“...Finally gone, huh?”

Hiding in the crack in the wall, the witch listened to the receding, rustling footsteps and quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Like everyone else, after being teleported in, she noticed the belt around her waist and heard the system's explanation of the rules.

Before she could seriously consider the impact of the belt, she was attacked by a large group of monsters that crawled out of the pipes.

The monsters were quite bizarre, like hairless donkeys with inverted legs,

with plastic human heads attached to their necks, upside down, chins facing up,

faces stiff and pale, eyes wide open, corners of their mouths upturned in a bizarre smile,

numbering in the thousands, chanting in unison: "Welcome to the employee cafeteria No. 13 in area d on level 37 of the shelter, welcome to the employee cafeteria No. 13 in area d on level 37 of the shelter..."

as they swarmed toward her.

The witch's sanity dropped a notch just from looking at them. Without hesitation, she stepped onto the cleaning robot, which was essentially a witch's broom, and flew into the air.

From her backpack, she took out a large number of prepared spell material packages—

Her power system was a combination of classical occult alchemist and violent mage,

with enormous spell power and short cooldown times,

but it required gestures, incantations, and, most importantly, extraordinary materials as fuel for the spells themselves.

That's where the money was burned.

The witch and Meow Meow Head ran a shop together, did odd jobs, and the money they worked so hard to earn was spent on buying spell materials and advancement materials—for this Doorway Contest, the witch even used her rank of fifty-third on the personal combat power rankings as proof

to obtain a dozen risk investments from various commercial organizations,

receiving a total of nearly 100,000 game coins in low-interest loans and extraordinary materials,

both advancing herself and expanding her "ammunition" depot.

In this Doorway Contest, players ranked 300-101 could obtain three pieces of excellent quality equipment and items, as well as 8,000 game coins,

while players ranked 100-51 could also obtain a one-time-use escape ticket.

According to the usual practice of the Killing Field Game System, equipment and items not marked as exclusively bound could be transferred and resold.

The scenario mission escape ticket might be useless for top players like Michael and Out of Control,

but for those big shots in the real world who held high positions but whose own strength was not high, the escape ticket was equivalent to an extra life, and they wouldn't mind spending any amount of game currency to buy it.

The witch bragged wildly about her strength to various commercial organizations, guaranteeing that she would definitely advance to the top 100, repay the low-interest loans borrowed from the commercial organizations, and at the same time give the other party the limited purchase right of the scenario mission escape ticket,

killing multiple birds with one stone, selling one item multiple times.

Only then did she swindle and deceive her way into obtaining low-interest loans and extraordinary materials worth 100,000 game coins.

What if she failed to advance to the top 100?

Then she was very sorry, but after the contract failed, the speed at which the loan interest increased and accumulated far exceeded the witch's pitiful savings speed.

Given the latter's current financial situation,

she might have to work until 2077 to pay it off...

She could only win, she couldn't lose!

Under the pressure of fate, the witch's fighting spirit ignited. She wore a string of spell material packages compressed into pendant shapes on her wrist,

and her hands quickly made spellcasting gestures, summoning a large number of crystal servants to fall to the ground and make frontal contact with the human-headed donkey-horses.

The witch did not release offensive spells immediately,

first, because she was afraid of making noise and attracting other players or monsters in the map,

and second, because she couldn't be sure that the mechanical donkey-horses were hostile, and acting rashly might provoke an attack—she was equipped with an identity verification particle emission device, which was theoretically safe.

As it turned out, her worries were unnecessary.

As the distance between the two sides closed, the mechanical donkey-horses that approached the crystal servants with human-like outlines seemed to trigger some kind of switch, and their eyes turned from white to red.

Large chainsaws extended from their back spines.

The chainsaws buzzed, and the sharp metal saw blades spun, cutting the crystal servants, which were harder than metal, into countless pieces.

At the same time, they accelerated their chanting of "Welcome to employee cafeteria No. 13 in area d on level 37 of the shelter!"

