Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 783 - 781: Magazine

After their two victories, the other duels were also nearing their conclusions.

Bell Tower's Eric, transformed into a fixed artillery piece, had begun by unleashing a blanket of energy-based spells, seeking to drown his opponent with a dazzling barrage of magical firepower.

His opponent, Paranoia, clad in a simple and elegant dress, lightly tapped the ground, releasing a curtain of darkness that shrouded the entire Dueling Field and blocked the view from outside.

When the veil of darkness lifted, the only one left standing was Paranoia, holding a dagger, drenched in blood, and smiling upward.

Eric had been sliced into more than twenty pieces, scattered around the Dueling Field, barely clinging to life thanks to the Dueling Field's life-preserving effects until he could be treated by the Bell Tower association.

The battle in the second Dueling Field was slightly less one-sided. Priest Hessenberg from the Temple Knights and his opponent from the Monster Alliance traded blows in close combat. They battered each other, leaving the Dueling Field pockmarked and cratered, with the priest eventually claiming victory. Why a priest, who should be in charge of confessions and preaching, was so capable of fighting... well, that remained unknown.

On the third Dueling Field, Death Soul and his opponent climbed into the arena and then fell into silence, standing still without moving. Just as the audience outside was puzzled, Residual Sound from the Ninth Division of the Japan Islands Supernatural Affairs Investigation Bureau suddenly fell backward, fainting, and was declared defeated—probably due to some sort of psychic ability.

The fourth Dueling Field continued the style of the previous round. The average-looking young man in prison garb, Hundred-faced Demon Throat from Gen-Sys Biotech Company, turned his bodily organs into monstrous forms—bloated and grotesquely terrifying—upon entering combat mode. His opponent, God of North Wind from the Gru Super Psychology Department, clad in a Platinum Dual-color Gorgeous Battle Suit, summoned modern weapons out of thin air—missiles, cannons, heavy machine guns, and autocannons—to suppress the advancing Hundred-faced Demon Throat with firepower. In the end, he secured a victory in the Dueling Field by a slim margin of 10:9.

Li Ang sat in the audience and watched a few more rounds of the duels before he greeted Mule and logged off to return to the real world.

His reasons for logging off were: first, the sixteen-day schedule was long, so there was no rush for a day or two. Secondly, even if you climbed to a higher floor early, you would still face powerful enemies allocated by the System, and if you were defeated, your ranking would still drop. And lastly... Li Ang had class tomorrow, and staying up late was not good for him.

「Experimental High School, classroom, during the break.」

Li Ang was sitting at his desk, forehead pressed against the tabletop, fingers sliding across his smartphone, intently reading the text on the screen, occasionally exclaiming with a "HMM" or "HUH."

Wang Congshan, who was tidying her desk, glanced at him without much surprise.

Long ago, schools everywhere started allowing students to bring their phones, and to even keep them turned on during class—mainly to ensure all residents could be promptly notified about any emergencies or abnormal events. For those residents without smartphones, the Special Affairs Bureau even provided them with free phones—linked to their identity cards and not for sale, with any buying or selling being pursued.

However, with the end of the term approaching, most students still wouldn't take out their phones to play; that was more Li Ang's style.

"What are you looking at so intently?" Having tidied her desk, Wang Congshan casually swept her hair back behind her ear and leaned in, curious to catch a glimpse of Li Ang's smartphone screen.

The latter, without lifting his head, said, "I'm reading 'The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years All Alone in an Uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oronoke; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With An Account How He Was at Last as Strangely Deliver'd by Pirates.'"

"???" Wang Congshan was taken aback. "What did you say?"

"In short, 'Robinson Crusoe.'"

Li Ang leisurely scrolled through his phone screen and said indifferently, "That bit of text I just read is the original title that Daniel Defoe, the founder of realism in British literature, gave to his novel. 'Robinson Crusoe' is an abbreviation of the full title. Defoe was a real connoisseur of such things. How about it? Sitting with me, isn't it like learning something new every day?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"Wow, what a wonderfully 'practical' piece of knowledge," Wang Congshan retorted, rolling her eyes. "What's with you reading novels lately? Weren't you always into magazines like 'Science,' 'Nature,' 'The Lancet,' 'Physical Review Letters,' and 'Jane's Defence Weekly' before?"

Li Ang responded indifferently, "I still read them. It's just that my knowledge in the medical field is now fully stocked up, and I'm about to publish a paper on solving cancer. So, I've got time to focus more energy on literature."

"I believe you," she said.

Wang Congshan smirked, remembering times Li Ang had rambled on to her about becoming a doctor or something. Becoming a doctor was probably placed between "being the first person to set foot on Mars" and "finding a youthful and beautiful heiress worth billions to mooch off" on his list of life goals.

"Then tell me, what is the gist of this paper on solving cancer?"

"It's quite simple." Li Ang lifted his head and, raising a finger, said earnestly, "Immigration. One in every five deaths in the world is due to cancer. But in Syria, there is only one cancer patient for every 120 deaths. If we just immigrate to Syria, we could lower the cancer incidence rate worldwide. I've already written the paper, and it's just a matter of time before it wins a prize at some youth science competition. There are still a few slots open for co-authors. If there's a middle or high school student willing to sponsor 450 yuan, I could let them get their name on it as a co-author and maybe win an award together, or something like that. Are you interested?"

"No, sorry."

Wang Congshan shook her head, recalling a news report she had seen on TV not long ago.

As the killing game continued to produce extraordinary items, the technologies of real-world companies were making leaps and bounds, with one previously unsolvable disease after another being conquered. Companies like Gen-Sys Biotech Company, and Prometheus Laboratory Company—which wielded considerable clout in the United States—had been setting up numerous branches and research institutions in South America, Africa, and India, under the guise of experimenting with new therapies to recruit volunteers.

In the past, so-called experimental new therapies were often met with societal skepticism over safety and ethics, and many pharmaceutical companies were mired in scandals. But now, the killing game greatly shortened the time to achieve scientific results, increasing the efficiency of success, so medical groups sometimes preferred to risk ruining their reputation to conduct ethically dubious experiments in secret. It's like rowing against the current—not to advance is to fall back. If you don't conduct experiments and achieve success, other companies will easily surpass you. Thus, more underdeveloped areas with less connectivity became the preferred locations for multinational medical groups to establish their research institutes.

Recently, there was news that Gen-Sys Biotech Company had an incident at one of its pharmaceutical research bases located in a valley in southwest India, where volunteers attempted to escape. Gen-Sys Biotech Company officially announced that the patients had a sudden mental breakdown and posed no serious threat, but from photos taken by the public, it was evident that India had dispatched tanks and armed helicopters to assist Gen-Sys Biotech Company in conducting a thorough search of the valley. At night, explosions and towering flames could be heard and seen from the valley...