Chapter 18: Racing Maiden: The Gateway to Another World

A truck sped through the streets.

Trucks had long been banned from entering the Nancheng city area, but the empty driver’s cabin revealed its form of existence. The law couldn’t govern Nightmares, nor could it deduct license points from thin air.

The truck’s cargo bed was filled with fiercely burning sulfur, dragging behind it a trail of black smoke dozens of meters long, like a curtain leading to hell. Within the depths of the curtain, lightning seemed to rumble, and the places where the wheels had rolled over were left with black ruts sparking with embers.

Pitter… patter…

—However, it began to rain.

A knight, wrapped in pale white bandages and clad in armor and a cloak, suddenly appeared from the crowd. With each step he took, the raindrops grew larger and denser, until he stood firm on the double yellow line in the middle of the street, and it finally turned into a sudden spring storm.

“It can’t be extinguished… I figured as much.”

Ren Huazhi shouldered her gunblade, her eyes fixed on the hellish truck speeding towards her.

She flicked the safety once.

The cylinder rotated halfway, and the activated magical power cast a faint red glow on the hammer.

She flicked the safety twice.

The magic-conducting rail unlocked, and magical power slowly infused the blade. The metal blade hummed.

She flicked the safety three times.

Magical power permeated every corner of the gunblade.

This Magical Hunting Gear had not yet adapted to Ren Huazhi’s cool and gentle water-attribute magical power, but before she handed it over to Meng Qiuxu for adjustment, the residual magical power left by Mangzhong in the cylinder should be enough for one or two more uses.

“For now, let’s praise the gods of the wilderness—the hunt begins!”

Inanimate-object-type Nightmares were concentrated in common death imaginations such as large vehicles, phenomena, and weapons.

Ren Huazhi had dealt with a very powerful, typical individual before, which manifested as a broken suspension bridge that caused its victims to fall endlessly.

As for vehicle types, she had almost collected the entire catalog, from sedans to tanks. They were generally quite homogeneous, with a rather singular attack pattern of ramming and crushing. At most, a tank could fire a couple of shots. They couldn’t compare to the simple and crude firearms above, nor the unique, mechanic-based monsters below. They were stuck in the middle.

If they were in a novel with combat elements, they would feel like the kind of cannon fodder villains that respawn periodically, born only to provoke the protagonist, even using similar cultivation methods and forbidden drugs.

She took a step back with her right foot and began to charge her power—

“…?”

Through the slightly sparser rain curtain than last time, Ren Huazhi suddenly saw someone who should have already left.

Xu Panpan.

She was completely soaked in just half a minute. Her untrimmed long bangs, now wet, covered her face. She had fallen face-first, and then she had gotten up from the curb.

“Brother Ren! It’s you, isn’t it, Brother Ren—!”

The magical power gathered on the gunblade suddenly exploded and dispersed. Ren Huazhi was startled and realized that she had momentarily relaxed her control over the mechanism. Her right thumb, which had been tightly clenched, seemed to have trembled.

But she did not answer Xu Panpan’s question.

Because it would be troublesome.

Entrusting multiple different lies to different people—this complex design required her to list out the character relationship network in a document, to clarify who knew what information, otherwise, the plot would have a bug.

For example, Xia Kong knew that under the mask was Ren Huazhi, while Xu Panpan and Meng Qiuxu thought it was still Ren Huazhi under the mask.

It wasn’t impossible for them to exchange information, and guiding them to a “tacit understanding” where they didn’t question things was far more useful than explaining the doubts.

“Brother Ren, I won’t tease you anymore! You’re actually a Kamen Rider protecting the city, fighting against an evil society that secretly controls Nightmares, right? You didn’t tell me anything—”

The truck was getting closer.

Ren Huazhi estimated that the truck probably wouldn’t hit Xu Panpan, so she decided to ignore her and her cheesy words.

Xu Panpan, while wary of the truck, stumbled towards the white knight, her voice tinged with tears:

“I’m always getting lost… But, I always want to see you…”

[Something’s not right.]

Meng Qiuxu suddenly said in her earpiece.

“This close and I’m still not in the field?” Ren Huazhi asked.

[Almost, just one more sentence’s worth of time. Pay attention to the black smoke it’s trailing. I saw from the satellite images that the road it passed over—]

Then came the static of a bad signal.

“I knew you wouldn’t finish.”

Information had to be given, but only half of it, to increase the suspense and whet the appetite. The truck had been running for more than half an hour, and Meng Qiuxu had been watching for a while. If there was a problem, she should have discovered it long ago, but she had to wait until Ren Huazhi was just a step away from entering the Anti-Civilization Field to say anything…

“Alright, watch the exhaust, got it.”

Ren Huazhi hefted the gunblade, setting aside her old habit of head-on collisions from her sword and shield days. She turned half a circle to the side and back, her whole body facing away from the truck, as if she had lost interest.

The gunblade fell from her shoulder and swung past her side—

Just in time to complete the other half of the circle, it struck the truck’s right front wheel.

The truck let out a deafening horn blast, like the king of the road losing control on an icy bend in a traffic accident warning video. The entire right side of the behemoth lifted off the ground, roaring as it screeched several curved marks on the asphalt—

But, it actually managed to regain its balance!

“What…?”

Ren Huazhi watched in amazement as the truck regained its balance and sped away with the accelerator floored. A sense of admiration welled up in her heart—if it could give her a new experience, then it was her teacher.

Could this Nightmare be the incarnation of a nightmare of a battle-hardened truck driver who had lost his beloved vehicle in a fire, and so his driving skills were deeply engraved on the steering wheel and gear stick?

There was nothing she could do. She wasn’t used to the new weapon, her skills had failed in the contest, and she had underestimated her opponent… A direct chase was impossible. She could only wait until she was out of the Anti-Civilization Field’s range and ask Meng Qiuxu to predict the truck’s direction with satellite cameras.

Sharpening the axe doesn’t delay chopping the wood. Ren Huazhi planned to use this time to grab Xu Panpan from the curb and toss her into the crowd of evacuees.

But as she looked around, Xu Panpan was gone from the rain-swept scene.

There was no crushed and smeared flesh and bone on the ground, and it was unlikely that the rain had washed it away so quickly.

…Was she sent to another world?

Although Xu Panpan was an annoying child, with a sharp tongue, and always shouting “finders keepers” to freeload off Ren Huazhi’s snacks, as fellow hikikomoris, Ren Huazhi had always treated her like a younger sister and, having written many tsundere characters, had a certain doting and tolerant attitude towards her…

If she really did go to another world, Ren Huazhi would probably offer her sincerest blessings for her cheat-powered, successful life in the other world, in place of her never-seen parents.

Meng Qiuxu reconnected to the channel:

[Communication restored. The truck is still on the road. Looks like you didn’t win the first round?]

“What did you say about that exhaust just now?”

[The exhaust smoke seems to be connected to another space, or rather, it should be called an interdimensional portal! For now, I don’t know if it’s the dream world or somewhere else on the other side. I just saw a stray cat pass through the lingering exhaust and disappear from the middle of the road!]

“Yeah, I saw it too. I just saw a person get a face full of exhaust and disappear from the side of the road.”

[Wait, who?]

“It could be the neighbor’s younger sister who has a crush on me, or it could be Jingzhe. I’m not sure.”