A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

While Giovanni passed his initiation test, far away in another corner of the world, Ke Mingqing rolled out of bed once again and knocked out a few push-ups.

When he finished, a notification panel slowly surfaced before his eyes.

[Congratulations, you have completed Main Quest 3 (Phase 2): Use a secondary identity to join Death Crow and become one of their members.]

[Quest rewards obtained: 3,500 Experience Points, 3,000 Super Coins, 1 Attribute Point, 1 chance to use the Item Roulette.]

[Experience points have reached the cap. Level automatically increased by one.]

[Current Level: LV.09 (100/4,500 EXP)]

Ke Mingqing climbed up from the floor, sat on the tatami mat, and leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window to check his settlement rewards.

I'm crawling my way to level 10. At level 10, I unlock a new skill slot, he thought. My five skill slots are already full, but Gate of Truth works like four or five skills by itself, so there's no rush to buy another one. I should just save up my money for a cost-effective B-grade skill.

Thinking that far, Ke Mingqing kept reading as the settlement panel refreshed.

[Current Super Coin balance: 6,500.]

[Main Quest 3 (Phase 3) updated: Survive the Comet Fragment Defense Battle, and ensure your secondary identity inside Death Crow is not exposed to the other members.]

Staring at the text on the quest panel, Ke Mingqing chuckled and muttered to himself, "Sure enough, Death Crow has its eye on the comet fragment. I wonder if this is going to alert the Roundtable. The three top magical girls have been busy fighting overseas witches lately.

"At this point, I'll just have to let the monsters in my family fight Death Crow to the death. I need to hurry up and notify our main combat power at home.

"Once the two sides clash, I can sit back and reap the spoils. I'll see if I can ride the chaos, find an opening to last-hit an A Rank superhuman species, and claim the first-kill reward. If I can last-hit an S Rank superhuman species, I'll ascend on the spot."

While mapping out his glorious future, Ke Mingqing opened his personal panel, tapped the plus sign above his attribute column, and allocated the point.

[Congratulations, your Spirit attribute has officially advanced from E Rank to E+ Rank.]

[Current player attributes: Strength: D+; Agility: D++; Spirit: E+]

"For now, I'll have to leave the Theater Puppet with Death Crow," Ke Mingqing said, stretching his back. "Since I used the upgrade card on it, the puppet doesn't have a time limit anymore. Logically speaking, nothing should go wrong—right?"

He glanced out the window. Down in the alley below, Xia Ningzhi was dragging Xia Wenna into a game of badminton.

Bright sunlight washed over them, and the maple leaves rustled.

Xia Ningzhi wore her hair in her usual bun. Dressed in shorts and a sportswear top, she showed off pale forearms and calves that looked almost translucent in the sun.

"Mom, your serve!" she called out, grinning at Xia Wenna.

Ke Mingqing looked toward Xia Wenna at the far end of the alley.

His alien mother still had her apron tied on—she had clearly been dragged into the game on the spot. Yet for all her usual blank-faced clumsiness, she was ruthless when it came to sports. Every movement she made was as precise as machinery.

It looked as if she had calculated the shuttlecock's flight path before her opponent even swung the racket.

Resting his chin in his hand, Ke Mingqing watched the mother and daughter rally back and forth, deadpanning inwardly, Two street-level superhuman species playing badminton. How is this any different from two adults seeing who can piss higher? What is the point of throwing energy around like this?

Then again, as a mythic vessel, his third sister had to understand her own condition.

She knew she was getting close to losing control, which was why she wanted to spend as much time with the family as she could.

Ke Mingqing watched Xia Ningzhi in silence. She narrowed her clear eyes, laughing without a care.

In his memory, his third sister was smiling almost all the time. Growing up, Ke Mingqing had rarely seen her look down.

If anything, she was the sort of person who would force a smile for the people close to her even when she felt miserable. No matter how fake it looked, she kept smiling. Ke Mingqing did not understand people like that.

When Third Sister loses control, isn't she going to be a literal demon babe descending on the world?

Ke Mingqing looked away from her, turning the problem over in his head.

Then again, Second Sister is a mythic vessel too, and she's worked at the Control Bureau for years. She's fought plenty of mythic vessels. Would she know a way to keep a high-tier mythic vessel sane?

