Chapter 258 |
Bai Liu left the Tai Shan station and went to the site where they had been placed to find that Fang Xiaoxiao, whom they had dug out of the ice crevice, had disappeared.
“Fang Xiaoxiao also took the rest of the team with him.” Tang Erda’s face turned grim.
Mu Sicheng looked to Bai Liu: “So are we going to find them next? Where will they go?”
“I think I know why Edmond left and where they’re going.” Bai Liu exhaled a white breath as he looked out across the sparse snow to the edge of the Antarctic continent, shimmering in the grey sunlight.
Bai Liu gave a relaxed, slightly teasing smile: “- it seems that the other player has put a lot of pressure on Professor Edmond, the boss at the bottom of the level, to abandon his experiments on us for a while and leave to target this player. “
Liu Jiayi, always the quickest to react, turned to Bai Liu: “Was it Spades? What did he do?”
“Go on the game’s main quest.” Bai Liu looked back at her plaintively, “- to make the globe warmer.”
———-
Pure white snow surrounded the Ross Ice Shelf.
It was the coldest time of the year when the Antarctic waters met the warm and coldest before the polar night, and it only took fifteen minutes for a person to fall in and die of hypothermia.
And in these waters, the sight of a human being sinking like a whale in a fluid ebb and flow is clearly an eye-catcher.
A tent-like storehouse of snow blocks was stacked haphazardly on the shore, containing tinned food, rashers, a pair of neatly arranged socks and a sled car.
A drying rack was propped on top of the sleigh, on which a pair of oversized boxer briefs hung in a regular pattern, being dried on top of two burning solid alcohol lamps.
It looks like they didn’t want to wear the panties they found in the observatory, opting to dry them off and reuse them on themselves.
On top of the snowy ‘tent’ is a small red flag, swaying violently in the sea breeze, the material on top emitting a peculiar fluorescent light that is quite conspicuous in the coming night.
The man in the sea floated and sank twice, swimming at an unnaturally fast pace, faster than even the seals and orcas that have started to feed heavily for winter.
At least as the two creatures tentatively hunted the man, he made only a slight stroke, turned easily in the water and passed under the mouths of these two top Antarctic predators in the blink of an eye.
Bubbles of air spilled from his lips – the only way to detect that this man was a strange human being, and not a cold humanoid monster born in the cold sea of the ice fields.
Even the seal that attempted to hunt him was probably wondering internally – why this prey was not feeling any heat radiation at all.
Like ice, even colder than ice.
Before they could struggle to come up with an answer, the cunning ‘prey’ once again swept past their fierce fangs, swinging its legs and opening its eyes slightly as it dived deeper into the invisible sea.
Ten minutes later, Spades emerged, dragging a tide gauge weighing several hundred kilos to the surface.
He strode forward barefoot on the ice, his left hand dragging the huge orange-framed circle of instruments across the snow in a long trail, the water on his eyelashes and hair freezing before it dripped down and was rubbed out with a handful of his right hand.
This is dangerous and could easily injure the eyes and skin, as well as causing severe frostbite and contusions.
But this damage does not seem to show harm in Spades.
This kind of damage and temperature, deadly to normal humans, seemed so worthless to him that it wasn’t even worth reaching out a second time to take care of the shards of ice caught between his eyelashes and forehead.
Like small, unpolished diamonds, the fine ice hangs loose and fragmented on Spades’ tight, smooth body, refracting at certain angles with a surprising light that glistens on his cool skin.
He wasn’t overly fit, looking lean in turn when his shoulder blades were tensed with force, but the proportions of his bone structure from his shoulders to his waist and stomach to his ankles were simply too good, the muscles thin and tough covering from the back of his neck to the backs of his feet, as if the amount of muscle attached to each bone and joint had been carefully calculated and honed to create such a shell of both strength and proportion.
The skin was not green after being soaked in seawater, but instead it gave off a glazed glow of polished marble, a kindred translucent white.
It’s like a piece of art that has been refined seven billion times and is still unsatisfactory, and it would probably drive sculptors around the world crazy to engrave such a half-naked sculpture.
The only pity is that the small part of the sculpture’s face is covered by hair, and only a jaw that fits perfectly with this artful body can be seen.
Spades dragged the heavy loads forward at an even pace as if he couldn’t feel the cold, glistening ice and gravel, eventually melting them with his eyeballs and body heat.
And so this bright light was lost in the great blizzard of wind and snow, and no one was able to perceive that this cold monster had been so bright after its dive into the deep sea.
Spades casually slammed the hundreds of pounds of apparatus aside with one hand, knelt on top of it with one foot, bending close to find the inner lining of the apparatus, then without hesitation drew out his whip, gripped the handle backhandedly as if it were a dagger, and stabbed it in.
