CHAPTER 250: MASS PLAYER KILLING INSIDE THE DUNGEON: TRIGGERING SERVER-WIDE EVENT [2]

During the sixth wipe, before Logan’s text had come...

Neoblade, who was the unofficial leader of his group because of his superior strength, appeared once more.

As for the others, he had tasked them to contact members of his guild in the real world while he kept Gabriel occupied until reinforcements arrived.

"It must be that strange weapon in his hand," Neoblade mumbled under his breath as he tightened his grip on the sword, eyes blazing with determination. "Yes, all I have to do is hold him here until they arrive. If we can find a way to get rid of that weapon, then everything is over."

"You!" Neoblade shouted, and Gabriel turned toward him, staring with an unreadable expression. Inwardly, he wondered if this player was being foolish or extremely determined.

’Every sane person would wait for some hours, perhaps until I leave the server and log back in,’ he thought.

Gabriel lifted the Hellfire Turret once again. He noticed the visible gulp slide down Neoblade’s throat, his sword arm trembling.

The next moment, the man seemed to gather courage and kicked off the ground, charging forward from the wide left, his long blade scraping through the dirt.

BANG!

Another shot was released.

The compressed round struck near the leader’s foot and exploded outward in a low, concussive shockwave. The man flew backward, rolled twice, and slammed into a tree, causing the red-furred monkeys—who had been secretly peeping—to flee in terror.

"Argh," Neoblade groaned, scratching his head.

Step! Step!

He looked up and saw that the masked NPC was still approaching.

"Stay back!" he shouted through gritted teeth. "I said stay back!"

"Where are the others? Why are you alone?" Gabriel asked calmly.

Neoblade ignored the question, struggling to get back on his feet. He cursed the game for being so realistic! If it were any other game, he would’ve been able to recover quickly as long as he still had health points.

"Tsk, I’m not answering that!" he spat when he finally stood upright.

"Well, if you insist on dying, I’m all for it," Gabriel shrugged.

The leader lunged, pulling a hidden dagger from his boot for a final swipe.

RATAT.

The blade clattered to the ground. The man’s body turned to light.

[You have killed Player: NeoBlade]

Although he was curious about where the others were, he didn’t have time to speculate or ponder over it, as the next moment, Logan’s text came through.

As soon as the message ended, respawn lights flashed again, and the same five faces appeared once more, their eyes clouded with intense hatred.

Gabriel raised a brow; he sensed more presences emerging from the forest.

’It seems they’ve called more of their friends.’ A sharp gleam flashed across his eyes.

The sound of snapping branches echoed, and the red-furred monkeys shrieked, fleeing further into the forest. They had learned their lesson already!

This new squad that appeared wore better gear, and their levels were much higher than the previous five.

At the lead were three figures—a heavy knight with a tower shield, a wand user with a wide-brimmed hat, and a healer with a glass staff. Their guild tag could be seen clearly on their attire: [Azure Dawn].

The knight pointed his shield forward.

"NPC or not, we’re confiscating that treasure! Put the weapon down," he ordered firmly. "Or else our Azure Dawn Guild will have no choice but to use force."

Gabriel didn’t answer.

The wand user clicked his tongue, flicked his wrist, and shouted, "Binding Grasp!"

A coil of light whipped from his wand and spiraled toward Gabriel’s legs.

Gabriel overcharged just a little, fired a short burst at his own feet, and the shockwave cracked outward in a ring. The bind unraveled into harmless glitter.

The knight tried to close the distance behind his shield; Gabriel sighted the shield’s rim and drilled three rounds into the same spot, one after another. The first two scorched it. The third carved a hole clean through.

The knight staggered, eyes wide. "W-what—?"

Gabriel stepped into the opening and fired again. The shield split in half, and the knight toppled backward.

The healer got smart and threw up a dome.

Gabriel stopped shooting.

He took one step, then another, up to the edge of the glowing barrier.

He fed a trickle of mana into the rifle until the barrel hummed like a living thing, then squeezed once and held. A thin beam lanced out—steady instead of bursting. The beam traced a circle on the dome, and the barrier glassed over and sagged like melting ice.

