After subduing the first enemy, the door to another classroom in front of Chen Chen suddenly snapped open. Another bearded man clutching at his arm rushed out of the door just in time to see Chen Chen taking down his partner.
Despite being invisible, Chen Chen’s large movement made his silhouette instantly noticeable to the other party.
The bearded man’s expression quickly changed as he instinctively reached for the gun before remembering that his arm was wounded. He immediately used his healthy arm to reach for a flashlight and charged at Chen Chen!
Enhanced flashlight?
The moment the flashlight emitted the first ray of light, Chen Chen quickly turned away from the source of light. It took a second before he realized that the bearded man did not aim the flashlight at his eyes, but instead at the wall right beside him!
A strange image appeared before Chen Chen!
It was an extremely bizarre image where hundreds of polygons seemed to be arranged in a predetermined pattern. They seemed to form the shape of an eye, but the eye was a combination of countless eyes drawn on top of each other. Some of them were laughing and some of them were crying. Some of them were like the squinting, smiling eyes of a lover while others were full of fear. It was like staring into a depthless abyss…
Joy, anger, sorrow, resentment, fear…
Countless eyes stacked on top of each other to produce this distinctive pattern. They were etched with senseless ink, but upon closer inspection, there was nothing left…
Upon seeing this image, Chen Chen felt his heart skipping a beat as he quickly twisted his neck away from the source. However, it was too late as the image had been carved into Chen Chen’s mind.
“Blasted!”
Chen Chen immediately made the connection and realized what he was looking at. His expression turned sharply while at the same time, countless graphene poker cards appeared and shot toward the bearded man!
“Swoosh swoosh swoosh!”
The light emitted from the flashlight in the bearded man’s hand was extinguished instantly. His eyes remained as large as they had been and he appeared as if he was frozen in place.
The very next second, his eyes, facial features, neck, body… Faint traces of blood appeared all over his body.
After that, the bearded man crumbled onto the ground like a tower of crumbling building blocks. Hundreds of chunks of broken flesh scattered all over the floor.
The hallway was immediately filled with a misty haze of blood.
At this moment, Chen Chen kept his eyes completely shut and his jaw was clenched together as tightly as he could. He felt as if there was a gigantic hand wrapping itself around his brain, the world appeared to be spinning out of control. The image illuminated by the flashlight was still burning in his mind, refusing to fade away…
“Sir Commander? Sir Commander!”
Inside the Bluetooth earpiece, the voice of X-112 sounded like it came from another dimension. Chen Chen tried to elicit a response but his voice was caught in his throat. He focused on taking repeated gasp, forcing air into his lungs even when his lungs were already inflated with air.
From the moment of Chen Chen’s betrayal until now, barely half a minute had passed. At the same time, the three Black Knights that were invisible and posted a short distance away had also arrived at the scene. They rushed into the building and surrounded Chen Chen to cover for him.
After what felt like another thirty seconds had elapsed, Chen Chen felt himself recovering slightly from the previous dizzy sensation. He felt a surge of joy as he mustered the strength to produce a sentence, “Don’t… Don’t mind me…
“Capture them alive if possible!”
Chen Chen let himself collapse onto the floor and clasped the floor with both hands to a point where even his fingernails were cracking and he remained unbothered. He felt like there was a terrible storm raging inside his mind. The height of the storm had only just passed and the roar of the wind was slowly fading out.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
One minute, two minutes, three minutes…
The storm came out of nowhere but took its time dissipating. Although it only took three to five minutes, Chen Chen felt like he had been suffering for ages.
After recollecting himself from the slowly fading dizziness, Chen Chen picked himself back up from the ground. It was then when he noticed that his shirt was drenched in sweat and there was a pile of bile where he laid which he must have vomited without realizing it.
The image had somehow caused Chen Chen to throw up without even remembering it.
“Is this Basilisk?”
A curtain of shadow glimpsed past Chen Chen’s vision. He was sure it was the NZT-48 that saved him.
According to Fujiwara Aoki, the Basilisk triggered a “Gödel’s shock” phenomenon on whoever met its eyes and effectively shut down the brain. Although it was still unknown whether the effect was only temporary, the heart ceased to function along with the brain, which essentially meant that anyone who saw the Basilisk would die instantly.
An extremely potent brain was required to alleviate the major damage caused by Basilisk. This meant that only young people with strong, developing brains and agile thinking had a chance to survive from Basilisk.
However, even people like Fujiwara Aoki who was resistant to its effects had fainted for half an hour upon making eye contact with Basilisk. After ingesting the NZT-48, Chen Chen did not faint but instead experienced a violent reaction for several minutes after.
“I was careless.”
Chen Chen shook his head. Although he was confident that he could negate the effects of Basilisk, this would still mark one instance where he was closest to death over the course of all his intricate planning and strategizing so far.
With this in mind, Chen Chen approached the corpse that had been mutilated into numerous pieces. With a gentle wave of his hand, several poker cards so transparent they were nearly invisible proceeded to appear in Chen Chen’s hands.
After putting away the graphene poker cards, Chen Chen bent down and picked up the flashlight.
“Weaponizing the Basilisk pattern, what a brilliant idea…”
Chen Chen looked at the flashlight in hand and directed his attention to what was illuminated in front of the flashlight. Before doing this, he made sure to cover half of the flashlight’s bulb with his hand and proceed to look down.
In front of the flashlight was a mini copy of the Basilisk pattern carved on the hardwood.
Just now, the flashlight was used to project the Basilisk pattern located right on the wall beside Chen Chen. Completely unguarded, Chen Chen had his first encounter with the dangerous image right away.
It was largely unknown how the bearded man was able to pull this off and carve the Basilisk pattern in its entirety. Could it be that by covering one half of it while carving the other half, “Gödel’s shock” would not be triggered since the image was not displayed in full?
Chen Chen had a mild epiphany.
At the same time, the voice of X-112 came from the Bluetooth earpiece again. “Sir Commander, are you feeling better now?”
“Feeling much better now.”
Chen Chen nodded. “How’s the situation up there?”
“All the members in the school building have been captured alive. There are 18 of them in total, 12 of them are women. All of them were hiding in the cellar of the cafeteria located at the back of the building.”
X-112 answered faithfully.
A gleam of cold light flashed past Chen Chen’s eyes. It was true that some people were truly despicable. Regardless of how well you treat them, you would only receive hostility in return. Violence was the optimal solution to shatter the fantasies of such people.
It was after you conquer them when you would see them turning into loyal dogs, bowing respectfully to you like clockwork…