Endzone: Simulated Apocalypse

Soon, Cyanide, Luna, and Kirika arrived at the abandoned multistorey car park, also known as a parking garage. Of course, given how many of these there were in the massive city of Lumina, it should've taken a long time to find the correct one, but luckily, the last time they were here during the Scarlet Hour on the first night of the game, Cyanide had marked the place down with a waypoint.

That made navigating back towards it easier, since he could simply 'track' the waypoint as a built-in feature of the game's system, essentially showing the target location with a little icon in the real world along with a distance marker, even after closing out of the map. It was truly like in a video game, where you could simply follow the direction the marker was in even after exiting out of the map screen.

"Geez… this place is dark, even though we're under broad daylight," Kirika remarked, shivering a bit. "I don't like the looks of it."

"This is just how parking lots are," Luna replied. "The electricity Cyanide restored to the city by defeating that Stage Five Mutant in the sewers unfortunately was not enough to cover the outages in this region as well, it seems, so we'll just have to make do."

"Yeah…" Kirika sighed. "I can't believe of us have found a Blueprint for a flashlight yet, honestly…"

"It's fine," Luna said, bringing out two mechanical appendages out of her back, each carrying two mega LED lights that shone as brightly as the sun itself. "I have these."

At this, Kirika blinked in surprise. "Wow… you really have everything, huh?"

Cyanide, after some thought, interrupted the conversation with a rather surprising interjection.

"We're splitting up."

Both Luna and Kirika were taken aback by this sudden proposal, and looked towards Cyanide in surprise.

"Eh? But… why?" Kirika asked, tilting her head.

On the contrary, however, Luna seemed to accept this perfectly well despite her initial surprise, and gave a slight bow.

"Understood, Cyanide. Kirika and I will search the other park building beside this one, and leave this one to you."

Cyanide nodded in satisfaction at her quick agreement, and without any further delay, Luna grabbed Kirika by the wrist and pulled her away, heading for the sister car park.

"W-Woah, wait!" She cried. "Why are we splitting up? I don't get i-"

"Survival rule number nine," Luna cut in coldly, not letting her go. "Don't ask meaningless questions that don't accomplish anything."

"… Did Cyanide teach you that?"

"Yes. It is a rule he added to the original Eight Rules of Survival, taught to him by his former teacher Anthrax."

"I… see…"

'Yep,' Kirika thought in her head. 'Sounds like him alright.'

*****

Once the two girls were gone, Cyanide entered his assigned building. The two were completely separate, standalone buildings, but they were right next to each other.

Of course, on the surface, this decision he made made little to no sense. After all, even if he wanted to save time in their search by splitting up, there really was no need given that there were still 6-7 hours until nightfall.

But naturally, that wasn't the real reason. Nothing Cyanide did was as simple as what's on the surface.

The true reason he wanted to split up with Luna and Kirika was because the last time he was here, there had been a mysterious presence haunting this place. It was powerful—powerful enough to make even him tremble at the time, due to his low level. But now, the pressure no longer bothered him, given how much stronger he was.

As such, he wanted to take this mysterious presence on, and if possible, convert them to his side. The more powerful chess pieces he had, the easier it would be to win this game. If Luna and Kirika entered with him, though, the presence might consider this to be too difficult of a fight, and retreat. That would be troublesome. Cyanide WANTED them to target him, fight him one on one.

After all… that was his specialty.

As soon as Cyanide stepped foot into the shadows of the abandoned car park, he felt it. The presence. It was still here. He was not trembling like last time, but the atmosphere certainly wasn't comfortable. Still, onwards he walked. This was nothing to the underground's number one assassin, the world's ultimate human being.

Just like what it seemed on the outside, the interior of the building was dark as hell. The lights were all off, and the only thing the sunlight outside contributed to was the shadows of the various vehicles and stone pillars inside the structure.

Cyanide looked around, wary and cautious, listening for anything—anything at all. He'll leave the search for the battery to the other two. Had Luna not brought up the matter of the battery, this was the place he had been planning on going anyway for today, in search of the mysterious presence here. It's only been a few weeks, nearly a month, but it felt like a lot longer.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a metal can hitting something, and he immediately stopped in his tracks, activating his [Radar]. No hits. The sound of the can continuing to roll on the floor, though, rang in his ears.

And then-

"—?!"

Abruptly, Cyanide heard the sound of something flying in the air behind him, and tilted his head to dodge it. Unfortunately, he was about a microsecond late, and the sharp projectile sliced the edge of his right ear, spewing blood out of its tip, before cutting into the stone pillar a few meters in front of him, and getting lodged there. It was then that Cyanide saw the object's true form—a throwing knife, used with perfect accuracy and technique.

"Oho… not bad," a woman's voice complimented, mature and seductive yet with a playful tone to it. Despite sounding closeby, Cyanide's [Radar] still was not picking up on any hostile signatures, and the strong echoes and reverb within this parking garage was not helping.

'… Playing stealth with me?' Cyanide thought to himself, before sneering like a psychopathic devil, a gleam of bloodthirst in his eyes as he twirled his knife in his hand and lifted his gun.. 'Very well… if this is what she wants the game to be… then I'll play along.'