Long-term salvation

[Pollution points in the other world increased by 1]

Rhodes quickly armed himself and stacked up several plastic boxes, placing them slightly inside the cave entrance as a cover. He then leaned against the rock wall, slowly munching on compressed biscuits while fiddling with the translucent hanging window in front of him.

The soldier cards in the system resembled the games he'd played in his past life, the Eugen Group's war game series, nicknamed the "French Genshin Impact." They were also somewhat similar to its sequel, WARNO, except there was no limit on the number of soldier cards. It seemed to have some connection to the game Regiments, as both were set during the late Cold War.

The system's expanded interface seemed to be visible only to Rhode, and it slightly obstructed his view. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been ambushed by the monster and [died], wasting his accumulated pollution points in the other world.

Yes, death.

Rhodes couldn't remember how many times he had died in those three days, or how many times he had woken up in strange places. After he had died more than thirty times, he no longer counted the specific number of times and how they died. It was meaningless.

There was only one thing Rhode still clearly remembered... Before arriving in this otherworld, he had been bedridden with a serious illness, barely breathing, unwillingly awaiting his fate. However, as darkness crept in from the edges of his eyes, pure white light poured down from above, pulling him from his already dead body.

From somewhere, a voice asked him:

"Are you willing to become the savior of mankind, the blade of order, the shield of civilization?"

"Are you willing to wield the power of iron, receive the loyalty of flesh and blood, and become the Lord of Hosts, the King of Kings?"

Rhodes couldn't make a sound, but his heart, longing for life, had already answered for him, even if it might be a contract with the devil!

Therefore, death is no longer the end. In the nearly three days since coming to this world, as long as there are pollution points, Rhodes can be resurrected in the other world an unlimited number of times!

It all sounded wonderful, but his experience during the first hour was torture:

The first time he died, he had just emerged bewildered from the otherworld, and was pounced upon and besieged by dozens of strange beasts resembling hyenas but with shrunken human faces. He was torn to pieces by human teeth. He could even hear the grinding of his own bones!

The second time, in order to escape the parasitic thorns, he accidentally stepped into a pool of corrosive acid. He lost his life completely without even uttering a scream. Of course, this was more comfortable than the first time.

The third time, the fourth time...

Rhode felt like he was suffering in hell. How else could that damned system contamination point remain at 1 even at its lowest point?! He considered fleeing, hiding, cursing, regretting, but in this damned world, in this otherworldly dimension, with its endless variety of monsters and endlessly broken terrain, running around and shouting would only lead to more suffering.

In less than an hour, Rhodes had been resurrected for the fifteenth time somewhere in the other world.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a jungle that looked like crystal products slowly growing out of the barren soil, reflecting faint light under the dim sky. They were so beautiful, yet so deadly - but that was definitely not crystal, but cicadas made of similar material. They were crowded on the twisted and shriveled rotten wood like aphids, vibrating their wings together and making sharp, noisy noises.

The jungle shelters monsters, and the monsters will bring it fresh flesh and blood.

Rhode stood there in a daze until a crystal cicada-like mouthparts pierced his palm and began to happily suck blood and flesh. A stinging pain woke him from his daze. He looked at the streak of bright red slowly spreading from the crystal insect monster's body... A kind of anger suddenly rose in his chest.

Despair turns into firewood, unwillingness ignites it, and courage fuels it.

Rhodes picked up a stone and smashed it hard at the strange crystal cicada!

Again and again, he was pounced on by more and more insect monsters, his other palm was pierced, his abdomen was pierced by dozens of sharp spikes, and his bone marrow was sucked out... He squeezed the last bit of courage from his chest to fight those monsters. He did not run away, did not beg for mercy, even though he was covered with wounds, even though he was seriously injured and dying!

When a monster was killed and pounded into a warm, filthy pulp, Rhode's mouth widened.

"That's all."

Rhodes, lying under the dark sky covered by the swarm of insects, laughed out loud, mocking the monsters around him who were agitated and roaring because they could not get any flesh and blood.

At this moment, there was no regret or confusion in his heart anymore.

Rhodes would die here and now, he would definitely die, the enemies were so numerous, in groups, overwhelming, and he had nothing, not even his body was no longer strong.

but--

A strange, hollow power poured into Rhodes' body, and he felt it transform. Bones were being reshaped, tendons were being rebuilt, and past features began to blur. Fragmented and complex memories flooded back like a tide.

[Mission: First Resistance (Completed)]

[Task Description: Every resistance is important]

[Soldier Card Unlock]

【Enhancement Unlock】

【Information Tips Unlock】

【Aggregation completed】

[Resurrection program started]

[New mission acceptance: Three-day resurrection (72 hours)]

Remember the past and move towards the future.

