Inside the “Buzhou” outpost, the constant-temperature force field generator hummed low and steady.
This invisible barrier kept out the minus-forty-degree cold winds and biting grit of the outside world.
Inside the force field, the temperature remained at a comfortable twenty degrees.
Next to the newly deployed matter printing station, fifty players—or rather, fifty muscular men dressed in grass skirts—slumped unceremoniously on the silver-white metal floor.
“This stuff… tastes like chewing on a ten-year-old compressed ration.”
A player pinched a pale yellow rectangular block in his hand.
It was the [Polymer Compressed Dry Rations] he had just exchanged with contribution points.
He took a hard bite out of a corner, his cheeks bulging as his face contorted in chewing.
“It’s not just hard, it sticks to your teeth. What happened to the promised chicken flavor? All I taste is sawdust.”
“Be content; at least it restores your stamina bar.” His companion gulped warm water from a self-heating flask and let out a satisfied belch.
“Look at these walls, look at these lights. This doesn’t feel like a game—this is like *The Martian*.”
The five-meter-high composite armored walls enclosed them from above, leaving only a circular observation hatch at the top, through which they could see a sky full of stars.
This sense of security inside a steel fortress finally allowed their tightly strung nerves to relax after a long day.
Some were already snoring in the corners, while others excitedly studied the folding mechanism of the multi-functional entrenching shovel.
Even in a virtual world, humanity’s obsession with “home” remained deeply ingrained in their bones.
…
On the northern side of the camp, on the observation platform.
“Breaking Bad” stood on the platform, looking around with a hint of unease.
Those inch-deep claw marks they had found earlier kept flickering through his mind.
*Click, click…*
An extremely faint, crisp sound mixed with the wind, drilling into his ear canal.
It was a fractured, rapid sound, like fingernails tapping quickly against stone.
“We’ve got trouble!”
Breaking Bad roared at the top of his lungs.
Before the alarm could fully spread through the enclosed camp, a massive dark shadow shot up like a cannonball.
Ignoring the five-meter-tall vertical wall, it leaped directly into the air above the camp.
*Thud!*
The dull thud of a heavy object landing struck everyone’s hearts.
It was an extremely hideous creature.
Three joint-reversed long legs supported its streamlined torso.
Its entire body was covered in a grayish-brown keratinous shell that gleamed with a cold, metallic luster under the camp lights.
On its triangular head, six compound eyes gleamed with a bloodthirsty red glow.
It landed right next to “Keyboard Warrior No. 1.”
The guy still had half a piece of unfinished compressed ration hanging from his mouth, and was just about to brag about his brick-carrying achievements of the day on the public channel.
“What the—”
Before he could finish his swear word, the monster’s scythe-like forelimbs swept out.
There were no wasted movements, only absolute speed and brutality.
Keyboard Warrior No. 1’s body flew through the air like a ragdoll.
While still mid-air, his chest ruptured, splashing blood like spilled ink across the pristine white matter printing station.
He didn’t even manage a scream before the green light representing his vital signs went out completely.
The stench of blood instantly exploded in the enclosed space.
“The monster’s inside!”
“Keyboard got one-shotted! What the hell is this damage?!”
The peaceful camp instantly descended into chaos.
Several players holding “Defender” pistols instinctively raised their guns and pulled the triggers at the dark shadow.
*Bang!
Bang!
Muzzle flashes strobed frantically in the narrow space.
Bullets struck the metal floor and armored walls, sending sparks flying.
The monster’s movements were so fast they defied common physics; using its three long legs, it bounced off the walls and floor in rapid, triangular leaps like a bolt of gray lightning.
“Agh!”
Another player collapsed, clutching his thigh.
It had been easily pierced by the monster’s leg-tip, leaving a hole where bone fragments were visible.
Ricochets flew everywhere.
Several bullets struck the monster’s dorsal plate, but they only produced a grating metallic clatter and a shower of bright sparks.
They didn’t even leave a white scratch.
“Stop shooting blindly! Watch out for ricochets!”
Li Lei rushed out from the crowd.
He was the only one who maintained a proper shooting stance amidst the chaos.
Holding the gun with both hands, he predicted the monster’s landing spot and fired two short bursts near its compound eyes.
But the monster’s shell seemed to extend around its eye sockets.
The bullets only drilled two tiny holes into them.
The monster’s compound eyes locked onto the nearby players.
Its mouthparts split open, revealing rows of dense, razor-sharp teeth.
A dead end.
Li Lei’s gaze swept frantically around, finally locking onto a pile of dark, heavy tools at his feet.
Those were the pneumatic industrial picks used during the day to mine iron-rich ore.
Equipped with tungsten-alloy heads and high-pressure pneumatic assistance, they were designed to break rocks with a Mohs hardness of 7 or higher.
If bullets couldn’t pierce it, then they would quarry it like a rock!
“Grab the picks! Everyone, grab a fucking pick!”
Li Lei tossed his pistol aside and snatched up a half-man-tall heavy pick.
He squeezed the air valve on the handle hard.
“This is just a game! What is there to fear?!”
His roar woke up the terrified crowd.
Fear stems from the unknown, and from helplessness.
But the moment they realized they held deadly weapons capable of piercing solid rock, the savagery of the “Fourth Cataclysm” was fully unleashed.
“Fuck! You dare mess with our spawn point?!”
“Construction Site Palu’s” eyes burned red, his corded muscles bulging with rushing blood.