He shook his head. No—the whole reason the System gave me an option to protect Third Sister is that it figures once she loses control, she can butcher a ton of superhuman species, which improves the board state for us players.

Ke Mingqing sighed, rested his chin on his folded arms, and leaned against the windowsill.

In the warm sunlight, the boy closed his eyes and shifted his focus to the Theater Puppet, Giovanni.

Ten minutes had passed since the test ended. The setting was still the abandoned building.

Bai Ziling was back. She and Giovanni were sitting on a clean patch of floor, playing Gomoku with a pencil and a small notebook.

Jiang Qingzi leaned against a nearby pillar with his arms crossed, watching them in silence.

After a moment, he asked, "I don't get why she's so clingy with a deadpan guy like you. Did you use an ability on her?"

After Stroh died, the members of Death Crow had been split over whether to keep Bai Ziling.

Jiang Qingzi was in the camp that wanted to take her in—he had been picked up by Lorenzo the exact same way as a kid. The problem was that Bai Ziling refused to go near him, and a few days ago she had straight-up run away from home.

"Probably because you're a creep," Giovanni said calmly. "That's why she won't play with you." He took the pencil and drew a circle on the grid.

Bai Ziling sat on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, watching the squares.

Snow-white hair spilled over her eyes. She did not seem to be listening to them.

Jiang Qingzi ignored Giovanni's jab, delivering a lukewarm warning instead: "Take good care of her. If anything happens to her, I'm coming after you."

"Infighting is forbidden. That's the first rule of Death Crow," Cosimo reminded him with a smile. He had already changed into a fresh butler's uniform. Dressed the part, nobody would have guessed the polite, blond gentleman was a werewolf.

"There are ten of us total, right?" Giovanni asked without looking up.

"Yes. Counting Ziling, eleven."

"Where is everyone else?"

"It isn't time to assemble yet. The other members are out playing around the city." Cosimo smiled wryly. "Of course, every now and then someone plays too hard and gets into trouble. Take Stroh—she got nabbed by Rain Crow."

"Don't tell him so much," Jiang Qingzi said. "Do you really think he's trustworthy?"

"Ah-Zi, he's one of us now," Cosimo said, patting Jiang Qingzi's shoulder with a laugh. "No need to be so hard on him, is there?"

"You talk too much."

"Where's the boss?" Giovanni asked.

"Upstairs." Cosimo thought for a second. "Right—I actually need to speak with him. Almost forgot." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform and headed up to the second floor.

The second floor was empty—just a dark corridor lined with surprisingly tidy rooms where Death Crow's members slept.

A young man in a black cassock stood at the far end of the hall, staring into a full-length mirror.

"Still having doubts?" Cosimo walked over.

Lorenzo said nothing, keeping his gaze fixed on his reflection.

The Bible in his hands fell open to a specific page without a breath of wind. As the print on the paper gleamed gold, the world reflected in Lorenzo's eyes broke down into a chaotic drift of text.

He stared at his reflection, and words like calm, dull, and boring rose in his mind.

He brushed a hand across the glass, and the words vanished, replaced by shock, doubt, confusion, and nostalgia—

"He looks just like Matteo. It startled me too when I first saw him," Cosimo said.

"He does," Lorenzo murmured.

Matteo had been their blood brother. He had died ten years ago.

The three of them had clawed their way out of an Italian slum—a graveyard of a place piled with corpses like scrap metal—supporting one another every step of the way until they finally saw the world outside.

Then, during a theft, Matteo was caught by an Italian superhero. The outcome was inevitable: nobody cared about the life of a slum rat. They were not treated as human.

Matteo was executed on the spot.

Not long after, Lorenzo founded Death Crow, traveling the world to recruit powerful ability users who refused to be leashed by the rules.

Cosimo had once imagined returning to the slums of their homeland to bring out all the children and old folks, building them a paradise where they could live without fear—where they could walk down the street in the light instead of scuttling like beaten rats.

Lorenzo's ambition went in another direction entirely. His greed was vast enough to close his fist around the entire world.

Now, ten years later, a man named Giovanni was standing in front of them.

