After touring the research institute’s residential facilities, they arrived at the dormitory building.
“We’re here. This is the dormitory area. You’ll all be living here from now on,” Babbit said as he showed them around the building.
“This dormitory was built to roughly the same standards as the laboratory. Even if something happens, you’ll be safe as long as you stay inside.” Babbit joked, “Of course, the research institute has an excellent security system. There hasn’t been a single incident since it was built. This is just a precaution.”
That sounded exactly like something was about to go wrong any second now, Tang Xiao thought.
Red lights began flashing as a piercing alarm rang throughout the entire research institute.
Huh? Was he a jinx, too?
Babbit’s expression changed instantly. “Damn it.”
Perhaps because he had been proven wrong so quickly, Babbit’s face turned terrifyingly grim. Even so, he immediately stopped the panicking newcomers. “Don’t run around. Stay quietly in the dormitory lobby. The walls and windows here are made of the same materials as the laboratory. It’s safe here.”
“Excuse me,” Tang Xiao said calmly. “If this is happening because something escaped from the research institute... and it can break through the institute’s buildings, doesn’t that mean it could break through here, too?”
Everyone’s expression changed at his words. Babbit stared hard at Tang Xiao. “What makes you think something escaped from the research institute?”
“It’s just a guess.”
As soon as Tang Xiao finished speaking, the lights around them abruptly went out.
“Did the power go out?” someone murmured.
The dormitory’s backup power supply kicked in immediately. With a grim expression, Babbit stepped forward and tried to open the dormitory door with his access card, but it didn’t work.
“Tch. The dormitory’s main entrance is connected to the research institute’s main power supply.” A trace of agitation appeared between Babbit’s brows. Tang Xiao’s guess had probably gotten to him. If the alarm really had been caused by an escaped test subject, then they were essentially trapped here.
“N-No, that can’t be right. Even if something escaped, the research institute’s exit isn’t in this direction. That’s right. We’ll be fine.” Someone nearby murmured words of reassurance.
“Shh.” Tang Xiao raised a finger to his lips, signaling for everyone to be quiet.
In the silence, the sound grew louder and drew nearer. Everyone instinctively huddled together, staring toward the darkened entrance.
A single red filament pierced through the doorway.
The instant they saw the blood-red hypha, everyone felt as though their minds had been struck with a club. Fear and unease spread uncontrollably.
Babbit’s pupils contracted. He cursed under his breath, drew the heat-ray gun from his waist, and aimed it at the entrance. Before long, the door—which was supposedly made of the same material as the laboratory—dissolved, and the monster they had seen earlier shot inside like a bolt of red lightning.
Babbit immediately gave up trying to aim. With his accuracy, hitting it was a pipe dream. While the blood-red monster attacked the newcomers, he turned and ran straight for the entrance.
Aaaaaah!
“No, don’t come any closer!”
The monster was incredibly fast. The moment it appeared in the doorway, Tang Xiao slipped into the crowd. The panicked newcomers around him were instantly sprayed with blood. The blond man from earlier was the first to fall, his head severed from his body. As Babbit fled, Tang Xiao blended into the crowd and shouted, “The entrance! Run for the entrance!”
The terrified crowd rushed toward the entrance like a flock of obedient sheep. By then, Babbit had already escaped through the hole the monster had corroded. Hidden among the crowd, Tang Xiao’s heart pounded as he used the positioning skills he had honed through years of gaming to stay clear of the monster.
He had a feeling it had come for him.
Just as Tang Xiao was about to reach the entrance, he suddenly stumbled and was yanked to the ground by an unseen force.
He looked down at his ankle. A layer of blood-red muscle fibers had wrapped around his slender leg like a tentacle an octopus might use to hunt.
Fuck!
The blood-red monster ignored the corpses scattered across the floor. Somehow, its orange-yellow vertical pupil had already healed, and it stared fixedly at Tang Xiao through the gaps between the fibers, revealing the greed and longing within.
Just as he had expected, it had come for him.
Cold sweat beaded on Tang Xiao’s forehead. Whatever fondness he had felt because the monster suited his aesthetic had vanished without a trace. A faint trace of fear even crept into his heart.
It was strange. Tang Xiao had played games for years, and even when the most terrifying monsters killed him, he had never felt a thing. But for some reason, the moment he met this monster’s gaze, some instinct deep inside him screamed at him to run, run!
He absolutely could not let himself be eaten!
What kind of game had a romance target that ate the protagonist?! Wouldn’t the players flood the forums and get the game shut down?!
Tang Xiao struggled desperately on the floor, trying every possible way to trigger the main quest. He cursed, pleaded, begged, and even resigned himself to his fate, but none of it made the force gripping his ankle loosen in the slightest.
