Where Are You Looking, Handsome?

A beetle as tall as two men fully revealed itself before the team, its shell glossy and translucent, its twin wings shimmering with flowing light.

Its legs bristled with spines, its twin claws like spears, their edges keen as autumn frost.

It raised a claw and slashed at the group. Everyone scrambled to dodge, and the formation scattered.

"Cover!" Ji Yunzhou shouted, falling back two steps to open distance from the insect.

Everyone withdrew to a safe range on his command.

Wen Li drew the thermal gun the system had issued, cradled the weapon in both hands, and aimed at the beetle's compound eyes. He squeezed the trigger; the muzzle glowed blue, gathering into an energy sphere the size of a fist.

Riding the barrel, the sphere fired off as a laser, grazing the beetle's carapace.

Enraged, the beetle lashed its forelegs, and the surrounding air filled with flying sand.

A cold gleam flashed—its foreclaw was already at Ji Yunzhou's eyes. In that split second, he thrust a hand into the battle pouch at his waist and drew out the hilt of a greatsword, raising it before him.

The moment the hilt left the pouch, countless faceted crystals extended from its cylindrical edge, condensing into a broad blade.

The beetle's claw was forced off course by the greatsword, slid down along the flat of the blade, and smashed heavily into the ground.

At the same moment, the beetle's other foreclaw was half a meter away. Ji Yunzhou adjusted his stance to meet it.

Yu Xinglan was faster. He had already drawn his longsword, and with a single diagonal slash he cut one of the beetle's legs clean in two at the joint.

The tall man swept his long hair back, dropped to one knee with the thermal gun braced on his thigh, and fired—his shot pierced the beetle's compound eye dead center.

The socket burst with green fluid. The spraying droplets corroded everything they touched, leaving a fishy stench spreading all around.

Ji Yunzhou raised the greatsword and cleaved off the beetle's head. Decapitated, the beetle stopped struggling and crashed to the ground.

Because he had stood too close, Yu Xinglan's hem was inevitably ruined by the fluid, leaving a stretch of pale waist bare.

Ji Yunzhou's gaze lingered two beats longer than it should have. His breathing stuttered, and heat crept up his ears before he shook his head and threw the strange feeling out of his mind.

Face unreadable, he did his best not to let his eyes dip downward as he faced Yu Xinglan, collecting his weapons with perfect composure.

"Thanks."

At the rear, Wen Li rubbed his nose. His mistake had put the captain in danger; his instinct was to apologize, but he opened his mouth, couldn't find the words, and in the end said nothing.

As a member of the number-one-ranked team, he enjoyed others' envious stares and shouldered pressure to match—especially someone like Wen Li. His overall rating was A, but his combat marks had only just scraped a B; in strength and speed he fell short of the rest of the squad.

Just as he was spiraling, Ji Yunzhou patted his head. The warmth on his crown slowly washed the unease away.

Wen Li perked up and pulled himself together.

Ji Yunzhou comforted him partly out of a captain's duty to his members, and partly the way one looks after a younger brother.

After all, this little teammate had skipped three grades—and was still a minor.

Besides, the reason he'd invited Wen Li into the team in the first place was his scouting and analysis. Every member had a role; the long-range slot was already filled by someone else.

With Wen Li's constant scouting on the remaining route, the odds of running into multiple enemies at once dropped sharply. Lone enemies couldn't slow the team at all and were swept aside with ease.

"Hold." One hand on the console, the other pressed to his temple, Wen Li's goggle-mounted radar caught enemies—a whole swarm of red dots blinking across the display.

The ground seethed. Swollen sand mounds shifted along several paths, and when they were close enough, a multi-legged flesh worm burst from the top of one mound, its huge jaws opening and closing like giant pincers.

It fell back to the ground and quickly spiraled down into the sand, vanishing.

Yu Xinglan's quick eyes snagged one flesh worm and flicked it dead into a sand pit. In the gaps of his attack, more worms surfaced all around, moving to strike.

He tilted into a backflip and rolled clear of all of them.

Ji Yunzhou drove his sword deep into the ground—and the worm surging beneath the sand was run straight through by the blade.

In an instant, none of the worms dared move; they circled the team aimlessly.

"Yu Xinglan takes point as the spearhead. Everyone else, support him."

The moment Ji Yunzhou gave the order, everyone gripped their weapons and readied.

Yu Xinglan moved to the very front, Ji Yunzhou a body-length behind.

He stilled his heart. When a sand mound shifted in front of him, he took one step forward—and the worm erupted on cue.

He cut it down in one stroke. The fallen half-carcass on the ground was like a fuse: worms came pouring in from every direction toward Yu Xinglan.

The ones farther back were picked off by the team's rear gunner; the close ones were cut down by Ji Yunzhou.

The team advanced in good order—until a worm broke through the line and clamped its jaws on Yu Xinglan's arm.

Then the next worm, and the one after that. The worms shredded the formation and coiled in, one after another.

Soon Yu Xinglan was declared dead. Simulation failed. All members ejected.

They sat up in the simulators, utterly baffled. They were the last group to log out—and the only A-rated team whose simulation had failed.

"Sorry."

Yu Xinglan didn't know what he'd done wrong, but as the lowest-rated person on the team—with an F in Team Coordination, no less—he understood the failure was probably his.

Never mind that he'd been the one to die in the simulation.

Rarely, the whole team stayed silent.

In that simulation, they had run into something unprecedented.

It had been too long since their fifth member left. They'd grown used to operating as a four-man cell; returning to full strength made everyone tiptoe.

That left Yu Xinglan in an awkward position in combat—unable to settle into the rhythm of four, and the others unable to coordinate with him properly.

He could only circle the edges of the formation, attacking in the gaps.

When they met the worm swarm, Ji Yunzhou, to improve coordination and survival odds, had placed Yu Xinglan in the spearhead role.

At first it did raise the team's margin for error—until new problems surfaced.

Yu Xinglan's attacks were steady, precise, ruthless. His speed against a single enemy and against many was the same. Against one, the team coordinated beautifully. Against many, his speed never dropped, but the others couldn't match that level. In the end, apart from the melee fighter Ji Yunzhou, every one of them missed targets and let the worms break the formation.

Strictly speaking, no one was to blame for a coordination failure like that—but it left the others genuinely frustrated.

Facing Yu Xinglan's apology, the members all avoided his eyes, almost in unison.

In the end, it was Ji Yunzhou who stepped forward.