Fantasy Game: Infinite City

Ten o'clock in the morning.

As the researchers left the dormitory area one after another, or boarded the base's transport vehicles from the planes at the dedicated airport near the base, the checkpoints leading to the large lifting platform above the base began to check the researchers who arrived at the checkpoints.

Of course there are exceptions, such as an inconspicuous jeep that drove straight through all checkpoints without being stopped once. It quickly arrived at the lifting platform from the airport. The jeep drove directly onto the lifting platform, and as the lifting platform slowly descended, a few minutes later, the jeep arrived at the gate of the research base deep underground.

"Om~~~"

Heavy metal gates opened quickly, and the jeep drove directly to the deepest part of the base that vehicles could reach, stopped at the designated area, and four people got off the jeep. They began to walk deeper into the base, and after walking through several special passages, they successfully entered the main area of ​​the base.

The person walking in the second position was the person in charge of the research base and a senior executive of the scientific research department. He and Han Zu had some connections. The person in charge of the exploration team that Han Zu had rescued was his younger brother, so the senior executive had a very good impression of Han Zu. Han Zu also had a good impression of him. To paraphrase Han Zu, he was a practical man who was consistent in his words, took his work seriously, and was rarely lazy.

Walking in front of him was his guard, who was always wearing a full-coverage nano-biochemical combat suit. I didn't know what he looked like, but judging from his behavior, he should be a very serious guy who didn't smile, and he hardly spoke. When he walked, his right hand basically didn't move, always resting on his waist, looking very professional, and his eyes were not just looking in one direction. If you look closely, you can find that the places he looked at were all more suitable places to hide.

There were two people walking side by side at the back, a man and a woman. They looked young, probably in their early twenties, a few years younger than Han Zu, who would be 29 in a few months.

The man walking on the right was wearing a set of overalls and a pair of beige mountain boots that you can often see in a repair shop, but his outfit was very clean and there was no oil stain. He was also carrying a large messenger bag, and from the metal collision sound coming from it, it could be guessed that it was probably some tools or something. He was of average height, about 1.8 meters, and a little fat.

The woman walking on the left, although also very young, was dressed very maturely, in a neat and slim black and gray striped women's suit, a pair of very simple black high heels, short hair, and a pair of triangular black gemstone earrings, it was unclear what material they were made of. Apart from the scarlet lipstick on her mouth, she was not wearing any makeup, but even so, her facial features were already delicate enough. She exuded a temperament that should not appear at this age, like a capable strong woman, or a sophisticated politician hiding a secret.

Walking into the main corridor of the main area of ​​the research base, the man carrying the messenger bag walked a little slower than the others. He looked around with excitement in his eyes, which was normal behavior for his age.

The woman next to him was different. She followed the footsteps of the base leader and the guards, her eyes only looking at the passage in front of her, never looking left or right. She was in stark contrast to the man.

A few minutes later, the four of them came to the outside of a laboratory. They could hear someone humming a song inside, and there was a strong smell of cigarettes coming from inside. It seemed that someone had smoked a lot of cigarettes in there.

The guard slowly pushed the door of the laboratory open a crack, blocked the person in charge with his body, and after seeing the situation inside through the crack, he nodded to the person in charge and opened the door for him. The person in charge then walked in. After he came in, the guard stood in front of a man and a woman behind him and turned to look at the person in charge.

"Let them in."

After receiving the order, the guard let the man and woman at the back in, then closed the door and locked it from the inside. He then opened the security gate of the laboratory, completely isolating it from the rest of the base.

"Give me one too!"

"Doesn't your wife forbid you to smoke?"

"Hey! Smoke one secretly, she won't know. By the way, what's the matter that makes you look for me so urgently?"

"I wanted to call you last night, but you finally got two days off, so I didn't call you directly. See."

As he said this, Han Zu took off his watch-like personal terminal and handed it to the person in charge. On it was a video with the pause button on it.

"This is the footage from last night at the base. See if there's anything wrong."

"From the base gate to your place, nothing seems wrong. Wait a minute! Why are all these small doors used by sentinels open? And why don't I see any sentinels?!"

