With a heavy heart, Bai Long drank eight cups of water at the esper center.
Mainly because the esper center provided free drinking water for espers.
Free is free, and free is good.
Once she’d successfully drunk herself to bursting, Bai Long started thinking about where to find that elusive, nonexistent second teammate.
She was pretty sure that inspector at the starship station had been pulling her leg.
Because she’d noticed that everyone looking for teammates wanted people with commission experience, and not just any experience, but a solo C-rank commission at minimum.
The nerve!
So now even getting a job in the apocalypse required an internship record?!
Alternatively, she could be the squad leader herself, but then she’d have to pay her teammates a wage.
Bai Long’s pockets were cleaner than her face. If she tried being a leader right now, she’d be hiring people at a loss, since she couldn’t even cough up a base salary.
Not a single soul would sign on with her.
The situation was this: if she didn’t want to sleep under a bridge, she needed money, to get money, she had to do commissions, to do commissions, she needed teammates, but to get teammates, she had to do commissions.
Round and round, an endless loop.
She seriously started wondering whether she ought to find a temple somewhere and burn a stick of incense.
How could anyone be this unlucky? She’d finally managed to grab a job, only to get stonewalled by a headcount requirement.
Bai Long’s face fell, and she began seriously weighing the feasibility of tying up a zombie and telling the client it was her teammate.
Say what you would, she still had to eat. She kept the commission interface open, refreshing it over and over, filtering for jobs she could complete solo.
But after half a day of refreshing, the commissions that fit the bill either had headcount limits, or the ones without limits weren’t a high enough rank…
It was somewhere around her umpteenth time hitting the refresh button when she suddenly felt a wave of heat in her pocket.
She nearly thought she’d stuffed a bomb in there, the kind about to detonate any second.
She hurriedly fished out the thing in her pocket.
It was an egg she’d grabbed back in the urban village of the water city.
So much time had passed that she’d nearly forgotten she still had two eggs.
It was still warm after all this time, and Bai Long finally realized something was off about this egg.
So it wasn’t cooked after all…
The egg sat in her palm, hot enough she could barely hold onto it.
As a water esper, Bai Long had an innate dislike for getting close to anything that radiated heat, and her instinct was to chuck the egg right out of her hand.
But the egg seemed glued to her hand.
Even when she spread her five fingers and turned her palm downward, the egg stayed stuck firmly to it.
“?”
What the hell?
Had the egg turned into a spirit too?
An egg spirit?
Bai Long shook her hand several times without dislodging the egg, then narrowed her eyes and studied it.
On closer inspection, this egg looked a little different from an ordinary one.
Bai Long pulled the other egg out of her pocket.
Cool, faintly rough to the touch, give it a shake and you could feel the dull, heavy slosh of the yolk and white inside.
This one was a real egg. The one stuck to her hand, not so much.
That egg’s shell was noticeably smoother and whiter than a normal egg’s, it didn’t even have the tiny pores a regular eggshell would have.
She’d been careless…
And here she’d thought it was just a free-range farm egg…
Should she crack it open and take a look?
It couldn’t be about to hatch, could it?
Bai Long rubbed the egg between her fingers, her gaze drifting toward the metal wall beside her.
Just as she was getting ready to knock the egg open and investigate, the egg seemed to sense it, wriggling around to the back of her hand.
Bai Long: What breed of non-Newtonian egg is this?
She noticed people nearby had already started staring at her.
To keep anyone from assuming she was some kind of egg esper, Bai Long found a bathroom.
She casually stuffed the egg into her pocket.
The instant it touched her pocket, the egg that had refused to budge slid right off her palm.
Bai Long: …
If she’d had more than the one pair of pants on her, she’d have whipped them off and tossed this egg in two seconds flat.
Crouching in the very last stall, Bai Long wised up. She spun a current of water from her fingertips, wrapped it around the egg loop by loop, and hoisted it out.
The egg bobbed in the air, trying to inch closer to Bai Long’s hand, but swayed left and right for ages without ever reaching her.
Bai Long narrowed her eyes: This thing’s got something going on.
The next second, she abruptly felt the water current she’d wound around the egg shrinking, thinning.
…No, that wasn’t it, her esper power was being absorbed!
After the white egg absorbed her power, it visibly began to flush red from the bottom, the color spreading upward layer by layer.
Even across a gap of a few centimeters, Bai Long could feel the unusual heat.
And it was getting hotter and hotter.
“Crack!”
The faint sound rang out unusually clear in the empty bathroom stall.
A jagged fissure appeared down the center of the egg.
Bai Long was stunned.
W-wait, so it had actually been fertilized?!
The next second, her gaze locked with a pair of golden eyes.
Golden bean-sized eyes.
Out of the white egg had hatched a red bird with golden eyes.
“You…”
Bai Long paused, then thought it over seriously. “Are flamingo eggs really this small?”
