Chapter 1 Community

It was three in the afternoon at the parking lot outside the community shopping center.

This was the peak shopping hour, with many cars in the parking lot and many people entering and exiting the shopping center.

And within this crowd, there was a "child" about 1.7 meters tall with a stern face, seemingly searching for something...

"Strange... where is he?" Long Ge arrived at the rendezvous point on time, but he looked around and didn't see Qi Sha's figure. "Could it be because he's too short... and I missed him?"

He muttered to himself as he wandered around the parking lot, looking left and right.

Suddenly...

"Hey! We're over here!" Someone suppressed their voice and shouted at Long Aomin.

"Hmm?" Long Ge recognized his teammate's voice, but when he turned to look, he didn't see the speaker.

"Over here!" The voice repeated urgently.

Long Ge then realized that the voice was coming from under a car.

So, Long Aomin squatted down beside the car and looked inside. "I say... are you two playing hide-and-seek?"

"In a sense..." Qi Sha replied with squinted eyes, "Yes..."

Tan Lang, who was lying beside him, also said, "Of course... if we were really playing hide-and-seek, with your current build, you'd definitely be 'it' every time."

"Although you guys are sincerely lying there trying to chat me up, I have absolutely no interest in joining you down there," Long Ge replied with a twitching mouth. "So... can you explain the current situation?"

"Isn't the situation obvious?" Tan Lang was about to start narrating when...

[Sub-Quest Progress Updated] The system prompt sounded.

In the next second, all three of them instinctively opened the game menu and glanced at the quest bar, discovering that the [Find a way to meet up with your teammates] quest had been crossed out. Below it, a follow-up appeared: [Enter Dracula's Castle].

"Oh well..." After two seconds, Tan Lang uttered, "Although our captain is dead, Hell Front has also used up the Blood Corpse God, this super-powerful summoned creature; moreover... the difficulty of our sub-quest has also decreased as the number of people has decreased, not a loss..."

"I have no idea what you're talking about..." Long Ge looked at him and said, "Can you come out from under the car and start from the beginning?"

In the next five minutes, Tan Lang, Qi Sha, and Long Aomin squatted next to the car, exchanging information furtively.

Tan Lang recounted his previous encounter with Po Jun. After that... Qi Sha followed the sound of the explosion to the basketball court and met Tan Lang, who had escaped death.

"In summary..." Tan Lang said after a long explanation, "We can know... in this script, even summon and machinery-based abilities will be affected. Those summoned creatures seem to have not been weakened, but their duration has been shortened by at least half; also... the effects produced by our weapons, equipment, items, etc., will also be discounted..."

"Hmm... I understand the summoned creature part..." Long Ge interjected thoughtfully upon hearing this. "If the Blood Corpse God's existence time hadn't been greatly shortened, you should have already died..." He paused. "However, how did you figure out that machinery-based abilities and item effects would be weakened?"

"Before encountering the Blood Corpse God, I drank a large dose of Survival Value supplement. At that time, my health was restored as usual, so I didn't pay attention to it," Tan Lang explained almost without thinking. "However, when Po Jun threw the [Singularity Grenade], I felt that something was not right... The grenade's effective radius was obviously smaller than usual. It's just that... the situation at the time didn't allow me to think about it carefully." He pointed to the knapsack slung across his body. "And after the battle, when I used a special item to restore Spiritual Energy, I confirmed... even the effects of items were affected by the script's settings."

"Oh... I see." Long Aomin nodded, remained silent for a moment, and reorganized and digested the known information.

Just then...

"Hey, little brats, what are you doing next to my car?" A man's voice rang out. "Trying to play a prank?"

The three turned their heads and saw a man around thirty-five years old, wearing a suit and carrying shopping bags.

"Hurry up and get lost, little bastards." The suited man put the shopping bags in the back seat of the car, already using foul language to drive away the three members of Blade.

"Sir, this seems to be a parking space reserved for the disabled," Tan Lang looked up at the man and said tentatively.

"So what?" The suited man took two steps forward, urging them away with a disgusted look and a gesture as if shooing away flies. "Stop being nosy, I'll park here, what can you do about it?"

Before he finished speaking, Long Aomin... stood up.

Although the suited man was also a little over 1.7 meters tall, taller than Long Ge's current height, the intimidating power of Long Ge's face was enough to make up for the height difference of about fifteen centimeters.

"What are you doing? Kid, I advise you not to make trouble for yourself!" The suited man was still bluffing and threatening the three "children" in front of him.

"Make trouble for myself?" Long Aomin repeated these four words in a meaningful tone, and then let out a cold laugh. "Hmph... Sorry, I'm a police officer."

Fifteen minutes later...

On a certain highway leading to Dark Creek Road.

A Volvo with a decade of mortgage payments left was driving on the road.

Tan Lang and Qi Sha were sitting in the back seat of the car, comfortably enjoying the air conditioning and eating snacks that had been on the shelves of the shopping center not long ago.

And Long Aomin was sitting in the passenger seat, arms crossed, staring seriously ahead.

"I warn you, my aunt is a lawyer..." The suited man in the driver's seat was still trying to control the situation with words as he drove. "If you get out of the car now, I can pretend nothing happened, otherwise..."

"Listen, you scum," Long Aomin slapped him across the face, interrupting the man without looking back. "I also warn you... what we brothers hate the most is scum like you who ruin the social atmosphere. If you don't shut up, I'll make sure you can use disabled parking spaces for the rest of your life."

…………

Four o'clock in the afternoon, somewhere in the community.

"Ha! I finally ran into you guys!" Xiao Tan, who was walking down the street with four little boys, happened to meet Xiao Ling and Ruo Yu.

The four children were all members of the "Monster Club." In addition to Sean and Horace, the other two were also children in their teens.

