Fatal Shot

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“Attributes Enhancing Potion!”

Everyone stared at the metallic vial containing the blue liquid.

In War, the opportunity to increase one’s attributes permanently was considered rare. Who would have thought that a potion like this would be dropped by a Commander monster!

“The Primary Evolution Virus could increase attributes?”

Feng looked at the blue liquid in the vial and suddenly thought of something. It was related to the Silver Leaf Island mission, where he had been bitten by the Commander Mutant Giant Python and infected with the mutated Evolution Virus. After using the gene agent from Lin, he had gained permanent attribute increases.

“Evolution Virus, Evolution Virus…”

As Lin had mentioned before, the purpose of developing the Evolution Virus had been to enhance one’s body—similar to the purpose of the biochip. But since they had never found a safe way to stabilize it in past research, it had never been widely deployed.

The T-virus developed by the Umbrella Corporation was also a mutated version of the Evolution Virus. As Feng Luo recalled, the T-virus in Resident Evil/Biohazard (the video game) had initially been produced for the intention of enhancing human genes, thereby producing a new human race. It was clear that it had similar functions to the Evolution virus.

Now, do the events in Resident Evil mean that the Evolution Virus is about to be added into the game? Feng Luo took a guess in his mind.

However, the distribution of the three items in the hands of Mu Zi was the most urgent matter to settle.

Two healing potions and an enhancing potion. How do we distribute them?

This was definitely a difficult problem to deal with because everyone only had their eyes on the vial containing the blue enhancing potion. It could permanently increase one’s attributes—and was not limited to the basic attributes—as well as one’s HP and perception. No one in their right mind would turn down such good stuff. After all, they would still have increased by a level regardless of the healing potion. However, the opportunity to increase a character’s attributes was hard to come by!

At that moment, the five of them, including Brother Ling, who had explored the hospital building, returned with disappointment written all over their faces. There was nothing that could control the T-virus in the hospital. However, they became happy after seeing the three potions dropped by the Tyrant.

“How about we split them according to contribution…?” Feng Luo immediately spoke up when everyone had arrived.

This was the most common method used by players. As a matter of fact, the contribution system was designed for this very reason: to allow players to distribute their equipment.

Nevertheless, there were two different ways to distribute according to contribution. The first was according to rank. The person with the highest contribution was to choose first, followed by the next-highest player. Those who were left empty-handed at the end would be compensated by other players with some credits or equipment from their own pile.

If they chose this method, both Feng Luo and Sister Rui would be able to get their hands on some of the loot. According to rank, Sister Rui, who got the “Final Blow” on the Tyrant, had the highest contribution of 26.5 percent, thus ranking first. Lin Aotian, with 15.9 percent contribution, was ranked second, while Feng Luo, with 12.8 percent contribution, was ranked third.

The fourth in line was a member of Brother Ling’s team who dealt “First Damage” on the Tyrant with 7.8 percent. Mu Zi had 4.3 percent contribution, ranking seventh.

The contributions of both Sister Rui and Lin Aotian were very high. In such a short period of time, the explosive damage of the Machine Gunner largely accounted for their success.

However, the majority of the players had nothing to say about this because the great damage done by the Machine Gunner required a high rate of consumption. The price of the cartridges in a single magazine alone was already higher than that of the average player in a single battle perhaps by a dozen times. Therefore, them getting more during the distribution was not unfair.

There was another reason behind Feng Luo getting the third-highest contribution. Although he had not gotten the Final Blow, he had been able to use the last three shots of his Desert Eagle to execute perfect crowd control. The system had given him a much higher contribution percentage for that. And, just as Feng Luo had mentioned, the last three shots were from B-Rank special ammo.

B-Rank special ammo was expensive! Everyone knew that. They even felt that Feng Luo’s contribution was comparatively low. But the system would not take the cost of B-Rank special ammo into account.

