Chapter 48: "Next stop, 'Ju-on Island'."
The subway is the primary mode of transportation in this city, providing access to all major buildings. At the same time, however, the subway also serves as the entrance to the city's dungeon instances.
Among all the stops, seventeen are dungeon locations.
Alighting at any of these stations is considered voluntarily entering the dungeon.
These seventeen dungeons update on a daily basis.
In the waiting lobby on the first basement level of the subway station, a prominent sign displays the general information for the day's seventeen dungeons.
...
Chen Jiang, leading the Mutesnake and the others, stood inside the subway station and looked at the real-time daily dungeons before them.
They quickly decided on the dungeon they would enter today.
Each of them paid another two paradise coins, passed through the turnstiles, and walked with the crowd to the platform to wait for the subway.
"..."
He looked around. There was only a single railway line in the entire city, served by two trains running back and forth.
The security check at the turnstiles was very lax, with no staff present. Everyone seen in the city was a player, and if one wished, they could easily bypass the turnstiles without paying any paradise coins at all by simply leaping right over.
Though he was curious as to what would happen if someone evaded the fare.
He only had one life, after all.
It was probably best not to run such experiments in person.
They did not have to wait long. In about seven or eight minutes, accompanied by a blast of a whistle, an eight-car subway train slowly pulled into the station. Once the train came to a complete halt, the doors slowly slid open, and a crisp female voice broadcasted:
"We have arrived at 'God's Church' station. Please disembark before boarding, and mind the order."
Everything looked identical to a subway in the real world.
It even made one briefly wonder whether they were still in reality.
Chen Jiang strode into the subway car. It was not very crowded, and there were plenty of empty seats. After sitting down, he cast a casual glance at a few players who had followed him in from another car before beginning to observe his surroundings.
The train doors closed.
The subway gradually began to accelerate, and the crisp notification broadcast rang out once more from the train's audio system.
-
"Next stop, 'Cursed Island'. This station is a dungeon stop. Players not intending to enter this dungeon should exercise caution before alighting."
-
The moment the broadcast echoed through the carriage,
he heard the sound of sobbing and breakdown from nearby.
He noticed a total of five players sitting opposite him. In this city, the faces of all players were blurred and obscured, but their body shapes made it easy to distinguish them: three men and two women.
None of them were young.
At that moment, a middle-aged woman whose legs were shaking violently like chaff fell from her seat. On the verge of a mental breakdown, she grabbed the handrail, unable to speak coherently, and simply wept. Her piercing cries sounded like a dying crow.
"Crying! What use is crying?!"
A middle-aged man sitting beside her merely gripped a Glock pistol in his hand tightly, as if clutching a straw to save his life. With trembling lips, he roared, "Once we get into the dungeon later, everyone remember: you must not split up!"
"Follow me, I'll keep you alive!"
"..."
Chen Jiang said nothing further. He merely leaned back against his seat and quietly watched the scene unfold. It seemed these people had failed to clear a dungeon voluntarily within a month and had been forcibly assigned to one. Cursed Island—the difficulty of this dungeon was certainly not low...
It was not the dungeon he had chosen.
He held a pessimistic view regarding whether these few would survive.
About three minutes later,
the train slowly pulled to a halt.
"We have arrived at 'Cursed Island'. Please disembark before boarding, and mind the order."
The doors opened.
Chen Jiang looked up. Outside the subway was no longer a station, but a desolate island shrouded in night, looking exceedingly eerie. He could even smell the fishy scent of the sea breeze mixed in the air.
The five players sitting across from him began to rise tremblingly, preparing to get off.
The other players inside the subway were all closing their eyes to rest, paying no attention to the scene whatsoever, as if accustomed to it all.
A sudden question crossed his mind.
What would happen if someone forcibly pushed the other players off the train at this moment?
Right at that instant—
the roar of the middle-aged man sounded from beside his ear: "Get your damn self down here already! What are you waiting for? There's no time left!"
Four of the five players had already stepped out of the subway. The middle-aged woman who had initially been overwhelmed by terror was now clinging desperately to the handrail near the point of collapse, wailing loudly.
The indicator lights on the train doors began to flash red.
The doors were about to close.
Yet the middle-aged woman seemed to have suffered a complete emotional breakdown, hugging the handrail and refusing to disembark no matter what.
The next moment!
The doors slowly closed.
The players standing near the doors suddenly rose in unison and walked toward the depths of the carriage. Immediately afterward, as the train slowly accelerated, the head of the middle-aged woman—who had failed to get off in time—suddenly exploded, scattering flesh and blood all over the carriage.
The gruesome and bloody sight was utterly nauseating.
"..."
Chen Jiang frowned slightly. The gore had not splashed onto him. It seemed that if one refused to participate in a forced dungeon, this was the fate that awaited them.
In truth...
he felt that the middle-aged woman's decision hadn't been entirely bad. At least that method of dying was somewhat more painless. If she had actually gone to "Cursed Island", she probably would have been tormented thoroughly before death.
The advantage of choosing a dungeon voluntarily was that he could bypass certain instances he truly had no desire to visit.
Take Cursed Island, for example.
One had to purchase specialized anti-supernatural weapons separately, and if those weapons weren't used in supernatural dungeons, they were practically useless. Their cost-effectiveness in terms of enhancing overall strength was far too low.
He glanced around.
It seemed there were no staff members coming to clean up this pool of blood at all; the headless female corpse was simply left soaking in the crimson puddle.
...
Fifteen minutes passed.
They passed through three more stations along the way.
The train's crisp female broadcast rang out in sequence once again.
"Next stop, 'Bloody Siege'. This station is a dungeon stop. Players not intending to enter this dungeon should exercise caution before alighting."
"We have arrived at 'Bloody Siege' station. Please disembark before boarding, and mind the order."
The doors slowly slid open.
Outside the doors lay a completely deserted theater. Several intensely bright white incandescent lamps illuminated the entire building, and amidst the blinding light, one could clearly see that the theater's ceiling had been blown away, leaving behind traces of an explosion.
"Let's go."
Chen Jiang slowly rose, leading Mutesnake and Xu Kun off at the station. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the three people from the neighboring carriage who had followed them all the way had also stood up, disembarked, and arrived at this stop.
Stepping out of the subway and standing inside the theater, Chen Jiang looked back.
A subway train was suspended in the void, mere centimeters above the ground. The front and rear of the train were invisible; only the carriage they had been in could be seen.
As the doors slowly closed and the train continued to accelerate, the subway vanished into the void, leaving them stranded right there in the deserted theater.
And at that exact moment—
a subway train slowly materialized in the opposite void. Its doors opened, and three players dressed in black also stepped down from it.
"..."
Chen Jiang narrowed his eyes slightly. There was only one line and two trains in this city, and those two trains traveled in opposite directions. The subway on the opposite side must have belonged to another city.
In other words,
a single dungeon could be attended by players from multiple cities.