A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

July 22, a morning of clear skies. Inside the commander's office on the fifteenth floor of the Leijing Hero Company.

"Players..."

After uttering the word, Lin Yin slightly raised his head, pressed his fingertips together, and swept his gaze from behind his lenses across the faces of everyone sitting before his desk.

Silence filled the office.

Blue Pigeon's expression gave nothing away, though his eyes glimmered faintly beneath his helmet.

Suddenly, an earsplitting roar boomed from beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Blue Pigeon turned his head and saw an eccentrically costumed hero streaking past between the high-rises, leaving a contrail across the clear sky.

He watched the hero's back recede into the distance, his mind a tangle of thoughts.

'A player is hiding among the drug dealers? Why didn't I know about this?' The moment the thought arose, Blue Pigeon's first instinct was to open the player Chat Panel and send a message to Kuroki Hitomi.

[Ke Mingqing: Among the players you know, is anyone hiding out with the drug dealers?]

[Ke Mingqing: Are you sure?]

[Kuroki Hitomi: Yes. Only Gu Mengqing is involved in the underground trades, but she only designs hero combat suits; she hasn't touched drugs or anything like that. Why do you ask?]

[Ke Mingqing: Nothing. Just pretend I never asked. Don't tell anyone I brought this up.]

[Kuroki Hitomi: Okay, whatever you say.]

Looking at the words on the Chat Panel, Ke Mingqing thought to himself:

'Even Kuroki Hitomi has never met the player the commander mentioned? Is there another Lone Wolf Player like me hiding in Leijing?'

Assuming the player he was talking about truly existed, Ke Mingqing now faced a highly contradictory problem:

If he shared this intel on the player forums the moment he received it so the target could quickly evacuate, Commander Lin Yin would likely grow suspicious of the four people in this squad.

And based on the established logic that "players cannot seize the bodies of super-human species," Lin Yin could quickly rule out Top Hero, Invisible Giant, and Shadow Girl.

After all, those three had clear and documented background files; they had become super-humans a long time ago, perfectly missing the window when players first began to appear.

Thus, the only person left to suspect would be Blue Pigeon, whose public identity had yet to be revealed.

'But it's also possible this is just false intel—though what would be the point of a fake lead?' Ke Mingqing thought. 'Forget it... Since neither Kuroki Hitomi nor I know who that player is, I'll just assume for now that they don't exist. There's no need to alert the enemy.'

Aside from Blue Pigeon, the other three people in the office paused in slight confusion, clearly not understanding the meaning of the word "player."

Shadow Girl lowered her head to type on her phone, then turned the screen around to ask:

"Excuse me, what is a player?"

"You don't have the Clearance to know about that just yet," Lin Yin said with a faint smile. "But I can tell you this: if you run into an opponent in real combat who fights in a wildly imaginative way, as if they can pull off any trick imaginable, making it impossible for you to identify which super-human species lineage they belong to, then they are most likely a 'player.'"

Shadow Girl nodded.

"Players..."

The Invisible Giant boy immediately took an interest. "Sounds like they're treating our world as a game. Sure enough, Earth Online really is a giant sandbox."

Top Hero rested his hands behind his head. "Honestly, I can't think of any power that wouldn't just be classified as an esper ability. Right now, whenever I run into some weird guy, I just assume they're an esper. It's gonna be hard to tell whether they're the 'player' you're talking about."

'Then how would you classify someone like me, who can transform into a magical girl and also become the urban legend of the "Leijing Iron Tower - White Booty"?' Ke Mingqing thought.

"Who cares if they're a player or not—we'll just beat the crap out of them together," Invisible Giant said.

"The brat makes a fair point," Top Hero said, his dreadlocks swaying behind him.

"No, if you really encounter a 'player,' you must capture them alive if at all possible," Lin Yin said, shaking his head. "We have already confirmed what that player looks like; I'll send the photos to you on the way."

Blue Pigeon paused for a beat. "What a pain."

Lin Yin adjusted his glasses and said sternly, "Rules are rules, and this is part of the mission. Let's skip the idle talk for now. The operation begins in thirty minutes. The drug den is heavily guarded, but we've prepared an infiltration route for you."

"Understood," Blue Pigeon nodded. "I was looking to stretch my limbs anyway. I'll take the chance to see what kind of thing this 'player' you mentioned really is."

"Do not underestimate the enemy," Lin Yin cut in. "Once Team Ember finishes breaching the den on the other side, they'll come to reinforce you. Normally speaking, given their strength, they should finish a bit faster."

Invisible Giant gave a cold snort. "By the time they get here, our mission will already be done."

Two hours later. Leijing, Xinhang District Port, right outside an isolated warehouse.

Trucks drove in and out incessantly while employees dressed in blue uniforms bustled back and forth.

At this moment, a large group of burly men wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood guard at the warehouse entrance. A single sweep of the eye revealed at least forty of them by a conservative estimate, a clear sign of just how valuable the goods inside were.

Suddenly, another massive transport truck rolled slowly toward them.

Two blue-uniformed workers walked over and swung open the iron doors of the truck's rear container. The next second, their figures froze rigid in place, solidifying as if turned to stone.

Seeing this, one of the bodyguards frowned slightly, walked over with his gun ready, and prodded their waists with the muzzle.

There was nothing physically unusual about the two workers' bodies. But the shadows beneath their feet seemed ensnared by something, creeping steadily straight toward the interior of the rear container.

The bodyguard paused, then raised his head.

