Chapter 167: Doppelganger Transformation |
Taking advantage of the remaining duration of his Berserk, Bai Mu arrived in front of the Doppelganger army.
He used Plant Care once to replenish the ammunition of his Cherry Bomb. This consumed his final ten percent of Stamina. On his status panel, his Stamina was already overdrawn to negative twenty percent.
He tossed a Cherry Bomb into the densest cluster of Doppelgangers. Once the vast majority of them noticed him, he hijacked the nearest military vehicle, roared the engine to life, and began plowing wildly through their ranks.
Large swaths of Doppelgangers were drawn away by him. He put on his mushroom hat and used the Hand of Walrider to plant a Guard Mushroom on the rear of the vehicle. Relying on his daring and masterful driving skills, he navigated through the narrow streets and found an exit.
After he lured away the massive horde of Doppelgangers, the final green dot on the quest map began to move.
The green dot advanced slowly toward the Evacuation Point. He moved at a sluggish pace, pausing frequently, but he was undeniably making progress. Bai Mu bought him as much time to escape as possible, easing off the accelerator to kite the Doppelgangers and hold their aggro like in a video game. For the duration of Berserk, he handled the situation with ease, but the skill's time limit was not infinite. Three minutes was actually very short, and Berserk finally reached its last second.
[Skill "Berserk" has ended.]
[You have entered a Weakened state. Remaining duration: 20 minutes.]
All attributes were halved, and his Stamina recovery rate was reduced by eighty percent.
Berserk was incredibly powerful, but its aftermath was impossible to ignore.
Fortunately, his base attributes were already quite high. Even when halved, they merely dropped back down to the level of a normal human.
In reality, the biggest issue was not his attributes, but his Stamina. His Stamina bar had hit rock bottom. If not for the special effect of his military boots restoring a tiny sliver, the bar would have been completely empty.
The consequence of a depleted Stamina bar was an unbearable wave of exhaustion. Every movement made him feel as if his body were weighed down by lead. It was comparable to the state of someone who had stayed awake for two or three consecutive nights.
Anyone experiencing this state for the first time would likely collapse to the ground like a dead weight if they lost focus for even a second.
But to Bai Mu, this was a common occurrence. He had endured many sleepless nights alone. During his most agonizing ordeal, unable to find any food, he had gone a full six days without sleep.
Because of this, his Spirit was the highest of his three basic attributes.
Strength and Agility were never his strong suits. His indomitable will was his true, impenetrable bedrock.
Moreover, he still had a Health Potion. Keeping one dissolved in his mouth, its awakening effect kept his mind as sharp and clear as if he were constantly inhaling crushed mint leaves. Even so, a stray bullet from the chaotic crossfire managed to strike his arm.
There were simply too many Doppelgangers firing at him. No matter how terrible their marksmanship was, the sheer volume of bullets guaranteed that a few would land by pure chance.
Bai Mu's Health took a noticeable dip. He had stalled for nearly ten minutes, but the green dot had only covered half the distance.
Before entering, he never would have imagined that this Script would be the one where he consumed the most items.
When his Health dropped to the halfway mark, he used one charge of the limited-use skill card he had purchased from the shop. By this time, the green dot only had a third of the journey left.
Doppelganger Transformation activated. The pain vanished instantly, and even the crushing fatigue faded away.
He noticed that both his Stamina and Health bars had turned an ashen gray, with a small mushroom icon resting at the end of them.
His mind entered a peculiar state where all emotions evaporated. He knew who he was and what he was doing, but the feelings were gone. In his transformed state, he felt like a computer running off a saved file, functioning solely on a backup of his memories.
That was not all. He could also hear a chaotic, static-like noise.
It seemed to be the signal Doppelgangers used to communicate with one another. He could roughly understand their exchanges, which consisted of nothing more than simple commands. Upon undergoing the Doppelganger Transformation himself, he finally grasped the logic behind their behavior. Their actions merely followed the most primal laws of life. Devoid of hatred, they acted just as a seed sprouts from the soil, or as trees in a forest stretch as high as possible to steal the sunlight. They were simply seizing human living space for their own survival and reproduction.
