy. He was genuinely happy for Bai Ci, even though the item looked like a single-player tool. “You go—”
“Watch out!” Turning her head, Bai Ci saw a horrifying sight. Quick as lightning, she yanked Lin Wenyu toward her.
“Hiss—” Lin Wenyu took out a hemostatic item and wrapped his arm. Fortunately, he had only been bitten about a dozen times. If Bai Ci hadn't pulled him just now, he would have lost half his arm.
To Lin Wenyu’s surprise, he had already prepared himself to make the ultimate sacrifice. After all, he wouldn’t actually die. Although his team leader had told him to avoid dying as much as possible, the reality of the situation left him with no other choice.
He hadn’t expected Bai Ci’s item to have an area-of-effect. It was just that the range was a bit small; they had to stay very close for him to be fully protected within the barrier.
“Let’s go downstairs first. Staying trapped up here is just waiting to die, and we don’t know enough about these bugs...” While pondering their next move, Bai Ci realized a flaw—one caused by their previous trust in the team despite an immature information-sharing system. “Do you know where Old Man Li’s room is?”
Lin Wenyu shook his head. “Wang Qiang and Su Xiao were the ones who did the floor sweeps...”
With no other choice, the two decided to head down first. They didn't want to just run away unless they had to, but survival was the top priority.
According to information on the forums, for the same experience, players who survived received slightly higher scores than those who died. Even if it wasn't a huge difference, every little bit counted.
When they passed Du Min’s apartment, they found the front door wide open. They went inside and did a quick search, but found no useful information.
“If only our team leader were here...” Lin Wenyu said dejectedly. As things stood, their only option was to play it safe and bide their time to clear the instance. “I’m telling you, our team leader is incredibly smart. If the stupid system hadn’t split him off into a solo mission, we wouldn’t be running around like headless chickens right now.”
Lin Wenyu actually belonged to a fixed team. The reason he had matched into this multiplayer instance all by himself came down to the matchmaking mechanics of Anomalous Infection.
There were no large-scale organizations like guilds in Anomalous Infection. Instances had a chance to drop only one type of team scroll, which had a limit of ten players. Although called a team scroll, its actual function was more like a permit to establish a squad.
Under normal circumstances, players who were not in a team matched into instances randomly. For those in a team, matchmaking would first undergo multiple steps of determination based on the team leader’s matchmaking result.
If the leader matched into a single-player instance, the team members would each enter random instances, which could be single-player or multiplayer, but no two members would ever enter the same multiplayer instance. If the leader matched into a multiplayer instance, the entire team would enter the same multiplayer instance together.
Lin Wenyu’s team had run into the first scenario. Their leader had matched into a single-player instance, leaving him to enter a multiplayer instance alone.
As for his previous self-introduction claiming he had only cleared three instances, that was just talk. The real number was at least double that.
“I see,” Bai Ci said, snapping out of her thoughts. Not knowing what else to say, she simply gave a brief acknowledgement.
“You’re spacing out too. You must also think just scraping by to clear the instance is really boring, right?” Lin Wenyu wore an “I understand” expression.
“No, I was thinking about something else,” Bai Ci shook her head, not slowing her descent down the stairs. “These bugs seem to only operate within a certain range. If they could move completely freely, they shouldn’t still be gathered here in such large numbers. After all, there shouldn’t be much food left here.”
The scene in the stairwell was horrific. Dark red blood, mingled with the carcasses of black bugs, was splattered everywhere across the walls and floors. A pungent, metallic stench of blood filled the air. Occasionally, they spotted a few clean, fresh skeletons, making their stomachs churn.
Seeing the sight before him and recalling what they had witnessed along the way, Lin Wenyu understood what Bai Ci meant.
However, a novel idea popped into his mind. “Hit-and-run?”
“What?” Bai Ci was startled for a moment, but quickly understood. That was the nature of the language—sometimes the meaning of a term could be deduced from its component words. “You mean us?”
“Yeah. As long as your item can hold up, doing a few hit-and-runs could push our completion rate forward.” Lin Wenyu briefly described his concept of farming the instance like a game dungeon. “I just don't know if Anomalous Infection will let us exploit a loophole like this.”
“Hopefully.” Who would turn down a higher evaluation rating, after all?
When Bai Ci was browsing the forums before, she had read a theory that instances with more rookies would have lower difficulty. But looking at their instance, which had two and a half rookies, the situation had already escalated into an outright insect swarm. She was highly skeptical of that theory now.
The two quickly reached the first-floor corridor. The corridor, which had been in utter chaos earlier, now seemed relatively orderly. Two figures clad in full white hazmat suits stood before the door of the room at the end of the first floor.
Looking closely, the hazmat suits bore the emblem of the Bureau of Investigation. They held specialized detectors and ziploc bags, seemingly searching the room.
Perhaps startled by their footsteps, one of the investigators turned around first, his gaze landing on them. He then strode over, his urgent movements combined with the bulky hazmat suit giving him the imposing presence of a charging black bear.
The other investigator looked over as well. Although his expression was obscured, his subtle, sideways glances made it obvious he was also curious.
“It’s you guys.” It was Captain Chen. His voice sounded somewhat muffled and raspy through the mask of his hazmat suit. When he saw the faint, shimmering barrier around them and the tiny bugs that were instantly burned to ash upon trying to get close, his gaze immediately locked onto the ring on Bai Ci’s middle finger. “Is it the effect of this ring?”
Rate on N.U.
