It was as if a blood-red demon had appeared before everyone, and Shen Yi's expression was cold and slightly arrogant.
A mutant yelled and raised his gun, opening fire on Shen Yi, while several other mutants simultaneously joined in the attack.
Shen Yi held his gun with one hand and charged recklessly toward the mutants, his Spiritfire Gun spewing flames of death.
On both sides, neither Shen Yi nor the mutants dodged or avoided. The mutants screamed and pulled the triggers, causing white light to erupt from Shen Yi's body. However, he continued to advance, rapidly taking down two mutants with precise shots.
In the next moment, Shen Yi had reached the mutants' vicinity. With his left hand, he unleashed a cold light with his Vampire's Touch, cutting the throat of one of the mutants.
Surprisingly, the mutant's head actually sank into its chest, and the Vampire's Touch passed through the headless body. In the next moment, the mutant's head popped out again, and it grinned menacingly at Shen Yi.
For an ordinary person witnessing this scene, it would likely induce a heart attack. However, Shen Yi simply smiled coldly and said, "Interesting."
He kicked the mutant in the groin, and the mutant howled in pain, squatting down immediately.
Shen Yi coldly remarked, "Unfortunately, you can't shrink away from everything."
With a quick slash, he split open the mutant's chest.
On the other side, another mutant threw away his gun and let out a wild scream.
This scream generated a massive shockwave, causing Shen Yi's ears to ring with a deafening roar. It felt as if someone had stuffed a giant firecracker into his ears, and the tremendous shockwave propelled him off the ground. In mid-air, Shen Yi had already locked onto the mutant and activated his Arcane Shot skill. The Spiritfire Gun fired in a random direction, and the bullet traced an exquisite arc in the air, flying into the mutant's mouth.
The mutant fell to the ground instantly.
As the shockwave subsided, Shen Yi crashed heavily onto the ground, vomiting a large amount of blood.
This mutant's sound wave attack was remarkably similar to the ultrasonic attack of the Vampire Bride Marika, possessing the ability to bypass defenses and directly harm Shen Yi's mental energy armor. However, the damage itself was not too severe, only causing a 30-point drop in Shen Yi's health.
But the enormous sound wave had left his head ringing and his vision blurred.
Suddenly, another mutant charged toward him, holding a rocket launcher.
Shen Yi raised his hand and shot at the mutant's wrist, breaking it and causing the rocket launcher to fall to the ground.
Unexpectedly, the mutant used his foot to hook the rocket launcher and grinned maliciously. Shen Yi then saw that the mutant had bare feet with extremely long and dexterous toes, almost like hands. The mutant's face revealed a wicked smile.
Shen Yi realized that time was running out and jumped backward just in time. The mutant's toes pressed on the rocket launcher's trigger.
The rocket streaked towards Shen Yi.
BOOM!
The rocket exploded with a devastating 300 points of damage, tossing Shen Yi into the air. In mid-air, Shen Yi managed to use his peripheral vision to lock onto the mutant and activated his Arcane Shot skill again. The Spiritfire Gun fired a bullet that traced a perfect arc in the air and entered the mutant's mouth.
The mutant fell to the ground on the spot.
As the shockwave subsided, Shen Yi crashed back to the ground, vomiting blood.
His mental energy armor had completely shattered, and one of his arms was severely injured, rendering him unable to use his gun temporarily. His health had also dropped by one-third.
At this moment, two more mutants rushed towards him, shooting bullets that hit Shen Yi, causing his body to emit a blinding white light.
One of the mutants howled, emitting a wolf-like howling sound, and extended sharp claws towards Shen Yi's chest.
A flash of white light appeared, and four ordinary soldiers suddenly appeared, standing in front of Shen Yi. Shen Yi had activated his Honor Medal just in time.
One of the soldiers stood in front of the mutant with the sharp claws and was pierced through the heart, but before dying, he emptied a magazine into the mutant's body.
The mutant was surprisingly resilient, not falling even after being shot. He forcefully threw the soldier aside and engaged the other three soldiers in battle. However, in the next moment, two bullets, burning with red flames, flew in from the left and right, penetrating the mutants' left and right temples, passing through their brains.
The two mutants swayed for a moment and finally fell to the ground.
Shen Yi let out a long sigh of relief. He exerted all his strength to pull out the bone blade that was stuck in his right arm. The bone blade was interlocked with the bones in his arm, producing a harsh friction sound that made Shen Yi want to pass out from the pain.
With all his strength, he yanked the blade out, and along with a spurt of blood, the blade finally came free. Shen Yi tossed it aside and quickly replaced his gun with a healing bullet. He fired it into his own body and then used the Despicable Healing Art on his wounds. The intense pain gradually subsided as his injuries healed.
