The Certificate
"I'm playing the role of a bank manager right now. I have to stay here and stop five robberies." Jin was sitting in the city's largest bank, updating Xu Lingqu on his situation. "Everything's fine on my end; it's just that the robbers are taking too long to show up. I can't leave easily."
Jin had assumed that, given how chaotic Sin City was, he could stop all five robberies within an hour. But after waiting for a long while, only one group had shown up.
"My skill is some kind of money-related ability—I can transfer cash from the bank's vault to somewhere else. I really don't see how that's useful," Jin grumbled in frustration.
"Alright, that's about what I needed to know." Xu Lingqu and Shen Shouli were already approaching the gas station. It wasn't far from Jin's bank, which was exactly why she'd taken a moment to ask about his situation. It sounded like he was fine, so they headed straight for the gas station.
Out on the road in front of the gas station, fighting had already broken out.
Xu Lingqu got in touch with Lin Xiao, who was extremely tense, her heart nearly pounding out of her chest. She was spraying bullets at the convoy outside with a submachine gun while reporting to Xu Lingqu: "I don't know why, but a ton of people suddenly showed up trying to take over this gas station. All the NPCs inside are resisting right now... It's still under control, but we really can't handle anyone else."
At first, Lin Xiao had been worried because she was the only one guarding the gas station, so she'd reported the situation to Xu Lingqu and requested backup.
But later, when the first wave of people came to rob and bomb the gas station, she was surprised to discover that the NPCs here would fight back together with her. And just when she thought she could handle the problem on her own without troubling Xu Lingqu, more and more people inexplicably kept pouring in, as if this gas station were the center of the city.
Xu Lingqu paused. "Did the system give you any text saying how many people would come?"
"The mission text didn't specify—it just said people would come," Lin Xiao replied.
Shen Shouli took off his sunglasses and exchanged a glance with Xu Lingqu.
"The people from Jin's side got lured over here. The NPCs' paths were altered—this has to be Dolanston's doing."
Xu Lingqu began asking the Moye Military Academy students nearby whether they had encountered any anomalies like Jin's.
A female student whose position was closer to the gas station and whose mission was to guard a convenience store said everything was normal on her end, and the NPCs' robbery paths were unaffected.
So it seemed only the NPCs near Jin had been affected. She had Jin step outside the bank to check the situation—everything was normal.
The Dolanston person had emptied out the NPCs around Jin, but the goal wasn't to make him let his guard down so they could attack him—that proved the person wasn't near Jin.
And this Dolanston skill could redirect wave after wave of robbers to the gas station in real time, which also proved that the person had to be on-site near the gas station, observing everything.
Xu Lingqu pulled out the map.
"From the upper floors of that building, you can see the roads around both the bank and the gas station. The robbers' cars in Sin City are all flashy, so someone up high could easily spot them. They should be within the range of floors 7 to 9."
As they spoke, they'd already arrived at that building and began searching floors 7 through 9 one by one. They had to kill this person first to relieve the pressure on Lin Xiao's side.
As the elevator reached floor 7, Xu Lingqu stepped out first. She had a gun and a butterfly knife, taken from one of the robbers. On the way over, the two of them had made a point of picking a fight with a gang of motorcycle thugs, successfully scoring two guns and a short spike.
Search floor 7 and floor 9 first. If they didn't find the person on either, they'd meet up on floor 8 to search together.
The seventh floor of this building was very dark. Xu Lingqu took a couple of steps and stepped on a metal sign. She picked it up and looked at it—this place used to be a research institute. Dressed in her white lab coat, she walked through it as if she were coming home.
A rustling sound emerged from the shadows. Xu Lingqu looked up and saw a group of rats huddled in a corner, just like the mental patients back in the church. They raised their heads, staring at her, then quickly scurried away.
Xu Lingqu didn't bother chasing them, because at the end of the corridor, a figure stepped out.
Before the match began, she'd memorized the Dolanston students well enough. This one was named Di, and his psychic level was A+. His condition wasn't good right now—scales had grown over nearly his entire body, but he still retained a humanoid form, looking like an unfinished experiment. This was probably his skill.
"Does this scare you, Commander Xu?" Di flashed a grin, then lunged at her with startling speed.
Xu Lingqu drew her pistol and fired three shots in quick succession. The scaled parts of his body couldn't be penetrated. At that moment, Shen Shouli's brief report came through the comms earpiece: there was also someone on the ninth floor, but the skill didn't match.
Both floor 7 and floor 9 had Dolanston people, but they had different skills—neither was the one who could alter NPC trajectories.
The moment Xu Lingqu fired, the Dolanston student on floor 8 would sense something was wrong. While the people on floors 9 and 7 bought time for him, he could take the elevator and slip away.
Xu Lingqu created some distance.
"Aren't you guys quite united? You've got that spirit of sacrificing yourselves for your comrades." Xu Lingqu studied Di carefully as she spoke.
Di let out a cold laugh. "Sacrificing myself? Commander Xu, I came here to kill you, not to die. That coward who ran away—I can't even be bothered to talk about him."
"To kill me?" A playful smile curled at the corner of Xu Lingqu's lips.
On the ninth floor, Shen Shouli's situation wasn't looking great. The Dolanston girl, named Qingle, had a skill that let her fire a gun spewing mud. The mud it sprayed was mildly corrosive, leaving a persistent burning sensation when it stuck to skin. Moreover, the mud spread over a wide area, and ordinary bullets couldn't penetrate it, putting Shen Shouli in a tight spot for a while.
Qingle had done her homework. The Shen family's young master from Moye had a thing about cleanliness, which happened to be perfectly countered by her skill. What luck, she thought to herself.
The next second, however, Shen Shouli charged straight through her barrage of mud. He was covered in filth from head to toe, but his movements didn't falter in the slightest. When he closed the distance, the bullets could no longer be blocked by the mud, and he took her out cleanly. Without even bothering to check his own condition, he rushed to the elevator.
The person on floor 8 had indeed fled. The elevator's number dropped to 2, and it looked like he was about to escape successfully. Shen Shouli was about to head down the stairs to chase when the number suddenly jumped to 10, then to 6, several numbers flickering in succession until the elevator went completely out of control and plunged straight down.
Within three seconds of her retort to Di, the butterfly knife in Xu Lingqu's hand plunged into a small patch of exposed human skin on his body—right where his heart was.
Walking over to the elevator, Xu Lingqu, the psychiatrist from Sacred Love Hospital, wrote out her first diagnostic certificate.
"Elevator: malfunctioning."