In the end, even the white light that represented hope was swallowed by those slender, blood-red hyphae. Darkness gradually covered his vision, dragging him down into an endless abyss.
The heart rate displayed on the game monitor continued climbing until it reached a critical point.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
All he could hear was his own heartbeat.
[Warning, warning: Health decreasing.]
Ah.
Tang Xiao had disabled pain feedback long ago, so he felt nothing at that moment. In a daze, he merely remembered something he had once read somewhere: fungi were decomposers.
What an apt comparison.
In the darkness, a person’s thoughts could run wild. Though he felt nothing, he seemed to “see” his flesh gradually being swallowed and decomposed by the hyphae, rotting into mud until it could no longer cling to his bones.
The mass of blood-red growth burrowed into his body, greedily devouring every organ and scrap of flesh without leaving anything behind. Even after only an empty shell remained, the hyphae seemed reluctant to leave. They wound around it possessively, remaking it into a nest suitable for their growth.
[Health: 0. Game over.]
[You have unlocked CG: “The Nest”]
Tang Xiao returned to the login screen, still somewhat dazed. The system displayed the CG he had just obtained.
Blood-red hyphae covered every corner of the dim lobby, but they were thickest around a corpse.
A corpse... already reduced to bones.
The blood-red monster had grown larger. It clung tightly to the bones beneath it like a greedy dragon guarding its treasure, leaving no room for anyone else to covet them. Blood-red hyphae grew through the gaps in the bones that symbolized death, alluring and eerie, as though they had been reborn.
[CG description: “You became the nest in which He grew.”]
Tang Xiao: ...
What the hell? That was it?
Tang Xiao closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, then couldn’t resist looking at the CG again.
The artwork in this game really was frighteningly good. Even in such a bizarre scene, the pale bones and blood-red fungi, the contradictory auras of death and rebirth, movement and stillness—all of it matched Tang Xiao’s aesthetic to a damnably perfect degree.
If only he hadn’t been the one being hunted.
The sensation of being dragged into the abyss seemed to linger in his mind. Tang Xiao silently rubbed his arms and thought ruefully, No wonder this game is so hard. Who could possibly beat something like this?! And what the hell is with this main quest?!
Tang Xiao immediately opened the customer service interface and filed a complaint. His reasons were the inexplicable romance quest and the fact that the romance target had gone straight to eating people.
But no matter how many complaints he submitted, customer service always gave the same cold responses: the game was still in internal testing; his issue had been recorded; once triggered, the main quest could not be changed; and so on.
They might as well have written, ‘Play if you want. If you don’t, get lost.’
Was Tang Xiao supposed to put up with that kind of crap?
He gave the game one star in his final rating and gave customer service another one-star review for their attitude. Just as he was about to exit the game, perhaps because his negative review had finally done the trick, the frigid customer service agent suddenly transformed into a completely different person.
‘We’ve received your feedback, dear! Although the main quest can’t be changed, we’ve added a save feature as an apology~ Please make good use of it and do your best to win over your target~!’
A prompt appeared in the game.
[Return to a save point?]
Tang Xiao froze for a moment and opened the system menu. Sure enough, save and load functions had appeared there. They definitely hadn’t existed when he first entered the game.
A new feature?
Tang Xiao thought it over and decided not to quit just yet. He checked the save points and found that there was only one so far: the moment he had first entered the research institute. To unlock the second save point, he had to complete the first stage of the main quest.
In other words, he had to earn the little monster’s affection.
Thinking about how his last run had ended, Tang Xiao’s face instantly darkened.
What kind of nonsense was this?
It had killed him, and he still had to earn its affection?
As a gaming streamer, Tang Xiao had been through countless games, but he had never touched a dating game. He was a certified straight man through and through. Fighting monsters and figuring out how to clear stages were no problem, but dating games were a complete blind spot for him.
That left him hesitating.
Maybe he should try to buy someone else’s account online? He really didn’t think he could handle a main quest centered on earning affection.
After thinking it over, Tang Xiao decided to play a few more rounds and see what happened.
But the game seemed determined to make things difficult for him.
In the second round, he ran ahead to the dormitory before the monster arrived and was killed.
In the third round, he demanded to leave as soon as he entered the game and was escorted out of the research institute. The monster broke out, chased after him, and devoured him.
In the fourth round, Tang Xiao decided to try a different approach. He tried to raise the monster’s affection and avoid being killed at the very beginning, so as soon as he entered the laboratory, he took advantage of everyone being distracted and shut off the power, hoping to free the monster.
Instead, Babbit angrily ordered the guards to seize him.
Just as he was about to be executed on the spot, the little monster burst through the window and swept him away from the research institute.
