[Destination reached. B-Rank employee Ms. Bai Wei, welcome back.]

Shua—

The hovercar slowly descended from high altitude, stirring up gusts of airflow.

On the landing pad, hovercars were arranged from the outside toward the inside.

The closer to the center point, the higher the value of the hovercars parked there, as orderly as an invisible pyramid.

As the Security Bureau’s Special Operations Supervisor, Bai Wei’s docking spot was very close to the exact center.

Deng deng.

Stepping out of the car, Bai Wei gracefully reached out and helped Li Chen up.

“Careful on the steps.”

“I’m not a kid.”

Li Chen muttered awkwardly, yet his body unconsciously leaned a little toward his fiancée, feeling the warmth of her soft palm.

Ding-dong ding-dong!

However, before Li Chen could keep talking with his fiancée, a flashing screen popped up in front of Bai Wei the moment they landed.

[Employee ID 1007, B-Rank employee Ms. Bai Wei. Your three-hour special leave approved for today has only ten minutes remaining. Please return to your post as soon as possible. Otherwise, the company reserves the right, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Employee Handbook, to impose disciplinary action.]

“Ah, time really flies. Sorry, Xiao Chen, I can’t keep you company right now.”

Bai Wei reached up and shook out her trench coat.

Her heroic and sharp little face showed a hint of guilt.

“But I have to go back to work. After all, for our life after marriage, I have to work hard too.”

Clenching her fist, Bai Wei blinked her watery eyes playfully.

“Oh, right. Recently, our Security Bureau got another major case. I might have to work overtime until eleven. So you go home first. As for dinner, the antique-style menu mod we bought last week should suit your taste.”

After speaking, without waiting for Li Chen to respond, she turned around and hurried into the elevator corridor.

Only her back was left behind, disappearing into the cold wind howling between the tall buildings.

“…”

Watching his fiancée’s dashing figure, Li Chen could not help but feel a pang of heartache.

If he had to say it, his fiancée was good in every way, except she was a bit too stubborn and driven.

‘She’s always saying the company-issued nutritional agents can condition the body but who knows what shady business those companies are doing behind the scenes.’

Thinking that, Li Chen’s gaze dimmed slightly.

But facing his wife’s hard work, what could he do?

‘After all, I’m just a useless cripple.’

Standing on the top floor of the Security Bureau, Li Chen looked down at the entire hive city with a hazy gaze.

Under the dazzling neon lights, everything was drenched in decadent luxury.

You could even smell money in the air you breathed.

But as a transmigrator, Li Chen understood better than anyone what kind of deep darkness lay beneath that glamorous surface.

Beep beep beep.

[Today’s intel has finished loading!]

Just as Li Chen was tangled in inner conflict and distress, the game player panel that had appeared in his vision not long ago now flashed vividly with lines of crisp text.

[Today’s intel: Three-star wanted criminal, the data-hacker organization <Scissorhands> is infiltrating the Newborn Pharmaceuticals employee information database.]

[Today’s intel: Tonight at 7 p.m. the Tiger Claw Gang in District 108 of the Lower City will smuggle illegal genetic modification agents into the black market.]

[Today’s intel: Seventh-tier martial artist Liu Yu encountered a sudden beast tide in the wilderness hunting zone outside the hive city. She is currently severely injured and is hiding in an underground safe house to recover in seclusion.]

[Current intel weight: 3. Based on the player’s martial artist level, reputation and wealth. As the player’s overall score increases, higher-level intel will become available.]

‘It really is the player log…’

Looking at the interface he used to grind all night back before transmigrating, something that had already been carved deep into his mind, Li Chen’s heart, which had long settled down, began to stir again.

What surfaced in his head were countless dreamlike experiences from day after day.

As a corporate wage slave, even if it was only slaughtering enemies in a game world, it was still a good way to erase everyday fatigue.

And that was why, ten years ago, when Li Chen discovered that after one night he had actually transmigrated into that female-dominant post-apocalyptic game, his mood had been unbelievably excited.

Especially when he noticed he had spawned as a frontier pioneer in the lower-hive slums.

Not because Li Chen had any romantic filter for pioneers.

Simply because he knew the plot well.

His spawn point was very close to that SSS-rank heroine, the future Mercenary Queen Lin Caining.

And right now, she, who was rising from the most insignificant depths of the slums, happened to need help the most.

Although Li Chen felt a bit disappointed when he realized the player log and level panel had not come with him, he figured that with his foreknowledge advantage, any problem would surely be solved easily.

Yes, back then Li Chen really was that naïve.

‘But I was dead wrong.’

Li Chen’s eyes flashed with remembrance.

‘In this cruel world, there’s no such thing as childhood sweethearts or friendship, it’s all just a beautiful fantasy that can’t become real.’

