Han Yue thought it over for a moment, then pressed the call button.
But the only response from the phone was the dull, mechanical tone of a failed connection.
He lowered his gaze to the screen and only then noticed the obvious:
there was no signal at all.
“Looks like if I want to see Ada, I’ll have to wait until the Resident Evil 2 instance…
assuming I can survive this one first.”
As that thought passed through his mind, he turned and looked out through the window.
Moonlight poured down over the forests of the Arklay Mountains, painting the entire landscape in a pale glow that only made it feel more sinister.
The woods were dense, silent, and oppressive, as if something monstrous might emerge from the darkness at any moment.
“The main quest is clearly following the plot of Resident Evil 1…
so does Resident Evil 0 count as a hidden quest?”
Han Yue narrowed his eyes and began thinking through the details carefully.
The mission prompt had explicitly stated that hidden quests existed.
Not only that, it had also very specifically restricted him from moving beyond a five-kilometer radius outside the mansion grounds.
And if his memory was right, the location where the events of Resident Evil 0 unfolded was still within that range.
There was also the issue of time.
The main quest required him to survive for thirty-six hours.
But the core plot of Resident Evil 1 was, more or less, just one night.
Which meant the extra time was almost certainly there for a reason.
And the most likely reason was obvious: to give reincarnators enough room to dig into hidden quests beyond the main storyline.
The more Han Yue thought about it, the more convinced he became that his guess was dead on.
But even so, he still hesitated.
Because going there meant real danger.
The forest outside was crawling with zombie dogs.
And even before reaching the forest, he would still have to deal with the zombies inside the mansion itself just to get out.
If his only goal was to clear the instance safely, then the simplest strategy was obvious.
Stay in his room.
Wait for Chris or Jill to show up.
Then latch onto the protagonist route and ride it all the way to the end.
That would be the safest possible clear, no question about it.
But if he did that, then his final evaluation would definitely not be high.
Maybe he needed to get a little more involved.
Besides…
even putting the quest aside, wasn’t Rebecca there too?
Once he made up his mind, Han Yue stopped wasting time.
He quickly searched around his office.
Other than the M9 pistol holstered at his waist, he found nothing useful at all.
No extra ammunition.
No map worth mentioning.
No medical supplies.
Nothing.
Still, for the moment, a gun was enough.
Han Yue slowly pushed the door open.
The corridor outside was silent—deathly silent.
Not a single sound echoed through it.
The lighting was so dim it barely deserved to be called lighting at all, and under that murky glow the hallway looked even more gloomy and oppressive than before.
Han Yue could not help complaining inwardly:
Couldn’t they replace the bulbs with brighter ones?
Then again, this was Resident Evil.
Half the places in this franchise were dark because the lights were broken, and the other half were dark because somebody apparently wanted to save on the electric bill and simply refused to turn them on.
Pitch-black hallways, shadowy corners, miserable visibility—everything arranged on purpose to crank the horror atmosphere to the maximum.
As he made his way toward the mansion’s main entrance, Han Yue remained extraordinarily cautious the entire time.
This might be only a beginner instance, but death inside an instance was still real death.
There were no retries.
No second chances.
No dramatic “load last save” option to bail him out.
“Holy shit—fuck!”
When he reached the corner of a staircase, even though he had been on guard from the start, Han Yue still nearly jumped out of his skin the moment he saw that grotesque, blood-smeared face lurch into view.
Back when he played the games, sudden zombies lunging out from blind spots were already enough to make him jolt.
Now one was standing in front of him in the flesh, reeking of death, letting out a low, beast-like snarl that sounded more animal than human.
Under those circumstances, there probably was not a single ordinary person on Earth who could stay perfectly calm.
Han Yue forcibly steadied himself, drew his gun, and aimed straight at the zombie’s head.
“Bang!”
The gunshot exploded through the corridor.
The bullet punched clean through the zombie’s skull.
With a heavy thud, the corpse collapsed onto the floor and went still.
But the sound of the shot immediately drew the attention of more zombies nearby.
Figures began staggering in from the surrounding halls.
Some wore work uniforms.
Some wore lab coats.
Some of them were already visibly rotting, with flesh hanging loose and darkened blood staining their bodies.
One had an ankle twisted so grotesquely out of shape that it should not have been able to stand at all—yet it still dragged itself toward him anyway.
Han Yue knew at once that he could not stay there.
He had to leave immediately.
Even an elite special unit like S.T.A.R.S.
had suffered heavy casualties in this place.
So what did that make him?
At the end of the day, he was still just an ordinary person with knowledge of the plot.
And right now, that knowledge was his greatest advantage—not standing in one place trading bullets with a pack of zombies.
Relying on his familiarity with the mansion’s layout, Han Yue avoided direct confrontation whenever he could, slipping around corners, changing routes, and doing his utmost to bypass the undead as he ran toward the front door.
At the same time, far away from the mansion, an Umbrella train was cutting through the tracks of the Arklay Mountains.
Its destination was the Executive Training School.
The school had first been built in August 1968, with Marcus serving as its first—and last—director.
On the surface, it had been presented as a place to cultivate talent for Umbrella Corporation.
In reality, it was still just another research site—another hidden facility devoted to viral development.
In 1978, Marcus was removed by the board of directors.
After that, the work of virus development was transferred to the nearby Arklay Laboratory—to the mansion—and continued there instead.
And now, because of the unexplained viral leak at the mansion, Umbrella had dispatched personnel toward the Executive Training School, intending to reactivate the old site and investigate what was happening.
But while the train was still moving, giant leeches suddenly flung themselves at the windows one after another.
Glass shattered.
The leeches poured inside.
And that—that was the true beginning of the story of Resident Evil 0.
Its events took place one day before Resident Evil 1.
Because not long before that, strange serial incidents had already begun occurring around Raccoon City and the Arklay region.
Citizens had been attacked by savage beasts, and some had even been torn apart or bitten to death under bizarre circumstances.
To investigate those incidents, members of S.T.A.R.S.
Bravo Team were dispatched.
But during the mission, their helicopter was forced into an emergency landing due to a malfunction.
After landing, the captain ordered the team to split up and investigate the area.
And it was during that search that Rebecca encountered the derailed train.
What followed after that was the long sequence of events triggered once she came into contact with Marcus—more precisely, with the leech creature that believed itself to be Marcus.
And the plot of Resident Evil 1 would begin shortly after that, when Bravo Team remained out of contact for twenty-four hours and S.T.A.R.S.
Alpha Team was sent out on a rescue mission.
….
On the other side, Han Yue finally made it out of the mansion.
Although he had run into danger several times along the way, his many years of Resident Evil experience had proven surprisingly useful.
Aside from the nausea stirred up by the bloody, grotesque sights all around him, he had already begun to force himself past the instinctive fear zombies inspired.
And coupled with his familiarity with the terrain, that let him stumble his way out with several close calls but no true disaster.
Unfortunately, the forest outside the mansion was nowhere near as peaceful.
It’s not really mandatory—I’ll eventually upload all the chapters here—but it helps a lot in supporting me and allows me to dedicate more time to it.