Chapter 39: Chapter 39

Chapter 39 - Unidentified Elf Carrying Bile Spewer as Flamethrower Spotted in Hellmire. Hxlldivers Are Advised Not to Imitate Her Action.

Their landing pods arrived and pushed the passengers outside. Parita, Neutrophils, Sparrow, and Andean emerged from the transports. The crimson wasteland surrounded them while the ominous noises of giant insects hissed everywhere.

Parita opened the map and confirmed the objectives. She turned to Sparrow and advised her.

"Remember, stay close to me. Don’t be afraid of fire tornadoes. We got stims."

Sparrow was still disoriented from the g-force and the harsh landing. She staggered several steps and didn’t hear what Parita had been saying. Fortunately, because of the intense heat from the flame and lava of this world, she got sober in seconds.

Andean didn’t wait for the group. He transformed into bats and left behind the default Hxlldiver suit. His life signal disappeared from the radar.

Neutrophils had it better. He sighed and covered himself with a golden aura. He patted Sparrow’s back and cast a fire resistance boost magic on her.

"Like she said, don’t be afraid of fire. Have faith in Goddess Ikol."

Sparrow got better. She observed the surroundings and sensed multiple life signatures of nearby monsters. Her expression turned dark.

"...There are thousands of them under us and around us."

Parita started moving and ordered them. "We don’t have to fight or kill everything we see. Follow me. Oh, ignore the nests and stay low. Stealth works in this game."

When stealth was mentioned, Sparrow came to her senses. She exuded a green aura, and her presence faded from everybody’s senses. Even though she was in front of Neutrophils, he could no longer see the elf.

Neutrophils nodded in approval and positioned himself behind the teammates. He wanted to see how Parita would fight in this foreign world.

Meanwhile, Parita checked the locations of the main objectives and finalized her routes. She highlighted the map and instructed the team.

"We’ll go pick up the launch code from the east side of the map. Then, we’ll detour around the map to head north and connect and upload data in that area. The launch site is behind us, so we will have to cross the entire map from the north to the south. Then, we head west and extract. Any question?"

Neutrophils tilted his head. "Yes."

"What are the invisible monsters that have been following me?"

Parita turned around. Just in time, Neutrophils turned his gun to the left side and held it with his left hand. He pulled the trigger while his right hand summoned an aura sword.

The basic rifle’s bullets accurately hit the invisible insects 100 meters away from Neutrophils. Three of the stealth bugs emerged in front of him, revealing their crimson scales and threatening long, barbed legs.

Neutrophils calmly sliced through the three stalkers with a sword aura and supported the rifle with his right hand. After dumping a magazine to the surviving stalker at a distance, he ejected the magazine and skillfully reloaded it.

Parita raised an eyebrow. "Oh, stalkers. I forgot about them."

"As you noticed, our enemies can use ’stealth’ too. They’re evolved ones, of course."

"Are all local monsters like them? If so, this mission should be easy."

Parita wanted to refute that a horde of stalkers was always a nightmare to gamers. She was curious to see how he would respond to them when they managed to amass a large group.

Sparrow’s rifle roared, and a single bullet punctured the head of a stalker, which had already arrived in front of Parita. Unlike a regular shell, the trajectory of the bullet left behind a sparking green light.

Sparrow let out a long sigh. "I guess wind magic is still useful."

A second later, the game informed Parita.

[MEDIUM BUG NEST ERADICATED.] Newest update provıded by novel✦fire.net

Parita rechecked the map. A small red area nearby vanished from the game map.

It wasn’t hard to deduce who had done it. Parita grew more concerned. She glanced at the system screen and asked it.

"Are they all John Hxlldiver?"

[Those people have the advantage of being good fighters in the real world. If monsters are vulnerable to light weapons, they can easily deal with them without using guns.]

"Jeez. Now, I wonder what their stats are compared to mine."

[You don’t wanna know.]

"Why? Are they overpowered or stronger than me?"

[No, but you’ll be very disappointed.]

Overwhelmed by the sense of inferiority, Parita decided to stop playing stealth. She called for the expendable anti-tank rocket launcher while she turned to shoot the patrolling team of hunters.

Provoked, the insects spat pheromone, calling for reinforcement. The ground shook, and many giant bugs crawled out of the ground.

Neutrophils sensed a threatening presence of a few monsters. He warned everybody.

"I DETECTED A HUNGER! RUN!"

Two bile titans rose up from the ground. Three behemoths followed, and a hundred smaller bugs accompanied them. They charged at Parita and Neutrophils.

Neutrophils roared and kicked the ground, jumping 50 meters. While suspended in mid-air, he injected his aura into the weapon and pulled the trigger. Holy bullets punched through the hard armor of a bile titan and killed it on the spot.

Meanwhile, Parita calmly dealt with smaller bugs and dropped a behemoth with an EAT. When she spotted the collapsing titan, she let go of the mouse and keyboard.

"Okay. That’s ridiculous. You can kill a bile titan with light weapons these days? Yeah, no. Devs! NERF PLEASE!"

The system suggested.

[If you wish to be as strong as your viewer, you can also dive into the game with your real consciousness. In short, use the VR mode.]

"VR Mode using my soul, you meant."

"Yeah, no. Let games be games. No SAO shit."

[Fair enough, but your viewers will keep joining your games in the future. Are you sure?]

Parita rolled her eyes.

"...Screw this. Give me the VR Mode after this game."

Parita laughed and played normally. She dropped another behemoth with an EAT shot to the face and left the bile titan to the paladin.

