Clown Game
Chapter 278 - 265: The Return of the Dark Realm (XX)

Chapter 278: Chapter 265: The Return of the Dark Realm (XX)

"Zzz—zzz—cough, you can all hear me, right! I’m the one for this mission...never mind, you all know already, I’m Abraham Ken, and I’m now going to reiterate the mission... All dispersed combat personnel are to assemble immediately, I’ve sent out my coordinates, move out quickly, as for the reasons, I’ll explain after we’ve assembled! That’s it!"

Click

With just those few sentences, he spoke as casually as a bunch of old-timers chatting in a run-down tavern, and then the signal cut off. Still, he managed to make the mission quite clear.

Jingjing and Bai Xiong frowned.

"What’s going on, have the two leaders had a disagreement? One tells us to scatter, the other to assemble?" Song Xuan was spinning a dagger on his fingertip as he spoke.

Bai Xiong silently brooded with an expressionless face for a moment.

"There are two possibilities, the first is that we destroyed the surveillance devices, and the leader doesn’t know what happened, so he wants us to regroup. That’s a reasonable explanation. The second possibility is..."

"The second is that the rumor that came out of nowhere is true, right? The Omega team member with the long rifle really got infected, and we destroyed the detectors, so he can’t find us, so he had to deceive another leader—who has all the communication channels with team members—to get us back together again..." Song Xuan picked up the thread saying, "It’s so annoying, can’t we just carry out a mission quietly?"

"Unlikely now. In this place, all outside signals can’t come in; our conversations can’t get out. It’s like a space cut off from the world. In this environment, every little problem becomes infinitely magnified. So, whether others believe it or not, things will develop in a bad direction..." Bai Xiong said flatly.

"So what do we do now? Should we listen to that guy and head to the assembly point?"

Bai Xiong pondered for a while.

"No rush, let’s first go check out the place where we split up just now. There must be quite a few others who are hesitant as well; going back to the starting point, we might run into people from other teams."

With that, Bai Xiong turned his head and moved back first. Song Xuan shrugged and followed.

...

...

In the city center, Abraham cut off the communication, heaved a big sigh of relief, and plopped down on the ground.

What appeared to be a normal sitting motion made a huge indentation in the ground, kicking up clouds of dust half a person tall.

Everything around was scorched black—buildings, vegetation, road surfaces—all emitting wisps of smoke. Above these, more abundant were charred anomalies, no longer recognizable, while beneath the streets, cables crisscrossed out of the soil, crackling with electricity, like giant mechanical pythons emerging from the ground. If one were to look down from the sky, the entire area with a radius of nearly ten meters centered on Abraham, and the streets a few hundred meters behind him, resembled the desolation left by a titanic lightning strike.

He looked around, annoyed, and sighed, "I really hate these kinds of missions. It’s just a search and find, so why not send Bluebird! That guy could probably do it in minutes."

Muttering to himself, he then "zipped" a small box from his waistband. Without a glance, Abraham casually pulled a bottle of what seemed to be chilled wine from the box, twisted off the cap with his bare hands, and started gulping it down.

The files on S—017 clearly stated that all food within the Dark Realm anomaly was unconditionally classified as infected. Meaning, eating or drinking anything here would result in infection... This bearded man, as an old member of the Omega team, obviously knew this regulation, but he seemed not to care in the slightest.

In fact...he was only drinking to stave off boredom while waiting for Dos to arrive.

With another "zip," the portable fridge retracted, and judging by its size, it undoubtedly extended into his body.

In less than five minutes, before Abraham could even start satisfying his considerable gut with wine, a dense rumbling sound approached from afar, like the roar of hundreds of tractors starting up together. He turned his head slowly towards the sound, saw a long trail of dust, took another sip from the bottle, and even shuffled his seat a bit in that direction.

Dos arrived a bit faster this time, crossing half the city district in just a few minutes. He hopped lightly a few times to shed his inertia before taking a few long strides to arrive in front of Abraham.

No sooner had he steadied himself than a cloud of flying dust and sand followed, enveloping them like a tornado and pelting Abraham with stones that clinked and clanked against him. It took a long while for the chaos to subside.

"Ptooey...ptooey..." Abraham spat out the sand in his mouth, "I hate the way you run. Look at Bluebird, way faster than you and without making any noise."

While saying that, he glanced at the wine bottle now filled with dirt, grimaced, and threw it aside in resignation.

Dos was not one to waste time on idle chatter; he was always this direct in his approach.

"25 minutes ago, two of my detectors lost signal, and it’s confirmed that one of the people on the mission shot them down himself. Moreover, he seems to have killed one of our field agents, and most importantly... he hasn’t been infected. So far, 12 detectors have lost signal."

Abraham, grunting, stood up straight, dusted off, and said, "I knew it would be something like that with you, relying on your marksmanship, using people as signal sources..."

"This is the quickest solution. This time, Dark Realm is different from before; no one wants to waste time. Actually, if you had run fast enough, you would have done the same by now!" Dos interrupted Abraham’s rambling and suddenly adjusted his goggles, "Lost another two signal sources... Damn it, what exactly is happening!..."

Abraham frowned, "Hmm... a traitor among us?"

"Don’t know. Can’t you help me ask around?"

Abraham shrugged, "Everyone else’s communication is limited in range, aside from mine. After all, signals here shouldn’t be transmitted outside. They can only listen, not talk!"

"Ah? Then why is yours different?"

"Because my power source is strong enough to run a signal tower! If they want to be like me, they’d each have to carry around a three- or four-meter-tall battery."

After hearing this, Dos nodded, looking somewhat resigned, "Fine then!"

...