What Should I Do If My Ex-Girlfriend's Pheromones Smell Too Good? - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Wicked

Shu Qiong and Chang Xichun rested on the periphery for a moment, wandered around to snatch a few kills while others were fighting, and then parted ways peacefully before their team-up time limit expired.

Shu Qiong headed toward the mountainside with a clear goal. In a shallow depression there, she had found her first supply crate and met Yan Xiangyu and Lin Mi. She had a strange intuition that Yan Xiangyu would be waiting for her there.

Sure enough, before she even got close, she saw a familiar supply crate lying in the center of the depression. The lid was closed tight, but the side bore a dent from a bullet. If she remembered correctly, the contents had long since been split.

Shu Qiong fell silent for a moment. This was… fishing with an empty hook?

She didn’t approach blindly. Instead, she fired three shots at the box. All three bullets struck the exact same spot with a crisp clink.

Soon, the rustling of parted branches came from nearby, and a figure stepped out. Yan Xiangyu didn’t spare the empty box a single glance, walking straight toward her. “You’re here?”

Shu Qiong couldn’t help but touch her earlobe. Her mecha mimicked the motion by shifting its arm and tilting its head slightly; she felt a wave of inexplicable awkwardness. They hadn’t been apart for long—only a few hours—yet it felt as though they hadn’t seen each other in ages.

“Waiting for a willing fish to bite?” Shu Qiong pointed at the empty crate. “Did you catch any?”

Yan Xiangyu seemed to let out a small laugh. She manipulated her mecha’s head to tilt, looking directly at Shu Qiong. “I caught one.”

In that moment, Shu Qiong could almost visualize Yan Xiangyu’s habitual expression. She couldn’t possibly be the “fish” being fished!

Yan Xiangyu didn’t continue the topic. She moved closer and tossed over two heavy sniper rifles. “Saved these for you,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I can’t use them.”

Both rifles were top-tier items she had recently looted. Xinghai reached out and caught them steadily, feeling the weight in its palms.

“The assessment is expected to end at 7:00 AM tomorrow. Do you… uh, does your mecha have enough energy?” Shu Qiong asked.

Yan Xiangyu was too lazy to name her mecha. When reporting the data, she had left the mecha information column blank, resulting in the entry simply reading “To Be Named.” Thus, she simply called it Standby—simple and blunt.

“Not quite enough,” Yan Xiangyu replied. “Five hours at most.”

Her combat style consumed energy rapidly and demanded high output. Shu Qiong nodded, dismantled a few cannons from Xinghai, and installed the two heavy snipers Yan Xiangyu had thrown over.

“Let’s go. I’ll take you to scavenge for energy.” She gave an energized wave, signaling Yan Xiangyu to follow. Yan Xiangyu gave a soft “Mhm” in the channel and followed obediently.

Shu Qiong had previously noted several suspected supply crate locations at the foot of the mountain. She hadn’t checked them earlier because of more pressing matters and the fear that they might be traps designed to lure her into an ambush. Now that she had a helper, her courage had grown.

The “courage” in question, Yan Xiangyu, sounded in high spirits: “Xiao Qiong, where are we going?”

Shu Qiong came to a halt. Xinghai reached out to touch a tree trunk and looked up. “There should be a supply crate hidden in the canopy.” When she passed by earlier, she noticed the concentration of filming drones was higher here than elsewhere.

Yan Xiangyu stared at the giant tree, which was at least twenty meters tall. “I’ll go up and check.”

She didn’t waste energy on the anti-gravity system. Instead, she deployed several sharp spikes from Standby’s palms to assist with climbing. She reached the top with little effort, but it was empty.

“We’re too late. Someone already took it,” Yan Xiangyu said as she jumped down, firing two air cannons at the ground to cushion her landing.

Shu Qiong was stunned. “Gone?” She sighed, resigning herself to a change of plans. “Let’s go, next target.”

The two moved toward the base of the mountain until they reached a small pond. The water was murky; the bottom was completely invisible to the naked eye.

“I came here with Chang Xichun earlier. We scanned a regular cube underwater,” Shu Qiong explained. “Highly likely to be a supply crate.” They hadn’t retrieved it then because their mechas weren’t low on ammo, and adding too many parts would have hindered their speed.

Shu Qiong detached a finger from Xinghai’s right hand. A black sphere at its base spun around once. She tossed the finger into the pond, watching it sink while the sensor’s feed appeared in her viewport. The finger’s joints wiggled like a crawling insect to move into position, reflecting the underwater conditions back to Shu Qiong.

“The box is still there,” Shu Qiong sighed in relief. “No one beat us to it this time. The pool is sixteen meters deep—stagnant water.”

Yan Xiangyu nodded, activated the air recycling system in the cockpit, and plunged into the pond. A moment later, Standby emerged from the water holding the crate and climbed back to the bank. Yan Xiangyu returned the probe finger to Shu Qiong before unlatching the box.

To their shock, it was empty.