The frustrations he had suppressed in reality transformed into the most primal violence here.
He swung the industrial pick, which screamed from overloading, and charged at the monster like a rabid bull.
“Smash its skull!”
The monster seemed enraged by this “food” that dared to resist.
Letting out a piercing shriek, it didn’t even bother to dodge, its forelimbs thrusting toward Construction Site Palu’s chest in a blur.
In a one-on-one fight, Construction Site Palu would have been a dead man.
But here, there were forty-eight madmen who refused to die.
The moment the monster’s sharp claws were about to touch Construction Site Palu, two dark figures pounced from the side.
They were two players who had long since discarded their pistols.
Ignoring the razor-sharp barbs, they clung to the monster’s two powerful support legs like leeches.
“I’ve got it locked! I’m holding it down! Thank god I set my pain tolerance to zero.”
The shoulder of one of them was instantly shredded by the barbs on the monster’s legs, dripping with blood.
Yet instead of letting go, he roared in excitement, “This physical collision engine is insane! I can feel its muscles twitching! Deal damage, quick!”
The monster thrashed wildly, its immense strength swinging the clinging players like pendulums.
They slammed into the walls with the dull, sickening cracks of fracturing bones.
Yet these players acted like zombies incapable of feeling pain.
When one was thrown off, two more pounced.
Three, five…
A dozen men piled on top of the monster like a human pyramid, using their body weight and raw flesh to pin this killing machine firmly to the floor.
“Get out of the way! Let me do it!” This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Construction Site Palu leaped high into the air.
Adjusting his posture mid-air, his arm muscles coiled tight as he raised the pneumatic industrial pick high above his head.
*Whirrr—!*
The air tank depressurized.
The piston drove the tungsten-alloy pick head forward with tons of impact force, slicing a black line of death through the air.
Precise and brutal.
*Splat!*
A deeply muffled sound echoed—the sound of shattering exoskeleton accompanied by bursting soft tissue.
The skull, tough enough to bounce bullets, was as fragile as thin paper before industrial-grade heavy machinery.
The half-meter-long pick head drove straight through the monster’s triangular skull, anchoring itself deep into the metal floor.
Green bodily fluids erupted like a fountain, drenching the surrounding players.
The monster’s body convulsed violently a few times before its whip-like long legs finally went limp, motionless.
“Huff… huff…”
Construction Site Palu remained in his downward swing posture, panting heavily as sweat mixed with green alien blood dripped down his cheeks.
Dead silence lasted for three seconds.
Then, a cheer loud enough to blow off the ceiling erupted.
“Is it dead? It’s actually dead?!”
“This combat feel… this feedback… when I swung that pick just now, my palms actually went numb!” A blood-covered player scrambled up from the ground, wiping his face in excitement, completely ignoring his bleeding shoulder.
“This mob’s AI is insane! It even knew how to flank us and target the squishies! This game is going to be a massive hit, absolutely massive!”
The players crowded around, staring at the hideous carcass on the ground.
Their previous terror was gone, replaced by an extreme rush of post-adrenaline high.
Some reached out to touch the monster’s sharp claws; others tried to pry off pieces of the shattered shell as souvenirs.
“If we could turn this stuff into armor, the defense would be off the charts!” Li Lei squatted down to examine the dorsal plate that had deflected bullets, his eyes burning with excitement.
“Don’t just stand there! Hurry up and salvage the useful parts before it despawns!”
…
Blue Star, China Region.
2:15 AM.
Keyboard Warrior No. 1, who had just “died,” and two other unlucky players who perished in the chaos, woke up in a pitch-black connection interface.
[Vessel deceased. Prosthetic reconstruction cooldown: 02:59:59]
“Three hours?!”
In his rented apartment, Keyboard Warrior No. 1 ripped off his VR headset and let out a squeal like a slaughtered pig.
“I have to wait three hours to respawn?!”
The withdrawal-like frustration of being kicked out of the game right after an adrenaline rush made him itch with impatience.
Indignant, he turned on his computer, logged onto the game forum, and typed so fast his hands became a blur, posting a thread titled: *First Kill!
Alien Raid on the Base at Night, This Game’s Death Penalty Is Too Hardcore!*
He attached a first-person screenshot of his final second of life.
It showed a creature taking up the entire field of view under the green glow of night vision.
Its compound eyes gleamed with a terrifying red light, and its scythe-like forelimbs, carrying the stench of death, were less than ten centimeters from the screen.
“Brothers, stop calling this a brick-carrying simulator! This is a fucking sci-fi horror thriller! The monster’s AI is ridiculously high, it one-shots you! And dying lands you in jail for three hours! But right now, I only have one word for how I feel—awesome!”
The late-night forum was already buzzing with countless night owls.
The moment this post with its high-definition “post-mortem photo” went up, it took the internet by storm.
Looking at the terrifying screenshot of the monster, countless spectator players who hadn’t secured a beta slot drooled with envy and jealousy.
“This graphics quality… this oppressive atmosphere… I don’t believe this is a domestic game!”
“OP, stop flexing. Give me your account, I’ll go to jail for you!”
“Three-hour cooldown? This setting is great, it prevents players from just throwing bodies at the problem endlessly. Looks like this game is serious.”
A discussion about the night raid on the “Buzhou” outpost spread like wildfire through the night.
And for the forty-seven players who were still alive, the night had only just begun.