MC Bookstore Chapter 584 Delving Deeper
Chapter 584 Delving Deeper
"Speaking of which, Akashi."
"What?"
"Where have you traveled since you retired? Would you be interested in telling me?"
"You suddenly asked this..."
Chi Xue sat in the middle of the back seat, with Little Jack and Alice sitting on either side of her. The three of them didn't feel crowded at all in the back of the car; in fact, they felt it was quite spacious.
If we rule out the possibility that the car has a large interior space, then only one possibility remains.
"I really envy you guys. I have to hold onto the tail when I sit in the passenger seat, otherwise it feels cramped," Su Tianqing said after carefully looking at the spacious back seat.
"Are you deliberately picking a fight?" Chi Xue rolled her eyes at her expressionlessly.
"You know what, Foxie always seems to enjoy picking fights with Hyacinth and the others," Fenrir complained from the driver's seat, taking a swig of his drink.
"In the past, I would summon monsters to make Hyacinths fight. Recently, I've been busy with a lot of things, so I haven't fought with them much. Also, I've realized that everyone's strength has increased a lot, and they're causing much more damage to the surrounding environment than before, so I'm picking fights with them much less often."
"...So you guys are quite considerate of the bigger picture." Akashi had no more motivation to complain, so she could only agree with Fenrir's words.
However, this can also be considered a good thing. Rongcheng now has a total of 5 permanent Star Shadows, plus Xinyuehu's unfathomable magic and reserves of witches and monsters. If the two sides were to fight a real battle, half of Rongcheng might be razed to the ground by the aftershocks.
Since Xin Yuehu and the others intend to control the damage, I'll just pretend I don't know anything about it. Compared to the large-scale destruction of the city, the damage caused by Hyacinth and the others being beaten is much smaller.
Chi Xue glanced at the bustling traffic on the street ahead.
It's now the third hour inside the Dreamscape. In the first two hours of exploration, Chi Xue felt that the Dreamscape was quite in line with the essence of the open-world action shooting game she remembered:
Robbery, high-speed chase, shaking off NPC clones with sirens blaring, and sitting on the beach singing a victory song with a ton of cash and gold.
Under Fenrir and Alice's planning, the group changed from their previous aimless wandering in the mental world to a highly organized and meticulous approach. They collected almost all the clues they witnessed and handed them over to Su Tianqing for summarization and analysis.
During the investigation inside and around the casino, they naturally experienced many thrilling and exciting things—a street fight with gangsters in the back alley of the casino, searching for intelligence in the boss's safe and finding a construction document that recorded a secret infiltration point in the casino, and then engaging in a fierce shooting battle to seize the escape truck.
Chi Xue felt that she had experienced several times more things in her recent dreamlike mental images than she had experienced during her retirement travels over the past ten years.
At least no one will drive a tank in Foxyr after the magical girl retires, or go to Los Santos to enjoy highway racing.
……but.
As all the investigations and preliminary planning were completed and preparations were in place to begin the formal operation, something that seemed quite important came to Akayuki's mind:
So far, this dreamlike mental imagery seems a bit too normal.
I'm not saying that robbing someone by car is normal; the thing itself seems very strange. But compared to the "chaos" shown by the card game and racing yesterday, this place is exactly the same and perfect, and there's not a single thing to complain about.
Although the NPCs, buildings, and streets still seem to be copied and pasted materials, the diversity of materials is much better than the previous one, and the urban landscape is also excellent. It's almost as if they were created by the same pair of authors.
"Something feels off," Chi Xue muttered to herself, frowning.
"Stop thinking about those things, we're almost there. Does everyone remember what we're going to do later?"
"Of course I remember." Upon hearing Xin Yuehu's words in the passenger seat, Fenrir in the driver's seat immediately nodded in response.
"Drive the car to the sewer drain behind the casino, bring the best weapons, and then..."
Fenrir glanced at the three people in the back seat through the rearview mirror. Jack and Alice nodded, and Fenrir pulled a travel bag from the trunk, showing that it was full of C4 explosives.
The latter then displayed the detonator and detonator assembly in his hand. The two men, one in gold and one in black, looked at each other and revealed a uniform, joyful smile.
"One hundred kilograms of C4 explosives are evenly distributed at the intended target location, and then we use our magic to confine the blast wave to the wall—"
Xin Yuehu gestured with her hands, then, feeling that two hands weren't enough, she used her tail as well, creating a vivid image.
"So, Alice, your Hong Kong City Bank from last time hasn't joined us yet. Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand." Golden Alice nodded repeatedly, her eyes filled with anticipation and a hint of nervousness as she looked at the detonator in her hand.
