noveltune Chapter 19 Three countries have been wiped out! Ahead, an asphalt road!
Chapter 19 Three countries have been wiped out! Ahead, an asphalt road!
The director switched the camera.
A split-screen window for a global live broadcast pops up, displaying footage from studios in dozens of countries below the main screen.
The beacon of light.
James sat at the table, motionless.
A newly printed system announcement was spread out in front of him.
"Lifespan +5", "Constitution +10%", "10 billion tons of rare earth elements".
The three lines of black text were circled in red by the deputy host, making them stand out starkly.
James stared intently at the three red circles.
He suddenly swept the beer can next to him to the ground.
The metal can hit the edge of the table, rolled over, and fell to the ground, splattering golden foam all over the carpet.
The deputy host huddled in his chair, not daring to utter a sound.
"That's not fair."
James forced out the words through gritted teeth and crumpled the notice into a ball.
"Marcus fought in the F-level zone for a whole day! He killed one monster and got ten thousand bottles of water! He distributed it among three hundred million people, one sip for each!"
"Where is he?"
James pointed at Su Chen on the screen, his eyes bloodshot.
"He watched a sunrise! He just watched a sunrise!"
Sakura Country Studio.
Masaki Fujino took off his gold-rimmed glasses.
My fingers were shaking so badly that the pure titanium temples slipped off my fingertips.
He instinctively tightened his grip.
A crisp sound.
The temples of the glasses were bent at an odd angle.
His partner turned around and froze.
Masaki Fujino looked at the broken glasses in his hand.
"I told him before that he would die sooner or later without weapons."
He threw the shards on the table and stared intently at the screen with his naked eyes.
"Now his strength is twenty-six times that of an ordinary person, his physique is thirty-two times that of an ordinary person, and he also has stacked bonuses."
Masaki Fujino's Adam's apple bobbed.
The studio in Japan was deathly silent.
It's quieter over in India.
Substitute player Priya was still pushing her bicycle in the C-level disaster zone, her face covered in sweat and her lips chapped.
The temporary commentator sat behind a simple table, his hands clasped together, unable to utter a single syllable.
One billion tons of rare earth elements.
They haven't even finished clearing out the Class D variants within their own country.
The system announcement popped up again.
Not one.
There are three in a row.
[Global Alert!]
[Modo Kingdom contestant killed – by C-rank aberration "Bone-Splitter Spider".]
[Global Alert!]
[The Beninnian player has been killed – by a D-class aberration, the "Sandstorm Scorpion."]
[Global Alert!]
[Tuvan player killed - by B-rank mutant "Abyssal Eel".]
The barrage of comments from Da Xia paused for a moment.
Three...three people died at once?
[Moor? Benin? Tuva? What countries are these?]
[Small countries! All small countries! The largest has a population of only a few million!]
Zhao Mingyuan put down his teacup and leaned forward.
Three lines of scarlet text appeared immediately below the announcement.
[Punishment Triggered - A Class C disaster has descended upon the entire territory of Mor Kingdom.]
[Punishment Triggered - A Class D disaster has descended upon the entire territory of Beninir.]
[Punishment Triggered - A Class B disaster has descended upon the entire Tuva Kingdom.]
The director reacted extremely quickly, with three split screens popping up simultaneously.
The first scene: Moor.
A small town in Eastern Europe, with low-rise buildings.
A spatial rift tore open the sky, and hundreds and thousands of grayish-white spider-like aberrations poured down, crashing onto rooftops, streets, and squares.
Someone was running wildly in the street.
He had barely taken two steps when he was pierced and knocked down by the massive arthropod.
The second scene is Benin.
On the arid land of West Africa, sandstorms create fissures, within which swarms of black scorpions proliferate.
Each one is the size of a mongrel, with its tail spikes standing upright.
The screen flickered, and the signal became unstable.
The final frame freezes on a scene of collapsed mud-brick ruins.
The third scene is Tuva.
The atoll island nation in the South Pacific has a total area of less than 30 square kilometers and a population of just over 10,000.
The sea surface is torn apart by cracks.
The seawater surged violently and collapsed.
A giant, dark-colored eel, over twenty meters long, burst out of the sea and snapped up the only breakwater on the shore.
