The Creators: From Night City

Page 427

Fear turns into dread, dread into trembling, trembling leads to collapse, and collapse brings despair.

But in the real world, Valkyria still wore a flawless smile, standing guard beside Jeffrey Weir.

"Tonight, we gather here to enjoy happiness."

Jeffrey Weir is an excellent speaker; he speaks at a measured pace, with humor that captivates the audience.

"We enjoy happiness, and we deserve this perfect happiness, which is what we are entitled to as people of noble birth."

"100 'prey,' 100 hunters, 24 hours, and only one winner will emerge in the end."

A holographic projection on the ceiling casts a topographical map of a metal maze, and photos of 100 children collected from all over the world slide into the maze like a water curtain.

"Here, we will witness betrayal and slaughter; we will experience sensory stimulation that is hard to find outside."

"The thrill of a gamble with one's life on the line will far exceed everyone's imagination."

As the holographic screen opened, information about the 100 contestants scrolled rapidly across it.

With keen eyes, Jiang Bing spotted two children from New America and one from Night City among them.

"At midnight tonight, this absolutely amazing match will begin on time, and those of you present here will decide their fate."

"Let's raise our glasses, cheer and wait for the exciting moment to arrive. Before that, all 'members' can place their bets in advance, and the players will receive some small 'assistance' based on the amount of their bets, making the competition more exciting."

As Jeffrey Weir was explaining the rules of the competition, a 'raven's' murmur suddenly came from an empty corner behind Jiang Bing.

"Boss, I'm back."

The raven sent to 'Kronos' to gather intelligence returned with its findings, but also brought back news of deaths from afar.

"The beacons have all been properly installed, and all the puppets you bestowed have been implanted into the server, ready to be used at any time."

"If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer them."

On stage, Jeffrey Weir was interacting with his patrons when Jiang Bing, having obtained the information he wanted, raised his hand at the opportune moment.

Jeffrey Weil's prosthetic eye flashed, instantly loading Jiang Bing's current identity information.

“Mr. Kenneth Winters from Night City seems to have some questions.”

"I don't think this competition format is exciting or thrilling enough."

"Oh?" Jeffrey Weir asked with an impeccably friendly smile, "What are your thoughts, Mr. Kennich?"

"Just finding some children and forcing them to play twisted tricks imposed by adults through violence only disgusts me."

Jeffrey's expression began to darken.

"Besides, sitting here and observing others, there's never a sense of immersion."

“Mr. Kennage, you may not have heard me clearly. We will provide the contestants with a first-person perspective of Mewtwo in sync, ensuring an authentic experience,” Jeffrey began to salvage the situation.

"No, no, no, others are always others, and there is always a sad, thick barrier between them."

"So, Mr. Kennage, what insightful opinion do you have?"

Jiang Bing, who plays Kenneth Winters, got up and left his seat. He walked up to Jeffrey, spread his arms, as if to announce or preach.

"The real sense of participation in 'Bloody Battle Royale' is to play it yourself."

The absurd remarks caused an uproar.

“Kenny, it seems you’ve had too much to drink.” Jeffrey said with a grim face, gesturing for the security personnel outside the hall to come in and ‘invite’ him out.

"The distinguished guests present are all rulers of this world. How can you condescend to compete with those 'beasts'?"

“I think you’ve misunderstood, Jeffrey Weir.”

Kenneth Winters reached into his pocket and, in full view of everyone, pulled out a revolver that should absolutely not have been in the banquet hall.

'Bap'

The hammer was lowered from the plate, just as death raised its scythe.

"You are responsible for escaping, and [Anti-Entropy] is responsible for killing."

"boom!"

Along with the gunshots, explosions were heard throughout the island.

Of course, there was also the violent explosion that resounded across the network and in Valkyria's mind.

One spatial rift after another quietly opened, and fully armed 'Apostles' poured out from them, beginning a frenzied slaughter.

The explosion at the network level directly breached the server units on 'Kronos', and the resulting data ripples not only instantly killed all the networked hackers, but also overloaded and damaged all the electrical equipment on the entire island.

In an instant, the entire Acadia archipelago became a truly isolated island.

Gunfire erupted across the island. Raven, wielding a nanoblade, shook off the last security guard's blood from the blade and silently returned to Jiang Bing's side.

"Boss, should I make a move?"

The mass launch zone on the moon is frantically charging up; all parameters have been calibrated, and the destructive cannon is already aimed at this island.

"Since it's supposed to be a battle royale, we should give them a chance to escape."

The time for full charging was rapidly decreasing. Jiang Bing stood in front of Jeffrey Weil's 'out-of-the-box' corpse, enjoying the various ugly behaviors displayed by the 'high-ranking' figures in the banquet hall as they fled. He finally felt relieved.