Only after the stabbing did he realise what he had done was out of place and slowly opened his mouth and let out an “Ah”.
[This is a whip, not a dagger!!! Not a long knife!!! Nor is it an awl or a crutch! It can only be thrown! You can’t stab, stomp or slash!]
Spades reflexively recalled the new teammate who had just transferred over, with the Reverse God breaking down and hissing in his ears.
[Use the whip properly! Don’t try to use all the strange weapons on the whip! Show some respect for the form of weapon you’re using! Do you know how many points the guild spent last year to maintain your weapon!]
This man accused him bitterly of.
[Stabbing around with the handle of the whip without any care, doesn’t your conscience hurt when you’re using it? Do you know how expensive the material is inlaid on it!]
It’s true that Spades didn’t know this, he just won the game and never cared about anything other than winning or losing it.
He recalled how he had answered the new member of the team who had just switched back to the Killer Sequence at that time.
— [It’s OK to win].
He seems to be very good at attacking with various weapon forms, and it’s not clear why the weapon form fixed at the end of his personal skills would be a whip.
Spades wasn’t a big fan of the whip, he was more comfortable with a short blade or awl, but got by with the whip.
Although he uses a whip, he can also use it forcibly to make a fairly powerful attack with other weapons.
So in the end, it often achieves his core aim too – to win the game.
So he never cared much about this, but his league teammate this time, the Reverse God, did care a lot about this.
No matter how many times the Reverse God warned him in tears of despair, Spades went ahead and used the whip in his own way.
So the Reverse God unleashed his skills and prophesied Spades’ future, wickedly threatening him, saying, “Spades, if you don’t practise your use of the whip, you will lose the league to a player who is even better with it than you are!”
Spades was interested in winning and losing, so he listened a little this time.
Since entering the game, Spades has been a moderate flogger1, not quite smooth, but not unusable.
But it just went smoothly for a moment and poked the liner of the tide gauge straight through with the handle of the whip.
But the annoying new team member wasn’t there to see the gruesome scene, so Spades paused only briefly and proceeded to pry open the steel skin of the instrument with his whip and dig out a thermometer wrapped in layers of waterproof plastic.
Spades tore away the tarp and a small metal box that was vibrating was wrapped inside.
It was a curious little box that moved in high frequency irregularities in all directions, and in Spades’ hands it kept emitting a very sharp high frequency vibrating sound that would shatter one’s bones just by holding it.
Spades closed his five fingers, leaving a clearly visible fingerprint on the top of the metal box.
He crushed the box straight away, then pressed his thumb against the side and flexed his fingers inward, poking a hole in the box.
Pressing his fingertips against the hole he had poked, Spades turned and took the small box back to the snow block tent.
A lot of dusty stuff could be felt banging against his fingers and his nail caps were congested with blood.
It should have hurt quite a bit, but fortunately he couldn’t really feel it.
Spades bent over and hooked off the dried boxer briefs, then rummaged around the tent for a while with one hand, finding a bottle of strong acid in a glass bottle and held the box directly over the alcohol lamp.
His eyes stared motionlessly into the fire of the alcohol lamp, his breathing very light, the leaping candle flame casting a warm glow in his eyes, the rigid cold outer skin gradually warming under the baking of the alcohol lamp
Also getting warmer was the metal box held in the palm of Spades’ hand.
The metal box was heated to such an incredible temperature that the outer skin was faintly red and Spades’ hand was so hot that the box made the sound of evaporating ice, but he didn’t seem to feel the heat at all, and continued to hold it indifferently.
The dust inside the box vibrates faster and faster under the heat, and Spades’ entire arm is brought to a frenzy of tremors.
After an unknown amount of time, Spades’ arm slowly stopped vibrating, as if the particles inside had been baked out of life by the constant heat, and he finally felt ready to withdraw his hand, open the hole in the box that his fingers were holding down and without hesitation, pour the strong acid from the bottle into it.
The strong acid emitted a violent reaction sound and a constant flow of gas spilled out of the hole in the box, even as the surface of the box reacted with a dark oxide film.
Spades looked down at the box and he heard his system announcing.
[System Alert: Congratulations to player Spades for destroying the Particle Weather Reactor (521/600)]
[The game is nearing its end, so please keep up the good work!]
EN1: After returning from his trip to Hawaii, Spades decided to cool down with some (half)naked swimming 🏄♂️
EN2: the author really described his beauty with like 6 paragraphs all bc he came out of water wow…. (spades is not the only person who is wet at that moment)
This is just an MTL edited chapter and can have some errors in it. Feel free to report them in the ERRORS channel on our server !
- a person or thing that whips or flogs someone. ↩︎