Chapter 332: South Park (7)
When Randy ran back into the bus, his wife started to open her mouth to fire curses at him, “Randy, what the hell are you doing?”
Randy tried to catch his breath and replied with a serious face. “I got a very good shot of it, Sharon.”
As he finished, the whole bus started to shake. It seemed the two giant guinea pigs who were lying on the bus were losing their patience.
Rat tat tat tat…
The rifle started to unload. This time, Feng Bujue had taken out his own Mad Moxxi’s Bad Touch and started to shoot at the creature. After the first round had been unloaded, the fire element of this weapon was triggered as it lit the guinea pig with the yellow and brown stripes on fire. The giant monster instantly crawled down from the top of the bus and rolled about on the street, trying to douse the fire on its back.
“As I expected… things that do not come from this have some effect on these guinea pigs,” Feng Bujue said as he summoned Death Poker. He opened the cards in his hand in a fan and tossed out a straight flush. The Sorcery Weapon had a homing ability. Furthermore, Feng Bujue now possessed the ability Soul’s Eye, so he was able to accurately control where the attack of the cards was going to land. Therefore, with the sound of flesh tearing, the Death Poker cut through the eye of the other giant guinea pig. After the monster was hit by this extremely painful attack, it scurried away from the bus. Seeing this work, Feng Bujue felt more confident in himself. At least for now, he had found a way to push the monsters back without exhausting too many resources.
“None of you are hurt, right?” Feng Bujue rushed into the bus and comforted the family of three. Without waiting for them to respond, he quickly continued speaking. “We need to leave this place as soon as possible. Quick, follow me.”
The three did not waste time. Seeing that the giant monsters had temporarily stopped their attack, they swiftly followed Brother Jue out of the bus. With Feng Bujue leading the way, the four ran in the direction of the small town’s shopping mall.
“Where are we going?” Randy was running at the back of the group. He did not forget to use his video camera to record all this while providing his own narration.
“The shopping mall,” Feng Bujue answered.
“Why are we going there?” Randy asked again.
“The walls there will be thick enough to hold off against the giant monsters, and the place will have more than enough resources to ensure the survival of the people,” Feng Bujue answered in a logical manner. Naturally, he could not say, ‘The quest that I was given was to escort the three of you safely to the shopping mall.’
“Oh, right! We will run into other survivors there. Perhaps someone will know what is going on,” Randy said by way of explanation. Feng Bujue did not comment about this even though he knew quite well what was happening and the reasoning behind this tragedy. This big calamity would go on for at least one more night, and the person who would end the tragedy would defeat the boss of these monsters at breaking dawn. The boss was, of course, none other than the Head of Homeland Security.
They would only need to wait until the following afternoon, and the monster in the shape of a human would be exposed. Then, the Peruvian Flute Bands who were quarantined and arrested would be released, and the tragedy would be avoided. In other words, there were at least ten more hours to spend inside this Solo Nightmare Scenario.
…
Inside the Peruvian deep jungle, the small moustache and the tall officer were leading the way while studying the map. The five kids followed them close behind.
“I don’t know, Lenski. This entire area of Peru isn’t even charted on the map,” the tall officer who walked at the front of the door commented as he looked at the map that he held before him. So, it had been revealed that the pilot with the small moustache’s name was Lenski.
“This whole valley is strange,” Lenski replied. It was clear that he was feeling a bit uncertain and anxious. “Just look at the size of that fruit…”
One would find it hard to blame Lenski for his lack of composure. The place that they were in, only the trees were of normal size, but everything else was incredibly gigantic. On the wet marsh ground, there were giant apples the size of humans, and high on the vines, there were peaches the size of bathtubs. Further in the distance, in the deeper part of the jungle, there were spider webs the size of a football fields, covering the air…
“Ain’t that a peach? And how do you like them apples?” Lenski commented. These were all innuendoes for… well, you understand.
“Take a look at this!” the taller pilot shouted. Clearing away the jungle that surrounded them, a giant wall suddenly appeared to block their way.
“It looks like… a beehive?” the tall one said.
“Oh my god…” Lenski gasped in shock. Once they got closer, they realized how big the beehive was. The height was as tall as a cliff, and when standing underneath the beehive, one was unable to see the sky.
