Heroes Return

However, since the leader didn't speak, the others didn't intend to ask any further questions. They simply watched the battle below calmly.

It was basically a one-sided situation; most of the students were subdued by Lucy after a period of fighting. Several freshmen who tried to escape using their flying abilities were shot down from the sky by special weapons.

Only a few of the new recruits were able to fight again, and one of them even withstood attacks from multiple skull-masked men, demonstrating a terrifying fighting ability.

Especially the long-haired boy, now there are more than one Clow Mask man lying dead beside him! Some of the other Skull Mask men have also had to be separated to deal with him.

Suddenly, they found themselves surrounding and attacking him. The freshman then took off his shirt, revealing a physique of small but dense muscles. Anyone familiar with this would understand that these were actually the most explosive types of muscles.

On the other side, Su Jiu and his three henchmen were still fighting, as was Qingqing. On the deck, the shield-bearer who had first appeared was also fighting, but he wasn't fighting alone. Instead, he quickly assembled a small team of ten people, which he was in charge of, attempting to break through the current encirclement.

The explosion did not occur inside the ship.

On the deck, many freshmen were captured, beaten, and gathered in the lobby of an entertainment complex on the cruise ship. They were guarded by some armed men.

At that moment, a man in a skull mask suddenly disappeared.

Then came the second one. When everyone noticed, they were surprised to see moving shadows on the ground. A hand reached out from the shadows and pulled the next skull-masked man into the shadows. However, when it tried to attack the third person, it completely failed.

Not far away, a masked man holding a notebook was watching the scene with great interest.

"You actually thought of rescuing those who were captured so quickly? And you're quite capable." Kuroru, holding the notebook, let out a cold laugh.

However, the shadowy figure was clearly spotted. Just as they were preparing to retreat, their escape route was blocked.

Two freshmen appeared directly in the cargo yard.

"We should be safe here for now. I remember there should be small boats moored on this floor."

Shouldn't we help the other students?

"Are you kidding me? Those terrorists are all superhumans, and on average, they're stronger than us! How are we supposed to fight them? We should be trying to escape, and then we can call for help once we're out of the signal jamming zone."

From the shadows, a masked man nodded: "A good idea, what a pity..."

"Found you." Just as they finished speaking, a strange laugh rang out, followed by a masked man dragging a rope out of the shadows.

Side Story (6)

With the appearance of this skeleton dragging a scythe, the cruise ship's cargo hold instantly became a battlefield.

All of this was observed by the shadowy observers. Each new student's reaction to this sudden crisis, their fighting prowess, abilities, and improvisation were all recorded by the masked skeletons hidden in the shadows during the battle.

If there's any exception, it's only Mu Mu. The only record she has is—she can eat a lot.

Meanwhile, Ren Xiaojie, who had been pretending from the beginning, hadn't actually left. He was currently hiding in a room that had just been searched. After the skeleton men checked the room, Ren Xiaojie sneaked in. In his opinion, the more dangerous the room, the safer it was on this cruise ship.

However, just as Ren Xiaojie entered the room, a fat man also entered the room with him.

"Nice to meet you, nice to meet you." Upon seeing Ren Xiaojie, the fat man greeted him familiarly: "Since you don't have a skull mask, you must be a freshman too. Want to come with me from now on?"

"Since we've run into this, there's nothing we can do," Ren Xiaojie said helplessly to the fat man. Then, his gaze swept across the room. To the fat man's surprise, he removed a very small camera from somewhere in the room.

"Holy crap! What's going on?" The fat man couldn't help but show a surprised expression as he watched Ren Xiaojie frantically fiddling with the camera.

"It's nothing, it was probably done by those people wearing Kuro masks." Ren Xiaojie said simply to the fat man, "Obviously, some rooms on the ship have been equipped with surveillance cameras. Fortunately, the monitoring room doesn't have that many screens, so their main monitoring locations are probably the unsearched areas and the areas where people would usually pass through."

After saying that, Ren Xiaojie put the surveillance camera back into the new camera.

"Huh? Why did you put it back on?" The fat man looked surprised again when he saw Ren Xiaojie's actions.

"What if you find a channel suddenly goes black while you're changing channels?" Ren Xiaojie thought for a moment, then explained to the fat man. He could actually try to have Rose hack into the system, but that would be risky, and besides, the fat man was right there, and Ren Xiaojie didn't want Rose's situation to get out. Just like they'd said before, the organization that created Rose couldn't possibly be a small one, and if it was a criminal organization, it could lead to very dangerous consequences.

Therefore, Ren Xiaojie plans to improve himself first. Once he has truly repaired Rose's memory system and found the information about the creator, he will return Rose to him if the other party is a good person.

