Ch. 34
Chapter 34: Fit Albert
The downpour was relentless.
Guo Shuai lay prone in the muddy undergrowth, eyes locked on the Humvee ahead.
When he made out the firearms scattered around those bleached-white skeletons, he didn't scramble for the loot like the others would have.
Instead...
He instinctively stepped back half a pace.
"Something's wrong..."
Guo Shuai narrowed his eyes as rainwater streaked down his cheeks.
The armbands on those remains were tattered, but he recognized them at a glance—Sakura Nation's flag.
"A fully armed special ops squad...carrying heavy machine guns and sniper rifles, wiped out in an instant?"
"And not a single sign of any real resistance—the guns are even brand new..."
The overwhelming wrongness of it all made Guo Shuai's scalp prickle.
His Danger Perception hadn't gone off yet, but the primal biological fear inside him was screaming.
‘Run!’
‘There's something terrible here!’
Guo Shuai gritted his teeth, his heels already lifting slightly, ready to spin and bolt.
But the next second, Jiang Nan's words—"My team doesn't need dead weight"—stabbed deep into his heart.
"No!!"
Guo Shuai wrenched himself to a stop, his eyes turning fierce.
"I can't leave!"
"I'm the scout! I'm the team's eyes!"
"If I run scared before I even get through the door, what face do I have left to go back and see the boss?"
"What right do I have to show Lao Yang the rest of this world?!"
"At the very least...at the very least I have to bring something useful back!"
"Confirm whether the Terminal Signal Tower is actually here!"
‘Do or die!’
Guo Shuai drew a deep breath. He trusted his Danger Perception—and that somewhat treacherous Eye of Calamity.
Fortune favors the bold!
He crouched low, using the curtain of rain as cover, and crept swiftly toward the Humvee.
……
Teaching block, second floor, Class 3, Year 3.
"Tsk, tsk..."
Lu Shiyan stood by the window, military binoculars raised, the cigarette between his lips glowing on and off.
"Another one with a death wish."
Through the lens, Guo Shuai's bedraggled yet resolute silhouette was perfectly clear.
"From the looks of it, he's probably going for the guns your companions left behind."
Lu Shiyan shook his head. "Men die for wealth, birds die for food."
Beside him, Hoshino kept her head down, still submerged in the grief of being despised by her own people, not saying a word.
"Tch. Boring."
Lu Shiyan lowered the binoculars and was about to turn away.
Yekaterina, who had been leaning against the window on the other side, also noticed Guo Shuai.
Her vivid blue eyes suddenly shifted—her pupils contracting in an instant into narrow, elongated golden vertical slits.
She fixed her gaze on a certain point within the rain curtain, and her red lips parted slightly.
"It's here."
……
School gate.
The rain fell harder, crackling and hammering against the roof of the vehicle.
Guo Shuai had already crept up beside the bodies.
He moved fast, first snatching the NG-7 machine gun from the ground and slinging it around his neck.
Then his hand reached toward the fully-kitted M416 assault rifle lying beside Ono's corpse.
His eyes slid toward the high-explosive grenades clipped to the tactical vest on the body.
‘Jackpot...’
The instant his fingers made contact with the rifle—
Within the rain curtain, a silhouette was darting between individual falling droplets, leaping and shifting continuously through the refraction of light and shadow!
At a speed no naked eye could track, it closed in on the back of Guo Shuai's skull with terrifying swiftness!
And in that exact instant—
Bzzt!!!
Guo Shuai's Danger Perception hit its maximum threshold! The red alarm exploded!
That deathly chill was more intense than anything he had ever felt before!
Before his brain could even issue a command—
Inside his left eye socket, the dormant Eye of Calamity seemed to receive a massive jolt and activated automatically in an instant!
【Warning! Warning!】
【Lethal-level life threat detected! Host response too slow!】
【Forcibly seizing body control! Auto-Counter Mode activated!】
The next moment.
Guo Shuai felt his soul being shoved into a corner.
His body, without any muscular wind-up whatsoever, executed a movement that defied all ergonomics.
Facing forward, it instantly launched into a blinding-speed back flip!
Suspended upside down in midair, the M416 in his hands and the machine gun around his neck both swung up simultaneously.
Aimed directly at the rain curtain where he had just been standing, he wrenched both triggers!
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Simultaneously, his teeth clamped onto the pin of a grenade clipped to the tactical vest.
