How Do We Play If This Boss Isn't Nerfed?-Chapter 71 - 69: Shocking Change in the Ruined City
Lin Ye looked at the friend request from his last opponent and the attached line of text, stunned for a moment.
’A ringer?’
Lin Ye chuckled, rejecting the request with a simple tap of his finger.
He then casually opened his match history for the day.
A solid wall of green "Victory" markers stretched from the top of the screen to the bottom, interspersed with the golden badges of rank-ups. It looked a bit ridiculous.
Not a single loss.
In the Iron and Bronze divisions, Lin Ye felt less like he was competing and more like he was just effortlessly cruising.
Or, as Li Jun would say, it was smurfing.
With the [Crush] mechanic, as long as his opponent’s level was lower than his, the all-around suppression was practically impossible to counter.
Lin Ye put himself in his opponent’s shoes. If he were that "Wind Chaser," he probably would have felt like he’d run into a monster, with no chance of winning whatsoever.
Just as Lin Ye was about to start the next match, a red dot appeared on his personal inbox, indicating a new message.
He opened it to find two unread emails.
The senders’ names surprised Lin Ye.
[Thunder Shock Martial Hall, Human Resources Department]
[Black Peak Martial Hall, Recruitment Office]
Lin Ye casually opened the first one and started reading.
The email was very polite. It started by complimenting the astonishing talent and potential he had displayed in his ranked matches before getting straight to the point and extending an olive branch.
It promised that as long as Lin Ye passed the Federation’s official Martial Artist assessment, the Thunder Shock Martial Hall was willing to immediately offer him a D-rank Martial Artist contract.
At first, Lin Ye thought it was a scam email.
But when his gaze fell upon the sender’s ID, he noticed a golden "Official Martial Hall" seal next to it, verified by the Martial Pinnacle platform itself.
He opened the other email. The content was largely the same—they also wanted to sign him.
The offer included a monthly salary of 150,000 Alliance Coins. He could also earn Martial Hall points by completing missions, which could be exchanged for Cultivation Techniques, Observation Skills, and even S-rank training resources.
Lin Ye mulled it over for a moment, not replying rashly.
’I’ll ask Mr. Chen about this tomorrow.’
Then, Lin Ye went back to his ranked matches.
...
「Five hours later.」
[You have been promoted to Silver IV!]
[Friendly Reminder: You have been playing on Martial Pinnacle for over 8 hours today. Please take a break and manage your time wisely!]
Even without the system’s reminder, Lin Ye was feeling utterly sick of it.
He’d been playing ranked for over eight hours straight; he was about to puke.
Lin Ye couldn’t even remember how many games he’d played.
Thankfully, he had finally reached the rank required to register for the tournament.
Lin Ye glanced at the time. It was just after four in the morning.
Normally, Lin Ye would be getting ready to head to school to train in the gravity room.
But Lin Ye noticed he was at about 92% experience for Level 12.
If he went a day without killing monsters in the Ruined City, he started to feel antsy.
’I’ll make a trip to the Ruined City and kill some monsters to hit Level 13 first.’
Having made his decision, Lin Ye headed out.
...
When Lin Ye set foot in the Ruined City again, he was met with a silence far deeper and more profound than usual.
The wind howled through the broken buildings with a strange, whimpering sound, kicking up dust and debris from the ground.
Usually at this time, even in the outermost Fifth Ring, you could always hear the distant roar of a mutated beast or two.
But today, there was nothing.
It was utterly silent.
So quiet it was unsettling.
Lin Ye’s figure moved swiftly through the shadows without making a sound.
As Lin Ye ventured deeper, the feeling that something was wrong grew stronger.
’The mutated beasts... there seem to be a lot fewer of them!’
He hadn’t seen a single roaming mutated beast on his way in, and he could hardly find any fresh tracks on the ground.
It was as if the creatures in these ruins had been wiped out overnight by some invisible force.
Before he knew it, the silhouette of the chemical plant, crouching on the horizon like a steel behemoth, came into view again.
He had reached the Third Ring.
