49 Apocalypse Rules

Opening the book, Guan Tong didn’t rush to write. Instead, he thought about what he was currently lacking.

’Offensive capabilities? I have Shadow, Silver Hunter, and the Living Dead summoned by the Corpse Whistle. That’s a decent amount.’

’Defensive measures? The workhorse Shadow can handle that too. If worse comes to worst, summoning a few Living Dead to act as meat shields is also a potential option.’

’Escape methods? Definitely lacking.’

That was it. Guan Tong had realized that he could fight and defend, but he couldn’t run.

He wasn’t so arrogant as to think he would never encounter a situation that required him to flee.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. Ever since his standoff with the group that seemed to be an Official Squad, he had felt the need for an ability to quickly withdraw from a battlefield.

Not to mention the upcoming challenge, where he would most likely face situations requiring a tactical retreat.

Summoning Shadow and having the tireless creature carry him while it was active was an option... but it was still too slow.

The key to escape was to either be so fast that others couldn’t catch up, or to have a way to stop enemies from pursuing.

Guan Tong planned to tackle these two aspects as he added words to the second page.

’How can a gun increase my speed?’

Guan Tong pondered this, getting up and pacing as he thought. A moment later, his gaze inadvertently fell upon the window of a collapsed building in the residential complex, where a clothesline still hung.

His eyes paused on the clothesline, and an idea suddenly sparked in his mind.

’A Hooked Claw Gun!’

That’s right. He remembered watching movies before he transmigrated where there were guns that could fire a Hooked Claw, allowing the user to move rapidly by retracting the cable once the claw was secured.

The one that left the deepest impression on him was Batman’s Hooked Claw Gun. Batman used it to ascend rapidly, descend quickly, pursue, and retreat... It was practically omnipotent, capable of hooking onto people, cars, buildings, steel bars, and even airplanes!

When he watched the movie, he had thought the gun was so cool and wished he had one. Now, at this very moment, why not try using his word-adding ability to give the Silver Hunter a similar function?

Guan Tong didn’t dismiss the idea just because the Hooked Claw Gun was from a movie and unrealistic—was his Silver Hunter, which didn’t need to be manually loaded and could freely switch between ammo types 1-3, any more realistic?

This inexplicably reminded him of Ouyang Shanyue’s words: Psychic Power acted as a medium that gave humans the ability to reshape reality with their minds. His [Wordless Book] seemed to be helping him achieve this very process.

He immediately had an idea for the words to add.

But just a Hooked Claw wasn’t enough. Besides increasing his own mobility, he also wanted a way to hinder his enemies. Thus, he ultimately decided to add two terms to the second page.

Considering the [Wordless Book]’s ability to fulfill vague requests, Guan Tong planned to simplify these terms into two words:

"Smoke" and "Claw."

"Smoke" represented Smoke Bombs.

He needed his Silver Hunter to be able to fire view-obstructing Smoke Bombs, which would be effective for covering a retreat or an advance.

"Claw" naturally represented the Hooked Claw.

Put them together, and you got a "Smoke Claw Gun."

"..." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Guan Tong felt it was a little abstract, but he believed the [Wordless Book] could understand his vague request. After all, he had succeeded with this method before.

Having made his decision, he immediately got to work.

Over the next several days, his life fell into a fixed routine.

During the day, he would expend Psychic Power to add words to the book. At night, he would rest, take walks, watch online classes from the Psychic Power Academy, and sleep.

This life might seem monotonous and boring, but Guan Tong enjoyed it.

Watching the strokes increase on the book’s page each day gave him a real sense of security and peace of mind.

As the days passed like this, Guan Tong completed the word-adding work by late August.

During this time, he didn’t create any ammunition for the Silver Hunter, because once the word-adding was complete, the gun would have to be re-materialized. If he had stored bullets, they would be wiped clean when the gun was reabsorbed into the book, and all the Psychic Power used to create them would have been wasted.

He now held the [Wordless Book] in his left hand, open to the second page. Gazing at the three words "Smoke Claw Gun" on it, he silently summoned the weapon.

A brand-new Silver Hunter instantly appeared in his right hand.

Its overall color scheme was unchanged, still primarily silver, but a strange, rhombus-shaped secondary barrel had been added to the side, likely for the Hooked Claw.

But Guan Tong didn’t care about its appearance. What he cared about was whether the functions he wanted had been implemented.

His gaze fell on the small black electronic screen on the left side of the grip. Guan Tong spent 5 Psychic Power points to generate a Type-1 round, and the screen immediately lit up, displaying the ammunition count.

Type-1 Rounds: 1

Type-2 Rounds: 0

Type-3 Rounds: 0

Type-4 Rounds: 0

Hooked Claw (Ready)

"Success!"

Guan Tong smiled when he saw the new "Type-4 Rounds" and "Hooked Claw" displays.

He eagerly took the gun outside to test it.

Taking advantage of the fact that he was in an abandoned, deserted residential complex, he found a half-collapsed building.

He tried spending Psychic Power to generate Type-4 rounds and found that each one cost 15 points—more than Type-1 and Type-2, but less than Type-3.

Considering its function, Guan Tong found the cost acceptable.

After generating one, he aimed into the building’s corridor and pulled the trigger.

"POP—"

A sound like a bottle cap being opened came from the barrel. Guan Tong saw a round, grenade-like bullet fly out, followed by a "HISSS—" sound.