"Woah~ woah~ woah~" Before the two players could reply, Sean and the others all turned their heads to Xiao Tan and gave him three consecutive interjections. "Buddy... you're not mistaken, are you? You want to play with the girls?"

"Uh..." Xiao Tan was an honest person, and he didn't think there was anything wrong with it, so he replied, "Yeah, we often play together."

"What?" The boys were shocked.

"Okay, it seems there's a huge misunderstanding here..."

"Wang, I'm sorry, I think you have to leave our club."

"We don't associate with girls, and we don't play with kids who associate with girls."

"Haven't you noticed the words 'no_girLs' written at the entrance of the treehouse?"

They said one after another, and backed away from Xiao Tan.

"Huh?" Xiao Tan, seeing this, still didn't react. After being stunned for a few seconds, he said again, "Huh?"

"Stop 'haha'ing, even I know... most boys are very unfriendly to girls before junior high school." At this time, Xiao Ling had already walked to Xiao Tan's side, shaking her head and muttering.

"Is there such a thing?" Xiao Tan said with a puzzled face.

"You really don't know?" Xiao Ling asked suspiciously.

"Yeah..." Xiao Tan replied, "Actually... I didn't have a good relationship with boys or girls when I was a kid... The only one I got along with was..."

"You've made bad friends, your childhood is ruined, condolences." Ruo Yu, who was standing on the other side, didn't even need to wait for him to finish speaking before giving an irrefutable conclusion.

"Wang, it seems you have a lot to talk about with the girls, so we won't bother you." Sean, who had retreated a few meters away, said.

"Maybe you can join our club after you break up with the girls," Horace added.

The group chattered and walked around the three players, leaving on their own.

After they walked away, Xiao Ling opened her mouth and asked, "Okay... back to the main topic. In these nearly six hours, what have you accomplished?"

"I have." Xiao Tan replied immediately. "I found someone to translate Van Helsing's diary..." As he spoke, he took out a piece of paper from his knapsack. "I also copied down the 'incantation' part, with the phonetic symbols." He looked quite proud. "Next, we just need to find a virgin to complete the ritual in the opening CG." At this point, he seemed to have thought of something. "Hey? By the way, do you count now?" He stroked his chin and muttered, "Logically speaking, you were before you met me... but not afterwards... but if we reduce it to ten years old..."

Bang—

A gunshot rang out, and a flash of white light appeared.

Xiao Ling drew her gun, aimed, and fired... the whole process was completed in one go. In an instant, the pistol bullet pierced Xiao Tan's temple very neatly, blowing his head off with one shot.

"Ah~ ah~ I got the incantation..." Xiao Ling drew the paper from the corpse's hand with a dark expression. "I also conveniently cleared a moron from the world, it's really delightful."

This scene caused all the viewers watching the match to fall into a state of mental short circuit.

Undoubtedly, this was the first incident of deliberately killing a teammate since the start of the Peak Brawl S2...

Although there had been cases of accidental injury and even manslaughter before (mostly caused by indiscriminate skills), this kind of intentional act... not to mention the perpetrator's motive... if it were someone else, even if they wanted to do it, they couldn't.

Technically speaking, Xiao Ling shouldn't be able to launch an intentional attack on her teammates, but... she actually did it at this moment.

So... according to the established facts, there are only two possible hypotheses: one, the person who fired the gun was not Xiao Ling, but someone impersonating her; two, Xiao Ling broke through to the [Beyond Limits] realm in some way, thereby achieving this kill...

…………

At the same time, inside the Monster Club's treehouse.

"That damn little bastard, when I get this chip out, I'll make you pay..." The vagrant Hill was cursing Jue Ge while pounding on the entrance of the treehouse with his elbow.

Of course, that's what he said, but he didn't dare to neglect the matter at hand, because before he left the old house on Dark Creek Road, Feng Bujue had said more than a dozen "delayed trigger words" to him.

What are "delayed trigger words"? Jue Ge's explanation was—words that you won't react to when you hear them, but that will trigger the chip's effect after a specific period of time.

At first, Hill didn't believe there would be such bullshit "high technology," but Feng Bujue immediately said, "Actually, I already said a delayed word to you twenty minutes ago. Calculating the time... it should be taking effect soon."

As a result, as soon as he finished speaking, Hill was struck by lightning and fell to the ground in pain...

After getting up from the ground, Hill had no choice but to believe it...

Later, Feng Bujue gave Hill some specific clues, telling him to find Van Helsing's diary, and told him, "If you don't return within four hours, these delayed words will torture you to the point of shock." After saying that, he said "pí yǎn" (a vulgar term) a dozen times in a row, and then said, "If you successfully bring back the diary, I'll immediately help you remove the chip."

Therefore... we saw the scene just now.

"Damn it! Damn it!" Hill elbowed the wooden planks at the entrance of the treehouse fiercely, as if the plank was Feng Bujue's face.

When his arm began to go numb, the lock on the entrance was finally broken.

"Tch... a kid's treehouse... still locked so tightly..." Hill shook his arm and complained, then leaned in and climbed into the treehouse.

His luck was very good; right now, Van Helsing's diary was right here.

Since the book itself was relatively large and heavy, and the German text on it was something the children couldn't directly understand, they didn't carry it with them but kept it in the treehouse.

According to the description given by Jue Ge, Hill quickly found the diary on a low table in the corner of the treehouse.

"What the hell is this?" Out of curiosity, Hill opened it and took a look.

Unfortunately... he was even worse than the children, unable to even tell which country the writing in the diary was from... all he could understand were some of the illustrations.

"A bunch of nonsense..." Hill quickly lost patience. He muttered softly and prepared to leave the treehouse.

However, just as he turned around, a "cunning" idea flashed through his mind, giving him an idea...