Bai Mu's current state was incredibly similar to theirs.
He carried out the decisions he had made prior to the Doppelganger Transformation, completely detached from values, emotions, or fear. In that moment, he operated more like a programmed machine, processing information faster than before while simultaneously managing his own line of sight and the remote vision provided by the Guard Mushroom.
Furthermore, he made excellent use of his near-immortal body, charging right through the hail of bullets to break out from the weakest point of their encirclement. His body was riddled with bullet holes, and the vehicle's windows were entirely shattered, yet he lost almost no Health. To a Doppelganger, these wounds were no more than a light scratch.
He did not bleed a single drop. Emotionlessly, he dug the bullets out of his flesh one by one while chewing on a Health Potion.
Finally, with one minute left on his Doppelganger Transformation, he watched the quest map as three green dots emerged from the Evacuation Point, converging with the final green dot to escort him to safety.
[All survivors have been evacuated. Main Quest completed.]
[You will be teleported to the Community after the storyline concludes.]
The moment the notification chimed, Bai Mu returned to his first-person perspective. His consciousness snapped back, and his condition was instantly restored to its peak the second the Main Quest was completed.
Using Doppelganger Transformation for the first time was an incredibly bizarre experience.
It was not just a simple case of pseudo-immortality. He retained his memories from those few minutes, but it felt as if something else had been piloting his body. 'Looking at it this way, this skill is not solely meant for tanking damage,' Bai Mu reflected on the state.
However, he did not have long to ponder it before the Script's ending cinematic began to play.
It showed Leon walking through the darkness. He dragged his heavy body forward through the ruins. Even though Bai Mu had lured away the majority of the Doppelgangers, Leon's escape was far from smooth sailing. Whenever he stopped, he was either taking cover or moving like an assassin, silently creeping up behind a Doppelganger to decapitate it with a single swing of his Flaming Sword.
He knew how to skirmish with Doppelgangers far better than Bai Mu did. Sometimes, cutting off their heads was not enough to kill them, but it did not matter; he only needed to deprive them of their vision. These creatures still relied on their eyes to see, so as long as he was not directly spotted, he could temporarily slip away. Those ten or so minutes of travel had been incredibly arduous. With a few fresh wounds on his body, he decisively used the Flaming Sword to cauterize his own injuries, forcibly stopping the bleeding so that no drops of blood would leave a trail on the ground.
Bai Mu could hear the sizzling sound of burning flesh. It was hard to imagine that the little boy who had once been too terrified to fall asleep now possessed such immense courage. He looked like a ragged, battered stray dog, yet he pushed himself all the way to the finish line by sheer force of will. Just as Bai Mu had told him, even if he had to crawl, he would crawl his way there.
In the end, he collapsed into the arms of his companions. Raging fires consumed the city block, and the Doppelgangers pried open the military vehicle Bai Mu had hijacked, only to find it completely empty. Meanwhile, to the north, a motorcycle carrying the survivors fled the scene, vanishing into the blowing sand.
The screen then faded to black. A certain amount of time seemed to have passed.
A fully healed Leon sat in a basement, discussing something with another person.
He then walked into a pitch-black storage room. Bai Mu found the place somewhat familiar; it was clearly the very room where he had once lived with the four of them. Leon took off the pocket knife hanging over his chest. He stared at the blade, hesitating for a few seconds before placing it into a storage box for safekeeping.
Inside that box, Bai Mu also caught sight of a charred diary.
That diary... it looked absolutely identical to the admission ticket Bai Mu had received. So that was Leon's diary all along.
A sudden realization washed over Bai Mu. That diary chronicled events from an even earlier time. Long before this, Leon had received a distress signal and led his team on a rescue mission.
The events within the Script were not happening for the first time for them.
Leon walked out of the dark room, greeted by a group of people waiting for him outside.
They had sharpened their blades and changed into fresh clothes. Pushing open the main doors, they stepped out onto the surface.
The sun scorched the earth. People had died, but the living did not stop in their tracks; they continued to forge ahead.
Bai Mu had saved a few lives, but even without him, humanity would still continue to march forward.
[The Script storyline has concluded. You have completed the Script and will be automatically teleported to the Community.]
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