“Cough, cough, cough!”
Back at the game’s login screen, Tang Xiao still couldn’t stop coughing, half-kneeling on the floor.
He didn’t even want to look at the new CG he had unlocked.
The sensation of having his throat forcibly pried open still seemed to linger in his mind. It had been so awful he wanted to die.
Tang Xiao had played countless full-dive games, but this was the first time one had left him in such a miserable state. The game was far too realistic. If not for the lack of pain, he might have thought he was actually about to mutate.
But...
Tang Xiao clenched his fists. Remembering the look in the monster’s eyes at the end of the last run, he couldn’t help baring his teeth in a fierce grin.
His competitive spirit had been thoroughly roused.
Players could lose, but they absolutely could not be looked down on!
He wasn’t switching accounts. He was sticking with this main quest—he refused to believe there was no way he could beat it!
However, the little monster was far stronger than Tang Xiao had expected. It was like running into a boss right outside the gates of the beginner village. After a while, Tang Xiao had died so many times that he became numb to it, restarting the moment things began to go wrong.
Only the fire inside him burned brighter and brighter.
Until—
Run 39.
“Take a good look, newcomers. This is one of the experimental subjects in the Third Eye’s main research project. If this project succeeds, the whole world will tremble beneath its might.”
As soon as Babbit finished speaking, he saw one handsome newcomer step out from the group and press his palm against the glass, leaning in until they were almost nose to nose.
...There was really no need to look that closely.
Babbit was just about to stop him when something suddenly changed inside the laboratory.
428, who had been lying half-dead in the corner, abruptly slammed into the glass wall. Its hyphae spread outward like a net, eyeballs embedded throughout them, all staring at the person standing on the other side of the glass.
“Fuck!”
“That scared the hell out of me!”
The new laboratory recruits around them immediately grew restless, each scrambling backward.
Only one person remained where he was.
The newcomer named Tang Xiao seemed oblivious to the horrifying sight. Beneath the laboratory glass covered in blood-red hyphae, he stood in his spotless white lab coat like prey trapped in an enormous red web.
Facing the monster’s stare, the prey showed no sign of wavering. His gaze slowly swept across the clinging hyphae and the countless eyeballs scattered among them...
The terrifying itch of hyphae burrowing into him in his previous runs still seemed to linger in his body.
Those blood-red hyphae and orange-yellow eyes had once been his nightmare. They hadn’t looked at him as an individual, but as a delicious meal, prey—or perhaps even a vessel.
He forcibly suppressed the faint fear rising in his heart. Pretending not to see the hunger in those eyes, he gave the eyeball inches from his face a brilliant smile.
“Hello, little monster.”
This time, he would definitely find the correct way to defeat it.
They were so close that the laboratory monster seemed ready to burst through the glass at any moment. Yet those one or two centimeters between them were like an uncrossable chasm. Tang Xiao stared at the creature on the other side, the one that had devoured him countless times, and lifted the corners of his lips in a taunting smile.
Come on.
Try killing me again!
In response to his provocation, the monster’s eyeball trembled slightly. As though answering him, its hyphae swept across the place directly opposite Tang Xiao’s eyes.
It smells so good.
It smells so good, so good, so good, so good, so good, so good!
From the instant Tang Xiao stepped forward, a certain yearning had begun howling wildly inside 428.
A yearning that seemed to rise from the depths of its genes urged it to capture, hunt, devour, and merge with the owner of that intoxicating scent.
428 paid no attention to anything Tang Xiao said or did. The olfactory receptors distributed throughout its body were working at full capacity, capturing every scent molecule belonging to him in the air.
But that wasn’t enough.
It had never encountered anything so enticing before. It was like the first time the white coats had taken it to the grasslands and taught it how to hunt. That raw, primitive desire had almost instantly seized control of its mind.
428 couldn’t resist ‘licking’ the man’s eyes with its hyphae.
As expected, it only licked the glass—and was badly burned by the current running through it.
That person left.
The scent molecules in the air grew thinner and thinner. 428 didn’t care that it had been burned by the heat. What tormented it far more was the fact that the prey drawing it in was moving farther away.
The blood-red monster was no longer as sluggish as usual. Its many eyes turned toward the ventilation duct, then blinked in unison, as though they had reached some sort of agreement.
Become one with him, devour him, then evolve.
It was like a mission engraved into its genes.
An instinct.
***
As usual, Tang Xiao followed the same route as in his previous runs and accompanied the other newcomer NPCs to the dormitory. Taking advantage of the sudden blackout, he deftly slipped away unnoticed, stole Babbit’s heat-ray gun, then quietly entered the kitchen and switched on the fryer.
