What malicious intent could NPCs possibly have? C41.1

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Chp41. part1

Ning Ge peered through the gaps between the people.

At the door, a metallic tentacle as thick as a human waist, resembling a giant python, had slithered inside.

The tentacle was metallic yet supple and elastic, extending and retracting with fluid ease, emitting faint clicking sounds.

At its tip were three massive metal claws, currently gripping a young man around the waist—he had clearly been snatched from the crowd.

The young man, a boy who looked like he’d been in a fight, was severely injured, his chest drenched in blood as he screamed frantically.

Before Ning Ge could even get a good look, the tentacle flung the man out of the carriage and he vanished from sight.

The scream cut off abruptly.

The entire carriage froze, staring at the tentacle’s abduction. Only then did panic erupt as people scrambled frantically toward the ends of the carriage, away from the door.

Under the pressure of the crowd, Pei Han braced himself against the wall with his arm, shielding Ning Ge behind the partition and creating a small space for her.

Owen, pressed against the wall by the surge, muttered, “Great. If they don’t get us, the crowd will kill us first.”

“Look at the screen,” Ning Ge said.

At some point, a countdown appeared on the carriage’s display screen. It showed thirty minutes remaining, as it was currently at twenty-nine minutes and thirty-two seconds.

After throwing the person, the metal tentacle retracted and vanished into the darkness. Everyone watched the countdown in silence, completely unsure of what to do.

Within minutes, the tentacle reappeared.

This time, it snaked into the carriage, its menacing, open claw hovering before the huddled crowd.

Though it had no visible eyes and remained motionless in the air, everyone felt as if it were scrutinizing each of them.

Suddenly, its neck twisted, and it lunged forward.

This time, a middle-aged woman was chosen.

She had been injured earlier and had been crawling with the crowd, but the tentacle still found her.

As the tentacle lunged at her, the people around her scattered, leaving her alone on the ground. Without resistance, she was seized around the waist.

Clutched by the tentacle, she flailed her arms in terror. She barely had time to scream before being flung out of the carriage.

“Two minutes,” Ning Ge said.

The tentacle had grabbed the first person when the thirty-minute countdown began. At twenty-eight minutes, it took the second. Every two minutes, it would enter the carriage to seize another victim.

By the time the countdown ended, it was expected that fifteen or sixteen people would have been taken. With over forty people remaining in the carriage, the probability of being caught was not low.

Pei Han endured the crowd’s pressure, maintaining a distance of about a fist’s width between himself and Ning Ge.

After observing for a while, he turned to Ning Ge and whispered, “The tentacle is searching for people. The victims vary in gender and age, but they all share one common trait…”

Ning Ge quickly raised a finger to her lips, signaling for silence.

Pei Han had no intention of revealing the truth anyway. He curved his lips into a smile.

Absolutely cannot say it.

The tentacle’s selection criteria were based on the severity of injuries, from most severe to least severe.

Neither Pei Han nor Ning Ge had sustained any injuries. Pei Han, having just fought a battle, was still clean and unharmed.

Ning Ge leaned over Pei Han’s arm to look out, silently counting the people.

It was evident that the carriage had undergone several rounds of fighting since the earlier stops, with a considerable number of people bearing visible blood.

Two minutes later, the tentacle reappeared.

As expected, it seized a man with a bleeding shoulder and hurled him out.

The man’s shoulder looked like it had been slashed by a screwdriver, his clothes torn to reveal flesh and blood—likely from the earlier brawl.

The tentacle moved with an almost intelligent precision, its “eyes” scanning the crowd to identify the most severely injured. It then snatched them up and hurled them from the carriage, like a strict quality control machine on an assembly line selecting defective products.

Two minutes later, the tentacle reappeared on time, this time targeting a man with a leg wound.

Just as the massive metal claw lunged for him, a sudden change occurred.

The man, who had been clutching a wrench, saw the metallic claw charging toward him and swung the tool wildly.

He didn’t strike the claw, but instead struck a nearby young man with dyed blonde hair.

Caught completely off guard, the blonde youth took a brutal and precise blow to the head. Blood erupted instantly, turning his hair crimson.

The metal claw froze mid-air.

It hovered for a second, as if reassessing the injuries, then changed course and lunged for the now severely wounded blonde.

The young man, dazed and unable to struggle, flailed briefly before the claw tossed him from the car.

It was clear the man with the leg wound had understood the claw’s selection criteria.

Once he had started, there was no turning back.

