Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The woman in red cried out with utter sincerity and overflowing emotion. Her righteous tone made her sound like a devoted lover confronting a faithless man.

She didn’t notice the silence around her. The human NPCs all looked as though they had something to say but weren’t sure how.

Assistant Li coughed and glanced at Zhao Xiuming in surprise. Zhou Qingyan stammered, “He loves… he, he…”

Zhang Xueya was the one bold enough to speak up. She gave a light, mocking laugh. “Our dear Xiuming really is popular.”

“You’ve got me, your childhood friend, confessing to you on the spot. There’s a girl with her first crush who doesn’t even know it herself. And that silent masked man behind you is watching like a hawk; you two have even kissed! Wonderful. Absolutely spectacular!”

“And now here’s a beautiful woman in red, devoted to you forever, going on about your vows of undying love.”

“Assistant Li, why bother being an executive assistant? Clean yourself up and become the second male lead in our Xiuming’s romance.”

She’d lost it. Zhang Xueya really had been driven mad with anger.

It wasn’t quite jealousy she felt. It was disappointment.

Before Zhao Xiuming could say anything, Zhou Qingyan exclaimed, “K-kissed? And there’s a girl with a crush on him who doesn’t know it? Who? How come I don’t know?”

Assistant Li was silent for a moment. “Never mind. Go play.”

She was unhappy with that. “Where am I supposed to play? Zhao Xiuming, what’s going on with that girl in red?”

“Isn’t she a pla… a complete stranger? How do you know her?”

Zhao Xiuming had one hand over his face. He gave a hesitant “Huh?” then lowered it, his ears red as he moved away from the biker.

By the time he looked up again, his face was expressionless. He took no action and offered Zhou Qingyan no explanation.

Seeing him stand still, some players had already begun talking, relying on Horror Game’s filtering to hide their conversation.

“Why isn’t he doing anything?”

“Didn’t you say your irresistible charm skill had him under control?”

“Then why isn’t he listening? What a bullshit skill. It’s completely useless. Unbelievable. We never should’ve trusted a brainless piece of eye candy like you!”

Two players were falling apart, their words growing uglier and uglier. They didn’t want to die.

“Of course a slut’s personal enhancement would just be useless seduction. Teaming up with you was a fucking disaster.”

“Wearing a bright red dress into a game, showing off that much skin… what were you thinking? Is this where you drum up business?”

“You bragged about how useful your skill was, and this is it? We trusted you, and it turns out you were lying. You deserve to die!”

Facing death, the two players unleashed a torrent of filth, directing their fear and fury at the woman in red.

All color drained from her face. Because of the path she’d chosen for her personal enhancement, other players had often despised her before she grew strong. She’d heard no shortage of ugly remarks like these.

That was exactly why she stressed her skill’s value so much. She was proud and confident, yet also insecure and sensitive. The less she had of something, the more she craved it.

Now the nightmare had returned. She seemed to be that young girl newly arrived in the game again.

Back then, no team wanted her. Alone, she’d moved from player to player, flattering and seducing NPCs in the instances.

She trembled all over. She wasn’t breaking down like the two players abusing her, but she couldn’t control the trauma rising inside her.

Was the reason her enhancement had taken the form of a skill steeped in sex and desire… that this was simply the sort of person she was?

Her team leader, the woman with shoulder-length hair, was injured. She’d lost an arm.

Pale-lipped, she refused to watch her teammate be humiliated. Fighting through the pain, she snapped, “Shut up, both of you!”

Then she hurried to reassure her companion. “Don’t listen to them. If your skill didn’t work, we’d already be dead.”

The two men on the team couldn’t take it either. The technical specialist tried to reason with them. “If you’ve got so much backbone, why did you join us in the first place? If you’re so capable, how did you get caught?”

“Now things have gone wrong, you’re dodging responsibility. If you two hadn’t been such treacherous little snakes, we’d still have eight players! Our captain wouldn’t have lost an arm!”

The player in the mask wasn’t good with words. After a long struggle, all he managed was, “You’re the two who deserve to die.”

“Exactly, exactly.” An unfamiliar voice suddenly sounded beside him. The man whose half-mask covered his eyes froze.

He stiffly turned his neck and found an NPC crouching at his side.

The NPC’s cheeks had an unnatural white sheen. His eyes were entirely black, without whites, and his split mouth stretched to his ears, exposing sharp, dangerous teeth.