“Cheep!”
The bird seemed rather indignant, but quickly blinked its little bean eyes and stared at Bai Long without looking away.
It was nothing like the wet, slimy newborn-bird image Bai Long had pictured.
This bird was covered head to toe in fluffy red feathers, like a little pompom. There was even a single feather sticking up on its head, red, with a golden marking at the very tip, and its golden eyes looked just like flecks of shattered gold.
Those eyes look pricey. Want them.
“Cheep!”
The little red bird seemed to sense that the person in front of it harbored ill intentions. It spread its wings, flapped a couple of times, and, would you believe it, actually got itself airborne.
It alighted gently on Bai Long’s shoulder and affectionately wrapped itself around her neck.
Snuggle, snuggle.
Not only could it fly the moment it was born, it was also remarkably attuned to people.
Bai Long raised an eyebrow. “You want to follow me?”
She seemed to grasp what the little red bird meant.
“Cheep cheep!”
The little red bird even nodded, blinking its eyes and gazing at her pitifully.
Bai Long laughed. “Fine. You can follow me from now on.”
As emergency rations and emergency funds.
If push comes to shove, I’ll just roast and eat the bird, she thought.
“Cheep!”
Oblivious to Bai Long’s calculations, the little red bird happily settled down on her shoulder and went still.
It didn’t weigh much anyway, perched on her shoulder it was as light as a snowflake, so Bai Long just let it be.
The key thing now was still finding a commission to scrape together some “internship experience” for herself.
Bai Long resumed her long, weary refreshing.
She hadn’t gotten through two rounds before the little red bird, which had been sitting obediently on her shoulder, suddenly appeared in her field of view.
It raised a wing and smacked it down right on the refresh button.
Bai Long pinched the scruff of its neck between thumb and forefinger and lifted it back to her shoulder. “Sit still, or I’ll roast you.”
The little red bird wasn’t even angry, it hugged her finger, nuzzled it, then pointed a wing at the commission interface to get her to look.
Not understanding what was going on, Bai Long instinctively glanced over.
She abruptly shot to her feet.
At the very top of the interface, a brand-new commission had appeared.
She hit “Accept” without a moment’s hesitation.
【Acceptance successful】
At the sight of those words, Bai Long got so excited she nearly walked into the door.
【C-rank commission: We’re out of food at home! Urgently need someone to go shopping at Hemu Supermarket!】
The commission fee was 1,000 credits.
It was the lowest possible payout, but judging by the content and requirements, it didn’t seem too difficult.
And since it was also a C-rank commission, same rank as the hospital materials delivery, Bai Long could use it to get a feel for roughly how hard a C-rank commission was.
Remembering that wing-smack from a moment ago, Bai Long broke into a benevolent smile.
“Didn’t know you had it in you, little birdie. Once I’ve got money I’ll go catch some bugs for you to eat!”
“Starting today, you…”
Realizing she still didn’t know whether it was a male or female bird, Bai Long lifted it up to eye level.
Her gaze traveled toward the little red bird’s lower half.
“Cheep!!”
The little red bird reacted with lightning speed, instantly raising a wing to cover its vital parts.
But Bai Long simply reached straight for its lower belly and felt up its little rump.
Narrow pubis, and judging by the stance…
“Good son, I’m your daddy.”
“Cheep cheep!”
The little red bird was trembling all over, whether from rage or something else, who could say.
Ignoring the bird’s extremely humanlike protesting expression, she reached up and rubbed its head, then strode out of the bathroom.
The client hadn’t insisted on meeting Bai Long in person.
The two of them worked out the details of the commission entirely through the commission interface.
The client sent her a shopping list directly.
“…Twenty catties of fish mint? Ten toilet plungers? Is this person planning to brew poison?”
But Bai Long considered herself a professional working stiff.
She kept her mouth shut about the boss’s hobbies.
After pinning down Hemu Supermarket’s location on her star-ring, she first took a detour to check the prices at a few inns.
Once she finished the commission and had the 1,000 credits in hand, she could find a temporary place to stay.
At that thought, a wave of sorrow welled up in Bai Long’s heart.
She’d assumed that having food would be enough, she didn’t expect to be stumped by the matter of where to sleep, too.
The schedule of doing commissions for credits was now pressing in on her.
Otherwise it was off to sleep under a bridge.
But Bai Long was highly adaptable, and she quickly straightened out her mood.
The esper center offered storage services for espers, so she dropped off her supply pack there and then headed for Hemu Supermarket’s location as listed on the commission.
…
Hemu Supermarket sat on the outskirts of Songdu, a vast, sparsely populated area with barely a residential block in sight for miles around.
Before the apocalypse, it had been Songdu’s largest warehouse-style supermarket, with bulk volume as its main selling point.
The supermarket’s footprint was enormous.
