Stealth dropped, you stare down at the dangerous painting in your hands, your face grim. Throw it away and you risk it being traced. Burn it and the unusual material might leave detectable ash.
Gritting your teeth, you stare at the mech's spatial button. Looks like you're going into the mech's pocket dimension.
Your eyes go completely cold. Whoever's pulling strings behind this scheme, the moment they come after you, you'll pilot the mech and slice their entire game board to shreds.
Foam churns in the bathtub. You glare at the painting underwater. Even scissors couldn't cut through it. Cursing it out in your mind. Special grade metal fabric, of course.
You smirk. You plunge both hands into the water, raw electrical energy exploding from your fingertips. Under the blinding flash, the tough canvas glows red, softens, and finally dissolves into a pile of fine metal granules. You shake out your hands, completely unharmed, protected by a photonic shield.
Next, you shove the two jade scroll rods into the oven and crank up the heat. You pull them out and douse them with a bowl of ice cold water. A sharp crack. The jade shatters into rubble, which you flush straight down the drain.
You exhale a long, heavy breath. Now no one can trace anything back to you through the dome incident.
Once cleaned up, you contact the dealer who sold you the 800,000 fake button, demanding a refund.
"No refunds once opened," the man snaps arrogantly.
You skip the small talk and flash your citizen ID code on screen. "Three seconds. If the money is not back in my account, your whole family will be sweeping floors in the slums."
The 800,000 refunds instantly. You scoff. In this world, a high status legal citizenship is the ultimate all-access pass.
With the money back, you start browsing real estate listings. Prices have crashed hard after the Crimson Count attack, but the trading center's been frozen by emergency government order. No buying allowed.
Fine. Train instead.
You jack straight into the mech simulator. Select the Blade. Activate melee combat mode.
The screen barely flickers on before, less than a minute in, the AI mech lands a clean flying kick. Warning. Cockpit critically damaged. Screen goes black. Instant death.
You slam a fist on the control panel, face tight. A surge of furious refusal to lose shoots straight to the top of your head.
Again. Relying on reflexes honed from years alone, you furiously rewrite commands, condensing complex maneuvers into single button presses. Defeated again and again and again, you step back in through impacts at five times the speed of sound. You build your instincts, learning to treat the mech as an extension of your own body.
After holding on for ten minutes, you watch the survival countdown finally clear. Drenched in sweat, you pull off the helmet.
Stubbornly unconvinced, you click into ranged combat training. Less than thirty seconds in, the opponent's laser fire pins you down so hard you can't even lift your head. A sharp crackle. Black screen again.
Screw ranged combat. You slam the interface shut, fuming. Ranged mechs are clearly built for intellect type evolvers with built-in autolock cheats. Someone relying on instinct and reflexes like you is stuck with melee assault.
The moment you exit the game interface, a blinding crimson pop-up slams onto your screen. In the video, a man in golden armor with flowing red hair stands inside an ancient castle, his tone dripping with arrogance.
"Prepare to face the Crimson Count's furious revenge."
Your scalp prickles instantly. These lunatics have already infiltrated the military fleet. If they actually bombard the planet with warships, everyone's finished. Run. Without a private ship, you can't even clear the atmosphere.
A crushing sense of survival panic grips your throat. You need to get stronger right now.
You turn and step into the game pod. You spawn straight into the underground. The entrance is narrow and damp. You pilot the mech, energy shield raised in your left hand, the plasma blade dragging behind in your right. Four mini hydrogen bombs strapped to the mech frame. Cornered and desperate. Anyone who messes with you now takes everyone down with them.
You'd planned to farm some weak mobs on the first level, polish your camouflage mastery, but you don't get far.
A violent explosion erupts from deep within the tunnel. The ground beneath your feet shakes wildly. Other mechs are in a massive brawl down there.
You turn and run without a second thought. No way you're touching that. Mech repairs are way too expensive. You're not getting dragged into that chaos.
To cover your tracks, you stick to flooded passages, weaving back and forth, and eventually miserably realize you're completely lost.
Just as you're about to complain, the view opens up. A massive sinkhole nearly fifty meters across stretches out before you. Mist swirls over a dense underground jungle below.
You flip on the radar for a scan and your breathing instantly turns ragged. Your eyes lock onto the red dots on screen. Over 1,200 giant hornless bulls.
You can barely look away. These aren't bulls. They're a mountain of pure stat boosts that could turn you into a superhuman.
But the excitement doesn't last two seconds before your pupils contract sharply. At the bottom of the sinkhole, glaring silver white wreckage catches your eye. You zoom in and a chill races up your spine. Several mutants nearly ten feet tall, with grotesque beastlike faces, are casually hauling multi-ton mech limbs and arms through the jungle like sacks of grain.
Then a deep, eerie horn call sounds out. At that strange sound, those 1,200 droolworthy bulls fall in line like obedient pets, marching with the mutants toward one direction.
If you took down all 1,200 hornless bulls, how far could your stats explode?
Watching the herd at the bottom of the sinkhole and those twenty-some beast-faced mutants hauling mech parts, the thread in your mind called reason finally snaps.
Big shots weigh their odds. A small fry like you, cornered with no way out, can only go all in. You're betting everything, using the real world resonance core to cheat your way through this game. Win and you rise instantly. Lose and you start from zero.
The rocket pack ignites in a flash. You launch the Blade off the hillside like a cannon shell. Using your max dynamic vision like a cheat code, midair, without a word, you launch all four mini hydrogen bombs straight down into the sinkhole like a verdict from above.
"Come and get it, you beasts."
You open the broadcast channel and roar down with the most defiant, unbreakable fury you have.
The mutants' eyes flare red the instant they hear it. They roar in unison. Swinging multi-ton mech arms, they smash the hydrogen bombs hanging in the air.
The first bomb collides midair. A violent shockwave erupts, flinging the leaping beast mutants away like ragdolls. The remaining three bombs land perfectly in the densest part of the herd.
Charge skill plus one. Notifications flood the screen relentlessly.