Chapter 092: Are You Having Fun Being Cheeky?

"This thing is disgusting," Crew Cut muttered, fighting down the urge to retch, a look of revulsion twisting his face. The mutant rat monster had actually torn corpses apart and swallowed them whole. No wonder its belly had swelled so grotesquely.

"Did it eat every human in the Rat Extermination Squad's stronghold?"

Zhang Wei was shaken as well. This instance was far more eerie and grotesque than any game scenario he had experienced before, and he had no idea what kind of horrors might appear next.

The mutant rat monster's belly had been slit open, and a rotten, grotesque face had been smashed beyond recognition, its eyes still staring with vicious hatred.

What was astonishing was that this mutant rat creature's vitality was even more tenacious than a zombie's. After suffering such grievous injuries, it still had not died on the spot.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out.

Su Cheng raised his 98K sniper rifle and, with a single, ruthless shot, blasted the mutant rat monster's head apart, sending it straight to hell.

The moment the mutant rat monster died, the game voice sounded in his ear.

"You have killed a Mutant Rat-Man Glutton. Reward: 500 contribution points to the Rat Extermination Squad faction. Rat-Man faction hatred increased by 50. Main quest complete: Find the Rat Extermination Squad stronghold. Quest updated."

"Objective: Search the Rat Extermination Squad stronghold for new clues."

Clearly, this mutant rat-man was far below the elite rat troll Su Cheng had killed before, yielding only 500 faction contribution points. Since Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei had also taken part in the fight, they received contribution points as well.

After the mutant rat-man was disemboweled, several mangled corpses were vomited out of its stomach. Su Cheng noticed that among those fused limbs and broken remains, a cold gleam flashed.

Then, to Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei's astonishment, Su Cheng walked over and began rummaging through the stinking pieces of flesh.

"Brother Cheng, can I ask what exactly you're doing?" Xu Xiaolong asked weakly, pinching his nose with a disgusted expression.

Without turning around, Su Cheng said, "Isn't it obvious? I'm looting the bodies."

"As a veteran gamer, the most important skill isn't combat or puzzle solving. It's looting corpses. A legendary forensic expert once said that corpses don't lie. Sometimes they hide unexpected surprises. If you can't even loot a corpse, how are you any different from a useless bum?"

After hearing Su Cheng's grand lecture, Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei both looked utterly baffled.

They didn't really understand it, but it somehow sounded very convincing.

As he spoke, Su Cheng pried a glowing steel ring off a severed hand and held it out to the two of them. "See? Here's the surprise."

Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei were stunned. They had thought Su Cheng was searching for clues, but he was actually stripping equipment from a corpse.

He scanned the steel ring with his phone, and a line of item information appeared on the screen.

Sturdy Ring
Type: Ring
Rarity: Rare
Effect: Energy Shield, active. Generates an energy shield that blocks one attack from the front. The shield disappears after successfully blocking an attack or after 10 seconds if released manually.
Requirements: None
Description: Please note that the energy shield can only block attacks from the front. If an enemy tries to attack you from behind, the shield will be of no use.

Seeing the description of the Sturdy Ring, Su Cheng's mouth twitched violently.

System, are you really that amused by being a little cheeky?

After the mutant rat-man's body had been cleared away, the players carefully searched the stronghold. Judging by the quest hint, the next clue should be hidden somewhere inside. Unfortunately, the place had been turned into a mess by the mutated rat-man, and many clues had been destroyed.

The Rat Extermination Squad's stronghold was like a safehouse, with a large interior serving as a place for its members to recuperate. Besides a lounge for combat personnel, it even had a medical room, showers, and a gym. The facilities were fully equipped.

Su Cheng was responsible for searching the main hall, where he found a smartphone beneath a sofa.

The screen was shattered, but fortunately it still powered on normally. The trouble was that unlocking it required fingerprint verification.

So he improvised a few simple fingerprint films from nearby items, then copied the fingerprints from the corpses one by one and tried each of them on the phone.

A few minutes later, the fingerprint lock was successfully unlocked. Su Cheng first opened the contacts list, hoping to find something useful.

"Brother Cheng, we found something on our side!"

At that moment, Zhang Wei and Xu Xiaolong seemed to have discovered something good in another room, and came out beaming as they carried over a metal case.

Click.

Xu Xiaolong cracked the password lock on the metal case, and Su Cheng saw that it contained all kinds of heavy firearms, more than a hundred rounds of ammunition, grenades, and other weapons.

These weapons were probably equipment issued to the Rat Extermination Squad's combat personnel. But since everyone in this stronghold had died, all that firepower and ammunition had conveniently fallen into Zhang Wei's hands.

