Chapter 183 Unexpected Mission
Day 12 of the Highway Survival Game!
Just then, not only in the dimension where Feng Xingshou was located, but also in the real-world train carriage, Gin, Bourbon, Scotland, Hagiwara, and Matsuda all heard a mechanical-sounding voice:
[Announcement: Survivor Feng Xing Shou has leaked game information to a dungeon NPC, triggering a dungeon penalty quest. In one minute, the game's penalty quest will begin, requiring survivors to find the dungeon exit and escape from the pursuit of mutated termites!]
Being killed by mutated termites results in failure and death in the dungeon. Being blocked by mutated termites and failing to leave the dungeon before the time limit expires also results in failure and death. Successfully leaving the dungeon ends the penalty quest!
This kind of mechanically synthesized, gender-neutral electronic sound is common in modern times and wouldn't surprise modern people. However, it's quite special when the sound seems to appear directly in one's brain rather than in one's ears.
Not to mention, the words that entered their minds clearly carried a hostile tone. Upon hearing them, the group instantly looked around warily and asked in surprise, "Is this the game announcement Feng Sang mentioned?"
"It sounds like we've been treated as NPCs in this game by the game's organizers."
"Are the mutated termite monsters dungeon monsters in the game?"
Upon hearing Gin's question, Hagiwara, who had experienced the Midnight Dungeon multiple times and killed some dungeon monsters, immediately replied: "I don't know. Currently, because we are going back to the past, we haven't traveled very far into the future after 2025."
We've been lingering along the past timeline. Based on our observations, the monsters appearing in the midnight instance of the Time Highway are all weak monsters from the past timeline; the further into the future we travel, the stronger the monsters we encounter.
"So far, the monsters we've encountered on these routes have all been ordinary Earth animals that have grown larger, such as wild boars and wolves that are two or three times their original size. We haven't encountered any monsters like ants yet," Matsuda replied, continuing Hagiwara's words.
Furthermore, these two individuals, who had experience killing monsters in the midnight dungeon, had each taken out their guns and were cautiously looking around.
Bourbon also worriedly said, "Real-world termites are highly corrosive and can damage soil and wood. Mutated termites are probably even more dangerous. I hope the game organizers didn't put a bunch of termites on this train!"
"The Suzuki Express train has luxurious, antique-style carriages built with a lot of high-quality wood, which are practically termites' worst enemy." Scotland opened the carriage door to check if there was anything unusual in the corridor outside.
And asked with some concern, "I wonder if this mutated termite attack will also target other passengers on this train? Or is it only targeting people like us who are involved in the game or those who know about it?"
"I think we can speculate that it's more malicious. After all, they've already called you game instance NPCs. Have you ever seen a game where players don't get involved with the NPCs while playing?" Hagiwara said with a half-smile, full of sarcasm.
Just then, Fengxing anxiously whispered in his ear, "Hagiwara, tell everyone that termites have appeared. They can be detected throughout the entire train carriage, no! In the corridor outside the carriage, and even further away... In short, they can be detected between the metal and wooden parts of the train within my spatial storage range."
Each of them was larger than a finger, and they looked ferocious. They were taking away a centimeter of wood from the carriage with each bite; at this rate, they'd probably burst out of the wooden furniture and decorations in just a few minutes.
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"Hiss! Everyone, Kaze-chan said..." Hagiwara gasped when he heard Kaze-sei-no-Mori's words. He quickly pulled Kaze-chan's hand away from all the wooden objects in the carriage while relaying Kaze-sei-no-Mori's words to the others.
At this moment, Bourbon displayed the qualities of a police undercover agent. While taking the same precautions against termite attacks as Hagiwara and the others, he didn't forget to maintain his persona, saying, "It seems Granwitt guessed right. It seems the organizers of this game want all the passengers on the train to become termite food."
“Termites bigger than a finger, these are the ones!” Gin stepped on several large ants, at least 10 centimeters long, white in color, and thicker than a human thumb, that had just emerged from the carpet in the carriage. He crushed the first few mutated termites that had appeared on the spot.
However, the next second, white smoke billowed from the sole of the shoe from which Gin crushed the ant, accompanied by a pungent odor. This caused Gin and the others to immediately take a few steps back and look down at the source of the white smoke.
Only then did they discover that the remains of those crushed termites still contained some filth. Both the remains and the filth were highly corrosive, corroding the surrounding carpet and wood. It took only a few seconds to corrode a small area before the white smoke stopped.
Seeing this, Feng Xingshou immediately moved to Gin's side with concern. While looking at his brother's feet, he took out a storage box containing disposable slippers and said, "Brother! Are your shoes corroded? I have some spares here. Change them quickly."