"Let them escape; after all, they don't have much time left."

Chapter 870 Arbitrator Quality Projector

He fled, he was pursued, but he could not escape.

The Arcadia Islands Real-Life Battle Royale Tournament kicked off with Jiang Bing's gunshot, and the contestants began to use their unique skills to compete.

With communications disrupted, the contestants had to resort to shouting to communicate and try to contact their bodyguards as soon as possible.

But to be honest, the results were minimal.

Although these 'high-ranking' individuals have world-class bodyguards, even the most skilled lone wolf can only retreat in defeat when facing a well-organized legion.

A slender cyborg, whose identity as a powerful figure's bodyguard was unknown, possessed formidable combat skills. He dodged several explosive bombs in a flash and charged into the enemy ranks.

But what awaited him was an apostle who had also activated Sianwistan, along with a chainsaw sword in the apostle's hand.

Of course, there was more than one.

The Lone Wolf, who was enough to become a legend in Night City, died silently in the midst of battle, without even making a ripple. Meanwhile, many other notorious and ruthless figures couldn't even contribute a final dance before being overwhelmed by tons of firepower.

The fighting was raging on the island, and the outer islands were just as lively.

The mercenaries of the Lazarus Group were highly skilled in tactics and immediately went into battle mode upon the outbreak of the riot on the island, ready for action.

However, a small amount of heavy firepower was no match for the swarms of drones that covered the sky, as well as the swarms of "Tianwen" individual combat armored vehicles that circled and surrounded them.

More importantly, their commander never understood why enemy tanks were able to drive onto the island right under their noses until his death.

The 'Apostles' in formation, like the finest combs, meticulously combed through the entire main island, and the explosive bombs ensured that any who dared to resist would become a corpse or half a corpse.

Several luxurious airships took off in a panic, only to be sliced ​​into pieces by the mechs hovering in the sky or blown into spectacular fireworks by anti-aircraft missiles launched from the ground.

The archipelago's anti-drone and missile defense systems are very advanced. Well Financial Management Company has put a lot of effort into physical security defenses, but today all of that has benefited Jiang Bing.

All the innocent people were rescued from all over the island, and the tragic scenes were revealed.

During the time Jiang Bing worked as the 'Masked Demon,' he had seen human dissection workshops that resembled slaughterhouses, and he also sighed at the cruelty of the medical institutions there.

Cloning, grafting, live culture, live organ replacement, human culture dishes...

All the life-extending and medical procedures that are prohibited in society can be found here. When evil is left unchecked, the extent to which it can run rampant is always astonishing.

All the medical personnel were shot.

The explosive gun cleansed all evil equally, whether the other party liked it or not.

The innocent were controlled, placed, and transferred by the auxiliary army, while the guilty were beheaded, executed, or physically exorcised. Gunfire echoed across the island, and gunpowder and explosions demonstrated to everyone what the will of the 'Black King' truly was.

High in the heavens, in the frigid universe, on the moon's abundant sea, lies the [Anti-Entropy] base.

Dozens of Edos-like beings, dressed in ordinary clothes, were brazenly exposed in the vacuum, bustling about beside the two colossal structures.

The mass projectors are not cannons in the conventional sense, but rather two awe-inspiring mega-structures.

The mass transmitter built by the European Space Agency on Kilimanjaro is a full 30 kilometers long. Countless superconducting coils and support towers surround it, making it look like a bloated and clumsy giant earthworm. It is both unsightly and difficult to use.

Two parallel vacuum electromagnetic orbits, each over thirteen kilometers long, slowly rose from the crater within the abundant sea. Thanks to advanced nanotechnology and the high-speed vacuum pipeline transportation technology of the 'Sword Star' world, the two mass launchers, named "Arbitrator One" and "Arbitrator Two," were not as cumbersome as those of other forces.

The two open orbits, each thirty meters in diameter, are slightly curved and grayish-white, blending into the gray background of the lunar surface and making them extremely difficult to detect by ordinary observation methods when in a silent state.

Of course, there was no need for these two big guys to hide. The information that there were unknown forces entrenched in the rich sea and building unknown bases was not a big secret among the major forces. Aragaka alone had several frictions with the base because of the previous Golden Conflict.

But the Edos-type people truly deserve to be called the 'Mother Realm's' masterpiece, the destined 'Children of the Universe'; they are perfectly suited for fighting in space.

With the teleportation portals within the base providing a continuous supply of materials, and with virtually unlimited transport capacity, all the minor probing attempts by various factions ended in failure.

Their plan to investigate the true situation by tracking transportation channels also failed completely.

In fact, before the two mass launchers were put into operation, no force could have imagined that a faction in this remote corner could secretly assemble two deadly behemoths.

