Chapter 21

Edited by Izrate

Warning: Grotesque and disturbing imagery, which will probably persist for the rest of this entire arc. You saw the flesh tentacle-vines, it only gets worse from here.

Things that terrified people were primarily separated into two categories. The first consisted of monstrous things that had very little human characteristics. They were feared due to humankind’s natural rejection of the other and their self-preservation instinct. The second kind includes things that held an exceptional similarity to humans, except for differences in slight details. When something bore such resemblance to humans, humans would categorize it as one of them, yet the subtle differences would bother them subconsciously, making them feel threatened and anxious.

Between the two, the former was more obvious – you know why you would be afraid of a mutated creature. It’s long tail and deformed body created a clear feeling of strangeness and threat. The latter was far more subtle – you might not know exactly why a hyper-realistic SD doll scares you, but on a subconscious level, you would associate the paleness and stiffness of the doll to corpses and death. Clearly, the latter would cause a deeper sense of terror, but it didn’t erupt as powerfully as the former. It would take root in one’s heart and grow slowly until it transformed.

What Shan Ziwei was facing included both aforementioned categories.

The woman opposite to him was as beautiful as she was on the photo. Her long, straight, black hair fell against her chest and back. She wore a light blue hospital gown, the hem of the wide robe just covering the base of her thighs. Shan Ziwei’s gaze was stuck to that area, and it wasn’t because he was pervert or anything – in fact, Shan Ziwei was certain that even if the most perverted man on earth stood here right now, he wouldn’t care about that lay under the hem of that robe; instead, he’d only look at that umbilical cord hanging out.

That’s right, umbilical cord. Everyone had once had one of those: an umbilical cord that connected each person to their birth mother. Usually, it would be cut by a doctor when a person was born, but that wasn’t the case here. A long umbilical cord, shining wetly, hung from between the woman’s legs, one end linked to the “new-born” in her arms. However, no matter how Shan Ziwei looked at it, the woman wasn’t holding a child, but a ball of compressed flesh, or, rather, a thing made from bits of flesh sheared off of human bodies and stuck haphazardly together in a vague spherical shape.

Seeing Shan Ziwei look over, the beautiful woman happily showed off the soft, slimy, mutant creature in her arms.

“This is your child, a beautiful baby boy.”

Wait, how did you guys figure out this was a boy baby – no, a boy ball or girl ball?! Shan Ziwei couldn’t feel the joy of becoming a father at all. Now he understood how Li Jing felt killing his third son. The baby (read: flesh ball) in front of him was inhumane!

Shan Ziwei could only continue mentally running his mouth to mitigate the steadily rising tide of fear. He was terrified in an inexplicable way, terrified of the mutant flesh baby in Maria’s arms, and even more terrified of Maria.

He was so terrified that he couldn’t move, so terrified that he would flee the moment he could. Even though his terror was so intense, Shan Ziwei couldn’t say exactly what aspect of the other made him so afraid. The Maria in front of him was exactly the same as the Feifei from his past, yet utterly terrifying to look at.

Little Gaia silently clung to Shan Ziwei’s shoulder. Its colour-inverted eyes glanced at Shan Ziwei’s stiff expression, before it pressed its chin against Shan Ziwei’s shoulder and hugged its own head, covering up the mask’s expression with its long sleeves.

Seeing Shan Ziwei staring straight at her and the child, Maria happily cooed at the flesh ball in her arms, “Come on, darling, let your daddy hold you. Daddy loves you.”

The flesh ball seemed to be overjoyed at Maria’s words. The convulsing mass of muscle had Shan Ziwei’s stomach also squirming at the sight, yet Maria smiled like she was looking at an angel. She couldn’t help but kiss the flesh ball and then press her face against it, nuzzling it. Thus, Shan Ziwei got to watch as the slimy oil on the surface of that flesh ball stuck tightly to Maria’s lips and face like a layer of glue, tearing her beautiful face off of her head as she pulled her head back.