Ren Xiaojie had once examined Rose's internal structure. For a genius boy who had been dealing with machines since childhood, he couldn't understand Rose's design at all. It could be said that it was a groundbreaking design, especially since Ren Xiaojie understood how the other party made the metal interior into something that seemed to be a semi-biological entity.

Thinking about it this way, let alone eating, Rose could probably even have children if she wanted to. This design, so ahead of its time, would likely attract a lot of malicious people before Ren Xiaojie even found any clues about Rose's true creator.

Although this era is full of heroes, isn't the reason there are so many heroes precisely because criminals are just as threatening and numerous?

Ultimately, Ren Xiaojie had no choice but to manually modify the camera. After taking pictures of the room with his phone, he forcibly connected the monitor to his phone and reinstalled it. All of this happened in the blink of an eye.

“But even if you put it back, they’ll still find us when they check the surveillance footage!” the fat man couldn’t help but say after hearing Ren Xiaojie’s words.

"Don't worry, they can't see it anymore. The monitor can only transmit the photo of the empty room I just took now," Ren Xiaojie said simply to the fat man, before fiddling with his communication equipment again.

At that moment, in the main control room, the leader, a man in a skull mask, revealed a surprised expression: "So, there's such a little trick! But it's a pity, he's actually been on my watch ever since he escaped the trapdoor! Although it's a pretty good trick, it's completely unacceptable!"

At this moment, the monitor panel in front of the Kuro masked man showed the room where Ren Xiaojie and the others were, but the room was quiet and looked empty.

Listening to the conversation between Ren Xiaojie and the fat man in the room, the masked skeleton leader calmly said to the others beside him, "Notify the monitors over there that this kid seems to be a skilled mechanic. Make a note of that. Maybe a few years of equipment competitions can train him."

……

Of course, Ren Xiaojie was unaware that his swift movements had already been observed by the skull-masked men. At that moment, he was focused on dismantling the transmitter from the communicator.

"What are you doing?" Fatty asked, somewhat puzzled, as Ren Xiaojie first disassembled his phone, then other electronic devices in the room, and started fiddling with them.

"I'm making a transmitter."

"A transmitter? Isn't the signal blocked here?" The fat man asked, puzzled.

“The signal is indeed blocked. But we just need to send the distress signal transmitter a long distance away!” Ren Xiaojie said seriously. “It’s not actually that difficult. We just need to make a waterproof transmitter and throw it into the sea. The ship is constantly moving, and once the transmitter travels a certain distance, it will naturally break through the blockade. I also need to input our flight path into the distress signal, but we need to send out our detailed information.”

"I didn't know you had this talent. Are you a freshman in the mechanical engineering department?"

"No, I'm from the combat unit," Ren Xiaojie said seriously.

"What a coincidence." The fat man said, taking off his hat. "My name is Jingdan, and I'm also in the combat department. We'll be classmates from now on. You can call me Dark Night Fat Otaku Fifth Generation!"

"My name is Ren Xiaojie." After understanding the fat man's words, Ren Xiaojie subconsciously replied, "By the way, what the heck is 'Dark Night Fat Otaku Fifth Generation'? And who gave you that name anyway?"

"Speaking of which, when were these surveillance cameras put into the room?" Jingdan suddenly asked Ren Xiaojie, as if he had just thought of something.

“We must have arrived before we boarded the ship,” Ren Xiaojie said after thinking for a moment.

"Holy crap! Does that mean everything I did when I put XX in the back of the boat was broadcast live?!" Jingdan's eyes widened when he understood what he meant.

"Would someone be so bored as to do something like this? Seriously, how thirsty are you? We've only been on the ship for a few hours!" This time, even Ren Xiaojie couldn't stay calm.

"There's no way I could resist getting this!" the fat man said, pulling out a special storage disk. "This is a collection of famous actresses from the past century! How could a normal person resist? By the way, do you want to take a look?"

"Do you think I'd be as bored as you?" Ren Xiaojie scoffed at him upon hearing his words, then grabbed the fat man's memory card and stuffed it into his own pocket.

Just as he and the fat man were talking quietly, Ren Xiaojie suddenly heard a strange laugh.

"Found you, haha." With that voice, the door opened by itself. A masked girl dragging a scythe walked in from outside, carrying two students whose fates were unknown. The moment she saw Ren Xiaojie and the fat man, the masked girl dropped the two students and walked towards them with a smile.

"Could you help me hold them off for a while?" Ren Xiaojie suddenly said to the fat man, "I need a little more time to get this thing sorted out."

"No matter what you're doing, it's impossible!" Hearing Ren Xiaojie's words, the skull-masked man laughed loudly, then proceeded to swing his scythe around the room. Even more terrifying, the scythe didn't stop or slow down when it hit the wall; instead, it sliced ​​through it and slashed towards the two people: "Hidden rats and the like! The most fun! Hahahaha!!!"

As the scythe approached, Jingdan's eyes widened suddenly. A golden light seemed to flash in his eyes.

