Player Reload
Chapter 273 - 251 Journalist

Chapter 273: Chapter 251 Journalist

Not good, extremely – no, immensely dire.

Li Cheng was leaning on the window, his nose perched with Information Integration Glasses that collected intelligence non-stop.

The "residents" of this city did not have the same height as ordinary toys in the real world or as depicted in literary works.

For example, the original few-centimeter-tall green plastic soldiers were enlarged here to nearly one meter.

The original ten-meter-tall Transformers Optimus Prime was shrunk to about two meters here.

Moreover, all the toys’ attire and behaviors exuded a sense of life—

A Pikachu in suit and leather shoes (0.4 meters tall), carrying a mini briefcase, walked out of a building with a weary face, showing an expression of a corporate drone who overworked to the point of fainting,

Approached the street food stall to buy a serving of grilled cold noodles from Kabuda, the robot from the classic tokusatsu show ""铁甲小宝"" who was the vendor.

Next to the barbecue stall was a two-meter-tall King Kong operating a stinky tofu stand.

The so-called observation of minutiae reveals the bigger picture, a single leaf heralds the coming of autumn. From just these few seconds of footage, Li Cheng had gathered quite a bit of information.

First, the "rules" of this world differed from reality. Real-life Lego couldn’t construct a hundred-meter-tall skyscraper.

Second, the production, living, and social order within the city was stable and orderly, which indirectly indicated that there was a strong administrative system behind the city.

The Kong that set up the stall was the great ape known as Donkey Kong from the FC hall of fame masterpiece ""大金刚"", one of the earliest classic villains in video game history.

In addition, on the streets were Vega, the leader of the Shadowlaw from ""街头霸王"", Dr. Eggman from "Sonic the Hedgehog", and Shredder from "Ninja Turtle", all classic villain bosses.

To keep such an array of humanoid stars in check, Toy City likely had a powerful police force, military, and prisons.

Third, the toys did not necessarily possess their original abilities, such as Li Cheng seeing Optimus Prime dressed as a construction worker, getting on a Totoro bus,

Which made him really want to tease, "Big brother, aren’t you a Transformer? You can straight up transform into an American-style big truck, so why do you still need to take the bus?"

At that moment, the system prompt sounded belatedly.

[Mission Brief has been sent]

[Toy City, a burgeoning city standing beneath the dome]

[The holy factory gives us life, the magnificent flames grant us free will. We are toys without masters; we live for ourselves]

[Work, struggle, live. Together, we pool our wisdom and efforts, united as one, and after twenty years, we’ve built this city from nothing]

[Although an unknown disease is currently spreading throughout the city, the public medical department is doing everything in their power to analyze the disease and develop a vaccine. Just like the past, the flame persists, and hope endures]

This mission brief used the first-person narrative, as if speaking from the perspective of the city builders.

The terms "factory," "flames," "disease," and such within it were quite noteworthy.

With the brief sent out, a new description of [Erosion Level: 0/1000] was added to the bottom of the player’s personal panel.

And considerately, the task log also attached the IDs and levels of the other five players participating in this [Toy Assault].

"Should I say it’s deserving of a special mission? Previous deathmatch tasks didn’t actively provide information about other contenders."

Li Cheng raised his eyebrows, the other five individuals were [Deceiver·Joker][Lv20],

[Hell Engine·Frankenstein][Lv22],

[Ready Block·Bartmos][Lv21],

[Arbiter·Gouchen][Lv23],

[Brown Rat Eugene][Lv19].

"Joker... Cervantes mentioned this name before, a member of the Wild Laughter Troupe. Stole a Fire Dragon Egg from Dawson of the Thousand Throats Beast and left a Dragon Fruit in its place as compensation. Quite the enigma."

Li Cheng thought quickly: "Frankenstein, I seem to have seen descriptions of him on the players’ forums too, hailing from the Demon Scientist Alliance. A notorious inventor of biochemical weapons.

He once sold biochemical poison to African Warlords, killing at least fifty thousand people.