However, this method was not approved. They voted and decided to employ another distribution method, which was to convert the items’ price into a ratio of contribution. The players were then to form groups, and if the total contribution of the group exceeded a certain amount, the members of that group could have a share of the items accordingly. Then they would proceed to split the items among themselves.

This method of distribution resulted in Feng Luo, Sister Rui, and Mu Zi taking the enhancing potion, which was worth the most. That was because all three of their contributions added together would exceed 60 percent of the overall players’ contribution.

Keeping in mind that the guards had dealt quite a lot of damage with their six-barreled railguns—in addition to the attacks by some of the Guard Soldiers—the overall players’ contribution did not equal 100 percent.

The three including Young Master Lin had a total of 20 percent contribution. With that, they took one of the healing potions, which they needed.

The last healing potion was taken by Brother Ling and the rest because they had gained some contribution from dealing some damage to the Tyrant when they had previously encountered it in the hospital.

The distribution of the items was completed. However, as he handed the healing potion to the Earth Manipulator, Young Master Lin was still staring daggers at the enhancing potion in the hand of Mu Zi.

Lin Aotian, who was looking at the blue vial in Mu Zi’s hand, turned and said to Sister Rui, “Sister Rui, is this enhancing potion up for sale? I can pay two million credits for it!”

After hearing his comment, most of the players were startled, thinking they had heard him wrong, except for Brother Ling and Feng Luo.

Two million Credits! That was equivalent to 20,000 star coins! Even totaling up the money of half the people there wouldn’t amount to that much money.

When Lu Chen had selected people for this mission, he had not chosen them according to their equipment and strengths. Some of them were chosen based on their specialties and talents, like Mu Zi.

That was also why the “biochip expert” female player had been chosen for the mission, even though she was quite ordinary. Unfortunately, her ability to accelerate the hacking of the intelligent system had been rendered useless, as it had no effect against supercomputers of this level, like the White Queen.

Nonetheless, a lot of people were dumbfounded by the proposed price of two million credits. All of this to preserve Young Master Lin’s reputation, along with his deep pockets.

If the potion could have a 100 percent success rate after combining with the player, then it would have been reasonable for someone to propose such a price. But the success rate was only 75 percent. There was a quarter of a chance that it could fail. One would only pay such a high price if he or she was not right in the head. The risk of reducing the attributes alone was enough to lower the price of the potion to one-tenth of its original price.

Sister Rui’s cold reply, however, stuffed all of Young Master Lin’s words back into his mouth.

“Not for sale!”

“Forget it then…” Young Master Lin shook his head and gave up on pushing further.

The main reason was that he was still a little afraid of Sister Rui. Otherwise, he would have offered the price at the very beginning. Most of the players would have probably agreed on the first distribution method at that point.

At the same time, the 75-percent success rate of the potion had made him hesitate. He would have offered any price to get his hands on the potion, had the success rate of it was 100 percent.

Of course, if that had been the case, he still would not have succeeded no matter how much money he crazily spent. The wealthy, like Sister Rui, for whom money was never a problem, would never have given it up for sale. Especially when the buyer was Lin Aotian. Also, the vial was owned by the three of them: Feng Luo, Mu Zi, and her. Based on her character, she would not just decide this all on her own.

Xiao Jiu, who was a Doctor player and a member of one of the five squads that had followed Brother Ling to the hospital, spoke up. “Plus, we have no idea if the ability to gain immunity for some of the mutated Evolution Virus, stated in the enhancing potion’s attributes, includes the T-virus. If it does, then we won’t ever have to worry about the scratches and bites of a zombie…”

Just when everyone was focusing on the first half of the sentence about increasing one’s attributes, her attention, unlike everyone else’s, was fixated on the last bit: “If merging is successful, subject will gain partial resistance to the primary evolving virus.”

“Virus immunity?”

The phrase had caught Feng Luo’s attention.

He quickly looked through his attributes, as he recalled something. When he had been in the Gray Water, after bonding with the Evolution Virus, his attributes had displayed the description, “gained immunity to most Primary Evolution Viruses.”