Infinite Game - Start With SSS Rank Class

Chapter 240: Our strength

Rover stepped forward one pace, but he didn’t touch the door.

He only said one sentence.

"Nanoe."

Nanoe already understood.

She stepped to his side, her gaze sweeping across the screen, stopping on the Zombie Angel spreading its wings before the main door. In that half second, she saw something the others hadn’t yet caught.

The monster had no eyes.

Where a face should have been was only a patch of pale white flesh, no nose, no eyes, just a torn-open mouth that stretched all the way to its ears. It didn’t see. It only sensed. And something that only sensed couldn’t distinguish between who it should kill.

Nanoe smiled.

"It can’t tell friend from foe."

Rover glanced at her.

"You’re sure?"

"Look."

Right at that moment, the Zombie Angel drove down its second blow.

But the blow didn’t hit the door.

Because another Hunter had just lunged across its path, and the Angel’s bone arm suddenly shifted direction, driving straight into the Hunter, tearing it in two mid-air.

Black blood sprayed.

The Angel didn’t stop. It spun, another arm sweeping across, and three Lickers crawling nearby were crushed simultaneously.

It wasn’t attacking room 2705.

It was attacking everything that moved.

On the grandstands, the crowd that had just been gleefully watching the door take a hit suddenly fell silent.

Because they realized one thing.

That monster didn’t belong to anyone.

Nanoe turned, her voice still gentle but clear enough to cut through the roaring outside.

"Selina, pull back. Don’t fight it. Lead it."

Selina was in the middle of the encirclement and understood immediately.

She didn’t slash the Angel.

She only glided across in front of it, close enough that her fingertips nearly brushed its rotting skin, then spun and launched straight toward a group of Survivors standing at the base of the grandstands.

The Angel sensed the movement.

It gave chase.

But Selina was faster. She slipped through the middle of the Survivor group, then vanished from the monster’s sensory range in the blink of an eye, leaving a cluster of people standing frozen directly in its path.

The Zombie Angel couldn’t stop.

BOOM.

An entire group of Survivors was swept by its massive wings, their bodies sent flying like tattered dolls.

There were screams.

The sound of breaking bones.

And for the first time since the trial began, the blood spilling across the courtyard wasn’t monster blood.

Rover stood inside, arms crossed, expression calm.

"Nice."

Nanoe glanced at him, the corner of her lips curving up.

"You’re enjoying this."

"I won’t deny it."

Outside, the situation had completely reversed.

Just seconds ago, room 2705 had been the prey surrounded in the middle of the courtyard. But now, the strongest monster on the battlefield had become a blade Nanoe was holding in her hand, and she was directing it toward the people who had just been shouting to break down the door.

"Rilia." Nanoe continued giving orders. "The Angel is about to turn around. Don’t block it. Step aside, let it go west. Vance’s group is over there."

Rilia didn’t ask why.

She only shifted sideways, and when the Angel charged forward, she let it pass, even lightly punching a Tanker into its exact flight path to redirect it a few more degrees.

The Angel was obstructed by the Tanker, roared, then drove straight toward the west.

Where Vance was standing.

Vance’s expression went pale.

"No, not me, go somewhere else..."

But the monster didn’t listen.

It didn’t understand either.

It only sensed that something was afraid, was moving, was alive, and for a Zombie Angel, all of that meant one word.

Kill.

Its massive wings spread wide.

And at that moment, under the faint silver-gray light of the suppression field, everyone finally saw clearly what those wings were made of.

Not feathers.

Not bone.

But thousands of hands.

Pale white human hands, layered over each other, woven together into the shape of wings. They moved. They opened and closed. Every time the Angel swung its wings, thousands of those fingers would clench together, would claw outward, and anything caught between them was torn to pieces.

Vance didn’t make it out in time.

Those hand-wings closed over him.

Rover didn’t watch that.

He turned to Morie.

"Door durability?"

"Back to 96%." Morie answered, fingertips moving across the control panel. "Since the Angel changed targets, the door hasn’t been hit. The towers are also less strained. I’ve switched the entire suppression field to deceleration mode, forcing the low-level monsters to slow down so Selina can clear them more easily."

Rover nodded.

This was what he wanted to see.

Not a suffocating battle where every second meant standing on the edge between life and death. But a machine running smoothly, each person in exactly the right position, the strongest monster turned into a tool, and the crowd now receiving the consequences of having dragged themselves here.

Nanoe stood beside him, continuing to coordinate.

"Elith, spread silk on the east side. Don’t trap the Angel, it’s too much. Just block the retreat path for the Survivors over there, funnel them toward it."

Elith gave a faint nod.

Thin strands of silk stretched out, weaving into an invisible net at the eastern edge of the courtyard. A group of Survivors trying to flee the chaos suddenly found their retreat cut off, and when they turned around, the Zombie Angel was already directly behind them.

"Thunder Dragon." Nanoe continued. "Don’t shoot the Angel. Useless, its wings can block it. Shoot the Tankers crawling toward the door. Keep the area around the door clear."

Thunder Dragon opened its mouth, a white bolt of lightning sweeping across the courtyard floor.

Three Tankers lumbering toward the main door were struck, bodies convulsing then collapsing.

Rover watched all of this unfold, and within him rose a very strange feeling.

Ease.

Not the ease of someone sitting idle reaping benefits. But the ease of someone who had built long enough, prepared thoroughly enough, that when the real storm came, he could stand inside his room, arms crossed, and watch every person who had ever looked down on him bring their own fate down upon themselves.

The crowd on the grandstands began to scatter.

No one was still calling for fairness.

No one was still demanding resource sharing.

They had only one goal left.

Run.

But this courtyard was surrounded by fog, and the fog had no exit. They were trapped with a monster that couldn’t tell friend from foe, a monster they themselves had helped summon by dragging room 2705 into this trial.

Nanoe looked at the scene, her voice still gentle.

"They wanted to see our strength." She said. "But they forgot one thing."

Rover asked: "What thing?"

Nanoe turned to look at him, her eyes curving.

"The greatest strength we have has never been the defense towers."

She raised a hand and pointed to the screen outside, where Selina, Rilia, Elith, and Thunder Dragon were moving like the interlocking links of a single machine, guiding the battlefield’s most powerful monster exactly where they wanted it.

"It’s that we know how to use our heads."

Rover laughed.

Right at that moment, the Zombie Angel let out a piercing roar, and at the center of its chest, something began to move.

Morie snapped her head up.

"Rover."

Rover looked.

On the screen, the skin at the Angel’s chest cavity was pulling apart. Not being torn. But opening on its own, like a door designed to open from the inside.

And from that gap, something began to pour out.

Nanoe dropped her smile.

"It hasn’t fought at full strength yet."