area51novel 019 The Game of the Elites
019 The Game of the Elites
The CC1000 express train, puffing out white steam, came to a smooth stop on the platform of Kassel College.
The sun was shining brightly, illuminating the red maple leaves covering the mountains and the medieval-style castle, making it almost dazzling.
"We've arrived." Nono stood up from her seat, stretched, and her dark red hair danced in the morning light.
She pulled out a long, black gun case from somewhere and slung it over her shoulder.
"Finger, you're in charge of taking our S-class student to dormitory 303 in Zone 1, and also help him pick up his school uniform and student ID."
"Why?! I paid my tuition too, and today is my 'day of freedom'!" Fingel wailed. "I'm already in eighth grade, and I still have to serve the newbies?!"
"To go or not to go?" Nono patted the gun case expressionlessly.
"Mission accomplished! Take care, sir. May you get headshots every time!" Fingel immediately stood at attention and saluted, his expression changing as fast as turning the pages of a book.
Nono ignored him, jumped off the train without looking back, and quickly disappeared into the shadows of the buildings.
"Let's go, bro." Fingel sighed, grabbing his tattered duffel bag. "You're lucky; you've just enrolled and you're already here for Kassel College's biggest annual festival..."
"Whoosh—Bang!"
The moment Lu Mingfei's toes touched the ground, a school uniform boy thirty meters ahead suddenly exploded in a cloud of blood from his chest. He was struck as if by a sledgehammer, falling straight to the ground on the lawn.
"Oh my god! Freedom has begun! Quick, find cover!"
Fingel let out a series of shrill, pig-slaughtering sounds, and with a silky smoothness that was completely incompatible with his massive size, he slid down and knelt into the corner of the Odin statue's base.
Lu Mingfei looked at the bullets flying wildly in the sky, twitched his nose, and tried to smell the gunpowder in the wind.
Fake bullets, fake blood, fake death.
"Boring," he muttered.
He walked behind the statue, squatted down next to Fingel, and was about to ask what was going on.
My phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket; it was a message from Lao Tang on QQ.
Old Tang: "Hey bro, got there safely? What's that lousy university like?"
Lu Mingfei glanced up at the campus square and typed back: "They're all lunatics. School hasn't even started yet, and these guys are out playing paintball, they're so bored."
Old Tang replied swiftly: "Damn, so he's just after a degree. Rich kids really know how to have fun. Be careful, you're not in the same social class as these rich people. Don't get tricked into joining a pyramid scheme just to fit into a circle that doesn't belong to you!"
Looking at the witty banter on the screen, Lu Mingfei shook his head and casually put his phone away.
Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound came from the air, and a specially made tranquilizer dart was aimed straight at his forehead.
Lu Mingfei had an instinctive premonition, but hadn't really reacted yet.
hum-
Ripples spread through the air, and a hexagonal barrier appeared out of thin air.
"Snapped!"
The high-speed projectile struck the thin film and was instantly crushed into a disc, which clattered down in front of the shoe.
Fingel, who was clutching his head, happened to see this scene through his fingers. His eyes almost popped out of their sockets, and his jaw slammed hard on the ground.
"Holy crap... Dustless Land?! Instant cast without needing to chant dragon runes?!" Fingel gasped. "No wonder you're S-rank, you're a monster!"
Lu Mingfei stared at the plastic lump on the ground, tacitly accepting Fingel's assumption.
The gunfire outside gradually subsided, and the lawn, billowing with red smoke, was littered with "corpses."
After the area was cleared, it was finally the big fish's turn to appear.
At either end of the square, the blond young master held two Desert Eagles, while the expressionless man in black held a long knife in his other hand.
"It's Caesar from the Student Council versus Chu Zihang from the Lionheart Society," Fingel said.
With a few laughable lines like, "To be able to stand before me, you're stronger than I thought," the two suddenly collided. Sparks flew from the metal clashing, and the wind from their blades even sliced through the bushes of the flowerbed. Amidst Fingel's frantic hand-rubbing and earth-shattering commentary, the two fought with fluid, graceful movements.
