86. Slacking Off and Then Encountering Miss Bomber

In the damp sewer, a group of mercenaries surrounded the White Fox, firing in rapid succession, forcing her to roll and howl in pain. Her wretched cries sent the nearby rats fleeing in all directions.

“That should do it. Let’s catch her now!” one of the mercenaries suggested.

The assassin dressed as a ninja released the trigger and pointed his gun downward. “Alright, let’s grab this lovely—”

His words were abruptly cut short as his head tumbled to the ground with a dull thud. It was only two seconds later that his smoothly severed neck seemed to realize what had happened, and blood gushed explosively from the wound.

“Damn, enemy attack!” the assassin in the black coat cried out, but his head was swiftly chopped off as well.

A shadow wielding a sword darted through the sewer with lethal speed, harvesting the assassins’ lives like a grim reaper. Chu Jianlai’s ambush caught them wholly unprepared, and these assassins were nothing more than a ragtag team hastily thrown together, lacking any real coordination. Before this undead swordsman, they stood no chance; all they could do was grab their weapons and fight desperately on their own, even injuring their own teammates in the chaos.

Chu Jianlai, meanwhile, was perfectly camouflaged in the classic black attire, blending seamlessly into the sewer environment. He had pushed his undead body’s potential to the limit.

One assassin managed to escape the melee, attempting a tactical retreat, only to get hit square in the face by a flashbang.

“My eyes!” he cried, clutching his face in agony and firing his pistol wildly with his other hand.

Chen Shang strode toward him with a light crossbow in both hands. He felt a pang of embarrassment; though he’d acquired this versatile weapon, he hadn’t even tried half its functions. After all, he always had hired muscle to do the fighting while he stayed safely in the back, playing support.

But now, faced with this blinded assassin, it was the perfect opportunity to test out the crossbow’s abilities.

Chen Shang pressed the X and A buttons on the grip simultaneously. The weapon began to vibrate violently in his hands.

“What the—?” Chen Shang frowned, nearly losing his grip from the powerful tremors.

Suddenly, the front of the crossbow split open, and a rapidly spinning chainsaw blade extended outward. The crossbow transformed into a chainsaw—this was its “Chainsaw Close-Combat Mode.”

It was Chen Shang’s first time attempting a melee attack; previously, he’d always favored long-range tactics.

Brandishing the whirring chainsaw, he approached the assassin stunned by the flashbang and brought it down hard on the man’s head.

“Zzzz—!”

The serrated blade sliced through flesh and bone, sending bits of gore flying. Amid the assassin’s screams, Chen Shang hacked his head cleanly in two and gave his body a few more blows for good measure, ensuring he had no chance of regenerating.

“Disgusting…” Chen Shang drew a deep breath and activated his calming hormones.

No matter how much his mind had changed, he was still an ordinary, honest man in his previous life. Even if his thoughts were far more reckless now, his physiology couldn’t bear the sight of corpses—especially those he’d killed himself.

He didn’t want his partners to witness him vomiting at the sight of a dead body.

After dispatching the assassin, Chen Shang turned his gaze toward the nearby battlefield.

Chu Jianlai truly lived up to his reputation as a near-bug-level powerhouse in this game. Though the top-tier assassins had left plenty of wounds on him, they were ultimately no match.

Glancing at the corpses strewn across the ground, Chu Jianlai wiped blood from his cheap mask and strode quickly toward Chen Shang.

“They’re all dead. Were they sent by the Xu Corporation?” Chu Jianlai asked impatiently.

“That’s right. These are just hired mercenaries and killers bought by the Xu Corporation,” Chen Shang replied, kicking aside a severed arm. He countered, “You want to kill people from the Xu Corporation, don’t you?”

“A vendetta for slaughtered kin is irreconcilable,” Chu Jianlai gripped his iron sword tightly, his voice low and strained. “Those small sects in Kunlun District only followed the trend and have already confessed publicly, so I won’t pursue them further…”

“But as for the oligarchs, I’ll kill every last one—leave none alive!”