“Dude, what is this place?” Stan, who had been following behind them, finally asked. Lenski and the taller co-pilot were obviously taken by surprise due to the scene that opened before them. The two had their eyes frozen in shock, and their mouths were hanging half open as they replied numbly, “It’s like… an unknown valley that time forgot where everything grows huge.”
Craig began his mockery with his expressionless face again.
“That’s a shock…” He paused for a second before adding, “I decided to follow you guys, and now I am in the land of the giant lost world.”
Stan replied with clear annoyance in his voice, “Craig, it isn’t our fault! You make it sound like we always want to be in situations like this. We don’t have any choice.”
“Yeah, stuff just happens,” Kyle concurred.
“Stuff just happens?” Craig repeated what was said in a flat and unamused tone.
“That’s right!” Kyle replied with a deep frown between his eyes.
“You just wind up being sent by the government to take down the city of Lima only to end up at the Land of the Giant lost world.” Craig concluded again.
“That’s right,” Cartman said.
“You know what stuff happens to most kids?” Craig used an example to push his sarcasm further. “They fall off their bikes, they get into fights with their parents, they get swindled out of their birthday money…”
Lenski broke up the kids’ conversation. “Look, no matter where we are, I think we’d better keep moving…”
Suddenly, Kenny ran forward and pointed at a spot behind the two pilots and used his muffled voice to warn them. “Hey, watch out!”
His warning came a bit late. In that moment, two big blobs of sticky yellow substance dropped from the sky and splattered all over Lenski and the taller co-pilot. Without giving the two of them any chance to react, giant pincers poked out from inside the beehive and snapped the two government officials in half like twigs, and their dead bodies were dragged inside the comb. Seeing the devastation that occurred before their eyes, the kids screamed their heads off as they ran back into the woods.
The five escaped in a panic. After running for who knew how long, they stopped after the tiredness caught up to them. After they got some rest to catch their breath, none of them could tell the route that they had come from earlier. But sitting there and waiting was not the solution. Furthermore, the kids had energy to spare, and they did not need to rest for that long. Therefore, they soon decided to continue their journey of exploration. The surrounding woods had turned darker and thicker than before. The moonlight was not clear enough to cut through the foliage for them to see their way. However, the boys had surprisingly good survival skills. This was probably because they had been in similar situations more times than they should have. They worked together to build a torch. Stan raised it to light the way and led the group forward. But honestly… even they had no idea where they were heading.
After walking for about half an hour, Kyle looked around their surroundings and observed, “I think we are just heading deeper into the mountains.”
Cartman raised his finger to point in a random direction and suggested, “Yeah, maybe we should start heading that way.”
Kenny appeared to be rather angry and disappointed. He used his muffled voice to say, “I think we’re dead.”
At that moment, Kyle was suddenly given a glimpse of something. He pointed to the right and shouted, “Hey, hey! Look at that!”
Hearing that, the other boys turned around as well and saw that… more than ten meters away, in a swamp that was overgrown with bush, there was a giant shadow. They came closer to take a better look and realized it was a building of sorts made from stone and brick. The building looked like the entrance to some kind of ruin. It was built using giant bricks and it reached up to three meters high and was shaped in the form of a pyramid. There was a door in the middle of the building and by the two sides of the buildings stood a totem made from stone each. They were of unknown purposes.
“What is that?” Cartman asked.
“I don’t know, looks old,” Kyle answered.
Stan then followed it up with a suggestion. “Let’s see what is in there.”
This naturally triggered Craig once more, and he launched into yet another sarcastic tirade.
“Let’s see what’s in there…” He paused for a moment for the insult to sink in. “That’s why you guys… get into these situations. Because when you come across a spooky ancient ruin, you say, ‘let’s see what’s in there’.”
“It might be a way out, Craig!” Stan argued by shouting back.
Cartman agreed with his friend, “Yea, Mr. Complainy-pants.”
Few minutes later, the five raised the torch and entered the ruin one by one. The interior of the ruin was very well preserved. The carving and the statue had not been destroyed. The floor inside was laid with stone, and there were strange carvings on the stone floor.
“Woah, I don’t think anybody has been in here for centuries.” Kyle looked around and gasped in surprise.
“Yea, totally,” Kenny concurred.
