Chapter 260: Ice Age (Day +141)

Killer Sequence Guild, Lounge.

The Inquisitor of Against the Gods is paralyzed on a couch, drinking frantically, next to a man who also looks like he's about to be sun-dried, with a pile of drained bottles of mineral water, stamina restorers, and spirit restorers at his feet.

"The desert copy is really hot." Sitting on the left side of the room, a person's cheeks were reddened by the heat, and he held a bottle in front of his chest, muttering to himself, "The game pool has banned the store, and you can't even buy water, so I thought I was going to die of thirst in this copy."

"It was our carelessness." The Inquisitor of the Inverse God rubbed his brow, "I didn't expect to be trapped, the coordination wasn't honed enough, and mostly I didn't bring enough stuff."

The man suddenly sat up straight, looked around, and wondered, "What's going on, why isn't Spades back yet? He's usually here in the lounge by the time we get out of the game, but where is he today?"

"Bought a bunch of strong acid fuel and went into the Ice Age replica." Inquisitor of the Adversary said, grinning, "Playing the [TRUE END] thread."

The man next to him understood and went limp again, tilting his head and sighing inexplicably, "How many times has he not given up?"

The Inquisitor of the Adversary shook his head, seemingly amused, "I don't know, anyway, quite a few times, every time we swiped at the Ice Age poster before entering the game pool, Spades would scan it twice, and it felt like whoever didn't hold it down when he was distracted was likely to jump in and leave us running."

"He'd have hit the [NORMAL END] line of Ice Age a long time ago." The man puzzled, "Don't Spades give no more eyes for games they've won?"

"What is it about this game's [TRUE END] line that attracts him, isn't it just a corpse collection quest, why does it go everywhere every day, does he have to fight it out?"

Reverse God tilted his head back and poured down a bottle of mineral water, as if getting nourished, he took a long breath: "I remember that in the Ice Age, Spades' corpse collection quests were only missing one piece every time, and the one that I remember missing seemed to be the heart piece, which I couldn't find after searching for it for a lot of times."

"Anyway, you know the character of that man Spades, if he can't find it, he'll keep looking for it, let him be, as a tempering of the heart."

The man looked complicated as he bit the mouth of the bottle and said vaguely, "Spades That heartiness all still needs to be honed ah, then wouldn't you want me to go back to the furnace and rebuild?"

The Inquisitor of the Reverse God held the bottle with a quiet expression.

The man fell silent with it.

That statement crossed the line a bit - the Adversary was the tactician in control of the whole situation, and it wasn't the turn of one of the players to question his resolution.

Maybe he came too short time, temperament is not very sharp, far from the other tactician personality and act so extreme, and the team integration of the silent, often let these players forget the identity of this person tactician.

But a tactician is a tactician, after all, and will not allow his players to be so offended.

The man opened his mouth numbly, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine." The Adversary waved his hand with little concern and smiled broadly, skimming over the unpleasant topic, "You've been working with Spades for a year now, can you tell me about the match he impressed you the most?"

This wasn't the first time this routine conversation had taken place; after Spades hadn't been able to integrate smoothly into the team, the Counter God would occasionally pull in other teammates for a long heart-to-heart talk and ask them what they thought of Spades.

The man held the bottle in his hand like a bear cub in deep thought, "Actually, every game is quite impressive, but if I were to say the most impressive, it's the one where I played the Russell Cemetery Warriors."

The Reverse God recalled for a moment and quickly picked up, "Ah, that one, ah, it was a tough fight."

The man nodded heartily, "More than miserable, one of the most horrible ones last year, I thought I was going to be reunited when we got to the back of the fight."

That Russell Cemetery vs. Killer Sequence match was sixteen to eight.

By that time, Spades' strength had already come to the fore, and all sides were inquiring about this new player from an unknown source, but, and the most prominent of these inquiring guilds, was Russell's Cemetery - the guild that did everything it could to dig up Spades' secrets and try to unearth his weaknesses.