After the apocalypse, most of the supermarkets within Songdu had been picked clean. The ones that still had food stock you could shop for were extremely few, and Hemu Supermarket was one of them.
By the time Bai Long reached the entrance of Hemu Supermarket, it was already night.
From the outside, the supermarket showed only a few faint lights, hardly noticeable in the silent night.
Hemu Supermarket had drawn huge crowds even before the apocalypse.
After the apocalypse broke out, the management had quickly sealed off all the supermarket’s passages.
That kept out the zombies outside, but it couldn’t get rid of the zombies already inside.
Right now, the whole supermarket was probably crawling with a huge horde of famished zombies wandering around.
Open a door and you’d be met head-on by a vast tide of them, easy enough to go in, no guarantee of coming out.
Short of being utterly out of options, no one would want to come gamble at Hemu.
Bai Long had been pulled into a group chat by the client, a chat about entering Hemu Supermarket that night.
They’d assembled a band of people, planning to force open one of the supermarket’s passages.
…
At the supermarket entrance, Bai Long spotted several different groups of people.
A few of them had obvious tension on their faces, their whole bodies trembling, yet they were forcing themselves to prepare to go in.
They all looked like people whose food stores had run critically low, leaving them no choice but to come out scrounging.
There were even a few elderly people among them.
A head of black-and-white hair swayed in the night breeze, a wrinkle-covered face full of hesitation, hands wringing endlessly in front of him.
But besides Bai Long, there were also quite a few espers.
Bai Long looked off in another direction.
Over in the parking lot, people stood in twos and threes.
They all wore gear suited for action, cuffs and pant legs cinched tight.
They looked like seasoned veterans at handling zombies, and had probably also come on a commission.
While Bai Long was observing her surroundings, the people beside her were observing her too.
Mainly because she really stood out a bit too much.
Among everyone present, Bai Long was all on her own. Even though the cloak she wore made it hard to tell what she looked like, a few of the more experienced espers pegged her as a woman at a glance.
Bai Long was a small, slight thing, and her standing in a corner well away from the crowd clearly meant she intended to go in and collect supplies too.
“She doesn’t look like an esper. And what’s with the bird? Little girl out here playing around?”
The rather burly esper sneered coldly.
“Watched too much StarNet and now she really thinks she’s a savior, huh? It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t piss herself the second she sees a zombie.”
A short, small esper scoffed disdainfully.
“I’m definitely staying far away from her. Don’t want her latching onto me later. Women like this are the biggest pain, useless, and when danger hits all they can do is cry.”
“Forget all this miscellaneous junk for now. Don’t forget our objective this time. According to our intel, that thing should be somewhere inside here…”
In the shadows not far from them, the faint outline of a figure could just be made out.
The figure heard what they said, its gaze lingering on Bai Long for a moment before quickly vanishing completely into the shadows.
Wisps of purple smoke faintly dispersed through the air, scattering into the wind in the blink of an eye.
…
Around seven that evening, Bai Long and the others received a message in the group chat: the door had been opened.
Finish early, done early, Bai Long didn’t hesitate, heading straight for the door’s location as stated in the message.
The espers all charged out in front.
The remaining ordinary people fell a step behind, but thinking of their dwindling supplies, gritted their teeth and kept up.
Lagging at the very back, the old man held his star-ring, talking to someone or other. “Don’t you worry. I’ll just trail behind them, pick up a few leftover potatoes, and come right back. Tongtong loves potatoes. There’ll be some for her to eat when she gets back.”
“You be careful out there, you hear? I’ll be waiting for you to come home…”
“I know, I know, don’t you worry!”
The old man hung up the call, looked toward the pitch-black passage, steeled his heart, and rushed in.
The door they’d opened was a side entrance, leading to the warehouse where the supermarket stockpiled its goods.
Warehouses were usually staff-only, so there were far fewer zombies there than in the normal passages where shoppers entered.
After Bai Long went in, she just so happened to run into a wandering employee zombie.
Bumping into a zombie right off the bat, Bai Long had already made her peace with her superlative luck.
She pulled out her cleaver and chopped down at the zombie.
After the apocalypse, the original restrictions on weapons had gradually loosened.
This cleaver was something she’d swiped back in the water city.
That zombie never expected to run smack into a tough customer head-on, it didn’t even get the chance to open its mouth before it could never open its mouth again.
The man who came in right behind her saw the zombie with a cleaver still embedded in its face. His gaze flickered, and he took off in the direction Bai Long had gone.
Bai Long made her way deeper into the warehouse, genuinely staggered by the sheer size of the supermarket’s interior.
“Where are the toilet plungers? The household section?”
This was Bai Long’s first time at this supermarket, and just finding the product sections ate up a fair amount of time.
The little red bird stood unmoving as a mountain on her shoulder, heaven knew by what principle it managed not to get jostled off.
After winding around for ages, Bai Long never found the household section, and instead ended up in the fresh foods section.