One of the mutant creatures dropped a gray box. The mutant with the bone blade and the one with the sharp blade from earlier were clearly second-level mutants, with strong vitality. However, Shen Yi could see that this box didn't belong to them; it should have been dropped by the first-level mutant who could breathe fire.
The boxes dropped by low-level mutants were inferior and had a lower probability, but the advantage was that they were easier to kill. Shen Yi wasn't particularly interested but picked it up nonetheless. Upon opening it, he found it contained something quite ordinary: three bundles of trigger-based yellow explosives, exchangeable for three hundred Bloody Points.
Yellow explosives were not hard to come by in New York, but trigger-based yellow explosives were something Shen Yi had never heard of before. The explosives had a plastic button at the bottom, which, when pressed, would cause the explosives to detonate within three seconds. This made them very challenging to use, as it was highly likely that they could blow oneself up instead of the intended target.
It seemed that their only purpose was to exchange for Bloody Points.
However, what caught Shen Yi's interest was as Fatty had mentioned earlier. There was indeed an energy bead inside the box. Upon picking it up, the Bloody Crest provided a prompt: "Energy Bead - Can increase psychic energy value by 10 points when used, requires the psychic energy slot to be unlocked before use."
Currently, Shen Yi had not obtained psychic energy, and the psychic energy slot had not been unlocked, so he could only set it aside for now.
The Bloody Crest's notification sound, like an alarm clock, continued to ring in Shen Yi's ears. It was then that he realized he had just killed a total of seventeen mutant creatures, including three second-level mutants. This earned him 29 Kill Points, combined with the previous 1 point, giving him a total of 30 points, catapulting him to the top of the rankings.
In fact, at this moment, almost all adventurers witnessed a significant change in the rankings.
The Eastern District, which had previously been ranked second, suddenly shot up to first place in the area. Four adventurers had made remarkable progress and jumped into the top twenty ranks.
Someone even shouted, "How is this possible? Rigged! There's a conspiracy!"
They were quickly silenced with a blow to the head from another person. "Do you think this is Earth? There's no conspiracy; someone must have wiped out a mutant creature nest."
All the adventurers in the Eastern District were in high spirits, but nobody knew who E5371 was.
After a while, Wen Rou and the others rushed over.
They saw Shen Yi lying in a pool of blood, surrounded by the bodies of mutant creatures, and their eyes widened in shock.
Wen Rou exclaimed, "You killed them all by yourself?"
Shen Yi lay there, weakly replying, "The opponents weren't very strong, but it was troublesome. I almost got myself killed carelessly. Can you help me up?"
Wen Rou smiled and reached out her hand, pulling Shen Yi up. She looked at his current state and then said to a soldier who had followed them, "Go upstairs and find some clothes for him to change into."
The soldier saluted and quickly ran upstairs.
Shen Yi shouted from behind, "Get me some Armani suits, including shirts and overcoats. I want several of them!"
"Yes, sir."
"And find me some cool-looking sunglasses!"
"Understood, sir!"
Wen Rou looked at him in astonishment, and Shen Yi shrugged.
Hong Lang laughed as he approached, "While we were fighting, the enemy suddenly disappeared. We were wondering what happened, and when we tried to contact you, there was no response. Fortunately, Wen Rou checked the rankings in time and found that your Kill Points had suddenly surged. We knew you had probably entered the rear through the escape route."
"We wanted to rush over too, but there were still some troublesome guys blocking our way. It took us some effort to deal with them. I guess the mutants used their strongest members to deal with us, so you ended up getting all the benefits," Hong Lang boasted shamelessly, but upon closer consideration, it made sense.
In this battle, a total of forty-six mutant creatures were killed, with seventeen of them dying at Shen Yi's hands and twenty-four at the hands of Wen Rou and her team. The three of them had discussed their actions beforehand, each taking eight mutant creatures—six first-level mutants and two second-level mutants. This resulted in each of them gaining sixteen Kill Points. They had captured five mutants alive and sent them to Fatty, including one second-level mutant. With 9 Kill Points, Fatty had temporarily escaped the kill list, which should have made him quite happy.
Shen Yi inquired and confirmed that the others had also obtained boxes, but none of them contained energy beads. It seemed that the chance of mutants dropping energy beads was indeed very low. Furthermore, the boxes mostly contained ordinary items like yellow explosives, which could only be exchanged for Bloody Points and had no special use. However, Wen Rou had been lucky; after killing one mutant creature, she opened a box and obtained a ring.
"Recovery Ring - Increases life recovery speed by 20%. Effect Priority: 20, upgradeable."
A 20% increase sounded good, but it was important to note that it only affected recovery speed. Adventurers' battles were usually short, often resolved in a matter of minutes. Unless it was a large-scale war like World War II missions, this recovery ring would be of little use in high-efficiency close combat and therefore had little significance for adventurers.