But why?

‘Why is it only now, when I’m about to wash my hands of it all, let go of the past and give up my obsession, that you shove the path to power I lacked back in front of me?’

Li Chen struggled in pain inside.

In truth, he no longer had a reason to fight.

With his perfect fiancée, who was virtuous, gentle and tolerant of every one of his flaws, who never blamed him even when he kept messing around, Li Chen could simply live quietly in a high-end upper-hive residence and enjoy a wonderful life that would have been unimaginable before transmigrating.

Just like all the other kept pretty boys in this world where women outnumbered men.

As a senior Security Bureau employee, Bai Wei had that ability.

But, but…

Li Chen remembered his fiancée who had rushed off not long ago.

Busy carrying out company tasks, yet still smiling brightly as she comforted him.

He… could not bear it.

‘Should I try it?’

Li Chen looked again at the lines of text flashing above.

‘These intel quest lines, I remember almost all of them like the back of my hand, it’s just that back in the game world, these quests were randomly generated so you couldn’t use foreknowledge like you could with the main storyline.’

Like this one.

Seventh-tier martial artist Liu Yu.

Li Chen looked at the last intel line and a seductive and enchanting figure appeared in his mind.

‘That woman isn’t short on money.’

Of course, more importantly…

‘Her mouth is a bit flirty but her character is genuinely good. I remember medicine that only cost a few thousand credits in the Upper City. If you give it to her during her recovery period, once she returns to the hive city she’ll transfer tens of millions.’

Tens of millions!

Even for a seventh-tier martial artist, that was a huge sum.

‘Even if it’s reasonable to repay a lifesaving benefactor with this much, unfortunately in this damned hive city, ‘reasonable’ itself is the greatest luxury.’

Rubbing his chin, Li Chen’s restlessness grew.

‘With that money, Xiao Wei wouldn’t have to force herself like this, staying up late every day and working overtime, right?’

As if trying to convince himself, Li Chen murmured, “Just one last time?”

He subconsciously pulled a dust-covered card from his pocket—[Mercenary License].

In the yellowed ID photo, he, still carrying a bit of youthful innocence, stood shoulder to shoulder with a black-haired girl whose expression was cold but whose ears were faintly red.

‘Lin Caining.’

A trace of memory flashed in Li Chen’s eyes, but it came quickly and went quickly too.

‘Forget it. Anyway, it’s all in the past. It’s kind of funny. Back then, it was my idea to form the mercenary group. I even picked the group name. But the first one to get expelled and kicked out was me, the founder.’

Forget it.

This kind of betrayal was common in the hive city anyway.

Li Chen held that card with a bitter smile and slowly walked toward the elevator corridor.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the hive city wilderness zone.

At the very center of the beast tide.

A figure raised her sword high and swung.

Along with a dazzling white light, it instantly engulfed the endless tide of mutated rats around her.

Boom—

Within that world-ending power, an ocean of gigantic black rats was churned upside down.

One after another, huge rats that could make even high-level martial artists tremble could not even muster the slightest counterattack before being blown apart and erased, leaving not even bones behind.

“Faster.”

Facing the sea of blood paved by corpses, that graceful figure in the gale remained unmoved.

She only turned her head slightly and gave her companions an expressionless order.

“We’re almost at the pre-civilization ruin.”

That cold and severe pretty face was filled with frost.

“What’s wrong with Big Sis,” a female squad member asked in terror, glancing at the thick white smoke filling the ground below, instinctively breaking out in goosebumps.

“No idea. Earlier, when we took down the pre-civilization ruin and dug up new Singularity tech, the captain was in a pretty good mood. But for some reason, after noon, she completely changed.”

Another female squad member wore a bitter expression and looked at the coordinates in her hand.

“Our supplies are almost not enough anymore but… sigh…”

Hunching her shoulders, watching the resolute figure still advancing straight into the beast tide, the female quartermaster could not force out a single word of persuasion.

Someone would die.

A high-level martial artist’s instincts were warning her that right now, she should obediently shut up.

“But why,” the quartermaster girl muttered, unable to understand.

“This has to be a misunderstanding… It has to be.”

Where the other squad members could not see, the captain of the legendary mercenary group [Judicators], the Mercenary Queen Lin Caining, gazed with overwhelming longing at the yellowed photo of the young man whose looks could shame Pan An.

“Or was it some bad woman forcing you?”

Lin Caining stomped her foot hard.

‘Back then, didn’t we agree that once I made it and had the power to protect you, we’d be together, Xiao Chen?’

A legend of the mercenary world.

A rising star who shot up from the barren slums in just a few short years.

That iron-blooded queen who never hesitated.

Yet at this moment, endless panic surged across her face, like a wounded beast.