The cold air originally meant to keep things fresh had all cut out due to the power outage.
The fresh vegetables and fruits, after such a long time in storage, had long since rotted and turned rancid.
Wave after wave of sour, putrid stench wreathed the entire product section.
After the power went out, the whole supermarket had sunk into gloom, with only a few emergency lights flickering, like candles guttering in the wind, ready to snuff out at any moment.
Bai Long had a sensitive nose, and these foul odors did far more damage to her than to an ordinary person.
She wrinkled her nose and was forced to stop in her tracks.
The little red bird on her shoulder was clearly none too thrilled by the smell either.
The fish mint the client wanted should be in the fresh section, but whether that fish mint was still edible was now a real question.
Just as she was caught in an inner struggle, a scream suddenly erupted from the fresh section.
“You old wretch, give it to me!”
“Let go! Let go right now or I won’t go easy on you!”
Bai Long thought she heard the sound of flesh being pierced, followed immediately by the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the ground.
Not far off, a shopping cart sat parked.
Bai Long’s feet started moving again.
Inside the fresh section.
The burly man from the entrance earlier, Zhang Chao, looked at the blood on his hand with disgust and casually wiped it on a water tank beside him.
On the ground in front of him lay an old man, blood seeping steadily onto the floor beneath his chest, his graying hair soaked through with bright red.
And those slightly cloudy eyes were still fixed on the potatoes scattered across the ground, his feeble hand reached toward them but couldn’t manage to touch them.
“Won’t take the easy way, so you get the hard way. The hell kind of thing thinks it can fight me for food.”
Zhang Chao spat on the ground, picked up the few still-intact potatoes, and prepared to stuff them into his own pocket.
Potatoes were highly sought after in the apocalypse.
Their starch content was extremely high, they greatly boosted the feeling of fullness, and they were the ideal food to stockpile.
He didn’t expect to walk in and smell nothing but vast swaths of rot, with some sticky, gunky layer of god-knows-what coating all the potatoes.
Zhang Chao had been fretting over how he was supposed to tell which potatoes were edible, when he just happened to stumble onto this old man gathering them up.
He’d meant to simply grab them and go, but he hadn’t counted on this old man being such a stubborn pain, clinging to his leg and refusing to let him leave.
Looking at the old man lying there at death’s door on the ground, Zhang Chao couldn’t resist raising his foot to stomp on him again, only to be sent flying by a shopping cart that came charging out of nowhere.
The cart’s hard front end slammed into his waist, and he was launched straight into a product display some distance away.
“Damn! Who the hell was that?!”
Zhang Chao felt like his waist had nearly snapped, he gripped the display and still couldn’t get up for a good long while.
“Oops, I couldn’t see clearly, thought you were a zombie.”
Bai Long pushed the shopping cart, wobbling slowly into the spot Zhang Chao had just occupied.
“Saw someone actually beating up an old person, so I figured it wasn’t human.”
The old man was helped up.
A big chunk of his head had split open and his consciousness was already none too clear, but his mouth was still fretting over his potatoes.
Over there, Zhang Chao was still cursing up a storm, propping himself against the counter, getting ready to stand up and make Bai Long pay.
“Sneak attacks, what kind of skill is that?! If you’ve got the guts, fight me head-on!”
Zhang Chao didn’t believe for a second that Bai Long could beat him.
One look at her thin arms and skinny legs, if she hadn’t seized her chance for a sneak attack, how could he possibly have lost to her?
Bai Long had no desire to waste words on this person. She took a few steps forward and flashed her cleaver outright.
“Y-you, you, if you’ve got the guts, drop the weapon!”
Faced with the sharp cleaver, Zhang Chao was instantly cowed.
“Dipshit.”
Without one word of nonsense, Bai Long raised the cleaver and knocked Zhang Chao out cold with the hilt, snatched the potatoes from his hand, and placed them in the old man’s.
Feeling the solid weight in his hands, the old man actually regained a bit of clarity.
“Thank you… thank you…” he mumbled, reaching up to pull a jade pendant from around his neck.
“Exchange… a token of thanks…”
The old man looked like an educated sort, unwilling to accept Bai Long’s kindness for nothing, so he used the one fairly valuable thing on his person as an exchange.
“I don’t have any credits… I hope you won’t look down on this.”
He knew full well that in the apocalypse this jade pendant was useless, just a hunk of stone, but it was the finest thing he could offer.
Bai Long didn’t refuse.
Since this was the old man’s heartfelt gesture, she didn’t want to spoil his goodwill.
In fact she’d only dealt with the obstacle in passing, it would also let her gather supplies more efficiently afterward.
Otherwise having a fly buzzing around constantly was annoying.
“The exit’s over that way. Follow the kitchenware section and you’ll get out quickly.”
On her way in, Bai Long had noticed there were far fewer zombies over by the kitchenware section.
