Finding a secure stairwell access, Luo Jie opened a glass window and deployed the [USS Micro Recon Drone].
The silver-gray drone vanished into the dark night like a phantom, its night-vision feed projecting the rooftop scene onto Luo Jie's visual display.
On the fifth-floor rooftop of the Minami District Comprehensive Shopping Center, a blue-and-white painted light helicopter hovered mid-air. Four heavily armed soldiers leaped out in succession. The most striking was a woman with a short, dark-purple ponytail. Her black tactical suit clung tightly to a figure both long-limbed and defined with feminine softness, her healthy, wheat-colored skin adding a touch of wild beauty to her striking face.
Her?
Given this was a purely anime-styled Illusion World, major characters had extremely distinctive features. Luo Jie instantly recognized her: Nanli Xiang, Juchuan Jingxiang's best friend.
If Nanli Xiang was here, this squad had to be part of the Metropolitan Police Department's Special Assault Team (SAT) – a rapid-response unit similar to SWAT teams back home.
But weren't the SAT supposed to be on guard duty at the Bedmaster City Seaplane Airport right now? What were they doing at a strategically insignificant shopping mall?
When things get weird, there's usually a quest involved. In an Illusion World, anomalies like this almost always signaled a hidden mission.
Alignment-wise, the NPC Nanli Xiang fell under Neutral Good. While not guaranteed safe, a simple contact shouldn't pose much danger.
With this in mind, Luo Jie stowed his music player. He fought his way up the stairwell, clearing scattered undead, until he reached the shopping center's fifth floor.
Even before pushing through the heavy fire door into the main corridor, the distinctive pfft-pfft sounds of suppressed gunfire echoed intensely – a clear sign of heavy combat.
To avoid friendly fire, Luo Jie deliberately kicked the door, creating a loud bang as a warning, before bursting into the corridor, blade drawn.
Shiiing!
A wave-like arc of steel sliced through the air with a sharp whistle. The surging undead fell like harvested wheat, rapidly piling into a waist-high wall of corpses before him.
Luo Jie, experienced in such situations, shifted towards a less dense pocket of undead. He kited the massive horde down the corridor, leaving curved mounds of bodies in his wake like grotesque breadcrumbs.
Blocked by the press of bodies, Nanli Xiang and her team couldn't identify the mysterious newcomer, but recognized the opening he provided. They snapped into high alert, methodically dropping surrounding undead with precise headshots while covering each other, steadily maneuvering towards his position.
They converged near a beverage shop.
Nanli Xiang slightly lowered her rifle muzzle. Before she could speak, Luo Jie cut in sharply: "Got grenades? Give me one!"
While the others hesitated, Nanli Xiang decisively pulled a cylindrical offensive grenade from her vest and slapped it into Luo Jie's waiting hand.
He gave her a curt nod, pulled the pin, and hurled the grenade down the corridor towards the open stairwell door he'd come through. Enhanced by his 400-point Spirit stat, granting extreme bodily control, the olive-drab cylinder traced a perfect parabola through the air. It bounced several times inside the stairwell with sharp metallic clangs.
Seconds later, a deafening BOOM accompanied by a blinding flash erupted. A shockwave blasted outwards, hurling several undead near the doorway over the railing. They plummeted down the central atrium, exploding into messy splatters of gore on the first-floor tiles.
Drawn by the massive noise, the thousands of undead crowding the fifth floor surged en masse towards the narrow stairwell. They trampled and shoved mindlessly, funneling through the shattered opening created by the grenade's blast. Like grotesque lemmings, they tumbled out through the blown-out windows, raining down onto the parking lot below. The sickening thuds were punctuated by the frantic shrieks of car alarms.
Watching the horde numbers visibly diminish as they plummeted, Luo Jie winced at the loss. Without this SAT team showing up, all those falling corpses would have been pure points...
Peering through the beverage shop's window at the now-empty corridor – the undead completely lured away by the explosion – all four SAT members exhaled deeply in unison.
Even as elite police officers, the psychological pressure of facing thousands of fearless, flesh-eating monsters had been immense.
Nanli Xiang slung her rifle across her back, removed her tactical gloves, and stepped forward, offering her hand. "Thanks for the assist. Minami Rika, Inspector, SAT Special Assault Team, First Squad. And you are?"
"Yè Yǎn," Luo Jie replied, removing his own armor's gauntlet to shake her hand firmly. He offered a measured smile. "Inspector Minami. I've seen your photos with Jingxiang on her phone. You look even better in person."
He deliberately omitted "sensei" when mentioning Jūchuān Jìngxiāng, aiming to obscure his current identity as a high school student. These four were all police officers; their official status inherently placed them in a position of authority over civilians. If they knew he was just a student, equal footing in any negotiation would be impossible.
"Jingxiang? You mean Jūchuān Jìngxiāng?" Hearing her best friend's name, Nanli Xiang's stern expression visibly softened into surprise. Her eyes scanned the powerful, mysterious young man before her, clearly puzzled about his connection to the notoriously airheaded school nurse. His friendly demeanor suggested he wasn't hostile... though it was hard to imagine Jingxiang having any male enemies.
"Apologies, no offense intended," she pressed, her cop instincts kicking in, "but what exactly is your relationship with Jingxiang?"
Asian men aged subtly; a well-maintained man could look nearly the same from twenty to thirty-five. Nanli Xiang found it hard to glean useful clues from Luo Jie's unremarkable features. Yet, a woman's intuition whispered that this man's connection to Jingxiang was likely... complicated.
"I'm also from Private Fujimi Academy," Luo Jie answered smoothly, giving her the perfect opening for misinterpretation.
"Ah, I see. That Jingxiang, she never mentioned..." Nanli Xiang's expression relaxed further, clearly picturing him as one of Jingxiang's fellow teachers at the academy.
"Speaking of," she continued, concern returning to her voice, "how is Jingxiang? And... what brings you out here in the middle of the night, dressed like that?"