Russell Cemetery was the twelfth ranked guild the year before last, but this team was different from other prestigious teams, it didn't have star players, it wasn't strong either, every year there was a big change in the team members, every year they went on the field were all new faces with stage fright, and there didn't seem to be anything that people could remember about it.

Of course, you can't finish saying that, the only memorable feature of the Russell Cemetery team is that they are very fond of forfeiting on single and double matches, thus Russell Cemetery is also known as the [Double Banger Team], meaning that after going on the field, they don't do anything, and surrender twice to blow up the empty field first.

However, this team has a surprisingly solid style of group play, and always manages to hit the ground running in certain battles, winning with a single blow, and even defeating star teams.

Last year's Killer Sequence nearly folded in front of Russell Cemetery.

In that match, Spades nearly died - Russell Cemetery tailored Spades' combat style to find a certain player with skills that could limit him, and had that player temporarily serve as a tactician in this match against Killer Sequence.

--This is a skill that is used in a rather brutal way.

As soon as the match started, Team Russell exploded quickly, grabbing one of their own players and forcing a kill sacrifice.

Through this sacrifice, Russell's Tactician forces the skill to be unleashed, turning the ground beneath Spades' feet into a large mud puddle - and that's his skill.

And this quagmire can nullify all of a player's attacks, and also slowly kill that player by devouring them, so it can be said to be a hundred-tested skill, with the only drawback being that the cost of using it is too high - you need to sacrifice one of your own teammates in order to activate the skill.

The more capable the swallowed player is, the slower the quagmire swallows.

Spades, with the Mud Puddle, a negative buff that prevented him from attacking, lasted a full seven days in the game, switching his status from [Attack] to [Shield], grinding his opponent down to a standstill, and trapping him in a game-shattering map.

But it's finally time for the quagmire to swallow the Spades whole.

Spades is half-faced in the mud, and his teammates are doing everything they can to try to get him out, kneeling beside the crisis-ridden mud puddle and desperately digging for him with their bare hands, fighting off rivals who are coming to sneak up on them as they do so.

At that time, the grimace on the faces of everyone in the Killer Sequence Battle Team was unforgettable for the audience at that time.

Grimace, fury, fear, and dread mingled together, filling the room with an intensity that could not be resorted to in words, muddy tears sprawled across their twisted visages, and a low, maddened hiss erupted from the knots of their throats - a pure, unadulterated horror at the impending [death].

Each and every one of them knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Spades died here, they would absolutely fold in this match.

And Spades had no such trepidation; he just looked calmly at the men, the mire swallowing him up bit by bit, while he said, "You may run."

Still, no one ran, and there were those who howled at the top of their lungs, fuming and fighting their opponents in a bloodbath.

Spades still won that game.

The team's collective outbursts under fear resisted Russell's attacking line of troops, and the quagmire skill that had trapped Spades was lifted after one of them exploded and chopped off the opposite tactician's arms, disarming him and rendering him unable to use his staff.

Spades that can perform attacks are invincible, and victory is rightfully theirs.

In that match, when Spades climbed out of the bottomless swamp with his whip in his hand, bathed in sludge and blood, the crowd erupted, standing on their feet and screaming and cheering for Spades, a demon who had climbed out of the abyss.

He was covered from top to bottom in mud, the seven day long tug of war had left Spades' body covered in a striking assortment of filth and horrific wounds, with several broken bones exposed outside the skin, sharply branched, and mud and water mixed with clots of blood hanging from the bones as they congealed.

Even with such a wretched posture, no one doubted that the final victory would belong to this wretched fellow.

Ten minutes later, Spades stood in front of the routed and kneeling group across the street, his demeanor sparse, his bloodstained whip in his hanging hand, the central prop of the game, the symbol of victory, held in his right hand, mud dripping from his jaw and knuckles.

Russell Cemetery's war party trembled as these newcomers to the field for the first time incoherently begged for mercy and cried out.