Han Zu exhaled a puff of smoke, held the cigarette with his right hand, walked to the other side of the laboratory, and waved to the person in charge.

The person in charge realized that something big might have happened, so he hurried over, and his guards followed closely.

"Someone sneaked into the base last night, and seemed to be here to steal something. Coincidentally, the place where I slept yesterday was one of the places this person was going to. In order not to trigger the alarm, this guy threw a portable personal terminal at me, waking me up, and then I followed him."

"What did you say?! Wait a minute, let me see..."

After handing Han Zu's terminal to Han Zu, the person in charge took out his own personal terminal and retrieved the surveillance video near the lift control room last night and the surveillance video of the checkpoints along the way according to Han Zu's estimated time. A strange scene appeared. There were no abnormalities in the checkpoints along the way, but in the lift control room, a blurry figure appeared, and the sentry in the control room also fell asleep.

"This is not right. I know all the sentries in the lift control room. These two are the most hardworking of all the sentries. It is impossible for them to doze off before the shift change, let alone fall asleep directly, let alone two of them together!"

"Bah..."

Han Zu extinguished the cigarette butt in his palm, threw it into the ashtray on the shelf next to him, and leaned on the dissection table next to him.

"If you are sure that the sentries could not be lazy, then they must have been knocked unconscious. Before the sentries changed shifts at around 9 o'clock, I used the terminal to contact them and asked them indirectly. They did not find anything unusual. They just said that they seemed to have dozed off for a while. This has never happened before."

"What did that man come to steal? Did he succeed?"

"The thing I got back from the Aurora Hotel was the living thing that looked like a freak. And this person also went to the teleportation laboratory. I don't know if he wanted to escape through the teleporter or the game cabin or what."

"Where is this person?"

"Here it is."

Han Zu put his hand on the black cloth on the dissecting table, lifted it up and threw it aside. A restraint device made of various chains, anchors, ropes, and some metal blocks used for research was nailed firmly to the dissecting table and could not move.

"Well, what is this pile of metal?"

"Oh, it's tied too tightly. Wait a moment."

Since Han Zu's restraint techniques were very safety-conscious, from the outside one could only see a large bundle of chains, anchors, ropes and the like on the dissection table, and could not see that there was a person inside. So Han Zu spent some time removing all the restraint tools and throwing them onto the racks and hooks nearby.

"It's her."

A figure with a mouth stuffed with a bunch of tentacles, most of which were taken from Han Zu, her hands tied behind her back with twisted steel bars, and her legs crossed and fixed in a straight line with steel cables and ropes appeared in front of the person in charge and Han Zu. Because Han Zu's restraints were too tight, she couldn't even twist or struggle, and could only lie straight on the dissection table like a mummy.

"Hmm... have you examined it?"

"No? Oh, you're talking about this. I'm afraid she has some special means to escape or commit suicide, so I did this. I'll help her out first."

Except for the wriggling tentacles in her mouth, the other restraints on her body were quickly removed. Han Zuyi reached out and grabbed the top of her head, forcing her to sit upright on the dissection table.

"He asks, you answer. No matter who is dissatisfied, I will treat you to some of my secret barbecue. Do you understand?"

Whether out of fear, compromise, or acting, this mysterious person seemed very cooperative and nodded slightly. Han Zu turned her head towards the person in charge, and the tentacles in her mouth crawled out by themselves and hung around her neck.

"Who are you? What are you doing in this base?"

"Come to find the "holy object"...Ah!!!!"

Although the woman immediately answered the person in charge's question, Han Zu suddenly jumped up, grabbed her arm, and spurted out a column of fire directly at her right palm. The temperature was just right, and her right hand was completely roasted in an instant. Then Han Zu directly put the burnt right palm to his mouth and bit off half of it in one bite. The aroma of barbecue, Han Zu's creepy chewing sound, and the woman's screams instantly silenced everyone else.

"Eat it."

"Wha...what?"

Han Zu roasted the woman completely and put half of his palm, which was filled with fragrance, to the woman's mouth. Although the woman wanted to refuse, the strange tentacles directly controlled her head, forcibly opened her mouth, and forced her to eat half of his palm.