Chi Xue silently turned her head and exchanged a glance with Little Jack.
The two little ones, one black and one gold, have identical facial features, differing only in their dress colors and expressions. The black one appears more composed and reserved, while the gold one is more lively, but both are quite adorable...
"...Miss Akashi, would you like to play this?"
Noticing that Akashi's gaze was starting to look at the neatly stacked C4 explosives in the travel bag, Jack tentatively took out a cube and handed it to Akashi.
"Besides the detonator, we can also detonate it with a code. The code is 7355608."
Here, have a piece.
"Please don't! I'll just play with it casually. I'm really bad at these high-tech gadgets," Chi Xue quickly replied with a wry smile, but still took the explosive from Little Jack and weighed it in her hand.
The quantity was substantial; it was a batch of confiscated explosives that the group had raided the FBL warehouse half an hour earlier. The terrifying firepower of the NPCs that triggered the five-star wanted level was something Chi Xue still couldn't forget.
...This inevitably reminded Chi Xue of the time when she was a magical girl, active alone in Rongcheng.
At that time, I had not yet found any other companions. Together with the stargazers, I fought against strange people and crimes all over Rongcheng. It was not until Qiu Baiyang and Albatross joined me that I truly felt the friendship between companions.
Looking at these spirited younger generations around her—even though they call themselves villains and what they are doing certainly fits the title of "villain," they are doing their best to investigate the whereabouts of the astral behemoth in order to protect Rongcheng, and they are even taking considerable risks.
"Sigh..." Chi Xue sighed, no longer thinking about the past.
Along the way, no one said anything more.
The demolition site was chosen to be an abandoned, hidden construction tunnel beneath the casino. Once the wall was breached, one could directly access the underground passage leading to the abandoned facility, bypassing the heavily armed guards and NPCs on the surface.
Driving to the designated location to set up the explosive device and the magic directional blasting barrier, it took more than twenty minutes to lay the detonators and pull out the main fuse for the entire bag of C4 explosives according to the predetermined arrangement. It was much more troublesome than expected.
Once everything was ready, the group of people wearing hoods squatted in a safe area where they wouldn't be affected by the shockwave, conducting a final check before the operation.
Alice held the detonator in her hands, Jack was tightening the detonator wire, Fenrir was checking the light machine gun in her hand, and Heartmoon Fox leisurely wagged her tail, waiting for everyone to be ready, as if she were passing through an ordinary day.
"Are you ready?" Chi Xue stood up and asked the people around her.
"After you go in, don't rush in. Remember to find an escape route as soon as possible. Do not leave the vicinity of me and Xinyuehu. If any unexpected situation occurs, the two of us can quickly bounce you back to the real world."
"Don't worry about me at all. I'm not good at anything but running away. You guys definitely won't be able to outrun me." Fenrir confidently gave a thumbs up and chuckled.
Then Xin Yuehu gently tapped his forehead.
"What are you saying, you dog! Look at that big machine gun in your arms. You'll be the one with the strongest firepower later. If you turn around and run away, do you expect Alice to go to the front line and take the hits?"
"It's just a joke, don't take it seriously," the gray wolf girl pouted, but judging from her evasive eyes, Chi Xue felt that she had seriously considered that idea.
That's enough of the interruption. After Little Jack confirmed that the fuse was intact, Golden Alice took a deep breath, stood up straight, gently grasped the handle of the detonator, and said:
"Then I'm going to detonate it."
"Three, two, one... Detonate!"
A dull, low explosion echoed across the ground.
The magically constructed directional blast barrier worked, completely collapsing and destroying the entire wall without affecting other surrounding buildings; the blasting effect was flawless.
"We did it!" "Let's go in and see what's inside...!"
Leading the charge was the most excited Heart Moon Fox.
Fenrir quickly followed the fox girl's steps, afraid that she would rush ahead and step on a trap and get beaten up. He worried that she might tell Hellcat and Cheshire Rabbit after they got out.
But as soon as the two of them peered into the huge gap, their feet stopped in front of the breach in the wall. The fox's tail bristled and thickened, and even the wolf's tail trembled slightly as it was held taut between its legs.
"Whoa..." "What are these things..."
Seeing that the two of them were expressing the same sentiment, Chi Xue curiously took two steps forward and looked closely at the scenery inside.
Abandoned facilities? Underground casino?
The underground facility door that Fenrir had captured on the surveillance camera had been blown open by the explosion, but what clues related to Garuda were behind the door?
It was a huge, pitch-black maze that almost filled the entire field of vision.