Class B disaster.
More than 10,000 people.
In the Great Xia bullet screen area, all the celebrations and revelry vanished instantly.
[...Tuva has only a little over ten thousand people.]
[When a Class B disaster strikes a country with 10,000 inhabitants, this isn't just a disaster; it's the destruction of the nation.]
Even Mor and Beninir couldn't hold on... Millions faced a monster horde descending upon the entire territory...
One second we're celebrating adding five years to our lifespan, the next second someone's country is falling.
……
The three split-screen displays are still ongoing.
Tuvalo's signal was cut off first.
A giant eel swept across the main island, the screen shook violently twice, and then turned into a lot of snow.
One minute later, Benin's signal disappeared.
Mohr's shot lasted the longest.
The last shot is an aerial panoramic view of the city.
The whole city is on fire.
The number of viewers in DaXia's live stream exceeded 400 million.
For several minutes, the screen remained completely blank, without a single comment appearing.
Grain fell from the sky, rare earth elements split the earth, and the life expectancy of the 1.4 billion people in Daxia increased dramatically.
At the same time, Tuva is being forcibly erased from the world map.
This is how a nation survives its fate.
Zhao Mingyuan leaned back in his chair.
Lin Xiaotang's pen stopped in mid-air. She glanced at the split-screen display and quickly turned her head away.
This game... is truly going to lead to extinction and the destruction of nations.
I can't laugh anymore.
[Su Shen, you must live.]
The scene cuts back to Su Chen.
He was squatting next to the tricycle, inserting a shovel into the fixed slot in the cargo bed.
The tent has been packed up, and the tarpaulin has been folded and stuffed into the tool bag.
He was unaware of the destruction of the three small countries.
Su Chen stood up and looked around.
He stopped moving.
The fog has lifted.
From your feet to the horizon, there is not a single gray or white obstruction in your view.
With enhanced vision, I could see clearly at great distances in the morning light.
The dark brown, sticky mud stretched out forward.
But at the edge of the field of vision, a flat cutting line appeared in the swamp.
Dark brown transitions to gray.
The transition from gray to pure black.
That's a road.
A standard asphalt road, two lanes.
The road surface is covered with cracks and potholes, but it retains its main structure. It is cut out from the southeast side of the swamp and extends northward in an arc.
Su Chen stared at that road.
He flipped himself onto the bus.
In Da Xia's live stream room, the previously silent chat suddenly came alive.
Wait!! Look ahead!
What is that black line behind the swamp?
[A road! That's a road!!!]
[The highway!! Su Shen has found the highway!!!]
He's going out! He's going to ride out of the S-class swamp area!!
Zhao Mingyuan sat up abruptly, staring at the straight black asphalt line in the distance.
"highway."
He spoke, his voice strained.
Lin Xiaotang nodded emphatically, her eyes instantly reddening.
"He came out."
The tracks tightened suddenly.
With power coming from the cargo bed, the all-terrain tricycle accelerates and surges forward.
Dark brown mud churned violently on both sides of the tracks, splashing up and crashing down.
As the vehicle speed increases, the mud layer becomes thinner and thinner.
The edge of the swamp flashed past my feet.
The front wheels rolled onto the asphalt road surface.
The rear wheels followed.
The car lurched violently before regaining its balance.
The metal tracks rolled over the cracked asphalt, making a rhythmic "clack-clack" sound.
Su Chen turned around and glanced back.
Behind them, the boundless, dark brown swamp was completely left behind.
The eight-hour ordeal is over.
Su Chen turned around and fixed his gaze on what was ahead.
On both sides of the road are cracked wastelands, with several dead tree stumps leaning in the road ditch.
Directly ahead of the highway, a silhouette rises on the horizon.
It is a building.
It is two or three stories high, with large areas of the exterior walls peeling off, exposing the cement structure.
Two rusted car frames were parked at the entrance.
On the left side stands a row of metal canopies, below which are several square pieces of equipment, with thick pipes embedded in the ground.
There is a huge metal sign at the top, hanging crookedly in mid-air.
The distance has been shortened.
A red sign with white lettering bursts into view.
The tricycle gradually slowed down.
Su Chen looked up.
"Gas station".