Spades, also a newcomer, watched them without a word, separated by the distance between the winners and the losers, the gap between life and death.

It's a game of life and death, where they've used everything they have to assassinate Spades, and Spades is perfectly capable of killing them in a fit of rage.

Excited leaps in the audience were joined by someone hissing at the top of his voice, "Kill them!"

"--Kill them!"

The Russell Cemetery contingent closed their eyes in despair, having paid for victory with the lives of others, only to end up paying for defeat with their own lives.

They thought they were sure to die, everyone thought they were sure to die.

Finally, Spades asked them a question.

Spades eyes were hidden by his mud covered frontal hair as he spoke, "You inflicted death on your teammates, and our teammates did everything in their power to prevent me from dying, both out of fear of death."

"But you have placed your lives in the hands of others." Spades looked down at the group, his eyes hidden beneath his hair devoid of any emotion, "Can't you see that your fates to die are equally bound together?"

The group looks up at Spades dumbfounded.

Spades waits quietly for an answer.

So the tactician who had both his arms chopped off tilted his head arduously and replied, "...... That's not how it works, one death and we all survive, that's our tactic and it works, didn't you get caught up in it in the beginning even if it was Spades? "

"This is done to protect more members of the team! One death will save so many!" He droned on, hot and excited, explaining, not sure if he was trying to convince others or himself.

When he had finished, Spades nodded calmly as if he had gotten an answer, "I see, you can't see your destiny."

"I will not kill you, you have your destiny, your death does not belong here and is not bestowed by me." Spades continued without a ripple, "You will die in your own mud."

The Tactician stares in dismay at Spades, who has turned away with tears in his eyes.

Spades didn't end up killing them either.

But shortly afterward, the Russell Cemetery team was robbed of a kill by the enemy team when they were about to pull off another stunt of sacrificing a teammate in their next league game.

That tactician drowned in the mud puddle skill he was about to unleash.

This person recalled the original match, can not help but sigh: "I from that time can not figure out what Spades brain is thinking, if I am sure that in a fit of anger directly killed that group of people."

"But I think it's because of this." The man looked to the Judge of the Adversary and said from the bottom of his heart, "Spades finally realized the importance of the team, and that's why they poached you this year."

The Inquisitor of the Adversary mused as he suddenly said, "I actually asked Spades why he chose me to be your tactician."

Curious, the man asked, "How did he answer?"

The Inquisitor of the Counter God smirked, "He said I see your destiny is to work for me as a tactician and die on the field."

The man squirted, "He said that directly in front of you? That's too ......"

Threatening each other with death like this in front of a prophet ...... is really something, Spades!

"Correction, my skill isn't prophecy, it's called [Listening to God's Only Words]." The Inquisitor of the Adversary God shrugged, "Sometimes I can barely tell if he's a prophet or I'm a prophet, this guy's intuition is amazingly accurate, it's almost better than prophecy."

"For example, this copy of [Ice Age], we've actually all been there, and the derivative of that unknown creature X in there that turns into a human is actually quite troublesome, even I have a hard time distinguishing who's the real person and who's the monster, and even if none of us have low abilities, it's hard to move even an inch in this copy- -because we can't find who to attack."

The Inquisitor of the Adversary looked to the team member sitting across from him, "But do you remember how Spades beat this copy when he was with us?"

This team member muttered, "He killed all the replicants except us as soon as he got in ......"

The Inquisitor of the Counter God nodded, "Yes. Once Spades went in, he quickly identified Edmund hiding in Fang Xiaoxiao's body, and after killing the other party and stopping his plot to use the particle device to affect the global climate, he was able to reach the main quest of Global Warming and pass the level."

"That's the [NORMAL END] of this game." The Inquisitor of the Counter God spread his hands, "From the time we entered the game, to the time we found Spades next to a pile of replicant corpses, it took him less than thirty minutes to clear the level."