The healer’s eyes widened in terror. She dropped the dome and tried to run.

RATAT.

She didn’t make it three steps.

The wand user froze mid-spell. "That—That’s not a standard mana rifle!"

Gabriel flicked his gaze. The wand snapped in half under a single shot. The caster’s mouth opened but never closed again.

[You have killed Player: LanceWall]

[You have killed Player: NightHealer]

[You have killed Player: AzureTank]

[You have killed Player: Jolo]

[You have killed Player: SunLeaf]

[Chaos Essence Fragments +5]

Far off, in the midst of a small group of players, someone shouted, "Clip it! Clip it! Upload—"

A minute later, clips of Gabriel using the Hellfire Turret to wipe out entire squads were uploaded.

[Thread: Public Dungeon Murderer?!]

OmegaYellow: It’s happening in Monkey Paradise right now. Some crazy NPC with a flaming rifle is deleting squads.

Liam_Christie: First it was ChaosKnight, now this. Could it be the NPCs are really rebelling?

User998: Nah bro, that’s not an NPC. Look closely at the way he moves—he’s aiming manually! No NPC has that kind of fluidity. That’s a player who turned off their name and level display!

Jason_graves: Are you blind? Look at the mask! Look at the weapon! No human player can get that gun this early in the game. There’s no blueprint for it yet!

The thread count ticked up by the hundreds.

...

Meanwhile, in the headquarters of the real world, the developers were panicking.

"Fuck! Fuck! It’s the bug!" one of them yelled. "He’s making the game unstable!"

Several monitors filled the dark room, each showing different angles of the chaos inside Monkey Paradise. Players were dying in groups, their death logs flashing red faster than the servers could register.

"Server balance dropping! NPC kill ratio exceeded by 400%!"

"Who the hell is running the Monkey Paradise logs?!"

"Wait—tracking signature now... there!" one of them shouted, zooming in on the data spikes flooding from the forest zone.

The main screen magnified the footage: a masked figure with a flaming rifle calmly walking through bodies turning into light.

The video feed zoomed in on Gabriel’s masked figure standing in the middle of the jungle, the Hellfire Turret glowing faintly red as another squad of players was reduced to particles of light.

"Jesus... he’s deleting them like trash mobs."

At that moment, the assistant head developer slammed his hand against the desk. "Pause that feed."

The room fell silent except for the faint hum of cooling fans.

"Take off that mask," he ordered coldly.

The developers obeyed. The mask came into focus—white, with several glowing lines flickering across it like spider webs. Then, the lines dissolved, peeling the mask away from the figure’s face.

Everyone froze when they saw who was behind the destruction inside the dungeon.

The head developer’s jaw dropped. "You’ve got to be kidding me... That’s him again?! Broken Heaven!"

"What’s the damage count?"

"Uh..." the man checked his tablet, gulping. "Three guilds wiped. Total of twenty-seven player deaths in under fifteen minutes. The system’s recognizing them as legitimate PvP kills."

"We have to do something," the head developer frowned. "The reason our boss made this game was to attract millions of players. An anomaly that spawn-kills repeatedly will discourage people from buying our game."

"So what do you suggest?" a junior developer asked nervously.

The head developer fell silent for some time, deep in thought, before speaking. "All right, listen up! We don’t have time to argue. Broken Heaven has been causing instability in the game for too long. The longer we keep him here, the closer we get to a critical desync. I want a full bounty announcement—server-wide!"

The announcement manager blinked. "A... bounty? On an NPC?"

"He’s not an NPC anymore! Treat him as a rogue entity! Put a global bounty on Broken Heaven. I don’t care if he’s an AI, hacker, or the devil himself—if the players kill him, maybe the system stabilizes, and the boss will reward us handsomely!"

The room came alive instantly. Commands flashed, data uploaded, and a crimson banner began spreading across the server’s skybox.

---

[WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT!]

Rogue Entity Detected!

Reward: 100,000 Valerian Dollars + 5 Skill Scrolls (Random Tier)

Location: Monkey Paradise Dungeon, Stellar City – Valerian Kingdom

Objective: Eliminate the Masked Anomaly before it destabilizes the world system!

***

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