Chapter 7
As soon as Tang Xiao entered the area where the monster was being held, Rocky hurried to the monitoring station and asked the operator, “Can you pull up the surveillance feed? Can you guarantee it’s safe?”
The middle-aged operator instinctively glanced at Babbit, who was walking toward them. Only after catching Babbit’s look did he slowly pour tea from his thermos into a cup. “Sorry, the surveillance system broke yesterday and still hasn’t been repaired.”
Rocky: “How could something this important be left unrepaired for so long?”
“You don’t know what it’s like in there. 428 struggles violently and is extremely sensitive to sight and light,” the operator said with an awkward chuckle. “Every camera we put in gets damaged. Any light that’s too bright makes it go berserk, and only darkness can keep it somewhat calm.”
“What about the audio equipment?”
“Same problem.” The operator looked away. He clearly felt this was going a bit too far, but there was nothing he could do. Babbit might not be a senior figure, but as an old hand who’d worked his way through several laboratories, his influence and connections were beyond what a newcomer could imagine.
No one would offend him for the sake of a newcomer, even if that newcomer was a genius. When had the organization ever been short on geniuses?
Rocky pressed his lips together. He understood the situation too. Turning to face Babbit, he said evenly, “Mr. Babbit, Tang was someone Dr. Bard had specifically mentioned before, after all.”
“Sigh, I know. I’m worried too,” Babbit said with a false smile. “Besides, Tang Xiao’s vital signs are still fairly stable, aren’t they?”
You call that heart rate and blood loss stable?
Rocky sighed inwardly. There was nothing he could do. Babbit seemed determined to put Tang Xiao through a rough time.
After ten agonizing minutes, Babbit finally relented and told the operator to repair the system as soon as possible. But before they could “repair” the surveillance feed, the door to the buffer zone opened again.
The young man emerged, disheveled from head to toe.
Rocky’s gaze immediately fixed on Tang Xiao.
His once-intact protective suit had been torn into strips, exposing patches of bruised, purplish skin. One lens of his glasses was shattered, his lips were as pale and thin as window paper, and his right arm hung unnaturally at his side, a drop of blood trembling at his fingertips.
He looked like he’d taken a serious beating in there.
Rocky hurried over, took off his own lab coat, and draped it over Tang Xiao’s shoulders. “How are you? Do you need to go to the medical room?”
Tang Xiao silently let Rocky put the coat on him, then said, “I’m fine.” His gaze passed over Rocky’s shoulder to Babbit, who stood with his arms crossed. His voice was cold. “Mr. Babbit, there must be a recording of what happened to me in there, right?”
“Unfortunately, both the surveillance and audio equipment are broken today. I doubt anything was recorded.” Babbit spread his hands, looking utterly innocent, though he was sneering inwardly. He’d expected Tang Xiao might use the incident to complain to Bard. Why would he leave behind evidence?
Little did he know that this was exactly what Tang Xiao wanted.
After all, he couldn’t let anyone find out that he’d made a deal with the monster.
Seeing that Tang Xiao said nothing, Rocky understood how angry he was. To keep the situation from escalating, he half-guided, half-pushed Tang Xiao away. “Come with me to the medical room first. Let’s go.”
Tang Xiao said nothing more. He gave Babbit a long look, made a mental note of it, then let Rocky lead him away.
The doctor in the medical room was the same one as last time. Seeing Tang Xiao again, he calmly asked, “What level of medical treatment do you want? Just so you know, Dr. Bard paid for your previous Level Three treatment. If you want it again, you’ll have to use your own points.”
“Level Three. Charge it to my points,” Rocky answered before Tang Xiao could.
Tang Xiao started to object, but Rocky firmly paid the points and explained, “Level Three treatment can check for lasting complications. 428 is an experimental subject, after all. Who knows whether it carries any toxins? Don’t worry about it. You can pay me back when you have the points.”
Tang Xiao simply looked at him and asked, puzzled, “Why are you helping me so much?”
By ordinary logic, Rocky should have been sucking up to Babbit like everyone else. Instead, he’d given Tang Xiao a heads-up and covered his medical expenses, all right in front of Babbit. It wouldn’t be surprising if that got him ostracized too.
Rocky shrugged. “Just think of it as an investment. Besides, I can’t stand how arrogant Babbit is. He’s only throwing his weight around because he’s been in the organization a long time. He’s no big shot.”
There was a hint of disdain in the blond young man’s voice. It even seemed at odds with the sunny image he usually projected; there was an edge beneath his words.
Tang Xiao narrowed his eyes. He didn’t think that was the whole story, but Rocky clearly wasn’t going to say more. So he said nothing and cooperated with the medical staff through the full course of treatment. His blood loss improved considerably, giving him a fresh appreciation for the organization’s medical capabilities.
“Don’t worry. No matter how bold Babbit is, he won’t kill you outright,” Rocky reassured him when Tang Xiao had recovered. “With the medical technology here, anything short of a fatal injury is no big deal. At worst, he’ll drain your points fast, and you’ll be in pain for a few extra days. This is the kind of underhanded trick he relies on. He wouldn’t dare actually kill you.”
Tang Xiao looked up sharply. “Does he not dare kill a newcomer, or does he not dare kill me?”
