Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

The man was lucky; he was only crushed in the leg by a chair with a large, fat man hanging on it while he was rolling. But he was also unlucky, because at this point, it was very difficult for him to escape.

He probably knew this all too well, but he clearly wouldn't give up. He gritted his teeth against the pain and hopped on one foot toward the outside of the restaurant, trying to escape. His vision was blurred by his bloodshot eyes, but after only two steps, he fell to the ground—another woman, also trying to escape but pinned to the ground by overturned tables and chairs, instinctively grabbed his foot.

He kicked hard, shoving the woman's hands away with each blow. But by then, his left arm had already broken after hitting the corner of the table. He couldn't get up and could only struggle to crawl outwards; Patchouli could clearly feel his will to survive even through their line of sight. However, as he crawled near the door, his vision suddenly dimmed.

—A chopstick shot into the back of his head and pierced through his skull.

End of record.

......................................................

Patchouli rubbed her puppet's head, detaching her will from the man's brain. She then spent some time finding several reference samples, and by observing the minutes before their deaths, she deduced her current situation.

“It’s Death, the Grim Reaper from the movie Final Destination. Not an angel.” Her fingers twitched slightly as she tried to organize her thoughts. “It struck after the stellar extraction tower took effect, killing everyone who should have died in the solar storm… Tsk, wasn’t this underground base designed to withstand solar storms? These Eastern Continent people don’t seem like they cut corners on this monumental project. Could the solar storm be more powerful than expected?”

She shook her head, somewhat puzzled. After all, to the Star Extraction Tower, even the sun itself was merely a battery to be extracted. Solar storms… their strength or weakness didn't make much difference. This also made Patchouli unable to accurately assess the strength of a solar storm; at least, she couldn't be certain whether this shelter base, located two or three thousand meters underground, could withstand one and a quarter days of solar wind as designed.

Without certainty, it's impossible to determine whether the people in this shelter were supposed to have died within this timeframe. Consequently, the rules governing the Grim Reaper's actions become difficult to define. And this incompleteness of information is undoubtedly quite unbearable for Patchouli, an information mage who thrives on data and information.

"There's no other way, we can only put this matter aside for now." She tapped her forehead.

What is certain now is the timing of Death's attack, but its range, frequency, and intensity cannot yet be accurately determined. Patchouli knows very well that her physical body is currently protected by the energy shield of the Stellar Extraction Tower. Before this energy, equivalent to the solar storm itself, is exhausted, even if a Tsar Bomba explodes outside the shield, it won't harm her. But that only applies to physical protection; mental attacks need to be calculated separately.

[I'm not sure if you want to kill me, but the Angel Legion is currently isolated from the solar wind, and Earth itself lacks any mystical forces. As long as I don't leave the protective shield, you only have a few methods left to deal with me.]

"...Let me see what you've got. Go ahead and blow up the Stellar Extraction Tower! I guarantee everyone in the world will be wiped out in seconds, not even a speck of dust will be left!"

Patchouli thought to herself as she checked the speaker that broadcast the message again, trying to reconstruct the complete broadcast, but to her dismay, she discovered that the line from the speaker to the main unit had been cut. And now, with the information in disarray, she had no way to directly trace the location of the main unit.

There's nothing we can do.

“…In the conversation we got earlier, the woman whose throat was pierced mentioned meeting in the square. Hmm…maybe I should go there and take a look.” Patchouli stood up and walked towards the outside of the restaurant.

She didn't care whether there were survivors in the square, but considering the mostly kind-hearted nature of her teammates, if they discovered a densely populated and dangerous human settlement, they would certainly do everything in their power to protect those vulnerable mortals. That would be a valuable clue.

However, as she walked out of the cafeteria lobby, even more clues came to her.

Author's Note:

....................................

I'll try updating twice today; the second section might not be 4,000 words.

By the way, I'd like to recommend a book called "I'm Being Targeted by the World, But I'm Trying to Survive" – written by a fellow book lover in the group. You can check it out if you have time.

Section Six: Final Destination - Part Four

"Eeya—!!!"

A scream rang out the moment Patchouli stepped out of the restaurant, and the sound came from not far away from her!

There's someone! There's a living person!

Moreover, this person is still alive and can be saved!

Without hesitation, Patchouli unleashed the full power of her doll avatar, launching herself forward like a cannonball. An invisible yet tangible barrier formed in front of her, ensuring she wouldn't be involved in an accident due to the strange wires or other contraptions. All the sensors were operating at full capacity, desperately trying to capture the image of the screaming person!

