Chapter 091: The Monster That Shattered All His Assumptions

“Brother Cheng, something about this place feels wrong. This isn’t going to be one of those jump-scare ambushes the moment we open the door, is it?”

Xu Xiaolong gripped his magic staff with a face full of tension, forcing out a smile that looked worse than tears.

By the usual logic of a horror game, there had to be something dreadful waiting behind that iron gate.

With Xu Xiaolong and Zhang Wei at their current levels, dealing with ordinary mutant rat-men would not be too difficult, but if they ran into an elite monster, there was a very real chance the whole party would be wiped out.

What they did not know was that this dungeon had originally not been nearly so difficult. Because of Su Cheng’s presence as a powerful player, the game had raised the dungeon’s difficulty by one tier in order to maintain balance.

“Why don’t we go to the next stronghold instead?”

“The next stronghold is at least ten kilometers away. If we miss this one, we’ll have to walk another ten kilometers. Leaving aside whether the next stronghold has already been taken by the rat-men, there’s still the problem of whether we can even break through their line and get there in the first place.” Su Cheng shook his head, drew Gale’s Shadow, and stepped up to the iron gate.

At that moment, whatever was behind the gate seemed to hear the movement outside. The air suddenly fell silent.

After thinking it over, Zhang Wei and Xu Xiaolong both realized that Su Cheng was right. They had already used up a great deal of stamina on the road, and there was no way they had the energy to walk another ten kilometers in search of the next stronghold. And even then, they would still have to break through the rat-men’s defenses along the way; it would be little short of a nine-in-ten chance of death.

Rather than that, they might as well fight the monster behind the iron gate. At least then there might still be a sliver of hope.

With one slash, Su Cheng cut the chain on the gate. Once it swung open, a pungent stench wafted out from inside, but no terrifying creature rushed out as expected.

It seemed the monster inside was waiting for them to walk straight into the trap.

Clutching his blade, Su Cheng charged in first. The Buzz Cut followed close behind and vanished through the iron gate as well.

“So disgusting. Is someone eating stinky tofu in there? Something about this feels really off.” Xu Xiaolong hesitated outside for a moment, then put on his gas mask and cautiously entered with a flashlight.

The stronghold was large, and the power source was not easy to find at first.

In the pitch-black darkness, where one could not see a hand in front of one’s face, fear spread like a virus.

A chilling wind blew from behind him, and Xu Xiaolong felt as though a pair of icy hands were stroking his neck. The expression on his face grew even more terrified.

“Brother Wei, where are you?”

Xu Xiaolong did not dare speak loudly for fear of drawing the monster’s attention, so he called out softly in the dark.

After groping around for about a minute, he suddenly saw a familiar figure ahead, and at once he let out a breath of relief.

“Don’t scare me like that. Brother Wei, did you find anything?”

Xu Xiaolong hurried toward the figure and patted his shoulder.

At that exact moment, the flashlight beam landed on the man’s face, revealing a horrifying visage that looked as though sulfuric acid had been splashed across it, right in front of him.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Xu Xiaolong screamed at the top of his lungs like a helpless little wife cornered by a dozen burly men.

The horrifying face before him had rotted beyond recognition. One eye seemed to have been gnawed apart by a beast, and green pus kept seeping from the socket, smearing across his face.

Most chilling of all, a layer of black rat fur had actually grown over the monster’s face.

A bloodthirsty gleam flared in the creature’s remaining eye. The next instant, its mouth split nearly to the ears, opening into a gaping maw like an abyss, with jagged fangs bared as it lunged for Xu Xiaolong’s head.

The moment the monster attacked, a hand suddenly reached out from behind Xu Xiaolong, seized his shoulder, and yanked him backward.

Then Su Cheng drove in with a powerful flying kick, sending the monster that had leaped at Xu Xiaolong crashing hard into the wall behind it with a thunderous impact.

The force of that kick was immense. When the monster smashed into the wall, a dull boom rang out, and the wall itself caved in under the blow, burying the hideous creature beneath a pile of rubble.

Xu Xiaolong stared in shock when he saw the monster sent flying by Su Cheng’s single kick.

Just then, Zhang Wei found the power switch in the room. He flipped it on, and the room was instantly flooded with light.

Under the harsh glare, they finally saw the true appearance of the monster.

“Damn, what is this thing? Some kind of human-rat hybrid?” The sight made even Zhang Wei sick to his stomach, and he nearly vomited up last night’s dinner.

By body shape, the creature was far larger than an ordinary mutant rat-man, with limbs that were more humanlike. But its body was covered in thick black fur, and a long rat tail grew from its back.

Su Cheng noticed that the rat-man’s belly was huge and round, hanging almost to the floor.

“Be careful. This thing probably isn’t dead yet.” In horror games, the more grotesque and bizarre a monster looked, the stronger it usually was. This rat-man’s appearance had practically shattered Su Cheng’s sense of reality. Even if it was not a mini-boss, it was at least an elite monster.

Xu Xiaolong recovered from the shock, forced down his disgust, and jumped up to the mutant rat-man’s face. Raising his magic staff, he brought it crashing down on the rat-man’s skull.

Though Xu Xiaolong had been jumpy and cowardly just moments before, anyone who could survive one horror game after another would not be lacking in courage when it came to fighting monsters. Otherwise, he would already have died in one of the earlier dungeons.

“Monster, die!”

With a sickening crack, Xu Xiaolong smashed a dent into the mutant rat-man’s skull. A stinking spray of pus mixed with gray brain matter burst out and splattered across his protective suit.

The fear that had been suppressed in his heart for so long erupted like a volcano. Xu Xiaolong seemed to go mad, swinging the staff like a baseball bat and hammering the rat-man’s skull over and over until flesh and blood flew everywhere.

The mutant rat-man let out a shrill howl of agony and, dragging its grotesquely swollen body, lunged forward.

“Move!”

Zhang Wei roared, darted forward two steps, yanked Xu Xiaolong behind him, and thrust up with his shield.

But there came only a heavy crash. Zhang Wei was knocked several meters backward by the mutant rat-man and rolled into a heap with Xu Xiaolong.

The instant Zhang Wei and Xu Xiaolong were sent flying, a figure swept past like lightning and appeared before the mutant rat-man in the blink of an eye. Then a sharp slash tore through the air, cutting a wound dozens of centimeters long across the monster’s swollen belly.

Once the creature’s abdomen was slit open, a large amount of blackish-red filth spilled across the floor.

Endless blood spread over the ground.

What was truly horrifying was that the mutant rat-man’s belly was stuffed full of several human corpses that had not yet been fully digested. The bodies were already missing pieces, and their rotting organs seemed to have been crudely glued together. The scene was appalling beyond words.