Immediately, a large amount of smoke spread rapidly through the corridor. Within about two seconds, the entire hallway was filled with a white fog, and Guan Tong couldn’t see a thing.

"The effect isn’t bad."

Guan Tong was very satisfied. This was exactly the kind of dense smoke he wanted. With it, he could advance or retreat at will. When facing a stronger opponent he couldn’t defeat, he could immediately pop smoke and run.

He then went to the outskirts for an open-air test. The smoke spread to cover a wide area, forming a pillar over twenty meters in diameter in windless conditions.

If there was wind, the pillar would quickly be blown into a smoke belt tens of meters long. Although the area of effect was larger, the obscurity would be significantly reduced.

Next, Guan Tong tested the "Hooked Claw" on various objects like abandoned vehicles, trees, and buildings. It basically fulfilled his requirement of "latching on and moving quickly."

However, unlike generating bullets, each use of the Hooked Claw consumed a fixed 15 points of Psychic Power.

Using it several times in a row would drain several tens of points, a significant burden even for Guan Tong. He definitely couldn’t misuse it for travel just to save effort.

After completing all the tests, Guan Tong felt that the results of his word-adding were good overall. It had partially shored up his weakness in escape methods.

It was now clear what he needed to do before September 1st.

Stockpile bullets!

As Guan Tong’s main damage-dealing weapon at this stage, the Silver Hunter needed to be stocked with plenty of ammunition to be sufficient.

So, in the remaining days, Guan Tong focused single-mindedly on stockpiling bullets. During this time, he also checked the market a few more times and found that item prices were still just as exorbitant.

Spending seven or eight hundred Sublimation Coins on a single-use item with a mediocre effect was too wasteful in Guan Tong’s eyes. Only those who didn’t earn their coins themselves would be willing to spend so freely.

Therefore, after some consideration, on the night of August 31st, he decisively gave up on buying from the market. Instead, he opened the Sublimation Store directly and purchased another five Lock Openers and five drones, spending a total of 550 Sublimation Coins.

To him, stockpiling more of these was much better than wasting coins in the market. He felt the drone items, in particular, could be of great use in the challenge, and that some of the professional teams would surely buy many of them.

With that, Guan Tong felt he was more or less prepared.

Before the challenge began on September 1st, he reviewed his current status and equipment.

[Name: Guan Tong]

[Nickname: Shadow]

[Title: Orderkeeper]

[Psychic Power: 132 (132) (330)]

[Sublimation Coins: 387]

[Comprehensive Bio-Information Evaluation: Excellent]

Guan Tong hadn’t spent all his Sublimation Coins because he wasn’t sure if the store would restock with new items after the challenge, as it did after each set of rules ended.

If it did, being flat broke would be a problem. So, he kept nearly four hundred coins in reserve.

He opened his storage box. The number of items inside was growing.

[Wordless Book], [Guiding Flashlight], [Corpse Whistle], [Basic Food Box (Bronze Level)] x1, [First Ascender Challenge Invitation Letter], [Multi-functional Lock Opener] x6, [Small Reconnaissance Drone] x6

In addition, he had three equipped item-level pieces of gear.

[Thermoregulating Technology Underwear] (Equipped), [Multi-Terrain Marching Boots] (Equipped), [Multi-functional Protective Suit] (Equipped)

Outside of his storage box, his Silver Hunter was also loaded with a large amount of ammunition:

Type-1 Rounds: 100

Type-2 Rounds: 50

Type-3 Rounds: 50

Type-4 Rounds: 20

Hooked Claw (Ready)

He had specially stockpiled 50 of the most powerful Type-3 rounds. If his Psychic Power recovered faster, he would have wanted to store even more.

After checking all of this, Guan Tong felt he was ready.

This was the absolute limit of what he could do for now. Whether these preparations would be enough to get a good result in the challenge was a matter of doing his best and leaving the rest to fate.

He slept through the night. The next morning, before 9 a.m., Guan Tong went online to take a look.

The online discussion surrounding the challenge was far less heated than the talk about the Apocalypse Rules. The reason was simple: many people hadn’t received an Invitation Letter and thus weren’t qualified to participate.

If you couldn’t participate yourself, and you couldn’t watch a livestream of those who were qualified like in other human competitions, then what was there to discuss?

Only the few who had an Invitation Letter were talking about it much.

"I wonder what format the competition will have? I’m so nervous!"

"Have you all filled your teams? Our team only has three people. I feel like we’re definitely not going to get a good result."

"Filling a team should be easy, right? Aren’t a lot of people looking for teams to join?"

"I don’t want to team up with strangers. What if I get backstabbed..."

"We’ve filled our team, and we all know each other. But I feel like it’s useless. The heavy hitters will all be participating this time, right? The top scores are basically guaranteed to be theirs."

"That’s not necessarily true. Anything is possible!"

Guan Tong watched for a moment before silently turning off his phone’s screen.

As soon as it struck 9 o’clock, the Invitation Letter in his storage box flew out on its own, hovering in front of Guan Tong.

Then, flames suddenly erupted in the center of the invitation, burning a dark hole. The hole rapidly expanded beyond the confines of the letter, and Guan Tong felt his body being pulled by a powerful suction, drawing him completely into the hole.

[The First Ascender Challenge is about to begin. Commencing location transfer.]