Passing through the corridor and climbing the stairs, a wide passageway connecting to the circular plaza comes into view. At the other end of the passageway, about seventy meters away, lies a terrified girl—hanging precariously from a broken railing, on the verge of falling into the platform below!

Got you!

A second later, Patchouli, accompanied by a gust of wind and afterimages, pounced on the girl like a beast unleashed from its cage. A gravity field was deployed before her hand touched the girl to ensure she wouldn't fall, while excess kinetic energy was channeled into the ground, preventing her from directly hitting and killing the person in need of rescue.

The sturdy alloy floor dented slightly, allowing her to stop abruptly before touching the girl. She then firmly grasped the girl's shoulder.

"Are you alright? You're safe now." Patchouli lifted the girl, removing her from her precarious hanging position, and placed her on the ground in the safe passageway. The gust of wind generated by the high-speed movement finally caught up with her body, transforming into a sharp whistling sound as it crashed into the broken fence.

She watched as the girl's expression changed from pale to one of relief at escaping death, but after catching her breath and barely regaining her composure, that relief turned into confusion.

“Thank you, you are…” She glanced at Patchouli’s high-class official uniform—prepared on the spot when arranging her official identity before arriving at the shelter—then paused, her gaze shifting to the depression in the ground and the seventy-meter stretch of road that led to the other end of the passage.

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Patchouli knew what the girl was thinking. She was happy to see it happen, so she naturally went along with it, pretending to be a high-ranking secret agent. In fact, she was indeed an official secret agent, because the agreement for the SP173 secret project was still in the archives inside the shelter, and the identity she had arranged was traceable and without any loopholes.

[Strange, why do I feel that the number SP173 seems a bit unlucky? I've never believed in fortune-telling or anything like that.]

Patchouli gently moved her neck—the slight damage caused by the broken neck before she awoke was still slowly repairing itself thanks to the shape memory alloy within the doll's body. Although it was mostly repaired, it was still somewhat choppy at times when the doll's body was operating at full power.

But she didn't spend too much time thinking about it. She lowered her head and looked at the girl who was now silent because of her slightly harsh tone, and asked.

"How did you get here? What happened?" Patchouli asked, while a calming spell was quietly cast, forcibly stabilizing the girl's overactive emotions without her noticing. The surge of hormones triggered by the fear of death was also forcibly stopped and quickly corrected to the balanced hormone levels of a calm state of mind.

The effect was remarkable. The panicked girl quickly calmed down and stopped caring about Patchouli's seemingly supernatural act of crossing seventy meters to save her in a second. She took a deep breath and calmly told Patchouli what she knew.

She had no idea what was happening at the base. A week earlier, she had been selected in a mass medical examination and, under the guise of military service, was transported to this shelter along with hundreds of others from the city who had also passed the medical exam. Base personnel told them the truth about the impending solar storm that would destroy the world, then assigned them rooms and settled them in the base—and many more people arrived gradually. As the countdown to the apocalypse drew near, the atmosphere in the base grew increasingly somber.

However, just fifteen minutes earlier, the message that 'the solar wind hasn't descended; it's been blocked in mid-air by an unknown force' was broadcast throughout the base. The base erupted in jubilation, and the authorities immediately issued a notice instructing all shelter residents to assemble at designated squares for an important announcement. It was obvious that this announcement would be related to celebrations.

So she and several hundred other people from the same neighborhood went to the square. The atmosphere was initially lively, but for some reason, the people gathered together felt inexplicably panicked. The authorities in charge of the shelter also seemed to be having problems; the promised announcement was not made on time.

The girl felt restless, and a strange emotion took hold of her, causing her to quietly leave the square and go outside to an open space to get some fresh air. Then, as she walked out of the square and into a corridor, she saw death writhing.

"Dead! So many people... all dead!" The girl's emotions became unstable as she recounted the story, even showing signs of breaking free from the calming spell. "I came from that side and saw so many people lying on the ground for no apparent reason, and the ground was covered in blood!"

"Calm down, speak slowly." Patchouli had to increase the intensity of her spell to soothe the girl. "You're safe now, don't worry about anything else happening... You said you only saw dead people?"

"Hmm..." The girl's emotions calmed down again as the spell suppressed them. "All I saw were dead people, ordinary people, security guards, soldiers... They were all inexplicably lying on the ground, and it all looked like an accident. But the authorities didn't release this information, not even a notice telling ordinary people not to leave or move around!"

She was startled and glanced at Patchouli timidly. Seeing that Patchouli didn't react to the word "authorities," she quietly breathed a sigh of relief before continuing, "So I was scared and didn't dare go back. I ran here like a madwoman, and just now I was trying to rest against the railing, but I almost fell!"