"Don't you find it curious? How is it that this guy can recognize who's the human and who's the monster so simply? Monster anthropomorphism in this game is done to the point where we parties involved would wonder if we're real or not."

The man also rubbed his chin in thought and wondered, "Yeah, how did Spades recognize it?"

"I asked him." A bit of helplessness showed on the face of the Inquisitor of the Adversary, "Do you know what he said back to me?"

The man asked, "How did he get back to you."

The Inquisitor of the Adversary let out a long, deep sigh, "Intuition - he recognized it purely by intuition."

"As much as I hate to admit that his instincts are so great, Spades does never lie." The Inquisitor of the Adversary sighed as he held his forehead, "But that makes it all the more troublesome, for Spades to fit in with the team, he'll have to trust my tactics over his instincts."

"But his instincts if so accurate that I simply don't have the means, or the confidence, to convince Spades to give up acting on his instincts and allow him to follow my tactical plan."

The man wrinkled his brow at that as well, "Is there a way for us to go with Spades' instincts?"

"I thought about it." Judgement of the Adversary took a deep breath, "But it's no use, Spades has no way of accurately representing his intuition to us, his intuition is usually a split second feeling to catch, and by the time we react, he'll have run eight hundred miles away from us."

This person also seems to remember the miserable life of chasing Spades in the game, lifelessly slumped on the table, and the tone of his voice is also miserable, "---- only left us to seek in the same place. "

"It's mostly a communication problem, Spades can't say more than a few words to us before he starts wandering off, and I can't even get his attention by banging on a gong." The Inquisitor of the Reverse God's features crumpled into a ball of sorrow, his head propped up on his hand, his eyes straightening, "-Can someone please enlighten Spades, so he can learn how to communicate with others ...... "

------

Inside the game, by the Ross Ice Shelf.

After Spades had gathered his things and strapped his curtsey to his sled boards, tying the safety rope around his own waist and dragging it forward, he looked down and took the map from the one he kept in the lining of his punching bag, confirming with his eyes the next location he was going to visit on the map, which had been wrinkled by the gusty winds.

After going to that buoyed point in the Ross Sea, Spades went to dozens more, and now the map was cleared of all but a handful of locations.

Eventually his eyes skimmed the map, landing on the South Pole point inland, before letting out a slow breath of white air.

Edmund Observatory.

He remembered that this seemed to be the location where the player named Bai Liu had logged in together.

Having identified his target, Spades drew out the whip pinned to the back of his waist, adjusted the skis secured to his feet, and then leaned forward, knees slightly bent, his gaze traveling through the unabated blizzard, locking onto a certain direction before dryly flinging his arms left and right to tart down the snow.

The whip swung and slammed into the ground, raising a thick layer of white snow around him as Spades made the whip act as a snowball, utilizing the massive reaction force of the quick swing of the whip on the ground to glide across the snowy surface, almost as fast as an orange-red lightning bolt on the blanketed ground.

If the Judge of the Adversary were here, he would be hissing at Spades again not to use such an expensive whip as a sled dog to borrow strength, but to pull the sled with the force of the whip!

But he's not.

So the Spades, with their black goggles, bowed and swung their whips from side to side, glided smoothly and soon disappeared into the sweeping blizzard.

Tarzan Station.

Bai Liu They made only a brief stop at Taishan Station, then took advantage of the situation to get out from inside, grabbed a helicopter parked outside, and flew away in the helicopter directly before the people at Taishan Station realized it.

Outside the helicopter wind howling, in such a visibility of not more than thirty meters in the weather to fly the aircraft is simply in the death of the scythe on the pole dance, at any time may be destroyed.

But Tang Er, as the pilot, could not disobey Bai Liu's order - their tactician's eyes were now glowing with the excitement of picking up a hundred million dollars, even his breathing was slightly shortened, and the slender fingers gripping the backrest of his driver's seat were tightened and whitened.

"Drive where?!" Tang Er hit hissed the question.

Bai Liu replies, "Edmond Observatory."