【Remaining 00:00:59】

These three hellish days were drawing to a close, and Rhodes was about to set out again from here.

After all, he still has a world and a civilization to save.

Chapter 2: Floating

【Remaining 00:00:01】

【Remaining 00:00:00】

[Mission: Three-Day Resurrection (72 hours) (Completed)]

【Start of ascent】

The cave he had been temporarily sheltering in gradually blurred before his eyes. A deep, hollow darkness enveloped everything before him. A slightly oppressive feeling came from all directions, as if he were at the bottom of a quiet ocean, with only a ray of light above.

Rhodes' mind moved slightly, and then he felt his body floating upwards.

During his ascent, Rhodes heard faint cries coming from the depths of darkness. They were human voices, all kinds of voices... millions, tens of millions of voices overlapping each other, turning from whispers into an unbearable cacophony.

The torture of torturing his eardrums did not last long. When Rhodes "crossed" a certain limit, the surrounding sounds suddenly disappeared, and the oppressive feeling similar to that when diving also eased.

Even in the darkness, other things began to appear: a towering lighthouse, a child singing nursery rhymes, a clown killing with an axe, a unicorn dragging out colorful and shining smoke, staggering zombies, and many more bizarre scenes that appeared one by one and mixed together, like a puzzle scattered on the ground being haphazardly pieced together by an ignorant child - more like a dream fragment with no rules and no meaning, dreams and nightmares intertwined, piling up layer by layer in front of Rhodes.

Rhode frowned, straining to find the initial pure white light amidst the complex, kaleidoscopic scenery. It pointed the way forward like a guiding lantern in the darkness. To him, the light was more like a fishhook, catching his soul and leading it out of the deep sea filled with demons and monsters.

But that's not such a bad thing, is it?

The strange scenery around gradually lost its color, shattered, and then reorganized into a long corridor like a hospital corridor. The lights were cold and the silence was a little creepy.

"Am I back?" Rhodes reached out and carefully touched the Japanese sign on the wall. It felt cold. "It seems like I'm back... and why am I in Japan? No... that's not right."

[Floating up]

The task reminder is still hanging in a corner of the system interface, very eye-catching.

It told Rod - you are still in hell - a reminder that seemed too blunt and cruel.

"Tsk."

Rhode suppressed his joy, gripped his rifle tightly, and walked slowly along the corridor towards the light. He didn't want to repeat the tragic experience he had in the other world.

He had been lured into a trap by false hope so many times that he was now somewhat suspicious.

The hospital corridor hadn't changed since Rhode's arrival. Instead, blurry black figures appeared behind the opaque glass of the ward doors on both sides of the corridor. They placed their hands on the glass, leaving behind incomplete handprints. The handprints overlapped, soon covering the entire glass.

Rhodes didn't want to know what those things were. When faced with these strange things, unnecessary curiosity would only kill him. Perhaps there were many more... He suddenly noticed that there was a room that did not have this problem. Even the door was only half-closed.

"..." Rhodes summoned the system interface and took a quick look. The top still displayed "Ascending", but there was a new prompt:

You are in Limbo

Limbo? Limbo, in Christian texts, is the resting place for souls whose sins have neither condemned them to hell nor qualified them to enter heaven. It also appears in Dante's masterpiece, "The Divine Comedy."

But apart from this, the system did not provide any further explanation of [Spiritual Prison], only a brief description of this "transition zone between reality and illusion".

"He's so frugal with words," Rhode grumbled quietly. Talking to himself was a way for him to relieve his stress. "Do I have to investigate every single place like an investigator? That's really..."

A faint creaking sound came from the half-open ward door.

Rhodes stopped abruptly, his finger on the trigger of his rifle. His hearing was sharper than a normal human's, allowing him to pick out more details from the sound—it was like someone getting up from an old wooden chair or a bed. The sound wasn't loud, but it was jarring in the dead silence of the hospital corridor.

Then came the sound of slippers rubbing against the ground, getting closer and closer, and the person in the ward looked like he was about to come out.

"..."

Rhodes frowned and gripped his rifle tightly, pointing the muzzle at the ward door.

A pale, white hand slowly pushed the door open, but only slightly, as if something horrible outside was about to break in. A few seconds later, straight black hair first drooped from the gap between the door and the door frame, and then—

The girl with long black hair cautiously leaned half of her body out. She first looked at the pure white light at the end of the corridor. She looked quietly for a few seconds before she looked at the other end of the corridor as if she had realized something belatedly.

She saw Rod.

Rod saw her.

The azure and emerald green eyes looked at each other, both filled with unexpected surprise.