"It's better than nothing," Wen Rou said helplessly, tossing the ring to Hong Lang. Hong Lang's Berserk skill consumed a lot of life, so any increase in life recovery speed would extend his Berserk duration, making it worthwhile for him to wear the ring.
Hong Lang already had three rings on his fingers. Although they were mostly ordinary items, they all glowed with a golden luster, making him look like a nouveau riche. This caused Wen Rou to burst into laughter.
However, a ring could only be worn to a maximum of four, and if one could wear ten, Hong Lang would truly be considered a nouveau riche. However, for adventurers, as long as it could enhance their strength, they could tolerate even the silliest of things.
Shen Yi gave the energy bead he obtained to Jin Gang. The Bloody Crest prompted: "Acquired an energy bead that can increase energy by 10 points. Activate it?"
Once Jin Gang confirmed activation, his energy increased from 100 points to 110 points.
Shen Yi checked the time and then called out on the communicator, "Frost, immediately send people to search the area thoroughly to see if there are any survivors. If you encounter any, kill them immediately. Complete the search within three minutes."
"Yes, Commander."
Next, Shen Yi checked the Honor Medals. The medal displayed that he had summoned a total of 166 members for the 2nd Airborne Division, including two commanders, 60 elite soldiers, and 104 regular soldiers. It had consumed 3,690 Bloody Points. Twenty-nine regular soldiers and three elite soldiers had died in battle, resulting in a decrease of 35 intimacy points.
The loss of regular soldiers was not a big deal since they could be replenished, but Shen Yi felt a pang of regret for the three elite soldiers. After all, elite soldiers couldn't be resurrected.
Most of the soldiers' casualties occurred during battles with the mutants. Although regular mutants posed minimal threats to adventurers, they caused significant damage to the soldiers of the airborne division. As for the soldiers responsible for intercepting outside the building, they suffered relatively little damage. This was mainly because the American police officers they were dealing with lacked the spirit of fighting to the death. Upon discovering an ambush, they immediately took cover behind their police cars and started shooting indiscriminately. As for the National Guard, their combat capabilities were limited as they were essentially a local force and were far inferior to regular military units.
The good news was that a few elite soldiers had successfully ranked up, with all their attributes increasing by 1 point and their special attributes increasing by 3 points.
Shen Yi began to consider whether he should equip all the elite soldiers with some equipment. The 2nd Airborne Division was currently using outdated equipment from the World War II era, which was far inferior to the weapons produced in the Bloody City, let alone the weapons in the task worlds. Unfortunately, even if Shen Yi could now equip the soldiers with better weapons through looting weapon stores, these weapons wouldn't be allowed to leave the task world. They could only use these old-fashioned weapons in future tasks. Only equipment obtained as task rewards or purchased in the Bloody City could be permanently equipped by the 2nd Airborne Division. However, each piece of equipment obtained as a task reward was exceptionally valuable, so it would be too extravagant to use them on these soldiers.
Furthermore, there was another problem: every time Shen Yi summoned soldiers, it consumed a significant amount of Bloody Points. Therefore, Shen Yi couldn't afford to let them go back. If he summoned them again, it would be like spending money twice. Since it was a rental, he naturally had to make the most of it and use the allowed period to the fullest. However, this meant that more than a hundred paratroopers would have to follow him all the time, which was too conspicuous.
It was precisely for this reason that Shen Yi had been hesitant to summon soldiers in the first place.
How could he make use of these more than one hundred paratroopers while avoiding the inconvenience of having such a large group?
After some thought, Shen Yi finally made a decision.
"Frost, send more people upstairs to find clothes, the more the better."
"Clothes?" Frost asked in surprise.
"Yes!" Shen Yi shouted, "Go fetch some clothes and have your soldiers divide into teams. Before changing, make sure each group has five people. Change into civilian clothes as soon as you break out of the encirclement and disperse. Oh, and before changing, rob the weapons stores in New York. Split them all into groups of five and spread out. Observe the surroundings as much as possible and gather information. If there's any situation, notify me immediately!"
"Yes, Commander!"
"It's a good idea," Jin Gang chuckled.
"It was forced out of me," Shen Yi replied with a smile. He looked at the Bloody Crest and said, "It's about time. Let's leave when they're done searching!"
Just then, a rustling sound came from the communicator. "Commander, we've found a secret chamber in the southwest corner of the garage."
"A secret chamber?" Shen Yi asked.
"Yes, Commander. There's a mutant inside."
"Why didn't you kill it directly?"
"... You'd better come and see for yourself, Commander."
Shen Yi exchanged glances with Wen Rou and Jin Gang, then hurriedly walked towards the secret chamber.