After visiting a round of the Institute’s supporting living facilities, they came to the dormitory building.
“Here we are. This is our dormitory area where you will all be living from now on.” Babbitt said as he showed them around the dormitory building.
“The specifications of this dormitory building are similar to those of the laboratory. Nothing to worry about if something happens as long as you hide inside.” Babbitt joked. “Of course, the entire research institute's security system is perfect. Since its construction, there have been no accidents. This is just an insurance measure.”
This sentence sounds like an accident will happen in the next second. Tang Xiao thought to himself.
Red lights accompanied by a shrill alarm rang throughout the research institute area.
En? Does he also have the talent of the crow’s mouth?
Babbitt’s face changed immediately. “Damn.”
Maybe it was because he was immediately slapped in the face. Babbitt's expression was ugly and frightening, but he quickly halted a few panicky newcomers. “Don't run around. You need to stay quietly in the dormitory building's hallway. The walls and glass are made of the same materials as the laboratory, so it's safe here.”
“Excuse me.” Tang Xiao said calmly, “Then if the situation is because of something that escaped the research institute… Does the fact that it can break the building of the Institute mean that it can also break here?”
As soon as these words came out, the faces of the people present changed. Babbitt stared at Tang Xiao closely. “How do you think it was something that escaped from the Institute?”
“It’s just a guess.”
As soon as Tang Xiao’s words fell, the lights dimmed violently.
“Power outage?” Someone murmured.
The backup power in the dormitory building was activated immediately. Babbitt stepped forward with an ugly face and tried to open the dormitory door with his permission card, but failed.
“Tsk. The power supply to the dormitory building’s main door is connected to the main power supply of the Institute.” Probably because Tang Xiao’s guess just now affected him, a hint of anxiety appeared between Babbitt’s eyebrows. If the experimental subject escapes and triggers the alarm, they are trapped here.
No, no. Even if the experimental subject escapes. The exit from the institute isn’t in this direction. That’s right, they will be fine.
“Shh.” Tang Xiao put his index finger to his lips, signaling everyone to be quiet.
In the quiet environment, the sound grew louder and closer. Everyone unconsciously leaned in to look toward the dark exit.
A little red fiber came through the door.
At the same time they saw this blood-red mycelium, everyone’s brains felt as if a stick had struck them. They felt uneasy and fearful unconsciously.
Babbitt’s pupils shrank as he cursed secretly. He pulled out the thermal gun pinned to his waist and aimed at the door. Soon, the door, made of the same material as the laboratory, dissolved. The monster they had seen before rushed in like a red lightning bolt.
Babbitt gave up aiming. His accuracy made it a fool’s dream to try to hit. He immediately ran toward the door when the blood-red monster attacked the newcomers.
“Ahhhhh!”
“Don’t–don’t come here!”
The monster was very fast. Tang Xiao quickly blended into the crowd when it appeared in the doorway. The panicked newcomers who surrounded him instantly splattered blood. The blonde man from before was the first to fall to the ground, with a separate head and body. As Babbitt fled, Tang Xiao immediately blended into the crowd and shouted, “The door! Run to the door!”
The chaotic crowd was like obedient lambs. They immediately ran towards the door. Babbit escaped smoothly from the hole corroded out by the monster. Tang Xiao mixed in the crowd with his heart beating fast. He used the walking position practiced by many years of gaming experience to try to avoid the monster as much as possible. He had a premonition that the monster was coming to find him.
When Tang Xiao was incomparably close to the door, his feet suddenly stumbled, and a force yanked him to the ground.
He looked down at his ankle, a thin section covered in a layer of blood-red mycelium, like some kind of octopus hunting tentacles.
Fuck.
The blood-red monster ignored the corpses around. The orange-yellow vertical pupils that had been repaired at some point stared at Tang Xiao through the slits in the fibers, leaking out the greed and thirst inside.
Sure enough, it’s coming at him.
Cold sweat soaked from Tang Xiao’s forehead. The favorability brought by his previous aesthetics was completely gone, even a trace of fear appeared in his heart.
Tang Xiao had been gaming for a long time. Even facing the most horrifying monster, his heart remained steady. However, something strange happened when he locked eyes with this monster. His intuition screamed at him to run, to not be eaten!
What the hell is the game strategy object that eats the protagonist of the game ah! Won’t it be rushed out of business by the majority of players?!
Tang Xiao struggled desperately on the ground, trying countless ways to trigger the main task, cursing angrily, begging, praying, and even resigning himself to his fate. All of which failed to make the force pulling on his ankles behind him relax even a little.