The remaining Bartmos and Gouchen—the former from the Whale Song Guild, the latter a member of the Global Supernatural Alliance.

As for Eugene...

If I remember correctly, he’s been on Zhangsun Yao’s wanted list, reportedly a former member of the Bell Tower Guild. He stole the golden arrows from Bell Tower, defected from the guild, and has been hiding in the Shadow Realm of Yin City ever since.

Unexpected to encounter him here."

Among these people, the lowest level was also Lv19, directly outranking Li Cheng by 7 levels. Moreover, they were all quite famous.

By contrast, Li Cheng was only at Lv16. Only he and the Side of Truth know about his help in traveling back to establish the Evil Science Alliance Guild.

In the eyes of others, this Ant is purely an unknown minor figure.

How does the saying go?

When the Ant joined the death-fight mission, all the other contestants were abuzz, everyone asking, who is the Ant?

New players might not know who the Ant is, but as an old player, I can responsibly tell everyone, actually, old players don’t know either.

"Besides myself and Eugene, who defected from the Bell Tower Guild, the other three are members of major guilds. This means they can temporarily rent powerful equipment or skill scrolls from their guilds.

The advantage, however, is that these people also know that the greatest threat to each other, which makes it easy to overlook me."

As Li Cheng was stroking his chin, he heard cheers of joy coming from outside the room.

He opened the door and walked out; the cheers were coming from the neighbor on the right.

A Lego postman was smiling as he handed a large cardboard box to a Lego couple, "Congratulations to the both of you. City Hall has approved your reproduction application today and has sent me to deliver your child."

Huh?

Under Li Cheng’s strange gaze, the ecstatic couple opened the cardboard box, which was filled with buffer plastic foam, among which were Lego bricks shaped like... children’s limbs.

The Lego couple pieced together the limbs, and as soon as the head and limbs were properly assembled, the Lego baby began to cry.

Instantly, from a pile of dead objects, it became animate with life.

’Is there such a way to reproduce? Because Lego bricks can’t reproduce, does the City Hall distribute the brick components directly?’

Li Cheng, having activated the Multi-threaded Brain Domain Method, began to think rapidly, ’Do other toys also reproduce in this manner? What do the factory and fires mentioned in the mission brief mean? Could they be the origin of all toys?’

"Hey, you’re the reporter who just moved in, right?"

A somewhat hoarse female voice came from the left,

Li Cheng turned his head and saw the door of the apartment on the left open, where a young woman in her twenties with brown short hair, dark green pupils, holding a can of beer, and an experienced look, was talking to him.

"Uh... yes."

Li Cheng nodded. His nominal strength was undoubtedly the weakest among the five participants of the mission,

The system, for balancing purposes, had set him up with a safe apartment building start and arranged a legitimate, inconspicuous reporter identity that could grant him access to various situations.

Thinking of this, Li Cheng quietly reached into his pocket and felt for it—sure enough, there was a press ID and a wrinkled piece of paper.

It had "Southern City Park, 18:00" written on it.

The brown-haired young woman, who obviously had been drinking with rosy cheeks, casually asked, "Since you’re a reporter, you should have some exclusive news, right? What’s the deal with the epidemic in the city? It’s been almost a year and still not resolved."

"Well, that..."

Li Cheng didn’t know the setting of the script world, so he quickly played it off with a laugh, "My exclusive news is that the citizens should follow the lead of City Hall, obey its commands, not panic, not spread rumors, overcome this difficulty together, and the epidemic will eventually pass..."

"Stop stop stop."

The brown-haired young woman rolled her eyes and interrupted, "Save those cliches for the newspaper."

"Okay."

Li Cheng, with skin as thick as city walls, didn’t feel embarrassed at all. Instead, the more he looked at the other person, the more he felt a strange sense of familiarity, "By the way, I just moved in and haven’t asked for your name yet?"

The young woman took a sip of canned beer and lazily said, "Sakura Kinomoto."