'Lixue, can you hear me?'
Lixue, who was about to start the torture session for the people in front of him, paused from hearing Thirteen's voice, 'What?'
'Uh…There's someone you missed on the second floor. A guy with a black rabbit mask.'
Lixue frowned, 'There are four black rabbits down there?'
Thirteen checked quickly, 'There are three including the one I just saw.'
'…I'm sure I got all of them. I ripped them apart and all that,' Lixue's eyebrows tightened, 'Something's not right.'
He took out 2 of the same sphere Thirteen used earlier and threw them with one further than the other. Upon landing, smoke sprayed out from them and filled the whole corridor, spreading to the entire floor.
The people who were held outside the room inhaled the smoke directly. They coughed with tears forming in their eyes until they passed out.
Lixue walked to the elevator, unaffected by the knock-out gas. He couldn't care less now about those people. He has a feeling that this one black rabbit would be a headache for him.
'I'm on my way to confront him.' Thirteen said as he walked to the door. The rabbit was heading to the entrance hall. He might be able to arrive faster than Lixue.
'No,' Lixue stopped him. He entered the elevator and watched as the door closed, 'This guy is beyond you.'
'Well, that's not pleasant to hear.'
Lixue looked at his reflection looking back at him with his demonic eyes, 'You're only human after all.'
At Cardinal main office building, Bai Linghua saw the shutter opened a few minutes after the 2 teams they called have arrived. She hurriedly approached Captain Yanyu and Shin Meimei.
"Captain, what did you do? How can it opened so fast?"
"I'll explain later. In short, Shin Meimei's acquaintance helped us," Yanyu nodded to the 2 team leaders as they and their team walked inside to handle the bombs, "What's new?"
Bai Linghua shook her head, "We still couldn't track hi–"
"Captain!" A girl with long bangs almost covering her eyes approached them, "We found something."
She was shorter than the three of them, only reaching their shoulder. She showed them her laptop screen which she flipped so it rested on the keyboard with the screen up for easier viewing. They needed to bend slightly to look.
"We detected a brief signal transmission before the second bomb exploded."
She just finished saying that when another bomb exploded. They were already used to it by now and only flinched a bit. Xi Yue flipped back the laptop.
"Hold it for me." She placed it on Bai Linghua's hand.
Her fingers flew around the keyboards. Bai Linghua and Shin Meimei looked at each other, not understanding what was popping out here and there on her screen. They just hoped she found something.
"Yes, it's similar," she opened a window full of data and showed it to them, "The transmission wavelength and pattern of the second and third bomb that just happened are similar. The problem is, they came from different sources. If the fourth bomb showed a similar transmission pattern, I can say with confidence that these bombs aren't exploding in random completely. Somebody is remotely detonating them. The second problem is, if that's true, then there is more than one person holding the detonators. Frost could also place several detonators in different places and linked those to one device. But…"
"There's more?" Shin Meimei asked bafflingly.
"Unfortunately, yes. The source of each bomb came from…5 different sources."
"He would go so far to confuse us?"
"No, that's not it," Yanyu cut in, "Are you 100% sure?"
"I can only confirm it if I have the third data. But for now, I can say I'm 95% sure." Xi Yue nodded.
"After you confirmed it, report it to the cyber team at HQ."
"Yes, Captain."
In many places, the Federation people were enjoying the game that Frost made for them. It was a casual RPG game that required them to kill different Bosses and Mini-bosses at each level. The backstory was set as the players being adventurers that were raiding a dungeon in the shape of the tower. Their goal was to reach the topmost floor where the dungeon king was by defeating his guardians on every floor. Although the setting was very simple and pretty common, the Boss Monsters were very well made. Each floor also required them to solve puzzles that became harder and harder the higher they climb.
"Idiot, don't move the tiles with the snake symbols!"
West's voice was converted into text by the game. His team member who was about to move the tile stopped.
"Why?"
"Remember the riddle at the entrance? It said that the snake is the pillar of the world. If we remove it, something bad is definitely going to happen."
"Then what should we do?"
After they heatedly discuss for almost 10 minutes, they finally managed to solve the riddle and the Boss of that floor came. As they fought it, they realized that its HP almost didn't budge from all of their attacks.
West recalled about the snake tiles and decided to try his guess.
"Everybody, stand on a snake tile closest to you and don't move."
After he saw that everyone signaled him an okay, he was already on standby. While his teammate was searching for snake tiles, he also searched for two with the closest distance to each other.
He removed the one in front of him and quickly moved his character to the other. As soon as the tile was removed, the whole floor rumbled and one by one, all the floor tiles except the ones with snake symbols crumbled down. Looking down, they could see the bottom was very far with spikes glinting at their end.
The monster's size was very huge. It fell together to the hole along with the tiles and was pierced directly by the spikes. Because of its weight, it fell to the very bottom with the spikes dripping its blood from the tip above him.
Yanyu and the others were analyzing where Frost was at when another explosion occurred. Xi Yue hurriedly switched to her laptop.
"It's confirmed. That game is the detonator."
"Report this to HQ and get the warrant. We'll find the first-place team and stop them until any of the team find Frost's whereabouts. Xi Yue, split your team to continue tracking Frost and the other assisting the specialized department inside when a bomb is going to explode. Use the transmission to locate the players. My team will head there." Yanyu ordered.
"But Captain, even if we catch them as long as there is someone still playing the game…" Bai Linghua reminded her.
"At the very least, we can minimize the damage. What if the explosives aren't just in this building? He never said anything about only placing them here. Knowing Frost, it's entirely possible that he planted them somewhere else too. Until we can track him down, the only thing we can do is prevent this getting any worse."
"Captain Yanyu!" another person approached her in a hurry, "You need to see this."
Yanyu accepted the tablet from her. On the screen was Lady Kumi that was shown earlier in the day. Except, her 2 hands that were still intact this morning were missing. From the screen alone they couldn't tell whether she was still alive or not. Her head was hanging weakly with her hair damp with sweat covering her face. Blood poured from her hands, spilling the metal table with blood on each of her sides.
"I found this when I tried to hack into Full Moon. This feed is live and is broadcasting in all of Full Moon's devices, including their member's communicator."
"That Frost, what's the point of all this if he's going to kill her anyway in the end?" Shin Meimei said hatefully. Although Lady Kumi was a criminal, seeing a woman being tortured like that was still too much!
"That's not quite right. He's not killing her per se. This is the timer he gave to Full Moon while we have the bombs as ours. It's just that our timer indicates the player's progress while theirs indicate the time," Yanyu clenched her teeth, "We must hurry. Use this to track where the source of the broadcast is."
"Yes, Captain!"
Lang Mujin watched the laptop screen showing the amputation show in front of him. Fortunately, he already ate before noon, or else he would've been hungry by now. But it wasn't like he could eat in this situation. He already wore his earpiece to cover his ears with some music, but it was still hard to ignore the scene.
His music stopped and a call came in. It was Yu Songfu again.
"What is it this time?"
"Brother Lang, they're heading your way. They brought not less than 50 people with them."
"Got it."
"I'll get there before them as soon as possible."
Notice: My college assignments are getting more and more piled up, so I'm going to pause my update for this month… I will continue the update again around November. Wish me luck (ミዎ ﻌ ዎミ)ノ