Welcome my ass!

Are you cafeteria aunties suffering from intermittent hand tremors? Why are you targeting customers so much?!

The witch noticed the detector that suddenly appeared in mid-air and cursed inwardly. She hated this feeling of being watched, but her body acted instinctively before her consciousness, and her hands made spellcasting gestures.

[Viscous Heavy Fog]—Summons dense heavy fog, covering the ground, slowing down units in the area.

[Glimmering Dust]—Creates a cloud of colorful, shimmering, tiny shards that scatter over the surface of every object in the designated area. The tiny shards last for 24 hours and can continuously expose invisible objects until forcibly peeled off.

[Sand Wall Technique]—Creates walls of quicksand to obstruct passage and trap objects attempting to cross the sand walls.

...

In the space of three breaths, the witch had released six non-lethal spells, and the various colored pendants on her wrists instantly decreased by six.

Large numbers of mechanical donkey-horses were trapped in the heavy fog and sand walls, covered in large amounts of colored fluorescent powder, illuminating the entire space. While widening the witch's field of vision, it also allowed her to notice that more mechanical donkey-horses, tens of thousands of them, with chainsaws on their backs, were crawling out of the pipes in the distance.

Without any hesitation, the witch immediately stepped on the cleaning robot and flew backward. This was the opponent's home ground, and wasting energy was completely meaningless.

She flew quickly through the bizarrely structured buildings, followed closely by the swarming mechanical donkey-horses—these strangely shaped creations were not very strong individually, but their numbers were almost endless, and they lived like ants in broken pipes and collapsed buildings.

Relying on the cleaning robot's flexible maneuverability and the revealing effect of [Glimmering Dust], the witch fled for nearly thirty minutes, during which she saw several kinds of strange creations with different shapes.

Their shapes, sizes, and living habits were completely different, and they seemed to have no sense of identity with each other.

The initial human-headed donkey-horses were attacked by mechanical scorpions and mechanical beetle-shaped creations. The three sides fought as a团, which gave the witch a chance to breathe and hide in the dark, narrow cracks in the wall.

"...The detector has disappeared."

Her face somewhat pale, the witch drank a potion to replenish her magic power, while watching the slowly fading detector phantom, she thought silently, "What exactly is going on? I'm wearing an identity verification particle emission device, so why am I still being attacked by native creatures?

Could it be that this belt is not protection, but bait?

To lure strange creations to chase me?

But that's not right, I'm hiding here, so how could they not have found me..."

Ding-

The wind chime tied around her waist suddenly swung backward, automatically making a sound.

The witch's hair stood on end, and she turned around abruptly, only to see a red dot shining on her chest.

And the source of the light spot was, from a great distance, the laser sight of a sniper rifle in the hands of a woman wearing a magnificent white-gold combat suit.

Ranked seventy-fourth on the personal combat power rankings, GRU Psychopsychology Department, [Borei]...

Ding-

The wind chime rang again, this time the sound was sharper and more urgent.

The witch subconsciously raised her arm, and the dozen or so pendants on her wrist emitted a faint light, which would ignite on its own in the next second, causing the magic forged by magic to fill the entire space.

"Personal suggestion, don't move."

A lazy, ambiguous, magnetic voice sounded from behind.

The witch did not turn around, but through the image transmitted to her brain by the multi-functional cleaning robot camera, she clearly saw the appearance of the person behind her.

It was a tall, graceful Caucasian woman with golden curly hair combed back into a ponytail. She wore a VDV army coat of the Arctic Bear Airborne Forces over a wine-red suit. She held a half-smoked cigarette between her fingers.

The woman's left side of her face was cold, elegant, and delicate, as dazzling as a magnificent ceremonial saber.

And her right side of her face...

was covered with hideous and terrifying burn marks, dark brown, wrinkled skin, forming a sharp contrast with her left cheek.

Also from the GRU Psychopsychology Department, ranked eighteenth on the personal combat power rankings, [Balalaika]...