"Fire! Turn him into a sieve!"
Boris's hysterical roar pierced the deathly silence. This Russian tycoon, who had spent years navigating the black market, felt a fear stemming from the depths of his soul for the first time.
It wasn't the fear of a gun barrel or betrayal, but the primal shiver branded into the genes of a creature facing its natural predator.
"Da da da da da—!"
Jiru's reaction was only half a beat slow; he likewise roared out orders.
In an instant, gunfire erupted within the cramped processing plant. Dozens of automatic rifles spat out angry tongues of fire, and a dense hail of bullets formed a metallic storm, sweeping toward the pale man in the center of the factory.
Bullets tore through the air, letting out sharp whistles.
However, the expected scene of flesh and blood flying everywhere did not occur.
At the very moment the first bullet was about to hit Orochimaru, his body bent backward in a way that defied the laws of physics. His waist nearly folded in half, and like a boneless snake, he slid across the ground.
The bullets, powerful enough to tear through steel plates, only futilely kicked up a series of concrete fragments and sparks where he had just been standing.
"He dodged it?!" a thug cried out in horror.
In the next second, he could no longer make any sound.
A dark shadow darted from Orochimaru's sleeve, trailing an afterimage in the dim light. It was a black snake, thicker and longer than the previous one. It accurately bit the thug's neck, its sharp fangs instantly piercing his carotid artery.
Blood gushed out like a fountain.
This was only the beginning.
Orochimaru's figure wove through the hail of bullets like a ghost. He didn't even speed up, simply twisting, stretching, and gliding with an elegant yet eerie posture.
His neck could stretch to an incredible length, and his head craned out at a bizarre angle to avoid fatal trajectories; his arms could extend like rubber, his fingers transforming into smaller venomous snakes that coiled around the enemies' wrists.
"Hidden Shadow Many Snake Hands!"
He softly whispered the name of the technique, as if stating a simple scientific formula.
In an instant, more black snakes surged out from under his kimono, from his sleeves, and even from his mouth.
It wasn't dozens, but hundreds, even thousands! They converged into a pitch-black tide, pouncing toward the panicked gang members with a scalp-numbing "hissing" sound.
"Aaaaah! Monster! It's a monster!"
"Don't come any closer! Get away!"
"Help! He—"
Screams, pleas for help, the sound of firearms hitting the floor, and the sound of flesh being torn apart intertwined into a symphony of hell.
A burly Russian man tried to resist with the rifle in his hand, but a black snake slithered directly into his barrel. In the next second, the chamber exploded, and countless snakes burst from the seven orifices of his body, turning him into a writhing, human-shaped snake nest.
Jiru watched this living hell in terror. He threw down his gun and turned to run frantically toward the factory gate.
He swore that if he could just survive, he would donate his life savings to the church and pray every day.
However, he had only run two steps when his ankle tightened.
He looked down in horror, finding that a black snake had clamped onto his ankle at some unknown point. He wanted to scream, but found his throat felt as if it were stuffed with a wad of cotton.
A hand burst from the ground in front of him.
It was a hand so pale it lacked even a hint of color, and it grabbed Jiru's other foot. Immediately after, Orochimaru's entire upper body "grew" out of the hard concrete floor, as if the ground were soft water.
A researcher-like smile still hung on his face as his golden snake pupils observed the extreme terror on Jiru's face from up close.
"Your fear response is a bit more intense than the others. A very interesting specimen."
"No—" a desperate syllable finally squeezed out of Jiru's mouth.
Orochimaru reached out with his other hand and gently pressed it onto the top of Jiru's head.
"Now then, let me see everything you have."
*Puchi—*
Jiru's body jerked violently, and the light in his eyes quickly faded.
On the other side, Boris was already slumped on the ground in fear, his portly body shaking like a sieve. A yellow liquid flowed from his pant legs, emitting a foul, pungent odor.
He watched the demon that had "grown" from the ground, watched him slowly walk toward him, and kept repeating meaningless words: "Devil... you're a devil..."
Orochimaru stopped before him, looking down from above. He didn't care in the least about the filth on the ground, simply raising his foot slightly.
The phantom of a giant python with scales shimmering with a metallic luster flashed behind him.
"Bang!"
Boris's head burst like a stepped-on watermelon, red and white matter splashing everywhere.
A few minutes later, deathly silence returned to the processing plant.
Over fifty corpses lay scattered in pools of blood, each one's death more horrific than the last. In the air, the thick stench of blood mixed with the smell of gunpowder, making one want to retch.
Orochimaru stood in the center of the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, his wide kimono unstained by even a drop of blood. He slowly raised his hand, and the blood-red panel that only he could see surfaced once more.
[Congratulations to the Raid Faction player—Orochimaru, for successfully killing 52 civilians. You have gained 10,000 reputation points.]
"Ten thousand points..."
Orochimaru looked at the number, his brow furrowing imperceptibly.
He looked down at the corpses beneath his feet, then back at the numbers on the panel. A glint of analytical doubt flashed in his golden snake pupils.
Over fifty lives, and on average, each person wasn't even worth two hundred reputation points.
This efficiency is too low.
He recalled the description of reputation points on the system panel and the division of the factions.
Clearly, the rules of this so-called "system" did not encourage simple slaughter.
If one could obtain a large amount of reputation just by massacring ordinary people, then the game's balance would be too fragile.
Value.
The key lies in the "value" of the target.
Killing these gang members struggling at the bottom of society was like stepping on a swarm of ants; it would hardly have any impact on the "momentum" of this World. Therefore, the reputation points they provided were negligible.
Conversely, in the previous system notification, Perona had gained 100,000 reputation points just by making two "players" lose their will to fight.
"Players"—or rather, "Singularities" from other Worlds like himself—were the high-value targets.
Besides that, native figures of this World with special abilities or significant influence should also possess considerable value.
"Hehehe..."
Orochimaru let out a low chuckle, sticking out his long tongue to lick his lips.
"So that's how it is... There are other 'players' like me arriving in this World... Good, very good. This World is becoming more and more worth researching."
He abandoned his original plan of purging the entire Hells Kitchen to test the upper limit of reputation points.
That kind of inefficient repetitive labor did not suit his aesthetics.
He needed higher-level "Experimental Subjects."
Orochimaru's figure began to blur, slowly sinking into the ground like a stone dropped into water.
"First, I need a suitable laboratory. Then, I'll go find some interesting'subjects' to play with..."
His voice left a final echo in the empty factory, and then, along with his figure, he vanished completely.
Leaving behind only a floor full of corpses and gore, silently testifying to how terrifying and eerie everything that had just happened was.