Chapter 8 Officer Sang, Who's Not in a Hurry

What an unexpected thoughtfulness from this woman! In this situation, most people, whether through coercion, enticement, or moral blackmail, would try to keep the driver firmly in place before considering anything else; they would never release the person without having mastered superb driving skills.

Perhaps... she has some other source of confidence that makes her believe she can handle the current situation as long as she learns to drive, Kenji Hagiwara speculated in his mind, but remained calm on the surface: "Just knowing how to drive won't be enough to survive in that kind of racetrack. Let's wait until we're sure you can get through that race before we think about going back!"

"Hey! Why aren't you in a hurry to go back?" Feng Xingshou was puzzled by his reaction. Shouldn't most people in this situation be in a hurry to go back to avoid their relatives and friends being sad for too long?

In response, Kenji Hagiwara gave a seemingly casual reply: "Of course, as a police officer, I can't ignore people in need of help!"

"Are the professional ethics of Japanese police really that high? Do people from other countries also perform their duties so diligently?" Feng Xingshou's eyes widened in disbelief at this statement.

“Heh…that’s one aspect.” Kenji Hagiwara laughed when he saw that she actually believed him. “The main reason is that you were captured by this road game in 2025.”

Furthermore, according to the game's announcement, the first batch included a full 10 million Earth Star Blue Warriors. These 10 million Earth Star Blue Warriors probably won't only target people from Zhongzhou; there must be victims from other countries as well. Under such circumstances, my relatives and friends probably couldn't escape either.

In that case, I should first gather more information about this road game here, find its weaknesses, and ideally, investigate ways to prevent its arrival or capture the Earthlings before…”

"Ahem..." Feng Xing Shou wanted to interrupt him immediately, after all, she knew this was a live broadcast. If someone she had brought into the game through a skill card bug said this during the broadcast, it would be discovered by the viewers or the program organizers.

Will he be dealt with immediately? But this person seems very clever. He was taken from the explosion site to the racetrack by himself, and before he had time to explain the situation, he reacted so quickly and got the tenth place reward.

I've only told him the contents of the highway game announcement and what happened in the past two days, and he actually thought of using this as an opportunity to exploit a bug in the dungeon. If only it went as smoothly as he thought.

Unfortunately, this is a live broadcast. The moment he uttered those methods, the organizers and viewers would surely try to prevent such a glitch from happening, right? Well, anyway, having a temporary driver who is intelligent, not malicious, and has a high professional reputation is not bad.

As Kenji Hagiwara was expressing his thoughts, he noticed her dry cough, which clearly indicated she didn't want him to continue. He hesitated for a moment, then swallowed his next words and awkwardly changed the subject: "Well! We'll talk about these things later."

It's more important to understand the situation first, so could you please open the game announcement panel you mentioned and let me take a closer look? I saw a few announcements earlier, but they were closed quickly, so I didn't get to see the details.

“Okay!” Since the skill information was already hidden, and the other Wind Star Guardians felt there was nothing they couldn’t let Kenji Hagiwara see, they readily agreed and used their consciousness to open the highway game panel.

Kenji Hagiwara looked at the road game panel. The first things he saw were the previous announcements and a personal information panel. When he saw the personal information of the Wind Star Guardian, he blinked in surprise: "Eh!"

If you are 35 years old, you will be 35 in 2025. In 2007, you would be 17 years old. I was 22 years old.

"You're five years younger than me. I'm so glad I didn't use honorifics when I addressed you. Even though I'm older, I almost did! Tsk tsk!"

.

“Actually, you’re only 22 years old now, and you haven’t lived to 40 yet. It’s too early to say this now.” Feng Xing Shou looked at his handsome appearance in his early twenties and retorted unconvinced. Anyway, she would never call a young man in his early twenties “brother.”

Kenji Hagiwara, also unwilling to use honorifics with women younger than himself, simply said with a grin, "In that case, I'll call you Kaze-chan from now on, no objections, right?"

"Feng-chan? I remember 'chan' means 'little' in Japanese?" Feng Xingshou was indignant: "I'm a 35-year-old adult, being called 'little Feng' is just too much..."

She didn't quite know how to describe it, but the thought of such a title coming from such a handsome man, and the people watching the live broadcast mocking her for being ugly and pretentious, or for being an old woman with a young heart, made her very resistant.

"What does it matter? I call all my friends that. It's just a habit. Don't worry about it!" Kenji Hagiwara noticed the slight change in her expression and his heart skipped a beat, but his face remained unchanged.

Instead, he asked with a grin, "Do you prefer to be called 'Hoshimori-chan'? I usually call my close friends by their first names. I was worried you wouldn't like it, so I called you by your surname!"

"Uh... let's stick with the surname!" Having known each other for less than a day, this person was already using such a familiar address. Was this what they called a "social butterfly"? Not socially awkward but also somewhat reluctant to initiate contact, she quickly changed the subject. -_-||

Having achieved his goal and avoided the crisis of having to call women younger than him "older sister," Kenji Hagiwara focused his attention on the road game panel, trying to touch it like a touchscreen. After finding that he could complete the task smoothly, he began to examine it carefully.