Rocky smiled. “You, of course. No one would care if some unknown newcomer died here.”
In other words, that so-called “genius” image had saved his life, along with Bard’s favor.
Tang Xiao had gained a deeper understanding of how cruel the Third Eye was. If he let slip that he wasn’t actually a genius and didn’t even know how to do research, his next stop might be straight into the monster’s maw.
No wonder this game was set to hellish difficulty. He’d thought he was finally on the right track, but it turned out he was still suspended in midair, liable to fall at any moment.
—That was... wonderful.
Was he smiling?
Rocky stared blankly at the curve of Tang Xiao’s lips. Was this how an ordinary person reacted after offending the person in charge of the laboratory, who also held his life in his hands?
“Rocky, you said you wanted to invest in me. I’ll take you at your word, then.”
Rocky was still dazed when Tang Xiao spoke. He took off his broken glasses and handed them to Rocky. “I want the files on the project team that used to work on 428. Can you get them?”
Since he’d already agreed to work with 428, his short-term goals were clear: keep it from being destroyed and causing the main quest to fail, and find a way to raise it into the “King of Fungi.” The two goals could more or less be pursued together, but he couldn’t achieve either on his own. That meant he had to figure out why the previous project had failed.
Seeing that the blond young man still hadn’t moved, Tang Xiao frowned. “Rocky?”
“...Ah.” Rocky came back to himself and reached out to take the glasses. His fingers accidentally brushed Tang Xiao’s, and the warmth of the contact made his heart skip. The words on the tip of his tongue slipped out before he could stop them:
“I’ll look into it and email it to you in a bit.”
After what had happened, Tang Xiao had no intention of going back to the laboratory to look at Babbit’s sour face. He talked with Rocky, then went straight back to his dorm to rest. To his surprise, Rocky sent the research files over not long afterward.
But he soon discovered another problem.
He couldn’t understand them.
Genuine cutting-edge research papers.
Tang Xiao, currently a sophomore: ...This is way too real.
What, did you have to be a biology PhD to play this game? Wasn’t this game a little too ridiculous?
Tang Xiao complained furiously to himself, but obediently opened his attributes and skills pages to look for a way through. There was no way he could understand the papers, but there had to be some opening left for the player.
He quickly settled on the disciplines page.
Based on the ratio the system had given him earlier, one full point of favorability could be exchanged for ten points of subject experience. And right now he had... 20 favorability points? When had he gained another 10?
Tang Xiao was startled. He’d turned off the notification sounds partway through because they were annoying, so he hurriedly checked the system log. Five points had come from the little monster, and the other five from Rocky. Since Rocky’s favorability only counted at half value, that meant he’d actually gained 10 points from Rocky.
That was a lot of favorability all at once. Rocky really was a good guy.
Tang Xiao tried it out, spending one point of favorability on Biology. The progress bar immediately advanced by ten points.
He couldn’t feel any difference. Tang Xiao scratched his head and simply filled the bar all the way to 100.
Biology jumped to Lv. 1 (6/1000).
He looked at the computer again. This time, he really could understand some of it.
Before a certain point in time, this game world’s development had been almost identical to Earth’s. There was just one difference: fungi were universally recognized here as an intelligent species. Although humans couldn’t communicate with them, they knew fungi were spread across the entire world and possessed a degree of intelligence. They even had their own kingdom.
The wilderness had still been dangerous then, but not to the point of being a forbidden zone for humanity, as it was now. Humans and fungi had also managed to coexist fairly peacefully.
The turning point was a major event fifty years ago. Fungi began parasitizing and invading other plants and animals, even encroaching on human territory. Humanity was forced to retreat into cities, while the wilderness—especially forests—became strictly forbidden zones.
From then on, fungi became synonymous with danger in this world. They could infect humans and parasitize plants and animals. The parasitized creatures underwent evolutions that defied the rules of biological development. That was why there were all kinds of bizarre, mutated beasts everywhere in the game, some of which could even wield supernatural powers.
To find out what had happened, humanity once organized a scientific expedition deep into the fungal kingdom in the hinterlands of Meizhou, hoping to find the legendary King of Fungi. No one knew what they encountered there. In the end, only one person returned, already insane and unable to explain what had happened inside.
428 was one of the spores the survivor brought back. It had been about two millimeters in size and was suspected to be a spore of the King of Fungi.
The project’s purpose had been to simulate that King of Fungi. According to current scientific theories, the King could reshape flesh and blood at will, accelerate evolution, and control fungi. 428 was a biological weapon created by humans to imitate—and perhaps even acquire—those abilities.
As Tang Xiao read, several text messages suddenly popped up in the game interface.
Bald Donkey: Aren’t you coming back? We have a quiz this afternoon, and Old Man Li is proctoring it himself. He said anyone who doesn’t show up will lose all their participation points.
Sha Seng: Xiao Xiao, you’re still not here? It starts in thirty minutes.
Bajie: Bro, I can’t hold out much longer. Old Man Li asked about you. Hurry up!
Holy crap?!
Tang Xiao slapped himself in the face. He didn’t have time to think about the game anymore; he hurriedly saved and logged out at top speed.
He’d forgotten about this afternoon’s quiz!!