Endless Paradise Chapter 117: This Has Got to Be Cheating

Bai Mu and Yan Yu had barely taken a step toward the exit of the Art Museum before the scene transitioned.

Just like during the Script introductions, this transition stripped them of control over their bodies, forcing them into a cinematic, movie-like perspective.

In the darkness, a screen-like opening sequence appeared before their eyes.

It read: "Detective Conan Special Episode: The Traitor Under the Moonlight."

A silver full moon materialized, illuminating rows of towering skyscrapers below. On the rooftop of one building, a black trench coat fluttered in the wind. A man with long silver hair, wearing a dark fedora, held a gun in one hand and a cigarette between his lips, exhaling a plu of smoke with chilling indifference.

This was clearly not Beika Town; the billboards were plastered with English words rather than Japanese text.

A lifeless body lay at the man in black's feet, the barrel of his gun still smoking. After taking another drag from his cigarette, he pulled out a phone and dialed a number.

"Still no news from Bloodhound?"

"Understood. I will handle this matter personally."

The man in black cast a fleeting glance at the cara before leaping off the rooftop. A second later, a black helicopter ascended from the lower floors. The man hung from the chopper's rope ladder with one hand while continuing to smoke with the other. It was an incredibly stylish move, yet one could not help but worry he might lose his grip and plumt from a height of several hundred ters.

Once the helicopter vanished into the distant horizon, Bai Mu and Yan Yu regained control of their bodies.

The ti of day had shifted from broad daylight to the dead of night. They were no longer in the Art Museum, but standing in a deserted, narrow alleyway.

"What just happened?! How did an F-grade suddenly beco C-grade?" Yan Yu glanced around in bewildernt. They were sandwiched between weathered, ancient walls about ten feet wide and six feet high. Behind the walls stood single-family residential hos unique to Japan.

Bai Mu keenly observed that the windows of the houses were coated in cobwebs and thick layers of dust. These hos had clearly been abandoned for a long ti.

"Did you hear that? That shout?" Bai Mu asked.

"Yeah... loud and clear. It sounded furious..." Yan Yu replied. "I just realized my attention ter has spiked to one hundred percent."

"Mine too," Bai Mu said.

The attention ter had turned a deep, glaring crimson, faintly radiating an illusion of leaping flas. It felt like it should simply be renad the aggro ter.

"That special episode opening sequence we just saw was bad news, wasn't it?" Yan Yu said anxiously. "That silver-haired guy looked like the main villain, Gin. When he said he would handle things personally, he obviously ant handling us."

"Honestly, the plot progression is quite logical," Bai Mu remarked. "First, they sent a minor lackey like Bloodhound to test the waters. Once we dealt with him, it naturally paved the way for Gin's entrance. Still, to orchestrate an entire special episode just for us... the Corrective Force is really pulling out all the stops. I honestly didn't think it was capable of doing sothing on this scale."

"Brother, aren't you being a bit too calm about this? The Script literally jumped from F-grade to C-grade!"

"Panicking won't magically turn a C-grade Script back into an F-grade one, will it?"

Yan Yu choked on her words, though she still rubbed her temples in frustration. This was her first ti experiencing a C-grade Script. Up until now, the only D-grade Script she had ever cleared was the Journey of Death.

After all, not everyone was targeted by Paradise's matchmaking system. Historically, she had always been matched into Scripts that perfectly aligned with her current tier. The only ti she had ever skipped a grade was during her promotion from F to E, where she was preemptively placed in an E-grade Script.

She knew the sheer difficulty of a D-grade Script all too well. Although she had scraped by safely under Bai Mu's leadership, the mont she ca face-to-face with the Witch, she genuinely believed she was going to die right then and there.

If a D-grade Script was that perilous, a C-grade one would be unimaginably worse.

"No, seriously, how does a kid's ani escalate into a C-grade threat?!" Yan Yu voiced her absolute refusal to accept, understand, or agree with the situation.

