"That was a damn accurate shot."
A somewhat thin, bookish middle-aged man crouched beside the incinerator, using his pure white gloved hand to part the blood-soaked hair as he examined the bullet hole that had pierced straight through the corpse's brow.
"That new kid seems to be a naturally gifted sniper. All his shooting scores were outstanding."
Beside him, a pot-bellied man with rough skin, dressed in a shirt and brown suspender jeans, lit a cigarette and held it between his lips.
"Weina, did you use a gun the first time you killed someone too?"
Smith did not turn around as he asked quietly.
"Yeah." Weina took a deep drag. The red ember climbed up the white cigarette, and smoke poured from his nostrils. "It was my first mission. I ran into a contaminated lunatic."
"How many shots?"
"Eight. The first seven didn't hit anything vital. The last shot blew that guy's head apart."
"But this kid only needed one shot." Smith twisted the corpse's head again and looked at the shattered back of its skull, where thin white fungal threads wriggled amid the broken flesh.
"If he doesn't have some past we don't know about, then he's a born hunter."
He slowly turned around, tossed the bloodstained white glove onto the corpse, and pressed the red button beside him.
Then he headed for the small exit door nearby.
The stretcher beneath the corpse began to move, slowly tipping the body into a massive silver pipe connected to the roaring incinerator beyond.
As if it sensed the approach of destruction, the corpse trembled.
Then its crooked head slowly straightened.
Its shoulders heaved as though it were convulsing.
"Who are you planning to assign Mu Xiu's case to?"
Weina watched Smith turn and walk out, exhaling smoke as he followed behind him.
"Selina and the new kid. They found the clue, after all, and this case happens to fall in the overlap between field operations and criminal investigation."
Smith answered casually.
As they spoke, he had already stepped through the small door, while the pot-bellied Weina had reached the doorway as well.
The corpse, which had been slowly sliding toward the metal pipe, suddenly shuddered. Its shoulders drew inward, and it abruptly sat up with the head dangling from its neck.
Bang--
A thunderous gunshot erupted.
The scorching bullet accurately pierced the corpse's neck. The powerful impact sent it rapidly falling backward, sliding into the silver pipe.
Click--
The pipe's gate slammed shut, and surging flames devoured everything.
"So what the hell was that thing?"
Weina holstered his pistol and could not help cursing.
"Ghost Mushroom mycelium." Smith walked ahead without looking back. "It lures creatures in the wilderness into eating it, then uses the flesh and blood of those gluttons as a breeding ground to grow new Ghost Mushrooms."
"After completely consuming its host, it replaces the muscles with mycelium and controls these poor people's corpses to return to their groups, attracting more of their kind to devour the Ghost Mushrooms growing from their bodies."
"That guy was fairly lucky. He died before being completely consumed. In the final stages of Ghost Mushroom parasitism, he wouldn't have wanted to stay alive."
"Those Wilderness Wanderers really carry all kinds of crap on them."
Weina took a hard drag on his cigarette.
"But they're humans too."
Smith suddenly said.
Weina fell silent, and the two gradually walked away.
A gate dropped down from above and sealed the small door shut. The metal plaque on the door reflected a cold, ghostly glint under the lights.
[Incineration Room (Contamination Mutation Type)]
--
He Ao and Selina waited quietly in the special field operations office on Underground Floor 3.
"Feeling better?"
Selina looked at the absentminded He Ao. She thought he was still trapped in the aftermath of killing someone for the first time.
But there was no use trying to talk someone through that. If He Ao continued like this, she would have to consider signing him up for counseling.
Hearing Selina's concern, He Ao shifted his gaze away from the character status panel and smiled at her. "I'm feeling much better."
He had not had time to check his character status before. Now that he finally did, he found that, just as expected, the panel had changed after entering the Copy World.
He Ao (Ander) Permission Level: Normal Player Physical Fitness: 15 (13) (ordinary people in the Copy World are 10; ordinary people in the Main World are 5) Skill: Talent Sequence 272: Hyperthymesia (Soulbound) (Rank F) Mechanical Modification: None Martial Arts: Qi Induction (Rank F) (Cannot Be Used) Character Ability: Basic Firearms Proficiency
Ander's name had appeared after He Ao's. The original 15 for Physical Fitness had turned gray, while the 13 in parentheses had turned yellow. That 13 should have been Ander's Physical Fitness.
His skills had not changed. Hyperthymesia was bound to the soul, so He Ao could still use it. However, Qi Induction under Martial Arts had turned gray, with the note "Cannot Be Used" added after it.
A new category had also appeared beneath Martial Arts: [Character Ability]. It seemed to refer to the character's strongest ability, or perhaps one that had reached a certain standard.
Ander's ability was Basic Firearms Proficiency.
Ander really was an excellent shot. He Ao wholeheartedly approved.
Who had never dreamed, while playing a shooting game, of having godlike aim that could land headshots every time without cheats?
At any rate, He Ao liked this ability very much.
"Are you really all right?"
As he pondered this, Selina's question reached his ears again.
He Ao looked at the beautiful, serious blonde woman. In truth, they only had a straightforward superior-subordinate relationship. She did not have to care so much about a subordinate; all she needed was for him to complete his missions properly.
She really was a good person.
He Ao had known Selina was a somewhat stubbornly good person ever since the newbie mission.
He could tell from how, during the mission just now, she had only disabled the Wilderness Wanderers' ability to resist instead of killing them outright.
So He Ao closed the character status panel and answered Selina seriously, "There really isn't much of a problem. If there is one, it's that the area below my chest still hurts a little."
That was where a Steel Rod had pierced his body when the airship Ander had been riding was attacked. Selina had pulled He Ao out of the hospital too urgently, and some parts had not fully healed yet.
"Then it won't hurt much longer." Hearing that, Selina smiled instead. She pointed to the silver wristband on He Ao's arm. "It's about time."
"Hm?"
He Ao was still confused when the wristband suddenly vibrated. He raised his hand.
He did not know how to operate the wristband, but that was fine. At times like this, as long as he relaxed and thought about nothing, Ander's bodily memory would skillfully unlock it.
Some actions did not really require thinking. No matter how complicated a phone's alarm-dismissal settings were, people could always somehow complete the entire process of turning it off while half-asleep.
Still, the wristband's controls were fairly simple. After He Ao verified his iris and unlocked it, a message popped up and projected onto the back of his hand.
But the projected text was not very clear.
"Here, try these." Selina handed him a pair of ultrathin silver glasses.
After He Ao put them on, the text on the wristband instantly vanished, while clear and precise information appeared in the glasses instead.
The header of the message made He Ao's body stiffen.
[Thank you for using Huiermei Medical Group's services. Your medical bill for this visit totals 435,791.73 Federal currency. A detailed breakdown follows:] [Surgery Fee: ...] [Anesthesiologist: ...] [Assistant Doctor: ...] ...
Oh no. It felt like a heart attack.
He Ao no longer had time to look through the detailed bill. His weekly pay was only eight hundred Federal currency, and even at most, his monthly salary did not exceed three thousand six hundred. Yet one surgery had cost him over four hundred and thirty thousand Federal currency?
What kind of prices were these in this Copy World?! Damn it!
He suddenly felt like his wound did not hurt anymore.
Before you continue