"Human...? A new... dream?" The girl's emerald green eyes were filled with confusion, but when her gaze fell on the rifle in Rhodes's hand, a hint of fear and worry climbed onto this lovely face, "Anata wa..."

The girl saw the face of the man in front of her clearly - silver-gray hair, deep blue eyes with scrutiny and the same doubts as hers, handsome face but a little childish, looking like a teenager who had just reached adulthood - but he was wearing an ill-fitting military uniform, fully armed and murderous.

【Language module loading】

The system's notification sounded, and Rhode felt a stabbing pain in his head, causing him to subconsciously purse his lips. But after just a few breaths, he no longer had to worry about the language problem.

"What's your name?" Rhode asked. He felt that the girl in front of him looked familiar, but his memory was still a little fuzzy and he couldn't remember it for the time being. Of course, this didn't stop him from continuing to ask, "Also, please tell me where this place is?"

How could he actually encounter a rational, normal human being here?! Rhode frowned, pondering the possibility of a trap, while he never moved his gun.

"Eh? Japanese?"

The girl's surprised expression was equally adorable, but the dusky hue between her eyebrows and eyes gave her a hint of sadness. Anyone could see that she was not doing well, as if she was suffering.

"Asuka Ikiki."

The girl whispered, a glimmer of hope rising in her heart:

"My name, and this place, this is just my dream... I dream every night, dreaming of all kinds of monsters, dreaming of myself... dreaming of poor people being tortured, these are too real, too real to be dreams."

At least the pain is real.

With her hands curled up in front of her chest and her fingers nervously twisting her hospital gown, the girl seemed to have not talked to anyone here for a long time and wanted to say everything in her heart.

"This isn't a dream world," Rhodes interrupted her rudely. He frowned, raised the muzzle of his gun, and held up his left hand. "This isn't a good place. If you think you're dreaming, wake up quickly or go back to your ward and don't come out."

"it is good."

The girl nodded obediently and returned to her ward, but the next second, she poked her head out again and asked Rhodes:

"We will again..."

Sinking

[Pollution points in the other world increased by 1]

The sudden system notification froze Rhode's expression. He slowly turned around, leaning against the wall of the hospital corridor. While keeping a vigilant eye on the girl, he looked in the direction they had come from.

The lights along the entire hospital corridor began to flicker, and between them, the doors of the wards opened one after another, revealing horrific patients with needles sprouting from their skin. Their palms were pitch black, oozing foul, rancid blood. They staggered or crawled slowly across the floor, mumbling in agony.

Without hesitation, Rhode immediately pulled the trigger at the monsters. Under the gunfire, gray-black blood splattered on the bodies of the needle-injected patients, but what flowed out from the abdominal wounds were plastic IV tubes stained with blood and pills of the same color.

Even if shot in the head, the monsters would still stagger forward. Only by breaking the leg joints or spine could they be stopped. Tall medical staff began to appear in the depths of the suddenly long hospital corridor - their bloodstained medical uniforms tightly wrapped around their short and strange limbs, making their walking posture like unlubricated machines.

The dilemma before him made Rhodes frown. He began to wonder whether he should turn around and rush into the pure white light. However, the latter's location was much farther away than when he first came here - it was as if someone had intercepted Rhodes' journey and forced him to stop here.

At this moment, the black-haired girl suddenly spoke:

"If you simply want to [wake up], you can choose to be [killed]. As long as you die here, you will wake up from the dream, but it will be more painful."

Rhodes turned slightly and saw from the corner of his eye that the girl was still standing at the door of the ward. Her face was still as sad as before, as if death and being killed by monsters were just trivial daily things to her.

"I won't surrender," Rhodes replied calmly, replacing a new magazine in his rifle. "If you want to [wake up] now, then commit suicide. At least it will be more comfortable."

"No, I've tried," the girl shook her head, her black hair swaying with her movements. "I've tried to commit suicide, but in the end, only by being [killed] can I [wake up], I've tried... many, many times."

When he met those emerald green eyes, Rhode already knew what the girl was thinking, but he simply turned his head and continued shooting at the approaching monsters:

"Don't force it."

"I won't die," the girl whispered. "I'll wake up in a hospital bed, every time."

"I'm not one of those monsters."

"If you could kill me completely," the girl thought of this possibility, her lips curled up slightly, "that wouldn't be a bad thing. At least I wouldn't have to suffer this torture anymore."

"..."

Rhodes stopped pulling the trigger of his rifle, twisted his body, pulled out the M9 pistol from his holster, pointed it at the girl's head, and before shooting, he said:

"One last question, Miss Asuka Ikiji, do you want me to [kill] you?"