Bai Mu's inner thoughts were not nearly as placid as his expression suggested. He simply had a habit of keeping his emotions ticulously guarded. In truth, shock and unease had coiled tightly around his heart the mont that voice echoed in his ears.

Even he could not accurately gauge the difficulty of a C-grade Script.

More crucially, both he and Yan Yu were currently subjected to severe restrictions. The vast majority of the equipnt in their inventories was locked out, and their skills and titles remained completely sealed.

Best Friend's Help had also gone on cooldown. Lucy had vanished right after fulfilling his request to help solve the case.

He was now in a state of nearly total resource depletion, with agonizingly few options left at his disposal.

Moreover, judging by the remaining cooldown on his skills, ti had been drastically accelerated once again.

The cooldown tir had ticked down by twenty hours, aning roughly eight or nine days had passed in the blink of an eye.

The situation mirrored their first encounter with the man in black. However, back then, the man had rely spawned behind their apartnt building. This ti, their entire surrounding environnt and the ti of day had been completely refreshed.

He had every reason to suspect that this was an isolated scenario specifically fabricated by the Corrective Force. A so-called special episode was effectively a realm where standard logic and rules no longer applied.

It was a domain where characters from entirely different ani could cross over, or where core narrative settings could be utterly discarded. The main protagonist might never even show up, while minor background characters—the ones who appeared just often enough to seem immune to death—could easily be written off and killed in an instant.

Bai Mu pulled out his phone to check. He was still wearing his white lab coat, and the items he had acquired earlier in the Script were still there, but just as he expected, his phone had zero signal.

"They certainly went all out," Bai Mu comnted. "Preparing a grand, final curtain call exclusively for our execution."

"Did we push our luck a little too far?" Yan Yu muttered, her tone dripping with despondency.

Right at that mont, a dark silhouette materialized on the path ahead.

It was none other than the stylish, silver-haired man in black from the special episode's opening—the authentic, overarching villain of the Conan universe, Gin.

"If you enjoy playing cat and mouse, then I will indulge you." Gin struck an icy, imposing pose, looking just like a runway Model.

Bai Mu had never been the type to sit around and wait for death. Moreover, since he had already succeeded once, he drew the revolver from his inventory, aid dead center at Gin's forehead, and squeezed the trigger.

He completely trusted his aim. At such close range, there was absolutely no chance of him missing, yet the impossible happened anyway.

The bullet slamd into the concrete right in front of Gin, carving out a small crater and sending a few sparks flying into the air.

Gin cast a frigid glare at the impact site. "So eager to die? Then I will grant your wish."

Bai Mu completely failed to understand how the bullet's trajectory had deviated. Feeling a pang of defiance, he fired two more rapid shots, but the man remained utterly unscathed.

Yan Yu's earlier deduction had been spot on: core characters within a Script were protected by special rules.

No matter how ruthless a human assassin might be, they could not realistically compare to sothing like a giant zombie. But Gin was different; he was a fictional ani character brought to life.

A major ani villain was not going to be taken down by two random background extras. Bai Mu reasonably suspected that whenever Gin faced minor characters, he was practically armored with an "invincibility barrier" and a "superman buff." How else could the Script's danger level have skyrocketed to C-grade?

"Hold on a second, friend. This should be our first ti actually eting, right?" he attempted to reason with Gin.

But the man refused to listen, simply raising his handgun and pulling the trigger.

The motion of his shot felt incredibly sluggish. Bai Mu had clearly dodged well in advance, yet the bullet still sohow bit violently into his right arm.

Based on the bullet's original trajectory, that shot should have been physically impossible to land. Yet it struck him anyway, completely defying all logic and reason.

A searing wave of pain washed over him as blood spilled from the fresh wound. Bai Mu's Health instantly took a significant hit. Fortunately, the bullet missed any vital organs, only shaving off fifteen percent.

Not only did this guy possess an "invincibility barrier," but he was also running an "aimbot."

'This has got to be cheating!' Bai Mu roared internally, feeling as though a stampede of ten thousand alpacas was trampling through his mind.