"What did I say just now? He asked, you answered. He asked two questions, but you only answered one. What's wrong with you? Are you hungry? Or do you not understand?"

"I say! I say..."

Han Zu patted the person in charge on the shoulder and whispered a few words in his ear. The person in charge's originally shaken eyes regained their firmness. He cleared his throat, took a cigarette handed over by Han Zu, lit it up and took a puff, then continued the interrogation.

"Who are you? Where are you from? What force do you belong to?"

The woman was silent for a moment, but when she saw that Han Zu, who was wearing pajamas next to her, had a pillar of fire with a deadly temperature immediately appearing from his open mouth, she immediately answered the person in charge's question.

"I don't have a name, only a number, 639. I'm from Q City and a member of the Night Owl. Someone hired the Night Owl. They're looking for something, a "holy object" that has only recently appeared on the market. I really don't know what this thing is used for."

"How many people were sent to this place to find this "holy object"?"

"Five! There are three more who started earlier than me, and there is one more behind me."

"Do you know who hired you?"

"I'm not sure about that. I'm telling the truth! I'm just a low-level member. I really don't know who the specific employer is!"

The person in charge looked at his guard, who reached out and put his hand on the woman's head. After a moment, he withdrew his hand and nodded to the person in charge. It seemed that the woman was not lying.

"What about the other four? Is it possible that they know who the employer is?"

"Probably not. They are low-level members like me and don't have access to any critical information."

"Why did they take you to the teleportation lab? Did you want to escape or cause any damage?"

"The senior member who manages us gave us some information about the mission and asked us to find a specific device in the teleportation laboratory. With this, we can directly bring the things back to Q City."

The person in charge thought for a moment, took a puff of cigarette and continued the interrogation.

"You have never been to this location before. How could you avoid all the checkpoints, stun the sentry in the lift control room, and avoid all the monitoring equipment in the base to enter the core area of ​​the base? Was there a traitor helping you?!"

"Before we came to this location, our superior gave us a detailed map with a route that could avoid all checkpoints marked on it. He also gave us some special equipment that allowed us to successfully reach the lift platform. He also gave us a location distribution map of all the monitoring equipment inside the base, so that we could successfully enter the core area. But I really don't know how those two sentinels fell asleep! That was not my fault!"

"How did you determine the location of this so-called "holy object"? How did you know where it is?"

"After we came in, someone told us to look for a portable terminal at a specific location and gave us a password, so I was able to find the location of that thing. However, I didn't find it. That's how I found the teleportation lab."

The person in charge looked at Han Zu, and Han Zu nodded.

"I've been keeping an eye on her for a while. That's right. This is the terminal. I also hid the freak-like thing before her. It's right here."

Han Zu opened a protective box nearby, and inside was the deformed creature, in good condition, with no damage at all. Then Han Zu handed the terminal that the woman mentioned to the person in charge.

"Transportation device?"

"I drained the energy from the reactor core in the energy furnace. She failed to successfully activate the teleportation device. I also left a piece of tissue in the energy furnace. Before I retrieve that piece of tissue, no one can activate the teleportation device."

The person in charge nodded, and his opinion of Han Zu improved a bit. This guy seemed reckless on the surface, but he was actually very smart. However, the person in charge's expression became serious when he heard what the woman in front of him said.

"There's someone in the base working with them. We have to dig this guy out."

"Do it one by one, or have you finished asking?"

The person in charge turned his head toward the woman, tapped his fingers on the portable terminal in his hand, and asked a final question.

"Do you know who asked you to find this terminal?"

"I don't know. The person was wearing protective clothing and his voice seemed to have been processed. I don't know the person's information."

The person in charge, with a livid face, pressed his temple and turned his head towards Han Zu's position.

"I'm done asking."

"Are you going to handle this person yourself or..."

"Leave it to you, Han Zu, no, Mr. γ."

Han Zu nodded, and suddenly grabbed the woman's head with his right hand. His five fingers suddenly inserted into her head and penetrated the bones. Almost in an instant, the woman's body completely disappeared. Only some clothes and the tools on them were left, without even a drop of blood.

"Let's go to my office. It looks like I have a lot of things to worry about."

"Go. Hiss... Huh..."