stonecrandall Chapter 60: Abandoning the Perfect Reward, Opening the Dungeon
Chapter 60: Abandoning the Perfect Reward, Opening the Dungeon
Chapter 60: Abandoning the Perfect Reward, Opening the Dungeon
The fluorescent lights in the police station lobby were still buzzing, and several of them had been shattered.
Only the broken pieces on the lamp base remained, emitting tiny sparks that flickered in the smoky air.
Shattered glass covered the entire concrete floor, from the entrance to the information desk to the detention cells.
With each step, you could hear the soft, crunching sound of your shoes crushing shards of glass.
"Let me out!!"
"Fuck, my leg! My leg!"
"Quick! Call an ambulance!"
"Hang in there, bro, don't fall asleep, hang in there!"
Lee and Frank stood up simultaneously from behind the overturned desk.
The two men moved in perfect sync, their knees rising from a squatting position to a standing position, their backs straight, the muzzle of their guns sweeping across the edge of the table, cutting back and forth twice between the shattered door frame, broken glass, and overturned tables and chairs.
There is no standing target.
The attackers at the door had vanished in the explosion, leaving only a few charred scraps of cloth stuck to the warped iron door frame.
Nearly ten police officers were lying on their backs in the lobby.
Most of them were hit in the legs by flying debris.
The chair armrests were shattered wood, metal pieces flew out when the iron door was torn apart, and various hard objects were thrown to the ground after being overturned by the blast wave.
None of the wounds were fatal.
These new bulletproof vests do stop bullets, but they only protect the chest and back, leaving the calves and thighs unprotected.
Blood seeped from the edges of the wound, spreading outwards along the gaps in the cement tiles.
Not far from the information desk, a figure lay in a pool of blood.
He lay face down among the shattered bar counter and overturned swivel chairs, his hands braced on the ground, his fingertips digging bloody streaks into the plaster mixed with glass shards and sawdust.
He tried to stand up, but every time he tried to prop himself up, his knees would barely leave the ground a few centimeters before he would fall back to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
He repeated this three times, his fingers digging into the cracks in the floor tiles until the edges of his nails began to bleed.
Li En walked over to the figure and squatted down.
He reached out and placed his hand into the blood- and grime-covered palm, his fingers closing in.
"Don't move, wait for rescue."
Bright's face was turned to the side, half of his face was pressed against the ground, and the other half was covered with a layer of shattered paper scraps and dust.
His pupils moved slowly in their sockets, and his lips moved a few times.
"Lee Eun—Captain, I couldn't stop him."
His body was numb; he couldn't feel anything from his waist down.
I don't know if the floor is cold or warm.
I don't even know if my leg is still in the same place.
I could only see tears in Li En's eyes, but they didn't roll out; they were all held back at the edge of her eye sockets, blurring her vision.
"Just now—just now I noticed something was wrong with him, but—I couldn't stop him."
The wails and screams continued all around.
Bright heard this, closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them again.
He believed it was all because of his mishandling of the situation.
He should have shot when that poisonous insect walked in, and he should have dragged the person out immediately.
His hesitation caused so many colleagues to get hurt.
His fingers tightened in Li En's palm.
He wanted to say something more, but as soon as he opened his mouth, a sweet, metallic liquid surged up from deep in his throat, blocking his vocal cords, overflowing from the corners of his mouth, and dripping down his chin to the ground.
"Cough cough." He coughed violently twice, and dark red blood splattered from his mouth onto Li En's sleeve.
He could feel his eyelids drooping, and a heavy, thick drowsiness spread from the back of his head to the front, covering the wailing in his ears, the pain in his body, and everything else.
He shifted his gaze from Li En's face to the remnant of the fluorescent light tube on the ceiling, still sparking with electricity, and his pupils began to slowly dilate.
Snapped.
A crisp slap echoed through the noisy police station lobby.
Several police officers who were moving the wounded turned around at the same time and saw Li En kneeling in front of Bright, his right hand withdrawing from Bright's face.
A clear red mark appeared on Brett's left cheek.
Li En withdrew his hand, his voice cold.
"What, now that you know it's your fault, you still want to rest?"
"Now, you have to persevere in order to make amends for your mistakes."
Bright's eyes reopened.
He stared at the ceiling, took several deep breaths, each one tinged with blood, but the spreading grayish-white color on his eyeballs was suppressed by something.
