He Zhihan was fucked, so he took that as his cue to haul ass.
The wall was growing eyeballs.
His roommate was now a glorified household shrub.
Why the hell would he hang around?
Sure, the man had been absurdly good-looking, but a pretty face wasn’t worth getting turned into... that.
He Zhihan bolted toward the door and slipped into the dim hallway, locking it securely behind him with a sharp click.
He idly twirled the key card between his fingers as he retreated down the carpet, his dark eyes scanning the shadows while his ears strained for any sound from inside rooms.
But there was nothing, only silence.
Zhihan wasn’t naive enough to take the quiet as a good sign.
Surviving a single night in this hellhole was turning into a massive headache. The walls were alive, the staff were animated corpses, and the house was designed to get everyone butchered before sunrise.
What bugged him was the trigger. He had stared straight at that wall of bloodshot eyes, and nothing had happened to him. Yet the second Ji Changsheng locked eyes with just one of them...
BAM. Instant botanical infestation.
He Zhihan slowed his steps, dark hair spilling into his eyes. "It can’t just be eye contact," he muttered, his mind flashing back to the wet hiss right before the whole freak show started.
He eventually halted at the end of the corridor where the hallway branched toward a grand, sweeping staircase. A massive, floor-to-ceiling window framed the night sky, letting cold, silver moonlight flood the floorboards.
His long shadow stretched across the polished wood beneath his boots.
Then... The shadow twitched.
Every nerve in He Zhihan’s body went taut. He froze, his breath dropping along with the temperature.
Slowly, something grotesque tore its way out of his shadow, rising from the floor like black ink coming to life.
Its body was a lumpy, misshapen mass, a hideous sack of pale, bruised flesh, ugly as a potato, but big enough to kill.
That wasn’t all. Dozens of thin, jointed, spider-like arms sprouted from its torso, dragging along the carpet with a sickening, dry scrape.
Hissssss.
Zhihan’s pupils shrank to pinpricks.
The creature lurked in the moonlight, turning its bloated mass just enough for the light to hit its midsection. Revealing two pale human legs, clad in dark trousers, dangling uselessly from the creature’s gaping, tooth-lined mouth.
Snap.
Crack.
The sound of splintering bone and tearing muscle echoed through the empty hallway.
He Zhihan stood motionless. His face a pale, unreadable slate, devoid of shock and terror.
This sight belonged in a horror movie, but all he could think was, it looks soft. Far softer than the teacher monster.
Slowly... very slowly... a thin, cold-blooded smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. His knuckles popped as his grip tightened around the plastic key card until the edges bit into his skin.
"System, I want to purchase a weapon with my points."
[What would Player He Zhihan purchase?]
"A Rocket launcher."
[Rocket Launcher: 500 Points.]
[Ammunition is sold separately.]
[There are currently two available ammunition types capable of increasing combat effectiveness.]
[Type One: Soul Fragment. A fragment of a soul can be condensed into ammunition. At your current level as a D-Class Player, a single Soul Fragment is sufficient to inflict serious damage on Class D and Class F creatures.]
[Type Two: Sanity. A portion of your remaining sanity can be converted into ammunition. This will weaken the boundary separating you from the NPCs and other beings of the Infinite Endgame.]
Zhihan’s expression flattened. The fleeting spark of satisfaction he’d felt at the chance of blowing a hole through the hallway vanished in an instant.
"So I either slice off a piece of my soul... or go completely out of my fucking mind just to survive on my own terms?"
The System offered no comforting words.
He Zhihan locked eyes with the bloated, flesh-eating mass writhing at the end of the corridor. "Great. Phenomenal choices."
Before the words fully escaped his lips, the creature’s spindly, jointed limbs whipped forward like striking scythes.
Zhihan moved instinctively, the sharpened tips of the monster’s arms tearing straight through the floor he was standing on just a second ago.
The momentum threw him backward, his spine slamming hard into the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the courtyard.
The creature’s bloated body squelched against the floorboards.
Hissssss!
Zhihan threw himself to the left, but the monster launched its entire misshapen weight straight at his chest.
"Hey—!"
Foul, tepid blood sprayed across his shirt, the impact pinning him backward against the glass.
Crack.
Spiderweb fractures spread across it before the entire window gave way.
Together with the monster, He Zhihan went airborne, plunging out into the pitch-black night air toward the stone courtyard below.
BOOM!
Mid-fall, an invisible pressurized force blasted the monster off him into the darkness.
Zhihan, meanwhile, hit the stone hard on his back, breath punched from his lungs.
For several seconds, he lay completely flat in the shattered glass, staring up at the crescent moon.
What was that?
What blasted the creature off him?
If that thing had actually landed on his body, he would’ve been crushed.
Suddenly, Elder Bo’s weathered face appeared in his blurring field of vision, flanked by three other Players.
"He Zhihan! Are you okay?"
"He looks like he’s in shock."
"Did you not see that thing?!"
Elder Bo’s mouth was moving rapidly now. He was shouting at the other players, but the words were drowned beneath the ringing echoing inside He Zhihan’s skull.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself upright, dragging the back of his hand across his cheek to wipe away a smear of black blood.
"What if I don’t want to carve up my soul or sacrifice my sanity?"
There has to be a third option.
[Player He Zhihan should not have rejected the Witnesses.]