“Hey, you guys, look at this,” Stan, who held the torch, yelled when he passed one of the cave drawings. He seemed to have found something. The kids all gathered around him to take a look, and they stood under one of the walls.
“It’s a wall of ancient drawings.” Stan concluded as he stood before the wall.
“Dude! It’s the Peruvian Flute Band!” Kyle pointed out as they saw the first carving. The carving depicted four people playing some kind of music with instruments.
“I know, and look!” Stan said as he pointed at the second carving. In that carving, there were four caricatures holding instruments and two giant guinea pigs. There were waves coming off the four small characters, and it was depicted as if the guinea pigs were running away from those waves.
“Looks like the… flute music is driving away the giant guinea pigs?” Stan observed with a doubt crawling into his voice.
“Oh! No way, look!” Kyle discovered something else on the wall and then pointed right at it. The third picture was the carving of the Peruvian Flute Band that appeared in the previous carving, but this time, there was a cage surrounding them.
“The flute bands are put in prison!” Kyle said. “Just like what happened!”
Stan’s torch slowly moved to reveal the fourth picture. “And then… the guinea pigs killing people…”
The fourth picture depicted the giant guinea pictures assaulting the people and destroying buildings.
“And then…” The group’s eyes collectively moved to the last carving. Then several seconds of silence descended. The four main characters looked at the last carving in shock and awe. Finally, it was Cartman who first broke the silence.
“Dude! It’s Craig!”
Craig was initially ignoring these four idiots, so he had been wandering about in the shadows behind the ruins, waiting for the time to pass. But to his surprise, he suddenly heard his name called.
“What?” Craig was first startled before he hurried over. He pushed through the group of four to squeeze to the front and finally saw the last drawing. On that carving, there was a depiction of someone who looked suspiciously like Craig, but he was in the adornment of a God, with sunlight radiating all over him. He held a long lance in his arm and aimed it right at a strange-looking giant guinea pig.
“What the f*ck? That is Craig!” Kyle exclaimed. Even Craig, who was normally unfazed by anything, was flustered by this discovery. He also looked numbly at this cave carving that was left behind in this ruin probably from hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
“Dude, Craig, what is going on?” Stan asked.
“I have no idea,” Craig answered truthfully.
“Well, do you mind telling us what you’re doing on an ancient Incan wall, Craig?” Cartman interrogated.
“I don’t know…”
…
On the other side, back at the American Department of Homeland Security, inside the office of the Head of Homeland Security.
“There is now word of huge bee hives forming in cities across the US and Canada.” An official raised the document that he was holding to look and reported, “Europe and China are reporting deaths by guinea pigs in the tens of thousands.”
The Head of Homeland Security assumed his leader pose calmly and sat there while saying, “And how are the efforts to contain all these going?”
“It’s bad, sir,” the official replied. “It seems like we have no way of stopping it. We’ve lost complete control.”
“Oh hahaha… Ah hahaha…” The Head of Homeland Security opened his fingers up like claws, raised his arms, stood up, and laughed into the sky.
“Uh… sir?” The other people in the office looked at him in shock and confusion.
“Oh…” The Head of Homeland Security sat back down in the chair and stopped his laughter. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just thought of a funny joke.”
The group of officials had their intelligence lowered once more, and they believed this obvious lie that was told to their faces.
“Oh, hahaha…”
The Head of Homeland Security instantly changed the subject. “Alright, back to the crisis. Get the jets ready. I need to get to Machu Picchu.”
“Huh? Machu Picchu, sir?” a soldier repeated in befuddlement.
“Yes, I need to be taken to Machu Picchu. Have you lost your hearing?” the Head of Homeland Security scolded sternly.
One of the officials who wore a blue suit asked, “But… sir, what could possibly be at Machu Picchu that will help the situation?”
“Am I in charge or not?” The Head of Homeland Security roared over the question.
The group looked at each other in consternation and confusion, but no one dared speak up or deny the order.
…
After exhausting about half a deck of his Death Poker, Feng Bujue finally managed to bring Stan’s father and mother as well as his big sister to the parking lot before the shopping mall. But the electronic shutters of the shopping mall had already been lowered. It appeared like the people hiding inside had already sealed up the entrance.