“No problem. There’ll be plenty for you to kill.” Chen Shang clapped Chu Jianlai on the shoulder with a smile.

Then he walked over to White Fox, crouching down. “Are you alright?” he asked.

White Fox gasped for breath, unable to speak from pain. Her hand gripped the harpoon lodged in her lower abdomen, but she couldn’t pull it out.

“That must hurt. Let me help you remove it.” Chen Shang squatted and yanked the harpoon free.

“Aaaah—it hurts so much!” White Fox’s anguished scream echoed through the sewer. Any scavenger passing by might think the place was haunted.

The twisted, sparking harpoon was tossed aside, and Chen Shang pulled a bottle of oral painkiller from his pocket, aiming the straw at her mouth.

“Drink this. It’ll make things easier for you.”

White Fox didn’t need wound treatment or fear hemorrhaging; for her, the pain was the greatest obstacle.

“Ha…ha…what is this? I don’t want any medicine!” she eyed the bottle warily, her rotting tongue licking her lips with hesitation.

Though she was nearly fainting from pain and blood poured from her abdominal wound, her childhood spent as a lab subject had left her instinctively distrustful of drugs.

“It’s a painkiller—good for you,” Chen Shang said, squeezing the bottle and letting the mint-scented liquid flow into White Fox’s mouth.

“Glug…” A little of the refreshing medicine slid down her throat, and a cool sensation spread through her body.

The pain in her abdomen eased considerably, and she could no longer feel the constant cellular explosions throughout her body. White Fox managed to catch her breath and even let out a relieved moan.

Immediately, she snatched the painkiller from Chen Shang’s hand and drank the rest in one gulp.

“So comfortable…my body doesn’t hurt anymore…” White Fox stretched languidly and stood, sizing up Chen Shang and the swordsman beside him.

The potent painkiller was high-grade stuff Chen Shang had bought from the black market. The priest had told him that even if he were crushed by a semi-truck, drinking this would block eighty percent of the pain.

Despite her ongoing physical explosions, White Fox could barely feel any discomfort now. She felt light and clear-headed.

Her face flashed with excitement and joy, but she quickly turned away, twitching her ears and murmuring softly, “You…really came to rescue me!”

“I told you not to reveal your abilities in the preliminary round,” Chen Shang said, spreading his hands. “If I hadn’t happened to be in the old district, I’d never have made it in time to save you.”

Chu Jianlai stared at White Fox in silence. Though he meant no harm, his gaze was somewhat unsettling.

“S-sorry! It’s just that when I’m in pain, I can’t think of anything!” White Fox forced a tough tone, but her fluffy ears pressed flat against her head like a guilty kitten. “I… I really caused trouble for you… Anyway, thank you both!”

Before being taken by the Radiation Bird Company for experiments, White Fox had been a cute, slightly tsundere girl with white fur and beast ears. Her descent into madness was purely the result of unrelenting physical agony eroding her mind.

Chen Shang emptied a dozen bottles of painkillers from his backpack and handed them to White Fox, instructing, “Take these. One a day is enough—too many won’t work.”

He’d originally bought these from the black market for his own use, but seeing White Fox’s suffering, he decided to share them.

With his calming hormones and healing skills, these were really just a hedge against “fear of insufficient firepower”—like stockpiling every kind of potion to thirty in a game, even if you never end up using them.

For White Fox, though, they were essential to prevent any more trouble before the tournament finals.

She cradled the bottles carefully, her face stubborn but her ears trembling anxiously. “Even if you give me so many, I don’t have money to pay you back!”

For White Fox, who was penniless and saving up for gene repair, it was impossible to buy painkillers worth more than five hundred a bottle, and the cheap stuff from the slums barely worked for her.

“These should last you until the finals. Consider them mission supplies from me,” Chen Shang said.

“Really…all for me?” White Fox swallowed hard, gratefully accepting the bottles.

On Chen Shang’s character information panel, White Fox’s favorability suddenly shot up by twelve points.

He thought for a moment, then added, “To prevent you from being attacked again, I’ll arrange a place for you to stay.”