So far, this round had felt the most like a dating game. The fungal monster kept him safely tucked away as they fled, shielding him from every bullet. Anything that could threaten him was eliminated before it even had the chance to get close.
Even a die-hard straight man like Tang Xiao smiled after being rescued by the little monster several times, as though he could finally see the game’s romance route beginning to head in the right direction.
Just as they escaped from the research institute and Tang Xiao thought things were finally going to proceed like a normal dating game, the little monster carried him to a secluded cave.
Dense hyphae carpeted the ground like a layer of lichen woven from blood.
When Tang Xiao was set down, he immediately realized something was wrong. The monster’s gaze was still cold and greedy.
Even though he had never played a dating game, he knew that gaze definitely wasn’t meant for a romantic partner.
He was still being treated as food, plain and simple!
As the little monster subdued him again, Tang Xiao struggled to pull out the heat-ray gun hidden against his chest—the one he had snatched from Babbit during their escape—and aimed it at the monster’s hyphae.
He pulled the trigger.
The high-temperature beam worked. It blasted a hole through the mass of hyphae, tearing apart the blood-red lichen. Tang Xiao seized the opportunity to run, but the enraged hyphae dragged him back into the cave and captured him once more.
In his daze, Tang Xiao felt a tingling itch.
The game had no pain feedback, but it hadn’t blocked his sense of touch. Tang Xiao lowered his head and stared blankly as the hyphae split into countless tiny strands, too fine to be seen with the naked eye, and burrowed into his body, forcing their way deeper beneath his swelling skin.
He couldn’t move a single part of his body.
The terrifying itch overwhelmed his mind. Tang Xiao trembled uncontrollably, feeling as though the hyphae were invading every single one of his cells.
No...
Perhaps that was exactly what was happening.
As he neared death, tiny black spots began spreading across Tang Xiao’s vision. Countless images flashed through his mind like a film reel, and he remembered a photograph he had once happened across.
The true masters of the forest weren’t the trees, but the inconspicuous fungi beneath them. Their hyphae invaded the cells of tree roots, becoming the “roots” through which they absorbed water and nutrients.
When those trees were pulled up by their roots, countless dense white hyphae came with them from beneath the soil.
Those were the true masters of the forest.
And now those hyphae were doing the same thing to him.
The hyphae he had once seen only in photographs now stretched throughout his own body.
At the thought of fusing so deeply with this monster on a cellular level, fear surged over him like a tide and swallowed him whole. Unable to breathe, Tang Xiao desperately summoned the system panel, trying to force-quit the game, and shouted,
“Wait! 428, I’m not—Mmph...!”
The hyphae seemed to sense their prey struggling desperately for its life and tightened their grip. He couldn’t move even a finger. They wrapped around the young man’s mouth, refusing to let him utter even a dying whimper.
His muscles were already under the hyphae’s control.
Fuck! You told me this was a dating game?!
The cave was utterly silent. The only sound was the faint noise of swallowing as the hyphae invaded his body through his mouth, forcibly prying open his throat to reach his organs.
The insects and bats that usually inhabited the cave had all been driven from their own nest, as though cowed by some terrifying presence.
Only the monster and its sacrifice remained in the cave. The red lichen resembled an altar, or blood flowing out from beneath a pure-white offering. The beautiful young man in a white lab coat was pinned firmly against the altar, his pale neck arched like that of a dying swan.
Just before his consciousness faded completely, Tang Xiao met the little monster’s orange-yellow vertical pupil.
Its gaze was cold and assessing, tinged with a trace of satisfaction, like a predator with its teeth sunk into its prey’s neck, quietly waiting for it to die.
At that moment, Tang Xiao’s pupils contracted.
He suddenly understood.
Hunters don’t fall in love with their prey, just as tigers don’t fall in love with rabbits, and people don’t fall in love with the food on their plates.
Because from the very beginning, they had never been equals.
It wanted him the way a bear sought honey or a tiger hunted a rabbit. But no one cared what that rabbit thought, or what strange things it did as it desperately tried to escape.
The little monster had only been protecting its spoils.
It was searching for an absolutely safe place, greedily and hungrily making sure it could possess Tang Xiao completely.
Tang Xiao’s own wishes had nothing to do with it.
Because from beginning to end, the little monster had never paid any attention to his actions.
Damn it.
His heart rate peaked, triggering the forced logout mechanism. Trembling, Tang Xiao raised his middle finger at the little monster in his mind.
Just you wait.
I’ll be back!
[Health: 0. Game over.]
[CG obtained: “Strange Tree”]
[CG description: People may never know where this strange tree came from. They only know it grew at an incredible speed, conquering the Earth in the blink of an eye.]