These are disposable slippers I found in the ship's supply depot last time. Although wearing slippers in this situation is not good, it's still better than having my feet corroded by something like strong acid.
As a result, Gin took her kindness for granted and mocked her with the rich man's disdain for the poor: "Hmph! Do you think I would buy those cheap shoes that cost at most a hundred or two hundred like you?"
"..." Feng Xingshou then noticed that although the carpet and the wooden floor underneath it had been corroded by termite remains, almost the size of half a table in the carriage, his brother's shiny black leather shoes had not changed at all, and there had been no white smoke at all.
Then she thought about how her brother's hat, coat, and shoes were all custom-made at high prices. His black coat even had good bulletproof capabilities. She had heard her brother say that he wanted to have several sets made for her to change into, but she immediately refused after hearing that each one cost more than seven figures.
At that moment, Feng Xingshou instantly felt the stingy younger sister being brutally attacked by her rich older brother. Unfortunately, the money her brother spent was not the exorbitant amount she had imagined. Feeling frustrated that she had made a mistake in being frugal, she immediately packed up her storage box and quietly returned to Hagiwara's side.
Never mind, when has my brother ever made me worry?
While the siblings were talking, the others, who had no time to speculate on the meaning of Gin's words and the storage box that had suddenly appeared and disappeared, saw more mutated termites crawling out from all over the carriage, greedily devouring everything around them.
The group instinctively left the carriage and walked into the slightly more spacious corridor, thinking that this would help them avoid the mutated termites. However, they did not expect that as soon as they left the carriage, even more mutated termites would crawl out from the walls and floors of the carriage corridor.
Screams and noises erupted from other carriages as figures rushed out in panic: "Ah! What is that thing?"
"Such huge termites? Did they ingest nuclear wastewater?"
"Get out of here!"
"Attendants, attendants, what's wrong with the train's cleanliness?"
"Hey! Are they making a movie about a termite crisis with special effects?"
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"It seems your guess was right. The game organizers don't ignore your existence, but rather treat you as normal game NPCs, after you cause some kind of change in the past."
The difficulty of the game dungeons will increase. I wonder how powerful this mutated termite monster is? It will definitely be more difficult than the time we rescued people! At the same time, Feng Xingshou saw that people in the surrounding carriages were also running out after discovering the mutated termites.
They discovered that these mutated termites seemed to emerge from their carriages and corridors the most, and then the number radiating outwards seemed to be related to their distance from the carriages.
The closer they were to them, the more mutated termites there were; the farther away they were, the fewer mutated termites there were. By the time they reached the two ends of the carriage, it seemed that there were none left, which made her nervously whisper in Hagiwara's ear.
Although she said that, she didn't understand that saving Officer Morofushi was saving a person, and saving Akemi Miyano was also saving a person. When she communicated with Mr. Bourbon earlier, she also heard about the abandoned warehouse where the bomb was originally stored.
Several Japanese official chemical researchers, explosives disposal personnel, and public security officers maintaining security at the scene were originally going to be killed in the explosion. That incident changed the fate of others.
In addition, there are instances where the fates of Hagiwara and Matsuda were altered by death. Why didn't those instances increase the difficulty of the main story? Only the difficulty of Inspector Morofushi and this one increased? What do those instances have in common with this one?
Although Feng Xingshou is not good at reasoning and his intelligence is worlds apart from his brother's, he has learned a lot of practical things under Gin's Spartan-style education.
This taught her that when faced with similar problems, the first thing to consider is finding the common ground between the two in order to understand why the game's difficulty might be increased or even why a penalty mechanism might be triggered.
When she pondered the common ground between the two, she realized that in today's instance, they hadn't even looked for the crisis of destruction. Their main task was to pass on the information about the game's arrival in the future to the people of the past, without doing anything else.
So that's what she thought of first. It was at this moment that she suddenly remembered that in the instance where they rescued Officer Morofushi, they didn't tell Hagiwara about the arrival of the game with their friend, Captain Date.
But I also revealed some things to him, and I even used my backpack space to store items in front of him. Could it be because of this? Last time I didn't reveal much, just slightly increased the difficulty of the dungeon. Did I order a geological disaster to occur in the dungeon without prior notice?
Did they leak specific information about the game's future arrival, raising the difficulty of dungeons to the point of triggering a penalty mode? This speculation seems a bit off.
Regarding the information leak, they had previously discussed it with Hagiwara's friend and brother via phone! They even knew more than their class monitor, but due to various coincidences, they never met to discuss it. Could it be...?
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