Bright clenched his back teeth.
When the gums are squeezed, they make a very soft creaking sound.
At this moment, the excruciating pain in my lower body resurfaced from the numb nerve endings, climbing up my spine vertebra by vertebra, into my abdomen, into my chest, and into my temples.
The veins on his forehead bulged one by one, his whole body began to convulse involuntarily, his legs spasmed on the floor, and his fingers gripped Li En's hand tightly.
But he did not close his eyes.
He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes wide, staring at the fluorescent light tube on the ceiling that was half broken, counting the remaining traces of fluorescent powder on the tube.
One, two, three —
Count everything you can count, and you won't close your eyes as long as you keep counting.
The siren of an ambulance came from outside the door, getting closer and closer.
Several medical staff in white coats rushed into the hall pushing a stretcher.
Li En gently placed Bright's hand on the stretcher, stood up, took a step closer to the lead caregiver, and said softly, "If I find any body parts missing, the entire hospital staff will be executed."
The caregiver shuddered, and the stretcher's handrail slipped from his palm.
He quickly caught it with his other hand and nodded several times.
Police officers are different from other people.
Police officers not only have health insurance, but also a police union.
Normally, hospitals don't do anything unnecessary to the police officers' bodies.
But there are always exceptions.
When an injured person is brought to the emergency room, if the chances of survival are not high enough, if the surgical risks are too great, and if the probability of successful resuscitation is weighed against the compensation sought by the family in the event of a failed surgery, some doctors will choose the easier option.
After all, all police officers sign a body donation agreement when they join the force.
But caregivers aren't stupid.
He looked into Li En's bloodshot eyes and quickly went through all the things the Manhattan branch had done recently in his mind.
He will relay the message to the doctor.
If you don't want to die, you'd better not do anything reckless.
Li En watched the ambulance drive away from the police station with its siren blaring, then turned and walked back into the lobby.
The fluorescent light tubes were still sparking, and the bloodstains left by the wounded who had just been carried away were still slowly spreading on the cement floor. The smell of gunpowder in the air was slightly diluted by the cold wind blowing in from outside.
There were fifteen people standing in the hall, all of them fully armed.
The safety on the M16A2 assault rifle has been switched from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
A grenade was hanging from the tactical belt.
Brock stood on the second-floor observation deck, also fully armed.
The hat he had worn for most of his life wasn't on his head; instead, it was tucked into the lining of his bulletproof vest, with only a small section of the brim showing.
Holding an M16A2 in both hands, the anti-slip texture on the grips was soaked with sweat from my palms, making it a shade darker than the surrounding area.
His face was grim, not because of the blown-away gate, nor because of the bloodstains in the police station lobby.
He glanced at the remaining officers, fifteen in total.
Fifteen people were not injured.
He'd been a police officer for thirty years, and this was the first time in fifteen years that someone had bombed the front gate of the Manhattan Police Department.
The police station was bombed many times 15 years ago.
At that time, they were still establishing rules, and the tacit understanding between the gangsters and the police had not yet been developed.
After the rules were established, the gangs knew that bombing the police station meant starting a full-scale war, and no one dared to do it anymore.
Here we go again.
"We are New York police officers."
"This is our city."
"Grab your weapons and kill him—"
"Chief Brock!!"
A loud sound rang out from the stairwell.
Barron rushed up to the second floor with his laptop in his arms, his shoes slipped on the second-floor platform, and he almost bumped into Brock's back.
He flipped the laptop screen open with a snap and turned to Block, speaking rapidly.
"Chief, based on the data analysis, this person may not be a gang member."
Brock had already gripped the gun handle, ready to kick Barron away.
Upon hearing this, his gaze shifted from Barron's face to the computer screen.
The screen showed the suicide bomber who was blown to pieces in front of the police station.
Barron input the image into the newly developed facial recognition system.
The system generated the results within minutes.
Before this person became a drug addict, he had a military service registration photo taken while wearing a Marine Corps uniform.
In the photo, he had a buzz cut, his bones weren't as tall as they are now, and his eyes weren't as unfocused.
Brock looked for two seconds, then turned and shouted downstairs.
"Lee En! Frank! Come up here!"
Lee and Frank went up to the second floor.
Frank's face was flushed, and the small patch of skin on his cheek, which had been congested with blood since the explosion, had now turned dark red.