Ding!
A snap of his neck—the grenade hurtled like a cannonball straight into that section of rain curtain!
Land, roll, rise, sprint!
The entire sequence flowed like water, so fast it left only afterimages.
BOOM!!
An earth-shaking explosion detonated behind him, and the fire instantly swallowed all the rain in that area.
The Danger Perception alarm cut off abruptly.
The whole thing had taken just 1.4 seconds.
"What...the...?"
Guo Shuai, already sprinting dozens of meters away, was completely dazed.
His brain couldn't keep up with what his body had just done.
All he knew was that something invisible had just tried to kill him.
And his left eye, to save his life, had gone and triggered an "emergency response" entirely on its own.
‘Where's the monster? Where's the data?’
Guo Shuai shouted inwardly while his body carried him sprinting forward under its own control.
But the Eye of Calamity didn't spare him a single glance.
Instead, it worked his legs like a motorized machine, driving him headlong down the hill without looking back.
Just then—
Bzzt!
Danger Perception fired off one more pulse!
Guo Shuai looked back in terror, but saw nothing except sheets of rain filling every direction!
Only when he finally burst all the way to the bottom of the downhill road and left the school's perimeter did the alarm in his mind go completely silent.
【Crisis resolved.】
【Auto-Counter sequence ended. Body control returned to host.】
"Hah...hah..."
Guo Shuai dropped onto the muddy ground, gasping hard, his heart nearly bursting out of his throat.
But right after, an nameless fire surged up inside him.
Not just fear of the unknown monster—more than that, pure fury at this eyeball that had taken over his body without permission!
‘What was this supposed to be?’
‘Am I the host, or am I the puppet?!’
"Do you actually have a mind of your own?!"
Guo Shuai shouted into thin air like a madman. "Come out! Stop playing dead!"
But the Eye of Calamity showed no reaction whatsoever, as if everything that had just happened were an illusion.
"Fine...so you're playing dead?"
Guo Shuai's rage flipped into a wild laugh, a manic gleam flashing through his eyes.
"First you size up the boss and Wang Meng differently based on who they are, then you let me win while lying flat like a maggot, and now you act on your own and don't even give me the data!"
"You really think Guo Shuai is made of clay?!"
He shoved himself off the ground, grabbed the machine gun, turned around, and marched straight back up toward the school on the hill.
"Fine! You won't talk? Then we go back! I'll deliver myself straight to that monster's door! We can all die together right here!!"
And saying that, he actually started moving, charging back with the look of someone utterly ready to die.
One step, two steps, three steps...
Just as he was about to step back into the alert zone—
The Eye of Calamity, which had been playing dead, finally cracked.
It was genuinely afraid of dying!
How was this host a complete maniac?!
"Stop stop stop! Stand down! Stand down RIGHT NOW!!"
An aged, exasperated voice erupted inside Guo Shuai's mind.
"This divine one surrenders! Unconditionally! With full honors to you! Was that what you wanted?! Now PLEASE, in the name of everything holy, stop moving your feet, you absolutely unhinged creature!!"
Guo Shuai's stride halted. He smirked coldly.
"Heh! Now you know how to back down?"
"Weren't you incredibly impressive a moment ago? What happened to playing the aloof system-type?"
"What an absolute coward!"
The voice clearly had no desire to argue with this madman, and immediately went along with everything.
"Yes, yes, yes! This divine one is a coward! This divine one is the biggest coward in all of the Savage Realm!"
"Please, just go back, don't throw yourself in there—that monster is something we cannot touch! We will get eaten!"
"Can't touch it?"
Guo Shuai still refused to let it go, planting himself in place and issuing his ultimatum.
"Then give me the data on that monster! Let me see exactly what it is! Otherwise, I keep walking!"
"Oh, kid!"
The aged voice was soaked in helplessness.
"It's not that I won't give it to you—that thing is just too underhanded!"
"It's hiding inside every single falling raindrop! I can't lock onto it for a direct scan!"
"Unless the rain stops, or it reveals its true form, I can't see through its panel either!"
"Raindrops?"
Guo Shuai's chest seized.
‘No wonder i couldn't see a thing earlier. It was hiding in the rain.’
‘How do you even fight something like that?’
He drew a slow breath and asked the most important question.
"So what exactly are you? Why did Liu-jie's Appraisal say you were a Cursed Object, but now you've turned into a chatterbox?"
