Chapter 3
“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’d unlocked.
The sensation of his throat being forcibly pried open seemed to linger in his mind, so awful he wanted to die.
Tang Xiao had played so many full-dive games, but this was the first time he’d been left in such a sorry state. The game was far too realistic. If it weren’t for the fact that it didn’t hurt, he might have thought he was 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 roused.
Players could fail, but they couldn’t be looked down on!
He wasn’t switching accounts. He’d stick with this main quest—he refused to believe he couldn’t beat it!
However, the little monster was far stronger than Tang Xiao had expected. It was like being blocked by a boss right outside the gate of the beginner’s village. After a while, Tang Xiao had been killed so many times he’d gone numb, restarting as soon as things started to go wrong.
Only the fire inside him kept burning brighter.
Until—Run 39.
“Take a good look, newcomer. 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 a handsome newcomer step out of the group and press his palm against the glass, moving closer until they were almost nose to nose.
...There was no need to look that closely.
Babbit was just about to stop him when something suddenly changed in the laboratory.
428, who had been half-dead in the corner, suddenly slammed into the glass wall. Its hyphae spread out like a net, with eyeballs embedded throughout, staring at the person standing outside the glass.
“Fuck!”
“That scared the hell out of me!”
The new laboratory recruits around them immediately grew restless, each trying to squeeze backward.
Only one person remained where he was.
The newcomer named Tang Xiao seemed not to see the terrifying scene. Beneath the laboratory glass, covered in blood-red hyphae, he stood in his pristine white lab coat like prey caught in a vast red web.
Facing the monster’s stare, the prey’s expression showed no hint of wavering. His gaze slowly swept over the clinging hyphae and the multiple eyeballs scattered across them...
The terrifying itch of hyphae invading him from previous runs seemed to linger in his body.
The blood-red hyphae and orange-yellow eyes had once been his nightmare. They weren’t looking at him as an individual, but at a delicious meal, a prey animal—or even a vessel.
He forcibly suppressed the faint fear rising in his heart. As if he couldn’t see the hunger in those eyes, he smiled brightly at the eyeball so close to him.
“Hello, little monster.”
This time, he would definitely find the right way to defeat it.
They were so close that the laboratory monster seemed about to burst through the glass at any moment. Yet the one or two centimeters between them felt like an uncrossable chasm. Tang Xiao stared at the being on the other side, the one that had devoured him countless times, and raised 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 if answering him, its hyphae swept over the spot where Tang Xiao’s eyes were.
It smells so good.
It smells so good, so good, so good, so good, so good, so good!
From the moment Tang Xiao stepped forward, a certain yearning had begun to howl wildly inside 428.
A yearning that seemed to come from the depths of its genes urged him to capture, to hunt, to devour and merge with the owner of that enticing scent.
428 paid no attention to what Tang Xiao said or did. The olfactory receptors distributed across its body were working at full capacity, catching every scent molecule belonging to him in the air.
But that wasn’t enough.
It had never encountered anything so enticing. It was like the first time the white coats had taken it to the grasslands to learn how to hunt. That primitive, naked desire had almost instantly taken over 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 grew sparser and sparser. 428 didn’t care that it had been burned by the heat. What tormented him more was that the prey drawing him in was moving farther away.
The blood-red monster was no longer as languid as usual. Its multiple eyes turned toward the ventilation duct, then all blinked at once, as if they had reached some kind of agreement.
Become one with him, devour him, then evolve.
It was like a mission engraved in his genes, and an instinct.
...
As usual, Tang Xiao followed the same route as in his previous runs and went with the other newcomer NPCs to the dormitory. He deftly used the sudden blackout to slip past unseen, stole Babbit’s heat-ray gun, then quietly made his way into the kitchen and switched on the fryer.
Over the previous runs, he’d discovered that high temperatures were the monster’s weakness, and 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 dark. Before long, he heard screams from outside.
It was here.
At first, no one noticed 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 a few people blocking its way, without wasting much time on them.
The scent was farther inside.
The crowd fled in all directions, while 428 headed straight for the kitchen. It immediately knocked out the light, plunging the room into darkness.
A low gasp came from the kitchen, its final note trembling involuntarily in the air.
428 thought of the first fawn it had hunted.
That was the first time the white coats had taken it outside. They had placed a little sika deer in front of it.
The fawn’s slender, trembling legs, its frightened eyes, and its instinctive turn to flee had awakened 428’s hunting instincts almost instantly.
Just like now.
Hearing that trembling note from the kitchen, 428’s hunting instincts were roused 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. Afraid that would be a waste, it wanted to draw 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 one prey animal.
It heard the young man’s unsteady breathing as he dodged around the cramped kitchen in a panic, managing each time to evade the hyphae’s attacks by a hair’s breadth.
At this point, 428 wasn’t on guard or taking the situation seriously. It might even have been holding back.
After all, the young man seemed so weak to him.
Just as during its first hunt, when it had watched the little sika deer run blindly through the woods in a panic.
428 didn’t usually toy with its prey, but now it suddenly enjoyed the young man’s trembling breaths and increasingly delicious scent.
He really was an exceedingly greedy hunter.
But the game should end soon. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to fully savor its prey.
Thinking this, 428 picked up speed. Its hyphae tangled together, gradually becoming harder than steel and sharper than blades.
Like a slash from the Grim Reaper, the hyphae swept toward the prey’s legs. This time, 428 didn’t slow down—but an orange-red beam of intense heat shot straight at it!
The laser briefly lit up the surroundings. It saw the pretty prey’s pale, thin lips trembling; his eyes were hidden behind his glasses, but his gun remained astonishingly steady.
The intense heat instantly destroyed two of its eyes. 428 cried out in pain and halted its attack, retreating into the shadows among the kitchen cabinets.
Had he planned this, or was it a coincidence?
428 couldn’t be sure. Even harmless herbivores would fight desperately with their hooves and horns when driven to the brink.
But that usually meant they were already at the end of their rope.
428 wanted to be more cautious, but there was no time. It could hear the reinforcements approaching outside. If it wanted to take this delicious prey away, it had to act now.
The little monster struck. It cautiously threw a piece of glass toward its prey’s face, while hiding its real killing blow in another direction.
The young man reflexively raised his gun and shot at the flying glass, but in doing so, he missed the real attack from his side.
—Got him!
428 could already picture the little sika deer driven to the brink, its vulnerable neck raised. Without hesitation, the hunter hidden in the dark lunged for its vital point.
Crimson instantly stained the white lab coat. The young man reflexively 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, his reason was almost instantly replaced by instinct. Hunger filled his 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 he hadn’t even realized he could make it.
The little sika deer really had been driven to the brink. It stood at the edge of a cliff hidden by the grass, using itself as bait.
The moment the hunter pounced, the positions of predator and prey were reversed.
428 reflexively 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 in that instant all of 428’s biological signals and neurons went haywire. Its spirit, never once shaken since its birth, trembled violently. A complex, unfamiliar emotion spread through every hypha, even though it didn’t know what the 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 quickly withered.
In the extreme heat, the hunter was dragged down into a bottomless abyss along with its prey.