Most of the players present had entered the dungeon no more than five days ago. Those with more days left were unwilling to take this risk; if things didn’t play out the way Artistic-Style predicted, they might have to face the dungeon’s counterattack during their remaining time.
A few players whose remaining days were close to expiring were genuinely tempted.
Because they were experiencing certain hallucinations.
The player who set the hotel on fire today could very well be them tomorrow or the day after.
Xu Huo wasn’t completely dismissive of Artistic-Style’s idea.
The only real problem now was how little concrete information they had. The dungeon’s inviolable rules were not mentioned in the dungeon introduction at all, so everything had to be discovered by the players themselves.
The situation was like being livestock inside a pen, and beyond their perception the pen master occasionally tossed out some to be killed. They could sometimes see a hand or a knife reach in, but they had no clear understanding of the pen master’s true patterns.
The rain eased. Fang Penghui glanced outside, “If we’re going to do anything, we’ll have to wait until daylight tomorrow.”
By then the players had clearly split into three groups.
The first group, led by Artistic-Style and Brother Shi, favored taking the initiative.
The second group, with Fang Penghui, Tian Kun, Wei Xian and others, hoped players would band together to deal with the dungeon’s sweep that might happen in two days.
The third group consisted of lone players like Xu Huo and the Black-Shirted Player. Their intentions were unclear, but it was obvious they didn’t want to act with the first two groups.
“How should we handle the corpses?” Liu Shiyan asked. “If the corpses move toward the dungeon core, using a corpse could give us some leads.”
Brother Shi stepped up to the burned player’s body and put a collar around its waist—the innards of the gutted corpse were thinner than expected. The collar had three oval-shaped signal tubes.
Seeing other players’ restrained expressions, he explained, “The signal flares burn for two hours. Unless we’re unlucky and the corpse wanders too far and hits fog like tonight, everyone should be able to see where the signals point.”
“Aren’t there two more corpses over there?” The female player beside him shrugged, “If that’s not enough, aren’t there plenty of people nearby?”
It wasn’t just that people in this county were a little abnormal—ordinary people killing for dungeon clearance wasn’t unheard of either.
“But don’t go killing too many.” The female player smiled and added, “We don’t even know how many players will disappear tonight.”
Putting aside what others thought, several players used items on the corpses one after another, ensuring they would receive news immediately, then left the courtyard.
Items have usage limits. It was only just past midnight and the heavy fog outside meant even if the signals went out, players couldn’t head there right away, so Brother Shi and his group stayed behind to wait until dawn.
Xu Huo trailed the crowd. Just before leaving the courtyard, he turned back on impulse and glanced toward the burned player’s corpse.
“What’s up?” Yi Pei asked.
Xu Huo rubbed his temple. “Nothing, I just felt like someone was watching us from the corpse.”
Yi Pei looked that way. Even with her blurry vision she could make out the two black hole-like openings on the corpse and frowned. “Let’s get out of here.”
They headed in different directions and parted after leaving.
Xu Huo walked alone in the fog. His light range was limited, so he followed the line of houses toward his lodging. After a few steps he noticed his footsteps sounding heavier, as if another person’s steps were layered over his!
His expression darkened. He abruptly shut his eyes, turned, and struck with his sword. About two seconds later he heard a streetlight fall over ten meters away.
He scanned his surroundings before picking up his sword and continuing on.
But not long after, the normally paced footsteps became heavy again; this time there were several footsteps keeping the same frequency as his—no voices, no people.
Compared to last night, this felt more sinister. A shriveled corpse was still a corpse; any existing object shouldn’t lose the ability to be perceived. The footsteps tracked to his left and rear. If there were no people… was he hallucinating?
Even if the dungeon caused mental interference, it shouldn’t show up on him so quickly.
After a moment’s thought, Xu Huo took out the Universal Lubricant. The moment he used the item, a rice-grain-sized pebble dropped from the back of his shoe.
“So it was an item.” With so many players around earlier, anyone could have done it. He tossed the pebble into his luggage compartment and quickened his pace back to his room.
The elderly man still had the light on. Seeing him return, the man seemed relieved, closed the door, and went back to sleep.
Xu Huo sat on the makeshift bed in the main room and tore open the bandages to recheck his wound.
As expected, the injury had relapsed, and the area of redness and swelling seemed to be expanding.
The King Fungus not being very effective meant this was not an ordinary contaminant or toxin.
He took out the previous potion bottle. The bit of flesh he had scraped off the wound had turned somewhat pale from soaking. The potion’s color hadn’t changed, but a layer of oily residue floated on top.
He picked some out to examine under the lamp and found a transparent, round-bodied creature with long legs trapped in the oil. It moved slowly and was hard to notice unless you looked closely.
“A worm?” Since entering the game, Xu Huo had encountered many poisons and contaminants. He knew only one type of worm well, the Skin-Burrowing Worm that could rapidly devour flesh and blood. He had read some material on mutated worms: the deadliest were toxin-based, producing novel poisons that were hard to cure. Simple flesh-eating worms like the Skin-Burrowing Worm weren’t that impressive.
But who would have thought such a tiny creature—smaller than a speck of dust—would have such odd uses? The potion couldn’t kill it, and its reproduction seemed decent; otherwise the wound wouldn’t stay unhealed.
If it weren’t for the healing potion and the player’s own recovery ability, these little things might already have eaten a good portion of his flesh.
He scraped away some necrotic tissue and improvised a simple water pouch to cover the wound.
He didn’t pour out the potion bottle’s contents; instead he tossed in bits of wood, food scraps, and small pebbles, sealed it, and put it back in his luggage compartment.
After handling this, he lay down to rest. After closing his eyes for a while, the lamp in the main room suddenly went out. Immediately after, the side door produced a “creak-creak” sound, as if someone were opening an old, poorly maintained wooden door.
“Brother Xu, Brother Xu?” The Little Girl’s voice sounded in the dark. “The power’s out, it’s so dark. I’m a little scared. Do you have light?”
Xu Huo sat up. The lock on the side door was gone—he didn’t know when—and the door stood ajar. A strange feeling washed over him. “I want to see what’s putting on a show!”
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