Noticing the blood on the old man’s head, Bai Long briskly tore off a piece of Zhang Chao’s clothing and had the old man press it down to stop the bleeding, then smeared some rotten vegetable-and-fruit pulp on him.
“Carry this, it’ll mask the smell of blood on you.”
Bai Long put the stinking, pulp-soaked cloth into the old man’s hands.
Zombies located people by the smell of blood, so having a foul odor to cover it up would be much safer.
The old man knew he wasn’t fit to stay any longer, and besides, he’d already gotten what he wanted.
He carefully made his way off in the direction Bai Long had indicated.
After the old man left, the instant Bai Long turned back, everything before her plunged into darkness.
The last emergency light had run out of power and gone out.
Her eyes couldn’t adjust to the total blackness right away, and all around her was dead silence.
A quiet, dark environment always made one feel something bad was hidden in it.
Bai Long raised her guard, lightened her footsteps, and slowly edged toward the wall she’d noted earlier.
In unknown territory, one should minimize the directions from which one could be exposed.
For a moment, the only sound by her ears was her own faint breathing.
The little bird on her shoulder pressed close against her neck too, its soft feathers tickling her, but it also made her nerves draw even tighter.
Rustle, rustle, rustle…
There seemed to be the sound of something moving along the ground.
And it seemed… there were also some unidentifiable squelching, sloshing sounds.
Was that water?
Bai Long frowned, gripping the cleaver firmly in hand, all five senses fully roused, not daring to slacken in the slightest.
Suddenly, she felt something brush against her hand.
It was wet.
Wait…
Something was wrong.
Her vision was still pitch black, Bai Long couldn’t see a thing.
Not even a blurry outline.
But that didn’t make sense.
Even if the light had vanished all at once, from then until now should have been plenty of time for her to adjust to the dark. There was no way she still couldn’t see even the faintest sliver of anything.
There was something else here!
Almost the instant Bai Long realized it, she sensed something seemingly moving rapidly somewhere not far ahead.
“Fuck! It activated its esper power!”
“Stay back! Don’t let it catch us all in one net!”
“Aah! Hel—”
The voice cut off abruptly, as if something had stopped up the mouth.
Bai Long pressed tight against the wall, her field of vision a sheet of black.
She knew clearly that there was something inside the fresh section, something that, at least for now, could apparently rob people within a certain range of their sight.
But she still didn’t know whether it was human or zombie.
An esper power that took away your sight was an enormous pain to deal with.
The squelching sounds by her ears grew louder and louder, along with people’s panicked footsteps, accompanied by the thwack-thwack of striking blows.
That band of people had started fighting whatever was hidden in the dark.
Bai Long condensed water arrows at her fingertips.
Although she couldn’t see, she manipulated the water current to set up a ring of water-arrow defenses in front of her.
The sharp arrowheads pointed outward, the moment something drew near, she’d know instantly.
The next second, one of the water arrows transmitted a strange sensation, followed immediately by the whole ring of arrows being swept over by something.
A cool, smooth touch, a thick, long, soft, ropelike object was right in front of Bai Long.
By rough estimation, this thing was thicker than Bai Long’s thigh.
Bai Long didn’t hesitate, she manipulated a water arrow to stab hard into the thing planted before her eyes.
It could be pierced.
Feeling the sensation of penetration transmitted through the arrow, Bai Long steadied her nerves a little.
At the very least, she now knew it was a thing with a physical body.
The thing, pierced by the water arrow, abruptly recoiled in pain, retreating some distance, then charged once more at where Bai Long stood, wrapping directly around her thigh, trying to drag her skyward.
From the sensation transmitted through her leg, it was like a tentacle, studded all over with dense rows of suckers.
Could it be an octopus?
Bai Long thought for only an instant before reacting swiftly. As she tensed her core, a sharp longsword condensed in her hand. Using the spot where the tentacle gripped her leg as a fulcrum, she did a kip-up, leapt into the air, and slashed the blade down at her own leg.
If any esper present had seen this scene, they’d surely have been astounded.
In the public’s understanding, water-type esper power was a soft, yielding thing.
Even as an attack power, it couldn’t possibly achieve such a lifelike, object-mimicking form.
That required the esper to have an exceedingly high familiarity with and control over water.
But how could an ordinary human, as a land-dwelling species, possibly manipulate water so skillfully?
The water sword severed the soft flesh, and the force binding Bai Long’s leg suddenly lightened.
She flipped nimbly and landed, and at the same time felt the scene before her flicker.
The darkness gradually receded, her sight slowly returned.
Once her eyes adjusted to the abruptly bright field of view, Bai Long got a clear look at the situation in front of her.
It was an absolutely enormous octopus, its body taking up the entire fresh section. A single one of its tentacles was nearly a dozen meters long, the one that had just wrapped around Bai Long was merely the negligible tip of one of its countless tentacles.