He peered into the back of the truck, met only by profound darkness. The next second, a surge of deep blue electric light flashed from within the shadows of the container, blinding him.

Immediately after, a figure wearing a blue helmet burst through the dark and closed the distance at lightning speed, smashing a knife-hand chop straight into the back of his neck and knocking him unconscious.

"Remember to watch your step."

Blue Pigeon kicked away the rifle in the man's hand. At that moment, the Invisible Giant boy, Shadow Girl, and Top Hero also stepped out from the shadows of the container. The four members of the squad stood shoulder to shoulder in the sunlight, raising their heads to face the forty-plus bodyguards ahead.

"Can we not strike poses? It works in movies, but doing it in real life is really cringe," Blue Pigeon said with a shrug.

"Hold on, bro, let me finish taking a picture first—I gotta post on Twitter tonight," Top Hero said, holding up his phone to snap a selfie. Almost instantaneously, the forty-plus bodyguards in front of the warehouse reacted at the exact same moment, a furious roar shattering the silence:

"Intruders!"

Led by the man at the very front, the remaining guards raised their rifles in unison and pulled their triggers toward the truck. Bullets shredded the air like a wall of falling rain, streaming straight toward Blue Pigeon's eyes.

In that instant, a strange gleam flashed in Invisible Giant's pupils.

An invisible colossus instantly materialized before him, standing like a rampart of bronze and iron to shut out the storm of gunfire. The bodyguards stared in shock; their bullets seemed to slam into an unseen wall of air, ricocheting outward like rain hitting a barrier without ever touching the four people behind it.

Shadow Girl crouched slightly and pressed her right hand to the pavement. Her shadow shifted suddenly, liquefying into a pool of dense, murky water that rapidly spread outward.

One pitch-black figure after another rose from the pool, coalescing into towering humanoid forms until they formed an army of shadows in just a few seconds.

The shadow soldiers held swords in their left hands and shields in their right, rising like small mounds of earth. At the same moment, the "invisible giant" raised its arms horizontally across the front, holding the vanguard to block the firepower of more than forty bodyguards.

The shadow army spread out to the left and right flanks of the giant, raising their shields to form a pitch-black shield wall that marched forward, forcing the enemy to split their fire among more targets.

This gave the giant room to advance.

Amid booming footsteps, the invisible colossus drew toward the warehouse step by step, with the soldiers of the shadow army advancing in sync.

From a distance, it looked like a black tide sweeping forward. Massive footprints were stamped into the earth one after another, and the air pressure dropped lower and lower, signaling to the guards that an unseen leviathan was closing in.

During all this, Top Hero and Blue Pigeon were hardly standing idle.

Because the enemy's gunfire was too fierce, Blue Pigeon did not rashly charge into the middle of the bodyguard formation; instead, he seized opportunities from afar, firing bolts of electricity across tens of meters to stun several bodyguards to the ground one after another.

Top Hero lacked any long-range attack methods to match, so he could only watch from the sidelines.

"Get out of the way!"

Suddenly, a bodyguard in front of the warehouse let out a furious bellow and rushed out from behind the crowd into Blue Pigeon's line of sight.

A super-human species panel slowly floated above the man's head.

[Code Name: "Rocket Maniac"]

[Type: Cyborg]

[Danger Rating: B Rank]

Rocket Maniac raised his metallic arms, which rapidly reconfigured into the shape of rocket launchers as sparks erupted from their bases.

"Watch out," Blue Pigeon warned. "That's a super-human."

"WTF?" Top Hero's eyes bulged.

Shadow Girl raised her eyebrows slightly and urgently commanded her shadow army to take counter-measures.

The next instant, two missiles shot out from the barrels of the man's arms, streaking straight toward the unseen "wall of air."

Finally, they detonated into a towering blaze of fire.

Boom!

A deafening explosion echoed through the entire warehouse facility as a raging curtain of flames swallowed the sunlight, obscuring nearly everyone's vision.

The next second, as the smoke and fire receded, the group saw what lay ahead.

The "air colossus" still stood proud and upright. In the sunlight, white steam drifted off its surface, revealing the outline of its body.

As the price for holding it, Shadow Girl had sacrificed a vast swath of her shadow army just to absorb the impact of the two rocket rounds.

"Then how are you gonna stop the next volley?" Rocket Maniac snarled hoarsely as his arms loaded a fresh pair of missiles.

Watching this scene, Shadow Girl typed on her phone screen and swiftly showed it to Blue Pigeon:

"Blue Pigeon, the kid and I will hold the people here. You and Top Hero get inside the warehouse—make sure no one slips through the net."

"We'll leave them to you, then."

Blue Pigeon glanced at the words on the screen and nodded, then scooped up Top Hero in his arms.

The instant Top Hero yelled out, "Hey, bro! What are you doing!", Blue Pigeon transformed into a streak of deep blue lightning and shot forward. Skirting around the front-line battlefield to evade the guards' gunfire, Blue Pigeon streaked toward the side of the warehouse, slammed his right arm forward, and used crackling black lightning to blast a massive hole through the warehouse wall.

Then he shot inside.

The second he entered the warehouse, Blue Pigeon dropped Top Hero and raised his head to scan his surroundings, catching sight of two figures standing right in front of the production assembly lines.

A super-human species panel appeared above the head of the first person, but the second one looked completely out of place: floating directly above that person's head was a pitch-black title—[Li Wei].

Blue Pigeon froze; what had just appeared before his eyes was unmistakably a "player ID."

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