Chapter 2
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, showing them around the building.
“This dormitory building is 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 like something was about to go wrong any second now, Tang Xiao thought.
Red lights flashed as a piercing alarm rang throughout the entire research institute.
Huh? Was he a jinx, too?
Babbit’s expression changed at once. “Damn it.”
Perhaps because he’d been proven wrong so quickly, Babbit looked terrifyingly grim. Still, he immediately stopped the panicked 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’s 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, 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 dark exit.
A single red filament pierced through the doorway.
The moment they saw the blood-red hypha, everyone’s mind felt as if it 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 darted inside like a bolt of red lightning.
Babbit gave up trying to aim. With his accuracy, hitting it was a pipe dream. While the blood-red monster attacked the newcomers, he immediately ran toward the entrance.
Aaaaaah!
“No, don’t come any closer!”
The monster was incredibly fast. As soon as 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 before 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 panicked crowd rushed for the entrance like a flock of obedient sheep. By then, Babbit had escaped through the hole the monster had corroded. Hidden among the crowd, Tang Xiao’s heart pounded as he used the positioning skills he’d honed through years of gaming to keep 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 a force.
He looked down at his ankle. A layer of blood-red muscle fibers covered the slender limb, like a tentacle an octopus might use to hunt.
Fuck! The blood-red monster ignored the corpses littering the floor. Somehow, its orange-yellow vertical pupil had already healed, and it fixed its gaze on Tang Xiao through the gaps between the fibers, revealing the greed and longing within.
Just as he’d expected, it had come for him.
Cold sweat beaded on Tang Xiao’s forehead. Whatever fondness he’d felt because the monster fit his aesthetic had vanished without a trace. A faint 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’d never felt a thing. But for some reason, when he met this monster’s gaze, some instinct inside him screamed for him to run, run! He absolutely could not be eaten!
What kind of game has a romance target who eats the protagonist?! Wouldn’t the players flood the forums and get the game shut down?!
Tang Xiao struggled desperately on the ground, 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 even slightly.
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 into an endless abyss.
The heart rate on the game monitor kept 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 only recalled something he’d once read somewhere: fungi are 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 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 when all that remained was an empty shell, the hyphae couldn’t bear to leave. They wound around it reluctantly, remaking it into a nest suited to their growth.
[Health: 0. Game over.]
[You have unlocked CG: “The Nest”]
Tang Xiao returned to the login screen, still a little dazed. The system displayed the CG he’d 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 to covet them. Blood-red hyphae grew through the gaps in the bones that symbolized death, alluring and eerie, as if 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 help taking another look at the CG.
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 fit Tang Xiao’s aesthetic to a damnably perfect degree.
If only he hadn’t been the one hunted.
The feeling 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 beat something like this?! And the main quest is so bizarre, too!
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 sent, 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 couldn’t 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 a one-star review for its attitude. Just as he was about to exit the game, perhaps because his bad review had done the trick, the frigid customer service agent suddenly became 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, he saw save and load functions there. They definitely hadn’t been there when he first entered the game.
A new feature?
Tang Xiao thought it over and didn’t rush to quit. He checked the save points and found that there was only one so far: the moment he’d 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 darkened instantly. 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’d never touched a dating game. He was a certified straight man through and through. Fighting monsters and figuring out 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 focused on earning affection.
After thinking it over, Tang Xiao decided to play a few more rounds and see what happened.
But this 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 and chased after him, then 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 start, 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 went, shielding him from every bullet. It took care of anything that could threaten him 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 if he could finally see the game’s romance route heading in the right direction.
Just as they escaped the research institute and Tang Xiao thought things were finally going to proceed like a normal dating game, the little monster brought him to a safe cave.
Dense hyphae carpeted the soil, like a layer of lichen woven from blood.
When Tang Xiao was set down, he realized something was wrong. The monster’s gaze was still cold and greedy. Even though he didn’t play dating games, 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 he’d hidden against his chest—the one he’d snatched from Babbit while escaping—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, splitting the lichen. Tang Xiao seized the chance to run, but the enraged hyphae dragged him back into the cave and captured him again.
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 divided into countless tiny strands, too small to see with the naked eye, and burrowed into his body, delving 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 hyphae were invading every 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 retinas. Countless images flashed through his mind like a reel of film, and he remembered a photograph he’d once happened upon.
The true masters of the forest aren’t the trees, but the inconspicuous fungi beneath them. Their hyphae invade the cells of tree roots, becoming the “roots” through which they draw water and nutrients.
When those trees are pulled up by their roots, they bring with them countless dense white hyphae underneath. Those are the true masters of the forest.
And now those hyphae were doing the same thing to him.
The hyphae he’d once seen in photographs now extended across 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 fighting for dear life and tightened their hold. He couldn’t move even a finger. They wrapped around the young man’s mouth, not even allowing him to make 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 lived in the cave had all been driven away 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 the blood flowing from beneath a pure-white offering. The beautiful young man in a white lab coat was pinned firmly to the altar, his pale neck raised 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, 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 hadn’t 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 tried to flee.
The little monster had only been protecting its spoils. He was looking for an absolutely safe place, greedily and hungrily making sure he 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.]