In the end, the slender blood-red mycelium also engulfed the white light, representing hope. The pitch darkness covered his vision little by little, pulling him into the endless abyss.
The heart rate in the game monitoring kept rising until it reached a critical point.
Thump thump, thump thump.
His ears filled with his heartbeat sound.
[Warning, warning, HP decreases]
Ah.
Tang Xiao had already turned off the pain. He was in a trance and didn't feel anything at the moment. He recalled words he had read somewhere that fungus was a decomposer.
What an appropriate metaphor.
In the darkness, a human’s mind would continue to diverge. He had no feeling, but he seemed to ‘see’ that the mycelium gradually swallowed and decomposed his flesh and blood, rotting into the mud, until he no longer had intact bones.
The blood-red monster burrowed into his body, greedily devouring all the internal organs and flesh, leaving nothing behind. Even if only an empty shell remained, the mycelium wouldn’t leave it, clinging to it and winding around it, transforming it into a nest suitable for growth.
[HP : 0; Game Failed]
[You have unlocked CG: <Nest>]
Tang Xiao returned to the login page, still a bit stunned. The system popped up the CG obtained this time.
Blood-red mycelium was scattered in every corner of the dimly lit hall, and it was most concentrated in front of a corpse.
A… a corpse that had long since turned into bones.
The blood-red monster grew larger. It firmly occupied the white bones beneath it, like a greedy dragon guarding its treasure, refusing to separate the slightest coveted void. The blood-red mycelium grew in the cracks of the white bones that symbolized death, enchanting and treacherous, as if it had been given a life.
[CG description: ‘You have become the nest of its growth’]
Tang Xiao: ……
What’s that? Is it over??
Tang Xiao closed his eyes, and barely calmed down. He couldn’t help but look at the CG two more times.
The graphics of this game were indeed terrifying. Even with such bizarre images, the pale bones and blood-colored fungus inside, the paradox of death and rebirth, and the contradictory aura of movement and stillness were damn in line with Tang Xiao’s aesthetics.
The premise was that the person who was hunted was not him.
The feeling of being dragged into the abyss seemed to remain in the cerebral cortex. Tang Xiao rubbed his arm silently and thought resentfully: no wonder this game is so difficult. Who can pass with this kind of intensity ah! And it’s also the main task of this inexplicable game!
Tang Xiao immediately opened up the customer service area to make a complaint. The reason for the complaint was this inexplicable romance's main task and the fact that the object of love was directly eating him.
However, no matter how many complaint letters he sent, the customer service’s answer would always be only ‘It’s still a beta test, the problem has been recorded for you, and the main task triggered can’t be replaced, etc.’
It was almost like saying ‘play or leave’
Could Tang Xiao take this shit?
He directly gave a one-star bad review on the final game rating and customer service attitude. He was about to quit the game, but he didn’t know if it was the power of the bad review or not. The originally cold customer service changed directly in the next second.
‘I’ve received your opinion. Although the main task of the game can’t be replaced, for the sake of apologies, we’ve launched the archive function~ Please cooperate with the archive function and work hard to play the game~!’
A prompt popped up in the game.
[Do you want to load the archive point?]
Tang Xiao was stunned for a moment. He opened the system menu and saw the load archive function on it. He didn’t have it when he first came in ah.
New function?
Tang Xiao thought about it and didn’t rush to quit the game. He checked the archive point and realized that there was currently only one archive point, which was when he had just entered this research institute. The condition for unlocking the second archive point was to complete the first stage of main task.
He needed to gain the favorability of the little monster.
Thinking of his previous ending, Tang Xiao’s face turned black immediately. What the hell? He killed me and I still have to gain favorability?
As a game streamer, Tang Xiao had gone through thousands of sails, but he had never touched a dating game. He was a well-deserved straight man of steel. He could fight monsters at any level without a problem, but the dating game was his blind spot.
This made him hesitate. Should he try to collect other accounts online? He felt he just couldn’t handle the main task of gaining favor.
After thinking about it, Tang Xiao decided to play a few more games first to see what would happen.
However, the game seemed to be against him.
In the second game, he ran inside the dormitory building early before the monster came and was killed.
In the third game, he entered and caused a scene. He was then escorted out of the institute. The monster broke through and chased after him. Once again, he was devoured.
In the fourth game, Tang Xiao decided to find another way and try to gain favorability to avoid the killing. As soon as he entered the laboratory, he turned off the laboratory’s power while others were unprepared, trying to rescue the monster, only to be taken down by Babbitt angrily by calling for the guards to take him.
Just as he was about to be shot on the spot, the little monster broke out of the window and fled the institute with him.