Li En glanced at the analysis data in Barron's notebook.
He was a former member of the Marine Corps, but his retirement date is unknown, and his records for the last few years are blank.
The explosives used by the suicide bomber were military-grade C4, not the homemade explosives commonly used by gangsters.
The tactical pattern of the suicide attack is exactly the same as that of the sniper ambush in front of Central Park amusement park.
Li En turned the screen around and looked at it carefully for a few seconds, then looked up at Brock.
"You should have the contact information for those gangs, right?"
Block nodded, pushed the notebook back into Barron's hands, and turned to walk into the director's office.
The landline receiver was picked up, and numbers were dialed one by one, with the sound coming from the crack in the half-open office door.
"Hey, do you want to start a war? You're actually sending someone to commit suicide."
"If it's not you? Then who is it?"
"Hey! Are you Russians trying to start a war?"
"Who is that?"
After a while, Brock came out of the office, his face even more gloomy than when he went in.
"Informants from several gangs all said he wasn't one of their people."
"Their boss just found out about this too, and has already sent someone over to offer his condolences."
If the gang really wanted to start a war, they would never send people to offer condolences after bombing the police station.
This is an act that severely damages morale.
Those leaders understood the seriousness of the situation.
They didn't want the police to hold them accountable.
Li En nodded and turned to Frank, who was clenching his fists so tightly that the veins were bulging.
"People in the army."
Frank's eyes were glued to the military service registration photo on the screen.
"I recognize this guy. It's him!"
His voice sounded like it was being crushed through a pile of rubble.
"Looks like the guy who wants to get rid of you has set another trap, trying to make us fight a bloody war with the gang."
After reading the information, Li En thought of the sniper in Central Park.
The sniper he saw on the rooftop of the apartment building through a scope was not someone that gangsters could easily recruit.
"I'll take care of it." Frank turned and walked towards the stairs.
Li En waited until he reached the first floor before calling out to his retreating figure.
"Frank, many of our brothers are injured."
Frank stopped in his tracks.
He stood on the concrete floor of the first-floor lobby, which was covered with broken glass and bloodstains, without turning around.
A few seconds later, the sound came back from behind my shoulder.
"If I can't wipe them all out—I'll call you."
From the conversation between the two, Block roughly understood the outline of the whole matter.
He waved his hand to dismiss the remaining officers.
It's not time to officially start a war with the gangs yet.
Then the phone on his desk rang again.
He put the receiver to his ear, listened for a few seconds, and then hung up.
He braced himself on the desk with both hands and slammed his knuckles hard against the surface.
boom.
The coffee in the teacup spilled out.
Li En was still at the office door.
"What's wrong?"
"Bright, he's paralyzed from the waist down."
Brock pulled his hands off the table, clenched them into fists, and let them hang at his sides.
He looked at the spilled coffee on the table, his voice low.
He is twenty-six years old this year.
He really liked Bright, the kid who grew up in Hell's Kitchen.
You could say he watched this little guy grow up.
He's only 26 years old, and now he's paralyzed from the waist down. His life is ruined.
Li En turned around, pushed open the door to the director's office, walked through the blood-stained and broken glass-strewn lobby, and entered the restroom.
He closed the door and sat down on the toilet seat.
Twenty-six years old, paralyzed from the waist down.
In this world, there are several paths that can be taken to help a person who is paralyzed from the waist down stand up again.
Go find a sorcerer to learn magic, but you can't just knock on the door to enter Kamar-Taj, and it takes time.
Super Soldier Serum—nobody knows where to find this stuff; the files are all sealed in the military's top-secret archives.
Dr. Connors' regeneration potion is the easiest option to find, but it has strong side effects.
so----
A screen of light appeared before Li En's eyes.
[Dungeon Cooldown: 10 days]
[Should we relinquish our right to choose the instance?]
One of the rewards for a perfect completion is the right to freely choose a random dungeon and its difficulty.
If you give up this option, the dungeon cooldown time can be shortened immediately.
His original plan was to keep this right and wait for the cooldown to end before directly selecting a random dungeon of the "Nation Destroyer" level, thus raising his combat power to a higher level in one go.
But there's no time for that now.
[Resident Evil 9 is ready]
Li En stood up and reached out to grasp the doorknob.
Click.
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