Chapter 4927

The second ambush began.

Shiler was setting up ice traps with his teammates at the front door. They had already assembled the ice-generating devices they received, but they needed to be connected to raw materials. This required some design and wiring, and it took them a while to figure it out.

Seeing the monsters emerge from the mist, everyone's expression turned grim. When they had explored near Gotham University earlier, they had already discovered that not all monsters were the half-crippled type from the previous assault. These monsters made of human limbs could actually be very intricate, representing another level of biomechanics.

Brainiac had a special talent for playing with corpses; he could truly treat every part of a human as a mere mechanical part, so what he created had a very strange, non-human feel. The moment you saw it, you knew it couldn't be human-made, because there was no emotion in it—just pure toolization and partization, which made it even more frightening.

Of course, the few people present weren't afraid. The problem was that Brainiac's mechanical engineering skills were genuinely good; the initial monsters were obviously him lowering the difficulty on purpose. This time, the assaulting monsters showed a clear upgrade.

First came a large figure wielding an arm shield. The arm shield was a huge coil made by combining countless human arms, then rolled into a circular shield.

The large figure behind him was a monster that could spray bone fragments from its protruding abdomen, with short but strong limbs. Since ancient times, shield-bearing archers have been hard to deal with.

Behind this monster was a row of creatures that used human skulls as teeth—headhunting beasts. Their attack method was to lunge forward and bite down, refusing to let go. Behind them was a group of many-legged centipedes, with the earlier skull archers riding on top. This vehicle's maneuverability was much better than before—at least it could completely ignore potholes on the ground.

When the army pressed in, everyone felt the pressure. There were many types and numbers of monsters; even with decent equipment, they were vastly outnumbered.

But at this moment, Gordon stepped forward. He was actually very skilled in urban warfare, after all—he had fought his way from old Gotham to New Gotham, a legendary veteran. Anyone with slightly worse urban combat skills wouldn't have survived to today.

Gordon had basically drawn up the defense plan, and the others cooperated with him to set up the ice-generating devices. As soon as they came up, he directly froze a charging centipede monster solid.

This ice-generating device was different from the later dense ice; once frozen, it couldn't be undone—it turned directly into an ice sculpture that shattered on impact. After being frozen, Ethan shot it once, and it split cleanly down the middle.

These monsters' structures had upgraded, but their intelligence didn't seem to have improved much. They didn't send small monsters ahead to scout; instead, they all rushed in at once, causing the frontline shield-bearers to freeze, only to be smashed by the charging hounds from behind. Then, after cooling down, the rear centipede monsters were frozen again.

"Excellent!" Gordon hid behind the curtains, looking satisfied with his setup. He truly hadn't lost his edge—even though Gotham had been peaceful for years, his fundamentals were still intact. Thinking back to the days when the Gotham police and gangs clashed, it had its own flavor.

But soon the situation changed. Because they didn't have enough raw materials, the three front devices had run out, and the two behind were struggling. Aside from that, their only weapons were Shiler's umbrella ice spray and two pistols. The monsters kept coming in waves.

"If I had known, I should have tried to get more raw materials," Charles sighed.

But the other three exchanged glances, obviously thinking that wasn't possible. Torturing Jonathan was one thing, but torturing Victor the same way would truly make them not brothers.

Even thinking about it, you know—even if it wasn't dense ice, the raw materials for this level of ice-generating device would be hard to prepare, probably second only to fear toxin. Being knocked out by fear toxin still leaves a chance, but being frozen by this? You could skip cremation entirely and just join the storm surge's floodwaters into nature's water cycle.

Still, Victor probably wouldn't let them into the lab, after all—he doesn't understand psychology, so it's hard to stop them before the students do something stupid. Jonathan is purely bold because of his skill.

Seeing the last two ice-generators weaken due to lack of raw materials, Shiler helplessly picked up his umbrella. This really wasn't him wanting to order fried rice at the tavern—he was truly outmatched. Without the anti-life equation, should he just wait to lose?

He pushed open the room door and glanced outside. The first to lunge was the headhunting beast—this monster resembled a small, headless hunting dog, with teeth in its abdomen. After lunging, it would spread its legs and tear with its abdominal teeth. But before it could lunge, Shiler opened his umbrella, facing it with the anti-life equation, while his hand pressed the ice spray button.

