[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game":3,"chapter-love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-chapter-46":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","Love.exe: Surviving a Cyberpunk Death Game",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1878919,2492,"Chapter 46: Kraken","love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-chapter-46",46,"\u003Cp>The tentacles had multiplied while he was still finishing the thought about the first one. That, in itself, was already rude.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was in the fastest current, which meant the zone was sliding past him at a speed that made the first tentacle a problem he had already left behind by the time three more rose across the field in front of him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Each one climbed out from below and did something different the moment it reached race level.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One swept laterally across the middle lanes with a slow motion of something that had discovered a target worth being smashed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One had not moved in several seconds and simply occupied the transition zone between two water currents, which was its own kind of threat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One was descending again, which meant it had already acted once and was resetting for whatever it intended next.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The fastest current pushed his truck at the upper part of what the zone’s physics would tolerate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The trucks ahead in the same lane grew visibly closer with each passing second in a way the slower lanes simply never managed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The current gave him the forward motion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His engine gave him more.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The two together were enough that when the first descending tentacle crossed his lane he had a window to use that a truck in the middle or left current would not have had.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tentacle was moving, but he was moving faster.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The gap between one edge of the tentacle and his path existed for about three seconds before it would not exist at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He took it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tentacle surface filled the left window for a moment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Close enough that he could see its texture, the scale pattern, the particular shade of dark the corporation had chosen for its kraken.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then it was behind him and the lane was open again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tentacle was behind him and kept going.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sensible response, if one ignored the fact that the situation itself had no sense.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To his left, across three water currents, a truck was no longer in the race in any meaningful way.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A tentacle had hit it somewhere in the previous thirty seconds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The result had been less a collision than a slap delivered at very high force.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The truck was moving, technically.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the sense that it had a direction.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the direction was not forward and the speed was not for racing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The truck was swatted around between sharks, whales and another tentacle before the darkness below the water currents claimed it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That was one less competitor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, Smokescreen discharged in the second-fastest lane ahead of him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Proxy found that interesting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What it created in water was not smoke but an opaque chemical cloud that dispersed slowly in the current.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The cloud occupied roughly one lane’s width for four seconds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Long enough for the truck that had deployed it to exit forward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And leave the two trucks behind it with reduced visibility at exactly the moment a tentacle descended through them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The first truck managed to steer around the tentacle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The second went through the cloud still blind, and found the tentacle by the inevitable contact.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The impact was enough to transform the truck into a displaced wreckage, which flew through the undersea like a torpedo. A truck in the next door current narrowly avoided being hit by it in what would certainly be a good fireworks show.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The driver in that lane said something.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Proxy could not hear it through the water, the cab glass, and the general situation of mayhem.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And then, his attention was preoccupied by a jellyfish ahead and to his right.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It sat in the second-fastest lane with calm permanence of something that did not accept the existence of the race as something worth respecting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its bell was wider than the water current.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Which meant trucks there were met with an obstacle they didn’t seem to ask.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It did not seem to care.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The water current moved around it rather than through it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That disturbance made turbulence at water currents.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That turbulence made it near impossible for a truck to remain in the water current without flying through the undersea.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Burst fired from somewhere behind the jellyfish.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Presumably toward a lead truck.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It struck the jellyfish instead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The jellyfish did not react in any visible way.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its forward momentum rebounded off the bell.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It shoved the truck that had fired it three meters backward, rolling.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Proxy found that an oversight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He kept going.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Something was moving in the dark below the water currents The zone had a floor in the sense that there was a depth beneath the currents.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Below that depth there was an absence of light.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Except for one point of bioluminescence moving slowly in the direction opposite the race.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was large enough that the light was not really a point at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>More a diffuse glow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It drifted the wrong way with the unhurried consistency of something that had not been told there was a race above it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And would have remained unimpressed if it had been told.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He watched it until it was out of his sightline.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To his right, two trucks deployed Ram at each other from different water currents at the same time. Which was the kind of decision that created an outcome only a virtual environment could fully commit to.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Both Rams connected the instant the trucks crossed into each other’s lanes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Both trucks smashed against each other in a wreckage and were driven outward by the other’s force.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The left truck crossed into Proxy’s current sideways at a speed its driver had not intended.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Proxy steered slightly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He slipped past it with the smallest input the speed of the fastest current allowed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The right truck was thrown in the other direction.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It met a tentacle that had been stationary for several seconds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Apparently it had chosen that exact moment to stop being stationary.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tentacle was not going to change course.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The truck was moving too fast to change course.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The crash that followed created a sound that carried even through the water.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The end of the zone was visible now. It was a defined line ahead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The next zone beyond it already readable from here as something different in color and light and texture.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He could see the remaining distance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was not long.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The water current at this speed was reducing it in a way that was almost worth admiring.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, of course, it surfaced.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The displacement of water came first.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When something that large moved from below into the water currents, it appeared as a pressure change before the body became visible as a body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The currents disrupted across multiple lanes at once.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Trucks in the middle field lost steering for a full second while the zone’s physics changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tentacles extended to full reach in every direction at once.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What had been a manageable obstacle became something occupying a significant stretch of the zone between the course and the end.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Trucks ahead of him were steering through the gaps between tentacles toward the exit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The gaps existed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They were not generous.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He watched the tentacle positions.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He mapped the openings.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then he saw Nyx’s truck at the front of the field.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was in the fastest current.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Expected.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was near the zone end.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Also expected.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What he had not accounted for was the direction the truck was taking inside that position.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The path she was choosing was not one of the openings that led toward the next zone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She had the accelerator down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She was heading for the kraken itself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He watched that for a moment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His hand stayed steady on the wheel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Right,\" he said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He did not sound surprised.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Which was, in itself, a kind of surprise.\u003C\u002Fp>",1297,"2026-06-10T06:21:48.780Z",1,"novelbin.me","01f825960a6be6cf35d08926f062470268616b27e66a458102db929a264594b3","love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-chapter-47","love-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-chapter-45",77,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Flove-exe-surviving-a-cyberpunk-death-game-cover.jpg"]