He was cupping his face in both hands. Noticing the player staring, he tilted his head with surprising liveliness. “Hmm? What are you looking at?”

“Zhao Xiuming…” The half-masked player spoke his name and jerked backward.

Bound hand and foot, the players were already kneeling awkwardly on the floor. He landed hard on his backside and couldn’t get up.
Tendrils writhed over Zhao Xiuming’s mutated right hand, creeping outward in every direction. A few curled around his luminously pale neck, their tips playfully teasing his earlobes. The sight was intensely suggestive.

Seemingly unaware, he’d quietly crouched beside them while they argued, sending chills through every player.

The biker blocked the doctors and nurses, keeping them from approaching.

The two abusive players swallowed their words and began to stammer.

Seeing surprise and delight on the woman in red’s face, they grew afraid.

“W-what are you doing?”

Had they started insulting her too soon? Was this NPC still under her control, only a little slow to respond? What were they supposed to do now?

Disgusted with the two who’d abused her, the woman in red spoke hopefully. “Zhao Xiuming, kill them.”

Already frightened, the two nearly fainted at those words.

“A misunderstanding! It’s all a misunderstanding! I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just desperate. It was an instinctive reaction. That’s not who I really am.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I was wrong. Don’t kill me.”

Smiling cheerfully, Zhao Xiuming untied the tendrils around the woman in red. She understood his meaning at once.

He was letting her take revenge with her own hands.

She smiled. Without hesitation, she exchanged points for a katana and drove it into the two players’ chests.

The number of Horror Game players fell to four, all members of the same team.

Wiping her katana, the woman in red said, “Thank you, Zhao Xiuming. Now let’s kill all the anomalies.”

The team leader with shoulder-length hair drew a sharp breath. “Stop talking about killing anomalies.”

“Haven’t you noticed? He can hear us talking.”

The woman in red didn’t understand. “What?”

Beside her, a male teammate added breathlessly, “He can hear us. This NPC knows who we are. He knows we’re players. He knows this is an instance!”

In instances without role-playing requirements, some anomalies did know the players existed.

But that knowledge didn’t extend to their identity as players. For example, in this Monster Hospital instance, they had arrived as patients.

The hospital’s anomalies would notice that a new group of patients checked in at regular intervals.

These patients seemed to have different objectives, while the anomalies themselves were bound by rules in their dealings with them.

But the anomalies would never know these patients were players trying to clear the instance. Nor would they know that their hospital, or even their world, was merely an instance.

Yet that boundary had clearly been broken. The NPC named Zhao Xiuming could hear all the filtered content relating to “games,” “players,” “clearing instances,” and the like.

Before the four survivors could consider how this had happened or what consequences it might bring…

Zhao Xiuming was already standing, bright-eyed. He clapped his hands and announced happily, “There. Problem solved.”

The anomaly instance wanted to threaten them by exposing them as NPCs from another world, bringing everyone down together.

If he exposed himself first, that threat would cease to exist.

There were indeed other ways to solve the problem. He’d chosen a path that hurt the enemy badly while doing almost as much damage to himself. It seemed stupid.

But really, why not?

Assistant Li almost admired the anomaly instance. He couldn’t help commenting, “Is it because it hasn’t evolved eyes yet?”

Zhang Xueya was mercilessly sharp-tongued. She scolded the pitiful, blast-ravaged cocoon. “After all this time, you still haven’t figured out what kind of person Zhao Xiuming is? Does he look like someone you can threaten?”

“At first, he was afraid of being exposed because he was having fun. If he was exposed too early, he wouldn’t get to play anymore.”

“Now he’s tested his theory and has no desire to investigate further. Hand him a problem at this point, and all you’ve done is give him a new toy.”

“With the way he courts death, he’d love to announce at the top of his lungs that he can hear the players. He can’t wait for Horror Game to deal with him.”

As she spoke, she moved toward Zhou Qingyan and Assistant Li, trying to protect them with her halo.

Assistant Li was surprised and flattered. “Thank you.”

Meanwhile, Zhao Xiuming removed the tendrils binding the remaining players. He pointed toward Assistant Li and the others. “Could you help protect them for me?”

The woman in red nodded instinctively, then caught his arm. “What are you going to do?”

He slipped away from her and answered as if it were obvious. “Listen to you, of course, big sister. Kill all the anomalies.”