Shiler wasn't sure if the unadapted anti-life equation would work. If not, the ice spray could at least buy time.

Who knew that the moment the umbrella opened, everything around them stopped. Whether it was the snarling headhunting beast with its jaws wide open, or the monsters outside on the street, or even the distant, hazy mist—everything froze in place.

Shiler himself could still move. He turned to look at the others and found that the other players originally in the house were gone. He frowned—had they been disconnected?

But if it was a system error that kicked the players offline, why was he fine?

"Brainiac," Shiler shouted, "are you okay?"

Brainiac didn't respond, and things started to feel strange. But soon, Shiler felt something and rushed in a direction. The surrounding buildings and monsters gradually faded, leaving only a vast expanse of mist.

Walking in the mist toward a direction for a while, he vaguely saw several figures. Approaching them, he discovered they were two other versions of himself, Lilith, and Charles.

As soon as he saw them, Shiler understood something had gone wrong. These were all people contacted by the Archbishop through collective unconsciousness; in a sense, they were all psychics. Everyone else had been disconnected—likely due to a major problem in Brainiac's game system.

Shiler sighed; he hadn't even thought about revenge against Brainiac for falsely accusing him of polluting the water at this time. It was also fitting—truly, evil deeds lead to self-destruction.

"We're doomed, we've caused trouble," the Archbishop sighed. "We shouldn't have studied that broken gun. Now the game has directly crashed."

Arrogance pricked up its ears, realizing it wasn't just his own actions that caused the crash—there were surely experts among the other players.

"Who knew this system was so fragile?" the agent said. "Just observing a spacetime paradox—how did it just crash?"

Arrogance immediately realized the anti-life equation wasn't that big a deal. Unadapted, it at most had no effect; what others were doing was like dropping a nuclear bomb in the game system.

Once spacetime issues are involved, it's basically only solvable by the Universe Administrator—one must master cosmology and understand spacetime rules to handle it. Brainiac definitely couldn't.

But why hadn't he heard Little Bu's angry outburst?

Arrogance had to admit that at the moment he opened the umbrella, he still really wanted to hear Brainiac's warning voice. Now this silence was worrying—would an AI really die?

"What's going on?" Charles said. "Can't log out."

"Surely it's an evil AI," the agent said. "It won't be trying to kidnap our consciousness here and wipe us all out, will it?"

"What's the point?" Arrogance asked. "Can't we just return to Gao Ta? Surely it's not just for Lilith and Charles?"

"I didn't come in my real body," Charles said. "And even if my physical form died, I have a spiritual backup in my own universe—he couldn't kill me."

"I have no grudge against Brainiac," Lilith said, also bewildered. "I've never offended him. During the war, I kept using my prophecy ability to help him—I thought we were friends."

"Looks like it was just an accident," the Archbishop sighed. "His system crashed. Some kind of fuse that should have forced everyone's consciousness offline during a crash didn't work on us, so we're stuck here."

"So what should we do now?" the agent asked, looking left and right, suddenly as if he'd thought of something. "Should we move to a certain spot, then wait for the system to come back online and get stuck in some place we normally can't enter?"

Arrogance was also thinking about this. Many teaching buildings at Gotham University are inaccessible, a major pain point in the game. And the most troublesome is the Xide Sect's teaching building—getting in to take exams is way too hard.

If he now waited at the location of the Xide Sect's teaching building, when the system comes back online later, wouldn't he be able to successfully glitch in?

Though he thought that, Arrogance didn't dare try. Never mind the possibility of getting stuck in a wall—what if the final boss spawns right in his face, and he uses the anti-life equation again? The system he just got back online might go down again.

"Brainiac picking us was also his just deserts," the agent remarked sharply. "He dared to bring three Shilers on the first test—he's braver than Batman."

"Maybe it's because there's no Batman here," Charles said. "If there were a reliable Batman, he'd choose Batman."

"But since there's no Batman, so he chose three Shilers to commit suicide?" the agent sneered. "Not without grandeur."

"This has nothing to do with you guys," Lilith sighed. "Although that gun was brought by you, the plan was ours jointly—especially mine. To be honest, I felt uneasy before activating my ability—I was just too curious..."

"What exactly did you guys do?" Arrogance asked doubtfully. He instinctively felt the anti-life equation might not be the real culprit—what could possibly have more power than this?