“Is there any other entrance to get into this place?” Feng Bujue asked while he was running. “Like a back door, side door, underground sewer, or something like that.”
It was not an option to break down the shutters because that would be letting the monsters into the shopping mall.
“Yes, but the back door is quite far away from here. We will need to walk for another three blocks before we reach it,” Sharon replied nervously. Feng Bujue lifted his head to assess the situation around him, and it was definitely not optimistic. There were more than a handful of giant guinea pigs around them, and there were already five to six of them within his view. If he chose to take the longer detour at this moment, there was a very high chance that he would attract more monsters that were now rampaging around the shopping mall.
“There is no other choice. We will have to get up to the roof,” Feng Bujue said as he tossed back a bottle of Life Points Recovery Points. That made his Life Points recover up to around sixty-five percent. Then, he activated the Body Enhancement Spell. He did not stop to give much explanation. He returned the rifle back into his inventory and then picked Randy up with one hand and started to run ahead as fast as he could. The shopping mall was a five-story-high building, but its height was surely lower than the surrounding nearby apartment buildings, and the roof of this shopping mall was about ten meters off the ground. But Feng Bujue had confidence with regards to what he was about to do. With a running start, he leaped into the air, stepping on some of the thin windowsill and the protrusions of the outer wall. Using both of his arms and legs, he leaped and kicked his way up onto the rooftop while carrying Randy.
Randy would not stop screaming throughout the whole process, but when he was placed on the rooftop and the man found his footing, he immediately turned to the camera and continued his narration. “Oh, Oh my God! Beep just brought me up here. Hey, man, would you wave at the camera?”
Feng Bujue was too lazy to care about him. He dropped his backpack that was on his back, and with one hand on the edge of the roof, he leaped over the edge. He used the spider web glove that he wore on his right hand to grab onto the edge of the wall, and combined with a unique posture, he slid down the surface of the wall vertically. When he landed, he realized that he did not suffer from any fall damage.
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” Feng Bujue shouted at the mother and daughter, Sharon and Shelly, who were looking at him with terror and fear frozen on their faces. That was because there was already a giant guinea pig that was approaching them from behind.
“Ah!” A light bulb came on in Sharon’s mind. While the scream continued to escape from her mouth, she pulled her daughter along and started to run. Feng Bujue knew that he would need to carry both of them with him up the roof of the building at the same time, or else the one left on the ground would be dead by the time the guinea pig reached them, which was not going to be that long from now. The side quest’s objective was for Feng Bujue to bring Stan’s parents and his big sister safely to the shopping mall. Obviously, the whole family had to be safe, and none could be sacrificed, or else when Randy was taken up to the rooftop, the system would have announced to Feng Bujue that he had already completed the side quest. In other words, if any of the three NPCs died in this stage, all the effort Feng Bujue had put in so far would have been for nothing.
“This side quest is truly killing me,” Feng Bujue lamented under his breath. He tossed the girls over his shoulders and he quickly turned around to face the shopping mall.
“It was already quite difficult and troublesome when I was carrying one person on my back. Even then, I already had to use the combination of my free hand and both legs to hike up the wall of the building. And now I am tasked with carrying two people,” Feng Bujue murmured to himself. “There is only one chance. Either I succeed or I fail…”
With that in mind, Brother Jue had already started to gather energy underneath his feet. This leap was going to be far more powerful than the leap he performed when he previously jumped up to the rooftop of a four-story building with one move. The ground under his feet started to break and crack the moment his feet left the ground.
Feng Bujue used Soul’s Eye to hypothesize the result of this leap. He knew that it was no problem sending the two NPCs up onto the roof of the shopping mall, but himself…
Three seconds later, with two people lying across Feng Bujue’s shoulders, Brother Jue flew up to the edge of the rooftop, but the height was still not high enough. He saw nothing in sight that he could step on to allow him a footing to push himself further up into the air. Therefore, he forced his arms to push, and he shoved the two over his shoulders up into the air.
When Sharon and Shelly flew over the edge of the rooftop and landed on solid ground, the system announcement came punctually.
“Side quest completed.”
“Hahaha…” Feng Bujue started to open his mouth to laugh as loud as he could in midair. But it was indeed not the time to celebrate… because he was free falling from a height of almost twenty meters, and there was a giant monster waiting for him to splat onto the ground.