In the basin within the rich ocean, at the starting point of the mass launcher, a massive array of nuclear fusion reactors and a complex matrix of capacitors are neatly arranged, operating silently and charging to provide instantaneous, devastating energy for launch.

Dozens of clumsy, automated mining robots bustled around a huge loading platform.

They are responsible for sourcing materials locally, crushing and screening lunar rocks, and then transporting them to small smelting plants. The rocks are then crushed using processing facilities and sintered at high temperatures in giant molds using the moon's vacuum and microgravity environment. A small amount of toughening material is then injected to form a dense cylindrical "projectile" with extremely high overall density and a sturdy structure, measuring six meters in diameter and twenty meters in length.

To achieve optimal stability and aerodynamic performance in electromagnetic orbit, the mass projectile's projectile is designed as a long rod with an outer layer of kinetic energy coated with a high-temperature ablation resistant shell.

Normally, such large lunar rock shells wouldn't be needed to destroy the Arcadia Islands, but since Boss Jiang gave the order to increase the quantity without raising the price, we had no choice but to temporarily switch to these larger shells.

Of course, there are even larger ones, since the moon has plenty of everything, including lunar rocks. However, if the mass of the projected object were larger, the resulting tsunami when it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean would affect coastal countries.

This is going too far and not going far enough.

As the 'Apostles' on the Arcadia Islands evacuated in an orderly manner, the superconducting coils of the 'Arbitrator' mass projector, which were integrated with the orbit, began to charge, emitting a ghostly blue light, like a giant dragon awakening.

The thirteen-kilometer-long track began to vibrate at a low frequency, and the fusion reactor injected tremendous energy into the capacitor array, like a shell the size of a standard semi-trailer truck being loaded into the chamber.

The projector started up silently.

There was no deafening roar, only a humming energy that filled the vacuum and made one's heart race.

A massive, dark gray pillar, resembling a small ship, began to accelerate smoothly and irresistibly along its trajectory, driven by a powerful electromagnetic force.

Its speed increased, and it finally broke away silently at the end of its orbit, carrying immeasurable kinetic energy at a precise angle, and shot towards that deep blue planet—Earth.

Chapter 871 Destruction in Progress

After flying silently for a period of time, the Earth's atmosphere became its stage.

Dozens of forces and thousands of satellites in near-Earth orbit observed what appeared to be a planet falling from space.

Under the close surveillance and panicked reports of numerous observation departments, the 1800-ton lunar rock projectile crashed into the atmosphere at a speed of 24 kilometers per second and sped forward at breakneck speed.

The scorching plasma generated by friction with the atmosphere enveloped the entire long, rod-shaped projectile, transforming it into a ray of light thousands of times brighter than the sun, directly illuminating the dark night sky of the Atlantic Ocean.

The air had no chance to escape and was forced to the front of the 'light spear', emitting a continuous and terrifying roar like a continental plate tearing apart, which traveled for miles.

Such a powerful space-based weapon has only appeared a few times in the entire history of mankind. With its terrifying energy, the atmosphere was mercilessly torn apart. Wherever the light spear passed, space was ionized and torn apart, forming a huge cloud hole that stretched for hundreds of kilometers and could not be healed for a long time.

From the perspective of satellite aerial surveillance, the sky appears as if it has been ripped open with a wound that will never heal.

God grasped His spear of divine punishment and hurled it upon this filthy island.

The 20-meter-long lunar rock shell, like a scorching needle, pierced deep into the heart of the island.

The Pantheon's magnificent marble columns, gilded carvings, bulletproof glass walls, flowers, power, money—everything man-made—lost all meaning in the sudden burst of energy implosion.

At this moment, there is only destruction, and nothing but destruction.

The light illuminated the darkness, and the soaring shockwave instantly uprooted the "Pantheon Clubhouse," a symbol of the pinnacle of power, along with the green mountain, causing fragments to be swept into the rising miniature sun and vanish into nothingness.

As the 'superiors' who survived the battle royale were still celebrating their escape, the sun-like light that pierced the dome thoroughly and without leaving a trace penetrated their bodies.

Subsequently, their bodies, their consciousness, their souls, and their sins were all directly sublimated in the tens of thousands of degrees of heat.

Nerves, muscles, bones, diamond watches, haute couture gowns—all were reduced to elementary particles. Without pain or fear, these people vanished from the world in an instant.

The impact instantly pierced through the entire island, vaporizing millions of tons of seawater that reached the seabed, creating a bowl-shaped crater over 500 meters in diameter.

The shockwave that followed spread out in a spherical shape, not only completely shattering the main island, but also pushing the surrounding seawater outward, forming a huge wall of water up to 150 meters high, surging in all directions.

Several satellite islands also trembled in the devastating shockwave and tsunami; the islands cracked, collapsed, and all the buildings on their surfaces were razed to the ground.