Lin Ye slowed his pace, raising his vigilance to its absolute peak.
The very instant he stepped across the border into the Third Ring, the thick, almost tangible stench of blood assaulted him.
Lin Ye’s pupils constricted slightly.
Using the cover of a broken window frame high above, he looked toward the source of the bloody smell.
The next moment, he saw a sight that made his skin crawl.
On the wide-open ground outside the chemical plant, the corpses of numerous mutated beasts lay scattered about.
Mutated dogs, mutated hyenas, and even a few massive mutated wild boars.
The state of the bodies was horrific.
Not a single one was intact.
Some were sliced in half at the waist as if by a sharp weapon, their entrails spilling onto the ground.
Others had their entire bodies smashed to a pulp, reduced to unrecognizable piles of flesh.
Lin Ye’s gaze swept over the corpses.
The blood was still fresh, not yet fully coagulated.
These mutated beasts hadn’t been dead for long.
Half a day at most.
’Who did this?’
Lin Ye suppressed his shock and didn’t approach the pile of bodies rashly.
He chose to go around.
Sticking to the shadows of the buildings, he crept deeper, one extremely careful step at a time.
Soon, in a well-hidden corner between two buildings, he found something scattered on the ground.
It was a collection of pure white fragments.
Lin Ye’s eyes narrowed.
He crouched down and used the tip of his spear to gently lift the largest piece.
’It’s the material from a protective suit!’
’Exactly the same as the one worn by those two mysterious people he’d seen last time!’
He brought the fragment closer to examine it, and a detail that chilled him even more emerged.
The edges of the fragments were covered in messy tears, and all the fibers were curled outward, away from the inside.
It was as if...
...something had forcefully broken out from *inside* the suit, tearing it to shreds!
Lin Ye felt a chill crawl up his spine.
His gaze fell to the ground beside the suit fragments.
There, in the thick dust, were several extremely clear footprints.
The outline of the footprints looked somewhat human.
But the size was terrifyingly large!
They were more than twice the size of an adult man’s foot!
ROAR—!!!
At that very moment, a strange, muffled, yet incredibly violent roar echoed from the top of a tall building not far away!
The sound was completely different from any mutated beast Lin Ye had ever heard.
Lin Ye’s heart leaped into his throat.
Acting on pure instinct, he instantly shrank into the deepest shadows of a nearby ruin, holding his breath completely.
He slowly raised his head, looking toward the source of the sound.
Through a gap in the structure above him, he saw a massive figure standing on the edge of a ten-story abandoned residential building dozens of meters away.
It was a mutated beast the likes of which Lin Ye had never seen before.
Its body was covered in thick, striped fur, and it stood at least three meters tall. Its form had the pointed ears of a feline but the long snout of a canine.
Two goat-like horns sprouted from its forehead, a dorsal fin ran down its spine, and its legs ended in hooves like a cow’s.
What made Lin Ye’s skin crawl even more was that this monster could walk upright, and its hands were incredibly nimble, capable of grasping things.
Above its head, a string of bright red characters floated clearly.
[LV.17] 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Lin Ye’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach.
’Such a high level!’
As he was thinking, the special mutated monster roared, easily broke off a huge piece of concrete debris—at least two meters square—from the rooftop, and hurled it down into the street below as if it were a small pebble.
BOOM!!!
A deafening crash!
The ground itself trembled.
Lin Ye saw a Level 8 mutated gray wolf that had just crawled out of the rubble get smashed into a pulp at the point of impact, without even a chance to yelp.
’What the hell is this thing?’
Lin Ye’s mind was in turmoil.
The next second, as the monster turned, revealing more details to Lin Ye, his pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks.
He saw it with perfect clarity.
Clinging to the special mutated beast’s thigh and waist were a few tattered strips of cloth.
The color and material of those strips...
’They’re fragments of the protective suit!’
An answer that nearly froze the blood in Lin Ye’s veins forced its way into his mind.
’That isn’t an ordinary mutated beast...’
’It used to be human.’