His face looked as if it had been cast from Matteo's mold.

If not for that resemblance, Lorenzo would never have given him a second look; he would have ordered Cosimo to kill the nobody on the spot and bring Bai Ziling back.

"Why does he look like Matteo?" Cosimo asked.

"I don't know. We'll keep him close and observe him for now," Lorenzo said. He shook his head slightly and walked away down the dark hall.

At that same moment, inside an apartment building in Old Jingmai District:

After finishing her badminton set with her alien mother, Xia Ningzhi came home in high spirits, bolted up to the second floor, and hammered on the doors to drag the lazybones out of bed.

Ke Mingqing washed his face and came downstairs, eyes heavy with sleep, slumping onto the sofa like a pile of mud.

Xia Ningzhi stood behind the sofa and gave his back a vigorous rub. "Wake up, lazybones! If you don't eat now, breakfast is going to get cold!"

Xia Lingxue tilted her head back, her tone dry. "Why is our high schooler such an embarrassment? When we were in school, we had to get up for morning runs."

"Come on, sis, it's summer vacation! Summer vacation!" Ke Mingqing retorted. I had to deploy my puppet first thing in the morning to deal with the bastards from Death Crow, he thought. Do I look like I have the same free time as you bums?

"What about summer vacation? Get up tomorrow and run with me."

"I have nothing to say to you."

Ke Mingqing rolled his eyes. He was still playing Gomoku with Bai Ziling on the other side, and his brain was running hot.

In a rare departure from form, Ke Mingwei was actually standing in the living room instead of pulling his usual morning vanishing act.

With a cigarette clamped between his lips, he looked over the kids in the room and made a muffled suggestion: "Since you're all sitting around with nothing to do on vacation, do you want to go visit Super Hero Company today?"

Nobody answered him.

Everyone kept doing what they were doing. They all remembered he had skipped Ke Mingqing's birthday dinner the night before, and they were quietly holding a grudge.

After a moment of silence, Ke Mingwei tried again: "It's a rare chance. I had to badger my superiors for days to get visitor clearance for the company. Outsiders normally can't get in."

Super Hero Company?

On the sofa, Ke Mingqing's heart gave a jolt, his sleepiness evaporating.

Remembering the day he had taken the Blue Pigeon Battle Suit to Super Hero Company only to get stopped and interrogated by his second sister, he couldn't help but shudder.

Xia Zili looked up from her English vocabulary list and said, "Sounds good. I actually want to see Blue Pigeon's promotional poster. Logically speaking, it should be up on the company's glass curtain wall today."

Ke Mingqing shrugged. "Now that you mention it, I kind of want to visit Magical Girl Company. Old man, can you pull through for once and get visitor passes from your precinct boss? I want to see if Magical Girl Company has any commercials Ember shot."

He and Xia Zili locked eyes the moment the words left his mouth, glaring at each other before turning away.

Xia Lingxue crossed her arms and said flatly, "I've actually wanted to look around Super Hero Company for a while. You guys can come with me."

Once Second Sister spoke, nobody else's vote mattered.

Ke Mingwei put a hand on his hip and shot her a gratified look. He knew full well that Xia Lingxue carried the most weight among the kids—when she spoke, the rest fell in line.

"I'm in," Ke Linye said casually, turning a page in his book. "It isn't every day Ah-Xue has somewhere she wants to go."

"Shut up. Nobody asked you," Xia Lingxue said.

"Orders received," Ke Linye said with a shrug.

Just as Ke Mingqing was sitting there sweating bullets, someone finally spoke up for him: "Why visit Super Hero Company all of a sudden?"

Xia Ningzhi thought about it and added, "I read online that the Lijing Super Hero Company put some super-creepy art exhibit at the entrance—an eyeball and a brain floating in a glass tank!"

She hugged her arms and shivered, dropping her head. "That sounds freakish. I don't want to look at that thing at all! I lead the protest!"

That's because these old bastards are going specifically for that freak-show exhibit! Ke Mingqing realized. They're definitely trying to use this trip to run a player sweep on the family!

Ke Mingqing let out a long sigh, let his head fall back against the sofa, and closed his eyes, dead on the spot.

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