93 Chapter 93- The Hell Train 3

A/N: If you are interested in supporting this story and read dozens up to 50 chapters faster, you can visit my Patreön.

Patreön.com/heavenlyraven

______________________________________

The two of them left the place and continued moving forward. It had been a week since they arrived in the Hell Train so they had managed to get a rudimentary assessment of how the train performed.

On the train, there were always monsters who guarded every room and every section of the train, and the regulars had to fight and kill them before they could proceed ahead.

Those four-legged thick-furred monsters and the blue and red feathered bird that Liu Guanyi killed when they boarded the train were some of their kind.

They were very aggressive and would attack any regulars within their sight. Their strength varied from one another, some were strong in close combat with a high defense like the furred monster.

Some used their numbers to overwhelm the regulars, and some could even attack from afar with shinsu. However, the most troublesome aspect of them wasn't their variety.

It was that they always reappeared in the same place in a day after being killed.

Hence, if they wanted to return to the previous section they had passed after a day, they would have to fight the monsters again though it was nothing for both of them, they would still have to waste some of their energy and time, especially time since it was essential in the Hell Train as they could be kicked out if they didn't reach the testing zones in time.

Unfortunately, after spending a night on the train, they realized that of course, it wasn't going to be that simple as they found out that every night, the monsters would appear in far greater numbers, and the rooms and sections would suddenly change magically as if they were living beings.

This made their efforts of mapping the Hell Train useless. Not only there were many routes, but every night, those routes would randomly change, making the Hell Train more of a maze than a train.

The Hell Train also blocked all of the transmission signals from the outside so they couldn't even access the internet inside the train, and could only send messages and communicate to each other via pockets, effectively making their lighthouse useless.

Even Liu Guanyi wanted to curse at the unreasonableness of the creator of the train. It was as if they wanted to torture the f*ck out of the regulars for vising the Hell Train with insane difficulty.

No wonder most of the regulars who boarded the Hell Train ended up dead or suffered mental problems.

Fortunately, they had obtained Gray Stingray to help them, a C-ranked observer, something that they normally couldn't afford to buy even if they had the money.

It could help them to conduct a valuable reconnaissance to get them the best route possible in the daytime to cover as much ground as possible before the nighttime arrived.

If they used a normal observer, first, they wouldn't be able to control it if it was separated far from them. An observer was still needed to be controlled with their shinsu, after all. Gray Stingray didn't have this limitation though, making it possible to travel far away from them.

Also, with its stealth capability and durability, it could hide from the regulars and monsters alike, and even if it was spotted and attacked, it could survive and quickly retreat back to them.

That was why they decided to split into two to cover more routes efficiently, Xin and Liu Guanyi, and Adori with Gray Stingray in her service.

Even though the insane difficultly was reasonable considering its infamous reputation, it was somewhat abnormal in a way.

Powerful monsters were normal to be found on any floor, even if the monsters on the train were twice as strong, Liu Guanyi wouldn't even care about it.

However, when even the sections of the train could move like a living being, that was where the peculiarity came about, and he started to become suspicious.

Wasn't the Hell Train was merely designed to give D-ranked regulars an alternative and faster way to climb the tower with much harder and more dangerous difficulty as the trade-off?

Having such a grand design for the train was already too extravagant for such a purpose, why would the Workshop even apply what was most likely an extremely intricate spell or a miraculous technology on the train to make its sections become alive in the nighttime?

All of the ticket holders who had visited the train knew about this, however, they merely shrugged off the significance of the information, even the smart ones.

But for Liu Guanyi, these all were a solid piece of evidence that Hell Train did indeed hid what was likely a great secret, but not that significant enough for the Workshop or the ten great families to completely cover it, or they probably were just too lazy to even care.

After living in the tower for more than a decade, the latter possibility wasn't out of the window since Liu Guanyi had more or less had an insight into the characteristics of the rulers of the tower.

Now, the question was, where did and how they hide the secret?

How was the way for them to find it out? Unfortunately, even after they worked with their best efforts, they didn't get any valuable leads.

'Now, the priority is to get to the testing zones as fast as possible. Once we get there, we will have the experience to reach the next testing zones with much more ease next time, and we will be able to use our time and resources better to uncover the secret of the Hell Train.' Liu Guanyi thought as he walked at a fast pace across the spotless metallic floors of the train's section.

When they reached the end of the section, they had to halt their steps as their way was blocked by a tall and massive gate of glistening metal.

With just a glance, Liu Guanyi could see that it was incredibly thick and most likely, was even harder than the metal frames which made the train's section itself. In the middle of it, there was a square of around fifty centimeters square.

In the square, there were many smaller squares inside that were arranged in three columns and three rows, making a total of nine squares.

Inside each of the squares, there were nine boxes arranged in the same three columns and rows with a certain number present inside each of the boxes.

Looking at the gate, Liu Guanyi could only let out a sigh in exasperation. 'Here comes another puzzle.'