The severed-tip tentacle retracted toward the octopus’s main body, and soon more intact tentacles took over the spot it had occupied, circling Bai Long menacingly, as if considering where to grab her.
Meanwhile the octopus’s other tentacles had several people bound up tight.
Those people weren’t strangers to Bai Long, they were all espers she’d seen at the supermarket entrance earlier.
But there wasn’t a trace of their earlier carefree composure now.
Tentacles coiled tightly around them, some had veins bulging from being squeezed, faces swelling purple, on the verge of suffocating. Yet their hands and feet were all bound, leaving them utterly unable to activate their esper powers.
On the other side, the octopus’s tentacles thrashed up and down, nearly smashing through the ceiling.
In the gaps between the flailing tentacles, you could also see a few people inside, struggling to dodge the attacks.
By the look of it, they’d lost their sight too, getting whacked hard by tentacles who knew how many times, on the verge of being caught.
So that sight-stealing esper power didn’t belong to these people.
Bai Long’s gaze settled on the octopus.
The octopus’s body was half-hidden in darkness.
The whole fresh section was a complete mess from its churning.
This was an esper animal.
When the apocalyptic mutation descended, it wasn’t only humans, animals had begun to mutate too.
Clearly this octopus’s current enormous form and esper power were the result of mutation.
It was probably originally just one of the fresh section’s takoyaki-octopuses.
A whistling cut through the air as several tentacles came hurtling toward Bai Long, all but sealing off her routes of retreat.
The water sword in Bai Long’s hand melted into ordinary water liquid and fell to the ground, immediately after, she raised both hands and spread her five fingers.
Several round water shields appeared out of thin air in the tentacles’ path.
The instant they touched the shields, the shields abruptly swelled into water spheres, completely engulfing the tentacle tips and slowing the tentacles’ assault.
Seizing the gap, Bai Long lowered her body and slipped through the tentacles.
The water spheres could only temporarily slow the tentacles’ movements.
The moment Bai Long crossed past the encirclement of tentacles, the water spheres abruptly burst, water droplets scattering down everywhere.
The tentacles didn’t pause for a moment, changing direction to continue their attack on Bai Long.
“Tch, why are you so clingy.”
Bai Long clicked her tongue and gave a slight flick of her fingers.
A thick, long water line spawned from her palm, winding and coiling its way up around a tentacle.
The octopus was a water creature to begin with, you could say it was practically born immune to Bai Long’s esper power.
Going up against it, Bai Long held no advantage.
And this octopus had so many tentacles, cut one and there was another, endless and inexhaustible.
At this rate it would never end.
Bai Long felt her esper power draining at breakneck speed. She couldn’t hold out much longer either, she had to find a way to shake off the octopus’s harassment for good.
Even at a time like this, Bai Long hadn’t forgotten her mission objective.
She quickly swept her gaze around and finally spotted a few pitiful sprigs of fish mint over by the octopus’s underbelly.
Bai Long: …
For a moment she really wanted to say she quit.
But at the thought of sleeping under a bridge, she figured she could push herself a little harder.
Bai Long had noticed that the tentacle she’d cut off earlier hadn’t regenerated, which meant the octopus’s tentacles weren’t beyond harm.
In other words, its main body wasn’t all that powerful.
But getting past all these tentacles to approach the octopus’s body wasn’t easy either.
“Hey, friend over there, how about we cooperate?”
Just as Bai Long was dodging the tentacles’ pursuit while thinking through her options, another esper bound by a tentacle spoke up.
“You’re an esper too, right? Let’s not split our strength, let’s join forces to deal with this octopus, and split the final bonus evenly, how about it?”
It was a male esper.
The combat suit on him was bloodstained.
By the amount of blood, he wouldn’t last much longer.
Bai Long said nothing.
She was thinking.
From the esper’s words, this octopus was very likely the target of their commission.
It could be exchanged for credits.
At the thought of possible extra income, Bai Long’s eyes lit up.
But still she didn’t speak up right away.
Bai Long could keep her cool, the esper was very obviously about to give out, and he gritted his teeth and shouted, “Sixty-forty! Sixty-forty! You take sixty, how about it?!”
“Eighty-twenty.”
Bai Long swung another sword stroke, severing a tentacle that was about to wrap around her, her voice unhurried, sounding as if she had plenty to spare.
The male esper hesitated for an instant.
A tentacle seized the chance and lashed a heavy blow at his body.
A searing pain shot through his waist, and the male esper figured he’d die right here if he hesitated any longer. “Deal! Deal! You take eighty! Just save me!”
At that, the corners of Bai Long’s mouth curved up. With a few leaps she circled to the male esper’s side, raised her arm, and severed with one stroke the tentacle that had already wound around his body.
Bai Long’s assistance gave him a moment to catch his breath, but he also noticed something.
“Friend, you can see?”
“What do you think?”