At that question, the aged voice instantly turned haughty.
"Hmph. That little girl's Appraisal skill?"
"It's perfectly effective against inanimate objects—even I have to admit that—but against living entities it's quite limited, because there's enormous room for manipulation!"
"Especially against something like me!"
"This divine one has roamed the Savage Realm for over a thousand years, revered by the world as a 'God'—the divineest wizard who ever lived!"
"Fit Albert!!"
"What?!"
Guo Shuai's eyes went wide. "Your name is Fit Albert?!"
"Heh heh heh, mortal."
Fit replied smugly. "Well? Did this divine one's thunderously legendary name strike fear into your heart? Tremble before it!"
However.
The expected awestruck worship did not materialize.
The next second—
"Pfff..."
Guo Shuai couldn't hold it together. He burst out laughing right there in the rain.
"Hahahaha! Struck fear? Oh, it definitely did!"
"I really never expected that an S-Grade Boss was created by a divine demon, and the reason it was born was because..."
The expression on Guo Shuai's face became absolutely priceless as he recounted every detail dramatically.
"Because a pair of awful lovebirds, at their own wedding, exposed a certain divine god's childhood embarrassment in front of everyone!"
"Hahahaha! That's even more absurd than that one game character selling his dignity! I'm dying laughing!"
That diary Jiang Nan had thrown in the trash had ended up becoming the vehicle group's reading material for when they had nothing better to do.
Guo Shuai in particular—having had this eye implanted into him—had read that diary more carefully than anyone, not skipping even a single punctuation mark.
"......"
The voice in his mind vanished instantly.
Immediately after, Guo Shuai felt his left eye socket go scorching hot, like a kettle boiling over.
Fully triggered.
The untouchable dignity that had stood so tall just moments ago shattered into dust—not a single fragment left.
In his fury, Fit threw a tantrum, pulled down the eyelid, unilaterally severed the connection, and shut himself away completely on strike.
"Tch. Petty."
Guo Shuai didn't bother with him anymore either.
Regardless, all the intel he needed was already in hand—and on top of that, he'd walked away with a free machine gun, a fully-kitted assault rifle, and several grenades.
‘Pure profit.’
"Now I should be able to report back to the boss."
Guo Shuai flashed a grin, wiped the rain from his face with one hand, slung the guns over his shoulder, and sprinted away.
……
Inside Class 3, Year 3.
Lu Shiyan set down the binoculars, and the smile on his face had followed Guo Shuai's retreating figure.
"This guy..."
He watched that agile, fleeing silhouette and couldn't help but murmur in admiration.
"A hidden expert with truly formidable depths?"
"Not only is his reaction speed absurdly fast, he walked away completely unscathed from the Starving Wraith's ambush."
"And on top of that, he managed to walk off with 2 guns..."
Beside him, Yekaterina retracted her vertical pupils, and a trace of heaviness surfaced in her gaze as well.
"He should be a perception-type or reflex-type ability user of extremely high rank."
"His grade...at least A."
The 2 exchanged a look, and both saw the wariness reflected in the other's eyes.
Lu Shiyan lit a fresh cigarette and exhaled slowly.
"Fortunately he ran fast enough—didn't get eaten by the Starving Wraith, and didn't stupidly charge into the school."
"Otherwise..."
He blew out a ring of smoke, eyes drifting with quiet weight toward the corridor beyond the door.
"Our problems would be a whole lot worse~"
Hoshino, who had been huddled nearby the whole time, couldn't see the details of the battle in the rain.
But the explosion and gunfire from earlier had reached her ears loud and clear.
She worked up her courage and spoke.
"Mr. Lu...Miss Yekaterina..."
"That person seems very powerful...and you two are very powerful too..."
"If you're not afraid of the monster outside, then why...don't you leave this school?"
In her mind, couldn't they just fight their way out?
When Lu Shiyan and Yekaterina heard that, they both laughed at the same time.
A laugh edged with helplessness—and a little bleakness.
"Young lady."
Lu Shiyan turned around and looked at this naive newcomer.
"Didn't I already say so?"
"There's not just that one ghost here."
As he spoke, Lu Shiyan pulled open the collar of his windbreaker and bared his neck.
Yekaterina rolled up her sleeve and revealed her snow-white arm.
On both of their skin—
Unmistakably stamped there was a mark radiating black aura.
It was the shape of a human face...
Contorted in screaming agony.