Patchouli raised an eyebrow.

[Her heart rate and brainwave fluctuations were all within normal ranges, which is the truth. So, this girl ran quite a distance alone without being attacked?]

Is she special? Or has death's offensive ended... or at least temporarily ended?

We need to check if there are any survivors left in the square.

Patchouli then looked at the girl, preparing to lead her back to the square. However, just as she was about to speak, a spark suddenly appeared on the other side of her vision!

That was... an electrical explosion!?

She raised her hand, and a gravitational field shield suddenly unfolded. Accompanied by a violent explosion and a shockwave, several high-speed, sharp, strip-shaped objects came to an abrupt halt in front of her shield!

It's steel reinforcement.

A steel bar hurtled towards her at a speed of 300 meters per second, approaching the sound barrier. And its target wasn't her, but the girl she was protecting!

A second wave of explosions followed, and more high-speed projectiles attacked. She immediately increased the strength of her shield, protecting the poor girl from every inch of her body as she screamed in terror. However, at that moment, several projectiles from the second wave veered off course, missing the shield protecting the girl and instead striking the top of it—the ceiling where Patchouli was located!

A high-voltage cable then dangled from a conduit in the ceiling, and right in front of Patchouli, a tens of thousands of volts of blue-purple current pierced the air, crossing the gravitational field that could stop solid objects but not pure electricity, and landed on the metal hair ornament on the girl's forehead. A burnt smell followed.

The girl died.

Before Patchouli's eyes, he was unexpectedly killed while under her protection. Although his perception and calculation abilities had been greatly reduced, leaving him with only about one-seventh the strength of his original body as a substitute puppet, Patchouli still felt a surge of anger. And this anger then manifested as thoughts.

【Very good, well done.】

[I underestimated you. The angels went to great lengths, even taking advantage of internal chaos within their teams and the superior cognitive interference of the Emperor, to barely manage to kill a few newcomers right under my nose. But you, the true Grim Reaper, slapped me across the face with a single move!]

I'll see just how well you've been hiding your true intentions!

Her eyes widened suddenly. And in the next instant, a thick wall beside her shattered, unleashing a burst of energy and flames powerful enough to completely obliterate her body!

Chapter Seven: Final Destination - Part Five

Patchouli's eyes snapped open. The pain of her substitute body being torn apart and destroyed was directly transmitted back to her original body, which was inside the protective shield of the Stellar Extraction Tower. She nearly screamed in anger, though she managed to restrain herself, though a trickle of blood still escaped from the corner of her mouth.

"Well done, beautifully done. I really underestimated you; you're even more capable than I expected." Extreme anger instead brought a pleasant smile to her face. She gently wiped the bloodstains from her mouth, and the trigger-based healing spells running within her body rapidly repaired the internal organs damaged in the synchronous injury.

She knew perfectly well who had destroyed her doll-like avatar; without a doubt, it was Zheng Zha, using the same positive-negative collision annihilation sword technique Alice had taught him. This highly concentrated, absolute destructive power would have severely damaged even her real body if it had been hit. And her avatar, which could only unleash one-seventh of its power and whose perception and spellcasting abilities were significantly diminished, was naturally even less vulnerable.

[Zheng Zha and the others wouldn't attack me without reason, not even a warning. Therefore, combining the previous clues, they must be trapped in a spatial rift. And 'Death' lured him into attacking within that rift, simultaneously creating a spatial fissure so that his strike landed on my puppet avatar.]

[Tsk...at least we can confirm Zheng Zha is alive. As for the others...let's hope for the best.]

Patchouli gently flexed her fingers, but just as she was pondering her next strategy, a change in the light emanating from outside the shield made her raise an eyebrow. She abruptly turned her head, her gaze falling on the elevator connecting to the natural cave not far away—the elevator doors opened automatically once again!

No one pressed the button, no one boarded, yet the elevator, which only had two stations—the lowest level of the base and the underground cavern—started on its own the moment she awoke. The lights inside the elevator were still chilling, and even through the protective shield of the stellar extraction tower, she could still feel the cold wind emanating from it!

"...It really is persistent." Patchouli couldn't help but applaud in admiration. This elevator, which had opened on its own without any reason, gleaming with cold light and emanating chilling air, undeniably displayed its unparalleled persistence and confidence, proclaiming "I'm going to cause trouble" from the inside out. Clearly, it wouldn't give up until Patchouli stepped inside. And Patchouli currently had no other doll avatar available for immediate use.