Now, Shan Ziwei was facing two shredded, bloody faces. It was even more visually stimulating than before, yet it brought Shan Ziwei out of his abyss of infinite terror. His fear-numbed body could finally move again, and he raised his tracker tagging gun practically by instinct, shooting at the flesh ball in Maria’s arms.

“——!”

The concoction-smeared bullet penetrated the body of the flesh ball. It trembled violently. It clearly didn’t possess any organs with which it could make sound, but the violent convulsions of that mass of muscles seemed like an expression of its pain and anger. The expression on Maria’s bloodied face changed. She glared at Shan Ziwei as if she were looking at a madman.

“Why are you hurting him? He’s your child, the child that you wanted – “

Shan Ziwei’s response was to fire another bullet. The adrenaline triggered by his fear sent him into fight or flight mode – right now he only had one thought: to kill that monster and leave this chessboard.

The second bullet accurately struck the flesh ball as well. Shan Ziwei didn’t pause for a moment and immediately reloaded. He had one eye closed, not just to aim better, but also to Investigate the monster’s stats.

[???

Type: Ten of Hearts

Category: Pawn

MP: 1000/1000

SP: Spades (100%), Hearts (100%), Clubs (100[40]%), Diamonds (100%)

Stance: Hostile

Relationship: Adoration (Active)

Description: This little guy was a man made accident. He’ll evolve, and he tends to hold a grudge. Once you get on his bad side, he’ll chase you down no matter what.]

Two shots had corrupted 40 percent of the monster’s Clubs SP. Five shots to completely corrupt its Clubs SP, Shan Ziwei noted as he pulled the trigger again.

“Bang!”

The bullet pierced through flesh and blood splattered out. Shan Ziwei paled. The moment the third bullet had left the chamber, Maria had turned to protect the flesh ball, hugging it in her arms tightly and using her own body to shield Shan Ziwei’s bullet.

After hitting Maria with the bullet, Shan Ziwei’s Spades SP immediately dropped by 50 percent. He didn’t have any time to figure out if he had violated scenario 2 or 3. After taking the hit, Maria began to stumble towards the door in an attempt to escape with her flesh baby. Under the restrictions of the scenarios, Shan Ziwei couldn’t attack his “wife”, but this wasn’t an issue for him. Under his adrenaline rush, Shan Ziwei darted into the doorway before Maria with a speed he had never managed before and turned, shooting the monster again.

“Bang!”

Shan Ziwei stood in the doorway, blocking Maria’s escape. Maria retreated towards the window with the monster in her arms, glaring as she watched the white-haired young man smoothly reload the gun, raise, take aim and shoot. The moment Shan Ziwei shot, Maria once again turned her back to him, prepared to once again take the bullet with her own body.

“Tink!”

Maria stared in shock down at the fourth bloody hole on her “child”. She raised her head slowly, staring blankly at the cracked marble windowsill – in that moment, the bullet had ricocheted off the marble and hit her “child”.

Maria despaired. She knew that so long as they were in this room, they wouldn’t be able to escape the white-haired young man’s attacks. Maria turned, holding the flesh ball, to face her powerful “husband”, attempting to awaken Shan Ziwei’s kindness and conscience by begging.

“Dear… don’t hurt him… please don’t hurt him…”

Shan Ziwei didn’t open fire again. Since he had only smeared five bullets with the concoction and one of the bullets had been wasted on Maria, he had to put away his gun for a moment to smear more bullets. When Maria saw him set the gun away, she was happy for a moment, but then she saw Shan Ziwei take out the concoction and she – especially the “child” in her arms – began to tremble violently.