The water sword in Bai Long’s hand melted away, her esper power was getting a bit hard to sustain.
“From your moves you definitely can! I’m begging you, tell me, how the hell do I break free of this damned control, huh?!”
Liang Qiu, the male esper, was nearly being driven mad by the octopus.
Completely unable to see, and still having to guard against tentacle attacks from all directions. That he’d held out until now without joining the ranks of the other captured espers was already impressive.
Bai Long said nothing.
Liang Qiu was suddenly struck by inspiration. “I’ll pay more, I’ll pay more!”
To hell and gone with the mission, his little life came first.
“Cut off the tentacles.”
This time Bai Long answered crisply.
And she wasn’t lying.
Through the struggle just now, she’d discovered that this octopus’s esper power was very likely tied to these tentacles.
Get touched by a tentacle and you’d lose your sight.
After she’d severed the first tentacle, her sight had returned, most likely the tentacle had to make contact with the skin for the esper power to activate.
To put it simply, the tentacles were the bridge through which the octopus’s power was released onto its victims.
You just had to cut off the bridge.
Liang Qiu was past the point of doubting, he immediately summoned his power and attacked forward with all his might.
An earthen wall sprang up out of nowhere from the ground.
The top of the wall was shaped like a sharp blade, and it sliced straight through a tentacle.
His field of vision blurred for an instant, and Liang Qiu’s sight returned.
“Thank you… uh…”
Liang Qiu turned around and saw the “boss” he’d imagined was none other than the very girl his temporary companions had looked down on before going in.
The girl’s cold, pale face showed not the slightest sign of strain, you could say she was moving among the tentacles with utter ease.
And in her hand was, lo and behold, a transparent water sword.
She was an esper.
Liang Qiu’s feelings were extremely complicated.
His teammates had looked down on her, and there she was alive and well, even able to save him in passing. Meanwhile the lot of them were halfway to meeting King Yama.
Who knew who was really begging whom for rescue.
“Are they your teammates?”
Bai Long pointed at the few people on the verge of being devoured by tentacles.
Among them, the burly man and another short man had only their last breaths left.
Both their faces had started to turn black, eyes rolled back to the whites.
“Yes… could I trouble you to… save them too?”
Liang Qiu said it with great difficulty.
It was just too humiliating.
The little red bird perched on Bai Long’s shoulder looked at this man and, in an extremely humanlike fashion, gave him a contemptuous look.
“Sure.”
Bai Long nodded, her gaze toward Liang Qiu carrying a hint of a smile.
“Thank you, you’re really a good—”
“Three hundred credits per person.”
Bai Long smiled radiantly.
“, per…son…” Liang Qiu dumbly spat out the last word.
Looking at his teammates bound by the tentacles, he wondered, more seriously than ever before:
Did these teammates of his absolutely have to be saved?
“Bank transfer, or IOU?”
Bai Long was thoroughly entrepreneurial, offering the client two payment options.
Liang Qiu: “…”
Liang Qiu, in despair: “IOU.”
“Got it.”
Bai Long felt as if her esper power had topped right back up again.
She looked at the three people bound by the tentacles, that is, her future nine hundred credits, brimming with drive.
Those weren’t three people now, that was her second commission.
Naturally, Liang Qiu couldn’t just stand by and watch Bai Long save people, after all, they were still his teammates.
He still had his pride.
And true to his being someone who could hold out so long under a tentacle siege without his sight, once his vision was restored, his control over his power was extremely precise.
Liang Qiu braced both hands against the ground, and one earthen wall after another rose up in succession, blocking part of the tentacles’ attacks and buying Bai Long a sliver of opportunity.
Bai Long bounded up onto the walls in a few steps, nimbly using their positions to draw near the bound people.
The water sword danced.
The transparent water liquid sparkled in the faint light, dazzling as crystal.
By simply cutting off tentacles, Bai Long, with Liang Qiu’s assistance, quickly freed those few people and tossed them toward him.
Liang Qiu caught one of them, a female esper.
The burly man and the short man who’d looked down on Bai Long earlier hit the ground directly, jolted awake by the impact.
The moment they came to, they saw the very girl they’d run their mouths about earlier nimbly crossing the tentacles and walking toward them.
“Thanks for your patronage.”
Bai Long beamed at them, her mood visibly excellent.
The burly man’s brain lagged for a second, then he flew into a rage. “What nonsense are you spouting? What’s a regular human like you still doing here? Waiting to die? Stop getting in the way and get lost, far away!”
Before Bai Long could even respond, Liang Qiu smacked the burly man across the head. “Is your brain caked over with shit?! That’s your savior!”
Dammit, my heart aches for those two hundred credits, how did I save such a brainless idiot? Liang Qiu mourned inwardly.
“Her?”
The burly man clearly didn’t believe it.
Bai Long’s smile didn’t change. She raised a hand, water liquid condensed into a rope, and she promptly strung the burly man up dangling in the middle of the tentacles.