Then something shocking happened to Ren Xiaojie. The originally menacing scythe-wielding man was suddenly and strangely kicked backward by Jingdan, causing him to fall to the ground.

"Let me show you the ultimate skill of our Bachelor Temple: the 100% Flip-Cut Kick!!"

"Huh? It doesn't hurt at all?" The skull-masked woman, who had just gotten up from the ground, only then realized that she wasn't hurt at all... But how could she have fallen to the ground with such a painless kick? This is completely illogical!!

"What exactly did you do?" Without any further words, the skull-masked man once again swung his scythe and charged towards the clean egg.

Then Jingdan simply kicked out once more calmly. And then... the opponent fell down again.

"Bastard! I'm going to kill you!" As if he had suffered a great humiliation, he slashed the scythe at Jingdan with all his might, showing no mercy whatsoever.

Jingdan calmly delivered a kick. And the opponent fell to the ground once more.

"Hey, Benefactor Ren, are you done yet? I can't hold on much longer." After lifting the charging guy down once more, Jingdan said to Ren Xiaojie behind him.

"I said you don't look like you can't be stopped at all!!"

"You don't know this! This move of mine doesn't do any damage; it's purely a control skill!! It also has the effect of enraging the enemy. Plus, I can't use it many more times."

"Damn it! Don't you have any other tricks up your sleeve?"

"How much martial arts do you think a fat otaku would practice in his spare time?"

While the two were talking, Ren Xiaojie did not stop. He quickly assembled the things in his hands, and then opened the window without hesitation and threw them into the sea.

"nailed it!"

"Understood! Then I'll run first!!" Upon hearing Ren Xiaojie's words, Jingdan didn't hesitate at all. After kicking the angry guy over again, he ran straight out of the room.

"Damn! You ran way too fast!" Seeing this, Ren Xiaojie didn't hesitate and ran out of the room after him.

Only then did the other person stand up from the ground.

"I'm going to kill both of you today!!!!" Clearly, this flip-top taunting skill is extremely effective.

Side Story (7)

The situation inside the cabin right now can basically be described in one sentence: 'You chase me, you catch me, and I'll let you... hehehe.'

Ren Xiaojie and Fatty Jingdan were desperately on the run. Although they didn't know how they had been discovered, the woman behind them was clearly not a stranger. (To clarify, the reason they thought it was a woman was mainly due to her voice and her undeniably sexy figure.)

"Just stand still and let me chop you to death, okay?" Right behind them, the skull-masked man wielding a scythe was laughing maniacally.

Meanwhile, in the ship's main hall, Mu Mu was still happily eating her food. Su Jiu was still trying to fight the muscular man, but in the next second, another skull-masked man appeared between the two. Accompanied by a burst of lightning, Mu Mu finally stopped eating. Her gaze involuntarily fell to the ground, her body still convulsing.

At the same time, Mu Mu's gaze also fell on Qing Qing, who was standing right in front of her. Almost simultaneously, more than a dozen weapons were pointed at Qing Qing's head.

Not only that, almost everyone on deck was subdued. Those who had initially planned to escape were all captured. At the casino, on the deck, in the banquet hall, cabins, and the opera house—in the areas where several freshmen had gathered on the cruise ship—almost all the freshmen were suppressed by these skull-masked men. In an instant, all the freshmen became hostages.

"Alright! You're the last one!" The muscular, skull-masked man who had fought Su Jiu earlier said coldly to Mu Mu, who had already put down the food.

Almost simultaneously, many companions appeared around him, and these people surrounded Mu Mu.

"Are you going to fight me?" Hearing their words, Mu Mu finally looked up at the people in skull masks around her.

“You just need not to resist, beautiful lady,” one of the three masked men who had been fawning over her suddenly said.

"But it seems you've hurt my friend." Looking at the group before her, Mu Mu suddenly smiled innocently: "In that case, let's fight!"

As Mu Mu finished speaking, the temperature in the entire banquet hall began to drop rapidly. Of course, what those present didn't know was that the room temperature hadn't actually decreased; what truly dropped was their body temperature's perception of the outside world. Influenced by the terrifying aura, they unconsciously felt the cold.

Almost simultaneously, Mu Mu's hand was already on the table, and in an instant, her hand merged into the table. The table, strangely, became connected to the ship's floor. Almost at the same time, the ground began to change rapidly, with large amounts of metal extending out to protect the knocked-down students.

Just as everything was about to be completed, and the entire ship was about to be merged into one by Mu Mu, a voice rang out at that moment.

"Mu Mu! Stop! Cruise ships are expensive! Your brother can't afford to pay for them!" With this voice, a woman wearing a skull mask rushed into the banquet hall and immediately removed her mask. It was the same woman who had carried the wrench earlier.

Seeing this, Mu Mu couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "Sister Tifa!!"