Feeding

Xu Kai calmed himself and sighed inwardly. He finally understood the pitfall in the cafeteria rules.

He also believed what Kana had said earlier: if there was something wrong with your perception, do not enter the cafeteria.

Because once he entered the cafeteria, he would face two sets of rules!

One was the cafeteria rules from before: he had to eat exactly on time.

The other was the arena rules now: he had to fight a match.

That meant that if Xu Kai wanted to survive, he had to fight a duel at top speed, then leave the arena and eat in the cafeteria at exactly six in the afternoon.

Xu Kai was certain that the arena was a phenomenon beyond ordinary understanding. It was tangible, yet also insubstantial; only when a person's degree of mutation reached a certain point could they see it. In fact, Xu Kai should still have been in the second-floor cafeteria, perhaps even standing at the elevator doors.

But that did not mean the arena was fake. Xu Kai could reach out and touch the surfaces of the transparent partitions on either side of the red carpet. They were unquestionably real. There was no need to guess about the rules, either; they were definitely real too. If he dared break them, the game would dare punish him.

The biggest problem was that he could not see the timetable in the arena. To avoid breaking any rules, he could only take part in a duel as quickly as possible.

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.

While Xu Kai was thinking about the rules, the other three elevators arrived too, but he only saw the doors of elevators two and three slowly open.

Elevator two had come up from below, and Leng Chong emerged from it. As soon as he entered, his expression was much like Xu Kai's: he looked as though he had seen a ghost. The only difference was that Xu Kai could clearly see that Leng Chong really did look like a bug now. He was crawling on his stomach, his clothes were in tatters, and he was in worse shape than he had been at noon.

Elevator three came down from above. Its doors opened, and the Nurse stepped out. It was Ms. Lin. She was standing, holding a long blade and breathing heavily. The inside of the elevator doors was covered in bloody handprints.

Then came elevator four. When it arrived, the entire arena shook. Its doors did not open; they shattered outright, and a huge monster burst out.

Xu Kai could hardly imagine how the behemoth had squeezed into elevator four. It was as though it had been born from the elevator.

It stood on all fours, its body covered in short, strip-shaped indentations. It had dark red pupils and a pair of wings with sharp claws on them. The hair covering its body was coarse and smooth, writhing as the monster moved.

Ignoring everyone's cries of alarm, it spread its wings, flew down from the elevator entrance, and landed in the middle of the arena with a roar.

"Roar!"

The terrifying sound wave was visible to the naked eye, spreading outward in a raging ring. It made the patients and doctors in the front rows bleed, while those farther back were sent tumbling.

When Xu Kai heard the roar, an involuntary shudder ran through his entire body. It was like facing a predator at the very top of the food chain; he could not suppress his instinctive fear.

Leng Chong dropped flat on the ground, clutching his head in both hands and trembling. Ms. Lin spat out a mouthful of blood, dropped her blade, and sank to one knee.

Looking around, Xu Kai's willpower was comparatively good.

Time waited for no one. Xu Kai watched the monster stop in the very center of the arena and provoke them wildly. It seemed they could only fight inside the arena.

But Xu Kai had no choice. If he could not leave the arena, he could not complete the task of eating in the cafeteria on time. It was a dead end. The designer behind the scenes was naturally drawing Xu Kai and the others into the arena, even forcing everyone to challenge the monster.

Clearly, Leng Chong and Ms. Lin understood as well. They gestured to Xu Kai, suggesting they set their conflict aside and kill the monster first.

Xu Kai responded to them in turn.

With that reassurance, they matched their steps and approached the center of the arena.

The closer they got to the center, the more frenzied the cheers of the patients, doctors, and nurses became. Finally, Xu Kai and the other two entered the arena.

Click!

The arena closed, and the monster began to move. It opened its enormous maw and aimed at Xu Kai, spraying out flames.

Xu Kai controlled the eerie hand and quickly pulled himself away from the area scorched by the flames, but the blaze covered too wide an area. Even with all his strength, he only narrowly escaped. When he looked up again, he discovered that the monster had burned half the fighting platform!

The entire platform was roughly the size of ten basketball courts, and one breath of flame had scorched half of it.

After the flames died down, the ground was still red, and the air above it warped from the scorching heat.

Ms. Lin had already charged to the monster's feet. Holding her sharp long blade in a reverse grip, she swept it up from the ground in a blur, slashing viciously at its foot.

But the monster's foot was too big, as thick as a bucket. Ms. Lin only cut through the surface before her blade stopped. She hurriedly pulled it back, and the instant she did, the monster's wound healed.

"What terrifying regenerative power! If you have any trump cards, use them! If we don't give it everything now, we won't get another chance!"

Hearing that, Leng Chong quickly covered himself in ice armor and crawled up the monster's leg onto its body, leaving patches of ice behind him. Xu Kai stared at the monster's front leg, and roaring flames sprang up, only for the monster to stamp them out at once.

The monster felt something on its back. With just a shake, the heavy force flung Leng Chong away and sent him crashing into the arena's protective barrier. It was unclear whether he was alive or dead.

Xu Kai and the other two surrounded the monster, watching it gravely. Faced with its enormous body, they were somewhat at a loss.

They could not beat it. They simply could not. All their power was like a tickle to the monster.

And a glancing blow from the monster would injure them; a direct hit would kill them.

The battle had only just begun, and Xu Kai and the other two still had the strength to barely dodge the monster's attacks. But as time went on, their movements slowed, and each of them was in grave danger.

The monster's stamina, however, seemed endless. When it saw that the time was ripe, it suddenly stamped hard on the ground, sending Xu Kai and the other two flying. Then it let out a mighty roar, and the vibrating sound waves warped even the air.

This time they were too close. The sound waves exploded beside their ears. Xu Kai felt blood streaming down his head, and the black-and-white world before his eyes shook endlessly. His body was like a rag, driven by the sound into a corner of the arena and stopped by the tall barrier.

The other two were in the same state, flung to the edge of the arena like broken dolls. If the monster stamped its foot once more, all three would die on the spot.

But at that moment, the situation suddenly changed.

The patients, doctors, and nurses outside the arena suddenly went mad and rushed into it.

Though they had been in the stands, they suddenly climbed over the railing and charged into the arena like lunatics.

Xu Kai's consciousness was hazy, but when he saw someone crawling toward him, he instinctively used his flames and burned the person to death.

The instant he burned that person to death, a familiar voice rang in his ears and swept through everyone's minds:

"Get lost! Every last one of you, get back to your places, no matter who you are!"

At that voice, not only the doctors but even the monster retreated.

The monster even shrank back in a humanlike manner. It roared, casually crushed a patient to death, and flew toward elevator four with the corpse in its mouth. It moved so quickly, as though the owner of that voice were a terrifying figure.

Elevator four had already been destroyed. It did not wait for the elevator, but squeezed straight into the shaft as though going up a chimney. There was no telling where it crawled off to.

Seeing this, the other two suddenly understood what the monster intended: it had killed someone to fulfill the rule requiring one duel.

They followed its example, each killing a patient before retreating, dragging their badly injured bodies along.

Xu Kai had already burned a crawling patient to death. After hearing that voice, it was as though a curtain had been lifted from his hazy perception.

He saw the cafeteria again, the clock above the serving window reaching exactly six in the evening, and the plump auntie wielding a ladle.

"Fuck, so that's how it is!"

Xu Kai was standing in his own place. He touched his cheek; the blood was still on him. The arena had not been an illusion. He had just lived through a terrifying, bloody battle.