He raised the wrench again and continued striking the head of another thin man nearby, this one in his late forties or early fifties.

He had to keep going.

Hurting one person was the same as hurting several.

If he didn’t deliberately injure someone else more severely, the metal claw would continue to target him in order.

The thin man beside him, who had witnessed his violent outburst, was prepared. He flinched back, and the wrench only grazed his nose, causing blood to gush.

The thin man realized the truth and shouted, covering his nose, “The claw only grabs the injured! It targets the most severely wounded! He’s trying to hurt others so the claw won’t grab him!”

His words jolted the others awake, and many in the carriage finally understood the claw’s targeting pattern.

After several rounds of brutal combat, most people bore wounds of varying severity. They began nervously sizing up each other, secretly weighing their own injuries against those of others.

The man with the wrench continued his frenzied attacks, his targets screaming and scattering in all directions.

Before the metal tentacles even appeared, the carriage had descended into complete chaos.

Seizing the confusion, someone launched a backstab.

Ning Ge saw a wounded man suddenly lunge, silently plunging a screwdriver into another man’s back.

If I injure someone more severely than him, I’ll be safe.

Pei Han stood on high alert, his eyes scanning the brawling crowd. He was fully prepared to kick anyone who dared to approach him flying.

He stubbornly guarded his corner of the carriage, leaving a safe zone untouched.

The rest of the carriage was a disaster.

Those already injured chased others like hungry eagles, while the uninjured screamed and scattered through the narrow space.

No one wanted to risk getting hurt, so they avoided confrontation.

It was a chain reaction: as more people were injured, they began attacking others, desperate to avoid being at the top of the injury rankings.

Fists flew, wrenches soared, and teeth and nails became weapons. No one cared about the tentacles anymore.

Ning Ge glanced back.

The carriage she had just left was also in chaos. She saw people who had barely survived the last round by drawing small red circles on their wrists now slaughtering each other.

A high school student was cornered against the wall, while a middle-aged man lay bleeding by the door. The attackers’ faces were twisted with rage as they fought savagely.

Ning Ge turned away, refusing to look in that direction.

When the two-minute timer ran out, the metal tentacle reappeared at the carriage entrance.

Faced with such chaos, even the tentacle froze for a moment.

Unlike its previous swift judgments, it hovered in the air for a long time before finally selecting a struggling figure lying on the ground from the chaotic crowd and flinging them out.

The tentacle ignored the several people on the carriage floor whose heads had been smashed in and lay completely still.

It seemed to avoid the dead.

In the midst of the melee, everyone wanted to inflict as much harm as possible on others, but it was impossible to control such precision. Some had already died without the tentacle’s intervention.

The chaotic scene in the carriage shifted rapidly. Ning Ge carefully observed the tentacle’s actions while mentally selecting the next target alongside it.

Each time, her judgment and the tentacle’s were identical.

It truly was selecting targets in order of severity of injury, from worst to least severe.

Once again, the tentacle appeared at the carriage door.

It hovered in the air for a moment, then twisted and lunged straight toward the end of the carriage.

Ning Ge let out a soft “Hmm.”

Even in the din, Pei Han heard her and turned to look. “What is it?”

Ning Ge was puzzled.

This time, the tentacle’s choice differed from hers.

A middle-aged man was curled up in the corner near the seats, not far ahead. He had suffered a severe head injury, blood gushing from the wound, but he was still alive, gasping for air in large, ragged breaths.

His injuries were far more severe than those of the person the tentacle was currently seizing.

Yet the tentacle had inexplicably chosen not him.

Ning Ge stared across the carriage for a moment before suddenly asking, “Pei Han, how far can you throw things?”

“It depends on what I’m throwing,” Pei Han replied.

“What about something like a wrench? Could you throw it to the other side of the carriage?” Ning Ge pressed.

Pei Han glanced across the carriage. “It’s not too far. I should be able to.”

“And are you a good shot? Can you hit things?” Ning Ge pressed further.

“We’ll have to try to find out,” Pei Han said. “What do you want me to hit?”

“That,” Ning Ge pointed to the far end of the carriage, near the ceiling, where a dark, round object was hanging.

“At first, I wasn’t sure,” Ning Ge said. “I wondered if the tentacle was judging positions and injuries by sight. But now I think it really does need to ‘see’. Someone might have been in its blind spot and avoided being attacked.”

Ning Ge gestured to the man with the head injury, who was still huddled near the seats.

Pei Han glanced at the curled-up man and then at the opposite side of the carriage.

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