Zhang Wei took an S12K five-round shotgun from the weapons case, pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on, then adopted a cold expression and did his best Terminator impression.

To be fair, Zhang Wei was tall and broad-shouldered, and thanks to his regular workouts, his muscles were well developed. He did bear quite a resemblance to the Terminator in the movies.

He held the shotgun in a pose and asked with a very narcissistic tone, "Do I look awesome or what?"

"Don't care. Get lost."

Xu Xiaolong made a disgusted face and rummaged through the weapons case, pulling out an Uzi submachine gun.

The Uzi's firepower was far inferior to that of an AKM or M16 assault rifle, but its advantage was low recoil and a high rate of fire. Even players with only modest firearms proficiency could use it easily, though its accuracy at long range was rather pitiful.

That said, these weapons and ammunition could not be taken out of the instance. Once the game ended, they would disappear.

"Don't you think something's off about this instance?" Su Cheng said. "According to the usual game pattern, there's no way the players would get such heavy firepower this easily at the start."

These weapons had come too easily. They had only killed a single monster that was not particularly difficult to handle, and they had paid no price for it.

"Brother Cheng, what are you trying to say?" Xu Xiaolong asked uneasily, sensing that something was wrong.

"I suspect we're going to run into an extremely dangerous mission next, which is why we're being given such powerful fire support. By the way, how's your shooting skill?"

"Pretty decent, I guess. Nothing special."

Although Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei had both learned firearms proficiency, their levels were not high; they were only just getting started. Beyond fifty meters, hitting one or two shots out of ten was basically fine. As for wanting every shot to be a headshot, that was pure fantasy.

Su Cheng nodded. In Tokyo, where firearms were strictly controlled, there were very few ways to obtain guns and ammunition, so very few players would spend resources leveling firearms proficiency. If the game were set in the gun-saturated United States, nine out of ten players would probably choose firearms.

"This dangerous mission of ours isn't going to be a massacre of the rat nest, is it?" Xu Xiaolong forced a grim smile. The mutant rat-men living underground were savage, cruel, and cannibalistic, even more terrifying than zombies. What was worse was their breeding ability. There were at least a million rat-men beneath Tokyo. The three of them alone could never hope to wipe them out.

"Maybe. But before that, I'll tell everyone about the clue I just found."

Su Cheng took out the smartphone. "I found this under the sofa. I unlocked it using fingerprint films made from those corpses, so I can be sure this phone belonged to one of the Rat Extermination Squad's members."

Then he opened the contacts and tapped on a random name.

"There are twenty-two names and numbers in the contacts. Including the owner himself, I estimate there were twenty-three people assigned to this Rat Extermination Squad stronghold."

"Of those, twenty were combat personnel and three were support staff. From the memo on the phone, the owner should have been a logistics worker responsible for recording casualties and receiving supplies from headquarters."

"The last entry was made five days ago. It seems the squad's combat team suffered a devastating blow. Out of twenty combat personnel, only three made it back alive to the safehouse. Two of those survivors had fatal injuries and died shortly afterward."

Xu Xiaolong listened in a daze, not understanding what clue Su Cheng had actually uncovered.

"In other words, there were six members of the Rat Extermination Squad in the stronghold at the time, counting those two heavily wounded combatants who later died. But inside that mutant rat monster's stomach, I only found five mutilated corpses."

Although those corpses had been badly mangled, Su Cheng had still pieced their severed limbs together and concluded that only five people had been eaten by the mutant rat monster.

So where had the sixth person gone?

Hearing Su Cheng's reasoning, Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei seemed to realize something. A chill rose up their spines, and they felt cold all over.

"Maybe the last one escaped from the mutant rat monster's claws and went to find help," Zhang Wei suggested.

Su Cheng shook his head. "Do you remember that when we came in, the iron door had been locked from the inside? There was no way that rat monster ate people and then locked itself in afterward."

"In other words, the surviving combatant was very likely infected by some unknown virus, turned into the mutant rat monster we saw, and then swallowed everyone in the stronghold. The Rat Extermination Squad members, in order to keep the monster from escaping, locked the door from the inside before they died."

Though it was only Su Cheng's deduction, it was already very close to the truth.

As for why that combatant had turned into a rat-man, that remained an unresolved mystery.

At the thought of a living human transforming into a revolting rat and then devouring his own kind, Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei both shuddered.

Just then, a message arrived on the phone in Su Cheng's hand.

"A message from Rat Extermination Squad headquarters!"

When they saw its contents, everyone's face instantly turned ashen.