It wasn't that she lacked more stock—the Great Library had countless avatars made from these raw materials, each costing only 180,000 RMB. The problem was that she couldn't contact the Great Library; she had underestimated the disruptive effect of the Stellar Extraction Tower's activation on surrounding information. To put it simply, if information was likened to electricity and magnetism, then the Stellar Extraction Tower, currently absorbing vast amounts of solar wind energy, was like a large, highly effective magnet. And Patchouli, a master of electromagnetism, naturally experienced a significant decrease in her abilities while near such a magnet.

She hadn't been unaware of this situation. In her contingency plan, she had already reached a preliminary consensus that Zheng Zha and others, who could be considered good partners, would become her protectors during her weakest moment. The angels would also be isolated outside the Earth by the solar wind wall, and once they came down, her strength would be restored. In the one and a quarter days she had gained, many of the arrangements she had made would come in handy.

She just hadn't expected that after the Stellar Extraction Tower was activated... the real Grim Reaper would appear, and that her assigned guards would fall into the trap right from the start.

She can regain her strength as long as she leaves the influence of the Stellar Extraction Tower. But right now... she can't leave.

"If I leave, even just leaving this main control console, it means I will lose control of the tower. If the Star Extraction Tower malfunctions, the best outcome will be that the solar wind will return, and this place will be the first direct target and blasted into dust, while Earth will be burned to glass in the next twenty-odd hours."

“If I stay here and don’t move, I’ll be fine. But we can’t contact Alice now, and the others are in unknown dangers. If we ignore it… most of our previous arrangements and preparations will go to waste. The other team members might die because I didn’t rescue them in time, and once we lose our companions… not only will it be very difficult for us to survive to the twelfth day and face the final test, but Alice’s plan will also completely collapse.”

"Tsk... Caught in a dilemma?" She lightly tapped her forehead, her smile growing wider. "If my main body leaves, I'll have to face an enemy with completely unknown information while at my weakest. But if I leave it alone, even worse consequences will emerge in the future... I never expected to face such a situation in my first encounter with an angel after fighting for six days. Is this the difference between AI-type passive enemies and intelligent, proactive enemies?"

The girl slowly exhaled a long breath.

"But if you really could defeat me from the very beginning, then why didn't you capture me and take me to the other dimension like you would any other person before I even deployed the protective shield of the Stellar Extraction Tower? Was it unwillingness? Or fear? Or perhaps..."

"Is it another possibility I've guessed?!"

"Although I don't know what you are, I didn't come here empty-handed during my avatar trip!" Patchouli sneered, her fingertips then touching the semi-transparent protective shield.

'boom--!!!!'

............................................................

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in the suburbs of Pisa, Alice reached out and touched the bloodstains seeping from a corpse lying on the ground.

Fresh blood, vibrant blood, blood still warm. All of this indicates that the dead person was alive at most five minutes ago.

Five minutes ago, a massive multi-vehicle collision occurred here: a large truck crashed into a smaller car, which then exploded, obliterating the large truck. The exploding vehicle then caused further crashes with flying debris, and within seconds, dozens of vehicles and their seventy or eighty passengers on this suburban highway were all killed. Not a single survivor was left.

Five minutes earlier, Alice had been traveling from Rome to Pisa. While adjusting her arrangements, she reminisced about the wonderful times she had spent in Western Europe when she was still in the outside world—she had visited Pisa as a wandering witch and seen the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. She had even mischievously straightened the leaning tower when no one was looking—a move that saddened her greatly, as local tourism officials had organized a team overnight to dig the straightened tower back down.

This city wasn't a place filled with painful memories for her; on the contrary, she had found a lot of enjoyment here. And that was one of the reasons she was willing to come to this city—there were plenty of towns and villages around Florence, so there was no need to travel all the way to Pisa, which was over seventy kilometers away.

She came full of enthusiasm, hoping to take advantage of the one and a quarter day that the angels had descended to complete her plans and relax her mind. However, what awaited her was disappointment and an inability to leave.

When she arrived on the outskirts of Pisa, she was greeted by a city stained with death—no, not everyone was dead. Through the communication network, she could still sense that many people in the city had survived. They were still marveling at the magnificent solar wind wall in the sky, completely unaware of the tide of death surrounding the city.

The living know nothing about the dead outside, and in the surveillance network controlled by Alice, she discovers that when these living people leave their current location and witness the area of ​​the dead, they too will soon die due to some kind of 'accident'.

“…Death has come. As expected, the terrible situation I predicted has occurred.” Alice looked up at the sky, at the artificially created polar day. She knew very well that if the stellar extraction tower hadn't transformed the solar storm into a solar wind wall, the mortals on Earth would have perished long ago. And since they hadn't died, they were now on Death's blacklist—if Death truly existed.