She looked a little embarrassed. “Were you affected by my skill at all?”
“As I’ve strengthened it, people have become as obedient as dogs once I use it on them.”

“At first I had to plan everything carefully, flatter them, and play the sort of person they liked.”

“I thought…”

She’d thought that once she was strong, she wouldn’t have to grovel like that anymore. Her eagerness to sever ties with her past had clouded her judgment.

Zhao Xiuming was about to speak when the biker kicked an anomaly doctor flying with a tremendous crash.

He glanced back, then turned around again. Just as he was about to speak, another crash came from behind him. The biker had deliberately kicked a doctor into a sheet of metal, as if afraid the noise might not be loud enough.

Zhao Xiuming looked back to find him standing with folded arms, all but displaying I’M UNHAPPY on his goggles.

Whether he didn’t dare or simply didn’t want to speak harshly to Zhao Xiuming, he could only vent his displeasure on the other anomalies.

Zhao Xiuming smiled helplessly and gestured that he’d be right over.

Only then did he explain to the woman, “It did have some effect.”

“I’ve never felt affection for any particular human being before.”

“Thank you for letting me experience that.”

She placed great importance on her skill and had thought something had gone wrong with it. “But you weren’t affected at all. All those sweet things you said before were lies, weren’t they? You never lost your reason.”

“I don’t think I said anything particularly sweet,” he objected.

“You should be more careful about using your skill on strange NPCs.”

“Normal love is useful, certainly. But twisted love can be very dangerous.”

He leaned down closer. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“When you used that skill on me…”

“I love my freedom. I wanted to kill you.”

He looked pitiful again. “What could I do, big sister? Holding myself back was painful too.”

Before she could react, he raised his voice enormously and adopted a singsong tone. “The reason you couldn’t control me… is that there’s already something in my head…”

“Ahh… I love him so much…”

The previously silent System spoke coolly. [Too late. I heard everything.]

Zhao Xiuming waved to the players and went excitedly to the biker’s side, using his mutated body to fight the anomaly doctors.

Only then did the players, Assistant Li, and the others understand why they needed both the players’ items and the female lead’s halo to protect them.

Zhao Xiuming tossed bombs around as if they were toys. He didn’t care whether he got hurt. All he wanted was the exhilaration of slaughter.

Or rather, he felt perfectly safe. At the biker’s side, he could let loose without worrying about the consequences.

The anomalies could now heal themselves and return to life after death.

But when the biker attacked, their halos stopped working. They could neither heal nor resurrect.

Once he noticed this, the biker switched from offense to defensive support, letting Zhao Xiuming enjoy himself to the fullest.

Zhao Xiuming’s control over his muscles and body grew increasingly precise. He was even beginning to trade blows with the cocoon on equal terms.

The players’ chat feeds exploded with comments. Most viewers were discussing the consequences of an NPC learning about instances. Some urged the surviving players to speak with Zhang Xueya and find out who these people were.

The four players didn’t dare. They could only eavesdrop on the NPCs talking behind them.

Assistant Li’s injuries were severe. The woman in red gave him some medicine purchased with points, keeping him alive for the time being.

Feeling much better, he asked Zhang Xueya, “Why do I get the feeling the biker is forcing the cocoon to spar with Zhao Xiuming?”

She nodded. “You’re right. And it’s more than sparring. Zhao Xiuming has kept something in reserve. He can absorb the halo’s power too.”

Assistant Li was surprised. “Can other people absorb it?”

She gave him an ambiguous smile. “What, you want to kill me? Do you think you can?”

He fell silent. Zhang Xueya reminded him, “When I was rescuing you, I couldn’t break the tendrils around Zhao Xiuming.”

Almost in response to her words, Zhao Xiuming finally lost interest. Tendrils grew from his right hand and pierced the cocoon. Amid its roars, he carved something out.

Li Zhehan’s head, along with the bodyguards’ and driver’s limbs.

The parts belonging to the romance novel’s world had been separated from the embodiment of the anomaly instance.

The doctors and nurses weakened. In a frenzy, the cocoon swallowed the anomalies around it, trying to grow stronger. But Zhao Xiuming didn’t give it the chance.

“Finish it.”

He gave the order, then smiled. “That was your goal too, wasn’t it?”

Eager to please, the biker bent down, lowered his head, and placed Zhao Xiuming’s hand on it. “Woof.”