This game gave Tang Xiao the feeling of a dating game so far, with the monster firmly protecting him inside to block all the bullets. Any issues that posed a threat to him were taken care of in advance.
Even Tang Xiao, a straight man of steel, smiled after being rescued by the little monster several times. He seemed to see the dawn of the game strategy embarking on the right path.
They had escaped from the research institute. Tang Xiao believed that he would finally experience a normal dating game. The little monster led him to a safe cave.
Densely packed mycelium lay on top of the soil like a layer of blood-woven lichen.
Tang Xiao realized something was wrong when he was put down. The monster’s eyes were still cold and greedy as he looked at him. Even if he didn’t play the dating game, he knew it was the kind of look not for the object of love.
He was still being treated as food!
When the little monster subdued him again, Tang Xiao struggled with the fire shotgun that he snatched from Babbit before in his arms. He aimed it at the monster’s mycelium and pulled the trigger.
The high-temperature rays had an effect. The mycelium aggregates were punched through a hole, and the lichen cracked. Tang Xiao took the opportunity to escape but was dragged back into the cave by the furious mycelium and recaptured.
In a trance, Tang Xiao felt a tingle.
The game had no sense of pain, but it didn’t shield him from the sense of touch. Tang Xiao lowered his head and froze as he saw those hyphae splitting into countless tiny ones that couldn’t even be seen with the naked eye, burrowing right into his body, going deeper under the bulging skin.
He couldn’t move his entire body.
A horrible tingling sensation attacked his brain. Tang Xiao trembled uncontrollably, feeling like every cell of his body was being invaded by the mycelium.
No, maybe that’s just the way it is.
On the verge of death, thin black dots began to spread across Tang Xiao’s retina. Countless images flashed through his brain as he remembered a photo he had once seen by chance.
The owners of the forest were not trees, but rather the inconspicuous fungus below, whose mycelium invaded the root cells of the trees and became the ‘roots’ for them to draw water and nutrients.
Those uprooted trees brought up a lot of dense white mycelium underneath, and that was their owner.
Now, this mycelium was doing the same to him.
The mycelium that he had seen in the photos now extended to him.
Thinking that he would fuse with this monster on a cellular level, fear was like a tidal wave that engulfed him so deeply that his entire being couldn’t breathe. Desperately, Tang Xiao summoned the system panel, wanting to exit the game forcefully while also saying at the same time:
“Wait! 428, I’m not ummm…!”
The mycelium seemed to sense that its prey was desperately resisting and entangled itself tighter. The prey couldn’t move a finger as the mycelium wrapped around the young man’s mouth, not even a dying whimper was allowed to come out. The muscles were already under the mycelium’s control.
Damn! You fucking told me it was a dating game?!
The cave was silent, with only the slight sound of the throat rolling. The mycelium was invading the body along the mouth, forcing its way through the throat and straight to the internal organs.
The insects and bats that used to be active in the cave seemed to be shocked by some kind of terrifying existence at the moment. They consciously stayed away from their own nests.
In this cave, all that remained was the monster and its sacrifice. The red lichen resembled an altar, symbolizing the blood that seeped beneath the pristine white offering. On the altar, a handsome young man in a white lab coat was restrained, his elegant neck resembling that of a dying swan.
As his consciousness was about to disappear completely, Tang Xiao met the little-monster’s orange-yellow vertical pupils.
Those eyes were cold, scrutinizing, with a hint of insatiable hunger, like a predator biting into the neck of its prey and quietly waiting for him to die.
At this moment, Tang Xiao’s pupils tightened. He suddenly understood something.
Of course, a hunter does not fall in love with his prey, just as a tiger does not fall in love with a rabbit, and a human does not fall in love with the dishes on his plate.
Because from the beginning, they were not on an equal footing. It craved him, like a bear chasing honey, and a tiger chasing a rabbit, but no one cared what the rabbit thinks, nor did it care what strange things the rabbit did in the process of escaping.
Before, this little monster was merely protecting its loot. He was looking for an absolutely safe space, greedily and thirstily, making sure that it could completely posses him. This process did not involve Tang Xiao’s will at all.
Because from beginning to end, the little monster didn’t pay attention to his actions.
Shit.
His heart rate climbed to the highest point at this moment. Before triggering the forced logout device, Tang Xiao trembled and raised his middle finger at the little monster in his heart.
You wait for me, this grandpa will come back!
[HP: 0, Game Failed]
[You have unlocked CG: <Strange Tree>]
[CG description: People may never know where this strange tree came from, only that it grew very fast and took over the Earth in a matter of moments.]
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