"Sparrow, are you still alive?" Parita asked for her voice without looking back.

Sparrow didn’t respond. Instead, she hopped on top of another behemoth and shot its butt. She shoved a grenade into the wound and leaped away.

Parita turned around and witnessed the Rico-maneuver in action. She dropped her jaw.

The behemoth’s rear organs detonated, and it went berserk. Instead of trying to get its revenge on Sparrow, it charged at Parita.

The behemoth ran Parita’s character over. The hxlldiver flew like a ragdoll and fell into a bug nest. Her character died instantly.

Parita smacked her forehead. She intended to surprise the uninvited players by demonstrating how a veteran gamer finished the task against the odds. In this case, she was the liability, not the asset.

Sparrow was unfazed by the death of Parita’s character. She ignored the prior mission and charged toward the largest nest nearby. Meanwhile, Neutrophils lost himself in the battle and continued murdering the endless swarms of insects. After he ran out of bullets, he tossed the weapon away and crushed everything with his sword aura.

No one bothered to use any stratagem or call for reinforcement.

Parita sat there, watching over Sparrow and Neutrophils. They were soon surrounded by stalkers and were stabbed to death. As for their kill count, it was over 500 within 10 minutes.

After the two fell, Parita shifted her focus to Andean.

The guy didn’t play the game normally. He split into a thousand bats and flew away in all directions, bugging the game’s spectator mode. She couldn’t find him or what he was doing because the screen switched and moved all over the map.

But in the end, 30 minutes passed. Andean didn’t return to the extraction point in time, and the game was over.

Parita’s game character returned to the super destroyer spaceship. As for the other players, they didn’t return along with her.

Neutrophils came back to his senses. He got up and looked around him.

Lupus and Rubella were by his side. They checked his pulse and complexion.

"You’re finally awake." Lupus snickered.

"...I had a weird dream."

Rubella sighed and pointed at the cube. "Yes, we saw it, and it was glorious."

Neutrophils looked up and noticed that Parita’s stream was still ongoing, and her game character remained in the spaceship that he had been in. He connected the dots and realized what Lupus and Rubella were thinking.

"Did you see my fight?" Neutrophils asked to make sure, even though he knew.

Appendix answered instead. "You were like a hero, sir."

Neutrophils was embarrassed. He grumbled and rubbed his face with his crude hand. He then thought of Andean and Sparrow.

"Wait. What about that Condor bastard?"

Lupus replied. "He stayed and fought until the flying metal abandoned him. He probably died there too."

"Heh. Serve him right."

Rubella laughed bitterly. "Too bad, though. I thought you would have brought back the weapons from that world."

Neutrophils paused to think and got up. He walked toward the cube once more. Hoping to rejoin the game, he touched the cubic screen.

The floating system panel manifested and warned him.

[You have already played the game today.]

[You may enter the game world only once a day.]

Neutrophils smacked his lips. He regretted not having tried harder. However, he swore that he would be more prepared next time.

Lupus peeked over Neutrophils’ shoulders and read the system messages. It piqued his curiosity.

"Say, how dangerous were the monsters and that giant Hunger? Do you think a regular A-rank adventurer can handle them?"

Neutrophils shrugged as the bile titans and behemoths were a lot weaker than Hungers and Starves.

"They serve well as practice targets. I wish all adventurers could practice battling them every day, so they wouldn’t get hurt in an actual fight."

"Not everybody has 10 gold coins, though. Do you think you can convince the kid to decrease the fee?"

Neutrophils thought about it and had a few ideas. However, he wasn’t confident that she would cooperate after what H5N8 had done to her.

While everybody was chatting, Parita’s movement changed. Her Live2D model disappeared from the screen, and she no longer moved like a stiff robot. The game character picked a new ’Hxlldive’ mission and deployed herself to the fire planet.

Appendix was the only one who noticed it. He couldn’t stop chewing the sweet potato in his hand. If he had modern 3D glasses, he would have worn them.

The next moment, Parita’s deployment capsule entered the atmosphere and flew straight toward the battlefield. It pierced right through a strolling bile titan and alerted the horde.

A curvy soldier emerged from the capsule. However, she was unarmed. Casually, she walked straight toward the horde of bile spewers and armored warrior bugs.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Appendix noticed Parita’s odd behavior and raised his voice to get everybody’s attention. "Look! Look! The lad is doing something crazy again!"

Lupus and the two others turned their heads in unison just in time.

Her game character was already soaked in yellow fluid, and the armor was melted into goo. Despite the threatening acid, she reached out and seized one of the fattest bile spewers and lifted it. She turned the monster toward another and kicked its belly.

The spewer hissed and sprayed acid onto the nearby insects. She dragged it around and marched straight toward the nearest bug lair while enduring countless jabs and stabs from smaller bugs.

Her armor came off, revealing the pink elf underneath. She remained unharmed despite countless gnarly attacks.

Neutrophils and Lupus dropped their jaws. They couldn’t imagine themselves being surrounded by a thousand giant bugs and allowing themselves to be attacked from all sides.

Parita stood at the edge of a bug hole. She ripped the fat bug’s head off and poured the juices into the hole instead of a grenade. Acid quickly filled the hole, and the weaker insects inside screamed in agony. The hole automatically collapsed.

She smiled and turned around, sending a malicious stare at the bug crowd behind her.

"Who’s next? You there, Miss I’m-On-Permanent-Period! Get over here and let me borrow your fat ass!"

Lupus, Neutrophils, Appendix, and Rubella were speechless.