“No… no, no…”

The monster clearly knew that once Shan Ziwei finished smearing the bullets, it would be over for it. Its flesh pulsed with unease before it suddenly charged out of Maria’s embrace, landing on the ground with a splat that sounded like a piece of overripe, mushy watermelon splattering onto the ground. Its sticky juices splattered everywhere, and the fleshy ball in the pool of slime convulsed, trying to roll its way to safety. Unfortunately, the umbilical cord had it chained tightly to its mother, so the monster paused, all its fleshy bits loosening like it was breathing in deeply before suddenly tightening.

Shan Ziwei just finished loading the concoction-smeared bullets into the gun and raised his head to see that the fleshy monster had grown, while Maria had thinned. It was like the monster had sucked away all the flesh in Maria’s body, leaving behind a layer of skin on her bones. The umbilical cord tying them together began to wither at a visible pace starting from Maria’s end, clearly about to fall off. A strong sense of unease had Shan Ziwei acting at once. He shot as he raised his gun, not even aiming properly.

The slightly off-centre bullet flew at the monster. The monster leaped up high, dodging the bullet and letting it pierce through the stretched out umbilical cord. Without the umbilical cord binding it to its mother, the monster quickly rolled under the bed. Shan Ziwei immediately got down, but then the monster under the bed threw itself upwards and the entire bed flipped in Shan Ziwei’s direction.

“Crash – “

The metal bed hit the ground with a thunderous crash. As the surface of the bed was now facing Shan Ziwei, he couldn’t figure out where the monster was behind the bed. Shan Ziwei could only go around the side to check, yet as soon as he left the doorway, a black shadow darted towards freedom.

Shan Ziwei had been expecting this and he immediately shot at the escaping silhouette. The bullet accurately shot the silhouette down. It landed with a wet splat like a piece of rotten flesh – it was, after all, indeed a ball of flesh.

Shan Ziwei warily watched the unmoving slab of flesh before he suddenly realized something was wrong. He quickly went over to check, but when he lowered his head to get a closer look, something breezed over his head. Pain suddenly spiked in his scalp; someone – or something – had torn out a bit of his hair.

“!”

Shan Ziwei yelped in pain and he raised his head to look at the perpetrator and saw the monster.

The now evolved monster.

[???

Type: Ten of Hearts

Category: Knight

MP: 5000/5000

SP: Spades (100%), Hearts (100%), Clubs (100%), Diamonds (100%)

Stance: Hostile

Relationship: Adoration (Active)

Description: Clearly, you’ve gotten on its bad side.]

The evolved monster was clearly smaller; the thing that had first been thrown towards the door was a piece of flesh from its body. What stood out most was the two tentacles it had grown. They were approximately a meter in length and looked soft but tough. Though the monster had grown two powerful looking tentacles, it was still a ball of flesh. It stopped in the doorway for a moment and, instead of leaving, it stretched out its tentacle, proudly showing off its spoils of war.

“…”

Shan Ziwei gazed speechlessly at the strands of white hair that was grasped in its tentacle – it was his hair. A certain hypersexual felt his heart sinking with exhaustion. This monster healed itself back up when it evolved. After all his efforts in corrupting its Clubs SP, with a single evolution it had negated all the results of his hard work.

Shan Ziwei numbly raised his weapon and fired, but the monster quickly showed him that those two tentacles were not for show. The two tentacles crossed and curled, wrapping the monster up into a beehive-shape. The bullet hit the tentacles and severed them, but the monster didn’t seem to care. It quickly regenerated two new identical tentacles, which only used up 100 of its MP.

Shan Ziwei stared at the nearly insignificant spiritual corruption and the amount of MP that could rival a Bishop-level character’s, feeling heartbroken.

Under the hypersexual’s heartbroken gaze, the monster picked up the white hair it had dropped and placed it on its own head – or where its head would probably be, considering the position – and the juices on its body quickly stuck the hair there like a strange head accessory.

It waved its tentacles at Shan Ziwei threateningly, before rolling off smugly with its spoils of war.

Shan Ziwei: … Just you wait for me to call my buddies, then we’ll see who gets to be smug!

Next up, Scenario Twenty-Two: Monster Hunter (IV)