“What did you just say? I didn’t catch it.”
As Bai Long spoke, the water rope in her hand seemed to grow unsteady, dropping him a few inches further into the midst of the tentacles.
The burly man was dumbstruck. Once it registered, he immediately blurted, “Sorry, sorry! I was wrong, I get it, I was wrong! Pull me back up, aaaaah!”
“Six hundred credits.”
Bai Long jacked up the price on the spot.
Watching the tentacles creep closer and closer, their suckers all but touching his nose, the burly man was past caring about anything. He hurriedly said, “Yes yes yes! Whatever you say goes! Just save me, help!”
A split second before he’d have been throttled to death by the tentacles again, Bai Long pulled him back.
“Thanks for your patronage.”
Bai Long’s smile grew even more radiant.
This one person alone was worth more than half her commission.
How could she not crack a smile?
The burly man turned his pleading gaze to Liang Qiu.
Liang Qiu, merciless: “Figure it out yourself.”
He was broke.
At present, all of Liang Qiu’s teammates had been temporarily knocked out of fighting shape by the tentacle attacks earlier.
Liang Qiu had no choice but to turn his attention back to Bai Long once more.
He decided to tell Bai Long the content of their commission.
“We need the crystal in that octopus’s head. I hope you’ll cooperate with me, once it’s done, we split the bonus the way we said, how about it?”
To be honest, Liang Qiu’s heart ached too. It was a very large sum of credits, even for them, it would take several commissions to earn that much.
But they really had been careless this time, and letting them go home empty-handed now wasn’t something they could swallow.
Their only choice was to pay half the cost in exchange for Bai Long helping them complete this commission.
“How much in total?”
Bai Long’s expression didn’t waver as she probed.
“Three thousand seven hundred fifty credits.”
Liang Qiu said outright.
By an eighty-twenty split, Bai Long would get three thousand credits.
Adding in the earlier sums, that came to five thousand five hundred credits total.
She was about to strike it rich.
Bai Long couldn’t help the slight upward tug at the corner of her mouth.
“Deal.”
Bai Long’s gaze met the octopus’s massive head.
Two eyes glowing with eerie light were looking back at them.
Without giving anyone the slightest warning, the octopus’s tentacles launched an attack on Bai Long and the others all at once.
Liang Qiu gave it everything he had, raising sturdy earthen walls all around, hemming the fresh section in completely.
The tentacles’ room to move was compressed in a straight line, curled up in the cramped, square space, they strained to attack toward that small figure.
Too much esper power had been spent, and its body, hard-pressed, faintly carried the momentum of a counterattack.
This had to be settled fast.
Bai Long unleashed her power, and a colossal water sword condensed in both hands.
Compared to the octopus’s vast bulk, Bai Long was as tiny as a grain of sand.
But in such a cramped environment, the octopus’s enormous body became its disadvantage instead.
Its sluggish movement speed no longer posed a threat in Bai Long’s eyes. With a few bounds, using the bulging, curving tentacles, she leapt straight up to right in front of the octopus’s eyes.
The fully person-sized octopus pupil met that slender figure, and the oppressive presence of a deep-sea monster instantly bore down on Bai Long.
The very air around them seemed to freeze, oxygen rapidly compressing, Liang Qiu, caught within it, felt only a tide of suffocation surge over him.
He met the octopus’s pair of cold beast eyes, and for an instant felt as though he’d plunged to the bottom of an abyssal sea.
The dread of the deep sea.
The most irresistible terror to humans, the menace of a colossal deep-sea creature, instantly numbed him from head to toe, leaving him unable to move so much as an inch.
But that slender, agile figure didn’t stop moving.
Bai Long met those beast eyes hidden in the darkness, and far from halting, her movements grew even faster.
The pupils of the beast eyes concealed beneath her colored contacts contracted slightly.
No one saw that they were a pair of vertical pupils colder than the octopus’s.
In that moment the octopus’s movements froze. Whatever it had seen, its tentacles suddenly began trembling violently.
Bai Long raised the water sword in her hand.
Slash down!
The keen water-light cleaved downward, one stroke splitting open the darkness and severing that massive head right down the middle.
The darkness receded, and a white crystal lay exposed.
Faint fragments of light shimmered within it.
Bai Long reached out and touched the crystal, and a wave of exhaustion came crashing down over her entire body.
Following close behind was the pain, born deep in her bones, flesh, skin, and blood, impossible to suppress, that came after esper power was utterly spent.
Liang Qiu was just about to step forward to meet her.
A purple mist appeared out of thin air, cutting across the space between him and Bai Long.
The mist was like an enormous curtain descending from the heavens, Bai Long’s figure vanished behind it.
When the mist dispersed, all that remained on the ground was an enormous octopus corpse, and the crystal, along with Bai Long, had vanished without a trace.