After he tried to check, Feng Xing Shou watched from the side and realized that she felt like her intelligence was being crushed. She had also checked the game panel before and found nothing except for the announcements. Even her personal information seemed to be a result of the changes caused by her resurrection after her death.

It wasn't until he started checking that he realized the road game panel wasn't empty; he simply hadn't found it. Hagiwara Kenji had only operated it a few times before he managed to find the game panel's function options.

Looking at the options, she realized that the game panel also had three other options: her region number, the number of survivors in her region, the car factory, and her personal information. However, there were still no region communication channels or world chat channels.

Currently, I only know that I belong to region 0256. The number of survivors in this region has dropped from 10,000 to 9,234. In just two days, including those who died during the previous races, more than 700 people have been eliminated...

Feng Xingshou couldn't help but gasp upon reading this.

Kenji Hagiwara remained remarkably calm upon seeing these brutal numbers: "According to the announcement, the previous daily dungeon and racing deaths were 172 and 509 respectively, totaling 681."

The number of survivors is 9234, indicating that 85 people died in the past two days. Having only been in the game for two days, even if they were hungry and thirsty, they would not die in just two days unless in extreme conditions.

If it's not due to physical limitations, then it must be the highway fog monster mentioned in the game's announcement? Wind-chan! Have you ever seen a monster lurking in the fog along the roadside?

"I don't like courting death." Hearing the other person call him "Feng-chan" so naturally, as if speaking to an old acquaintance, Feng Xingshou felt goosebumps.

The lumps all stood up.

.

Upon hearing her answer, Kenji Hagiwara immediately understood that this was a euphemistic way of saying that she hid in her car at night and didn't even dare to look out the window at what was happening. His gentlemanly and considerate nature prevented him from pressing the matter further.

I was going to observe it myself that evening, so I changed the subject and brought up another matter: "By the way, it says here that each season will have a disaster theme, what are your thoughts on that?"

He had also played the American road survival game, which usually involves driving and collecting supplies in special environments such as droughts and snowstorms. He had noticed since arriving on this road that the temperature here was around 25 or 26 degrees Celsius.

The sky, which was not obscured by the thick fog, was quite clear, with very few clouds. Such an environment did not show any trace of a disaster theme, which made him somewhat concerned.

Feng Xingshou had thought about this problem on her first day. She was worried that if it was like the high and low temperatures in the novel, she would have to rely on this car that didn't even have air conditioning. However, after experiencing two days of climate similar to that of the Central Plains of Earth, her worries lessened a lot.

Hearing Hagiwara ask this question, he shook his head helplessly: "I don't know. The climate was like this when I came here, and I haven't felt any change in the past two days, so I don't know what kind of disaster it is."

"I didn't feel it at all!" Upon hearing the answer, Kenji Hagiwara raised an eyebrow imperceptibly. Based on his current understanding of this road survival game, it was clear that the other party regarded the lives of the Earthlings as a joke.

After all, not to mention the challenges encountered while driving, such as attacks from monsters in the dense fog on the highway, the daily dungeons alone are like murder mystery games, where at least 10 people will be forcibly killed in at least one area. With 1,000 areas, that's 10,000 people every day.

The game announcement states that these daily tasks will be performed 20 times per season, meaning that 200,000 Earthlings will die each season just from this. This blatant malice cannot be concealed by the use of words like "rewards" and "survival" to show its intention to rapidly reduce the participating population.

In this situation, there is currently no trace of the disaster theme mentioned in the announcement... The smaller the trace, the bigger the incident. Today's racers are inexperienced, which is why so many people have died or been injured.

It is estimated that after a few more times, those with poor driving skills and weak mental fortitude will be eliminated. Once people are proficient in handling daily racing challenges, the game developers will no longer be able to harvest the lives of Earthlings in such large numbers as they have today.

At that time, the true nature of the disaster theme will probably be revealed, and it will be used to harvest the lives of the Earthlings... He thought of these things, but Feng Xingshou's earlier interruption of his words about the game and his expression prevented him from saying these speculations.

Instead, he shrugged nonchalantly, opened the car manufacturing function on the game panel, and said, "There's no other way. Since there haven't been any clues yet, we need to prepare for the disaster theme in advance."

I suggest upgrading the vehicle's performance as soon as possible. I've played that American road survival game before, and the strategy there is basically to maximize vehicle performance and store enough fuel, food, and water to cope with various challenges.

"That's what I thought too." That's why she ransacked that house. Hagiwara's words struck a chord with Kazehoshi-no-Mori. She also believed that since they didn't know what kind of disaster the game would create, they needed to be fully prepared.

Seeing that she agreed, Kenji Hagiwara thought about her storage space capabilities and, despite feeling pessimistic, still looked forward to it: "Speaking of improving car performance, how many materials have you stored according to the car upgrade methods on this panel?"