“…Huh?” Shu Qiong was dumbfounded. “Who’s so wicked that they’d throw an empty box back to the bottom of the pool!”

Yan Xiangyu held the deceptive box. “How should we handle it?”

“Throw it back!” Shu Qiong said without hesitation. She added righteously, “We can’t be the only ones who get tricked.”

The rest of the search went just as poorly. Shu Qiong began to suspect she was cursed; either the supply locations were already bone-dry, or there was only a decoy empty box left. After four consecutive failures, Shu Qiong began to question reality. “It couldn’t possibly be the same person doing this, could it?”

Yan Xiangyu thought for a moment. “If there are no crates, we can just rob other people.”

Shu Qiong figured that was the only option left. She and Yan Xiangyu embarked on the path of highway robbery. The only comfort was that the robbery went smoothly. With Shu Qiong providing cover fire from the rear, Yan Xiangyu’s hunting process was effortless. The combination of one in the light and one in the shadows was nearly invincible; their points rose steadily, even faster than when Shu Qiong was with Chang Xichun.

However…

“Why are these people so poor?” Shu Qiong grumbled while “looting the body.” This was the eighth player they had eliminated, yet the opponent was penniless—only a few rounds of ammo and a tiny, pitiful energy block.

Items in supply crates don’t grow legs and run away; there had to be one or a few people in the arena who possessed an exaggerated amount of supplies.

Yan Xiangyu suddenly spoke: “The remaining player count is down to 100.”

This was clearly abnormal. Logically, the peak of eliminations should have been the summit brawl for food. But the current elimination frequency was even higher than it had been then. While Shu Qiong and Yan Xiangyu’s combined harvesting contributed, the number of other eliminations was still significant.

BOOM— BANG—

The ground trembled slightly. A muffled roar echoed from not far away. Shu Qiong and Yan Xiangyu exchanged a glance and sprinted toward the sound at high speed.

However, the moment Shu Qiong stepped into the area, she was speechless. She saw Jin Yan’s and Qin Liang’s mechas. They were maintaining a safe distance to avoid the red-light team-up warning, rooted to the spot like two heavy turrets that no one dared approach.

It was a total equipment stomp. They had turned their mechas into fortresses. They had completely sacrificed mobility; their movements weren’t agile, but their firepower was so dense that no one could get close. Their massive, stable bodies meant that even if someone did close the distance, they couldn’t land an effective blow.

“…” Shu Qiong finally knew who had ransacked all the missing supply crates.

Currently, three people were circling Jin Yan and the others, but since the opponents were like armored hedgehogs, they had no way to attack. They could only keep darting around the periphery, looking for a breakthrough point.

Shu Qiong made a slashing gesture to Yan Xiangyu. She saw the latter nod slightly and pull a relatively light beam saber from her thigh. Yan Xiangyu’s movements were silent, like a large cat launching an ambush, ensuring a one-hit kill. Her steps were steady and fast; in a gust of wind, one mecha was down. Without looking back, the tip of her blade flicked across the opponent’s energy light. Ignoring the point notification, she met the second enemy.

The opponent hadn’t expected their comrade to be dealt with so easily. Startled and with no desire to fight, they turned to flee. But they hadn’t run more than a few steps before a bolt of impact slammed into the back of their knee. Their center of gravity shifted, and they collapsed, only to be easily finished by the pursuing Yan Xiangyu.

As the player fell, they realized their other companion had died even faster than they had. There wasn’t a single wound on the body—just a small, clear dent around the energy light. Cause of death: a single, perfect shot. The two unlucky players stared at each other through their viewports, their silent gaze filled with endless sorrow.

“Whoo-hoo! Daughter!” One of the humanoid turrets let out a joyful voice and looked around. “You’re here!”

Qin Liang also let out a series of laughs, retracting some of her cannon barrels. “I was getting bored of fighting; those guys were such a pest!”

The moment she finished speaking, both girls felt a chill down their spines. Two bullets responded to their enthusiastic greeting almost simultaneously, slamming into their mechas’ chests. However, because they were equipped with shields provided by the crates, the attacks were entirely blocked.

Yan Xiangyu clearly heard Shu Qiong let out a speechless click of her tongue in the channel.

“Turtle shells…” Shu Qiong said with a distorted expression. “How are we supposed to fight this?”

Unless she hit the exact same spot about a dozen times, that shield wouldn’t break—unless she could use melee combat to throw them down and tear the shield off. But the problem circled back: these two shameless “turrets” had packed so many thermal weapons that getting close was impossible.

After dealing with the three players, Yan Xiangyu glanced toward Jin Yan, then turned and sprinted back into the dense forest. She circled around to hide her silhouette before returning to Shu Qiong’s side.

Shu Qiong let out a very wicked laugh. “Want to play ‘kite the runner’?”

Even through the mecha, Yan Xiangyu could imagine the other’s expression. She only regretted that she was in the middle of a match and could only touch cold metal, so she forcibly suppressed her urge to be physically affectionate.

She chuckled lowly: “On standby for you, anytime.”