Over the course of his previous runs, he had discovered that high temperatures were the monster’s weakness, while the heat-ray gun was the only weapon he could get his hands on.
The kitchen was the most suitable place for a fight.
Tang Xiao waited silently in the darkness.
Before long, screams rang out from outside.
It was here.
At first, no one realized anything was wrong. Only when 428 forced its way through the dormitory entrance did the crowd scatter in panic like a flock of sheep.
428 casually killed several people blocking its path, wasting almost no time on them.
The scent was farther inside.
The crowd fled in every direction, while 428 headed straight for the kitchen. It immediately knocked out the light, plunging the room into darkness.
A low gasp came from inside the kitchen, its final note trembling involuntarily in the air.
428 remembered the first fawn it had hunted.
That had been the first time the white coats had taken it outside. They had placed a young sika deer in front of it.
The fawn’s slender, trembling legs, its terrified eyes, and the way it had instinctively turned to flee had awakened 428’s hunting instincts almost instantly.
Just like now.
Hearing that trembling note from the kitchen, 428’s hunting instincts surged to life once more. The fawn appeared before its eyes again, except this one smelled unbearably good and possessed something 428 desperately craved.
It didn’t intend to eat this person all at once.
That would be too wasteful.
It wanted to pull him into its hyphae, into its very flesh and blood.
Hyphae spread throughout the kitchen, weaving a silent net for the sole purpose of capturing a single piece of prey.
It could hear the young man’s unsteady breathing as he dodged frantically around the cramped kitchen, narrowly evading the hyphae’s attacks each time.
At this point, 428 wasn’t on guard at all, nor was it taking the situation seriously.
It might even have been holding back.
After all, the young man seemed so weak to it.
Just like during its first hunt, when it had watched the little sika deer run blindly through the woods in terror.
428 normally had no interest in toying with its prey, but now it suddenly found itself enjoying the young man’s trembling breaths and the scent that grew increasingly delicious.
It truly was an exceedingly greedy hunter.
But the game should end soon.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to fully savor its prey.
With that thought, 428 accelerated. Its hyphae intertwined, gradually becoming harder than steel and sharper than blades.
Like the scythe of the Grim Reaper, the hyphae swept toward the prey’s legs.
This time, 428 didn’t slow down—
But an orange-red beam of scorching heat shot straight toward it!
The laser briefly illuminated the surroundings.
It saw the beautiful prey’s pale, thin lips trembling. His eyes were hidden behind his glasses, but the gun in his hands remained astonishingly steady.
The intense heat instantly destroyed two of its eyes. 428 cried out in pain and aborted its attack, retreating into the shadows between the kitchen cabinets.
Had he planned this?
Or was it merely a coincidence?
428 couldn’t tell.
Even harmless herbivores would desperately strike out with their hooves and horns when driven to the brink.
But that usually meant they had already reached the end of their rope.
428 wanted to be more cautious, but there was no time. It could hear reinforcements approaching from outside. If it wanted to take this delicious prey away, it had to act now.
The little monster struck.
It cautiously flung a shard of glass toward its prey’s face while concealing its true killing blow from another direction.
The young man instinctively raised his gun and fired at the flying glass, but in doing so, he failed to notice the real attack coming from his side.
—Got him!
428 could already picture the little sika deer driven to the edge, its vulnerable neck exposed.
Without hesitation, the hunter lurking in the darkness lunged for its vital point.
Crimson instantly stained the white lab coat.
The young man instinctively raised an arm to shield his chest, but the monster tore through his skin and flesh as it climbed over him, like a rose blooming amid slaughter.
The instant 428 touched Tang Xiao’s skin, its reason was almost completely overwhelmed by instinct. Hunger filled its entire mind, and so the little monster failed to notice that this special prey showed no fear at all—
Only overwhelming joy and excitement at being on the verge of success.
Tang Xiao grinned in the darkness, wearing an expression so crazed that even he hadn’t realized he was capable of making it.
The little sika deer truly had been driven to the edge.
It stood at the brink of a cliff concealed beneath the grass, using itself as bait.
The instant the hunter pounced, the positions of predator and prey reversed.
428 instinctively looked up, only to meet the cold, inhuman gaze behind the lenses.
That was the gaze of a hunter.
Fungal bodies had no hearts, yet at that instant, all of 428’s biological signals and neurons went haywire.
Its spirit, which had never once wavered since birth, trembled violently.
A complex, unfamiliar emotion spread through every strand of its hyphae, even though it had no idea what that feeling meant.
Tang Xiao turned without hesitation and plunged his arm into the preheated oil.
His flesh was instantly cooked by the heat, and the blood-red hyphae rapidly withered.
In the extreme heat, the hunter was dragged down into a bottomless abyss together with its prey.