What kind of crappy turn-based game is this? Why are they still making melee combat games in the 21st century?
Lu Mingfei suddenly found it ridiculous.
Gendo Ikari, that cold-blooded old man, was willing to treat his own son as an unrecoverable biological component and stuff him directly into an EVA just to win. He had no regard for chivalry; as long as he could win, he would use any available resources, even clones that violated morality and ethics.
He thought of Misato Katsuragi. The one who, even as the Angel was falling from orbit, gritted her teeth and roared through the channel in a split second, recalculating the trajectory so that three eligible individuals could catch the asteroid-sized Angel with their bare hands.
He even thought of Asuka. That young lady, who was usually as proud as a peacock, had her intestines bitten through and her eyes gouged out when faced with the encirclement of mass-produced EVAs. Yet, she was still like a mad dog driven to the brink of despair, spitting blood wildly in the cockpit and roaring, "Kill you all!" She was still fighting frantically until the very last moment.
Survival is a dirty, brutal struggle in a quagmire. As long as you can stab the enemy in the core, you can bite, pry, or ram your head into them.
Once the umbilical cord power is cut off, Shinji will strip away all human rationality in a desperate situation, like a beast lying on the ruins to devour the hearts of the Angels. That ferocity, capable of tearing apart even the walls of the heart, is a thousand times more terrifying than these two young masters in front of him who are particular about aristocratic etiquette and still remember to strike a pose.
The only explanation for keeping these dragon-slaying elites with superhuman bloodlines so well-fed is that the dragons here are incredibly weak. So weak that these chivalrous young masters and ladies, obsessed with chivalry, still have time to use the apocalyptic crisis as a stage to display their adolescent hormones. If the Fourth Apostle had crashed into this lawn, these people definitely wouldn't have lasted even ten seconds.
"What a peaceful world it is, it's so peaceful it makes you sleepy."
Lu Mingfei tilted his head back, the back of his head against the cold statue, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on his face.
Reflected in his eyes were their gleaming swords on the lawn, and Lu Mingfei felt a surge of anger rise in his chest. Why were the people he knew reduced to LCL, while these lucky young masters could spout fine words and treat war as a clean, chivalrous game?
"Excuse me, buddy."
On the rooftop of the library's clock tower, Nono lay behind a low wall, slowly scanning the square with the crosshairs of her scope.
A figure that shouldn't be on the battlefield is emerging from the shadow of the statue, and he is now walking straight toward Caesar and Chu Zihang.
Nono bit her lip. She didn't know what Lu Ming was up to. She couldn't see his expression through the scope, but he looked like someone who had been woken up and was heading towards the source of the noise. If he just wanted to go over and say a few sarcastic remarks, that wouldn't be a big deal. Caesar was thick-skinned, and Chu Zihang wasn't the type to draw his sword over a few words.
But if he makes a move...
Her index finger rested on the trigger, and she hesitated whether to pull it down from the rooftop to stop it.
A tranquilizer dart hit her, and Nono's knees buckled, causing her to kneel and sprawl against the low wall. She struggled to turn her head and look at the church bell tower across the street.
Susie knelt in the shadow of the bronze bell and triumphantly raised her gun at Nuonuo.
Nono was so angry that her lungs hurt, and she had to open her mouth several times before she could squeeze out a sound.
"Su... Qian, you... you're so sneaky..."
The second half of the curse mumbled in the wind, her tongue already malfunctioning. She glanced one last time in the direction of the square; Lu Mingfei had crossed the flowerbed, and Caesar and Chu Zihang seemed to have noticed him simultaneously. Nuonuo wanted to see what would happen next, but her eyelids felt as heavy as lead.
"You brat... wait until I wake up..."
In her last moments before losing consciousness, she struggled to raise her hand and gave Susie the middle finger.