Boom!
A bedroom door was violently smashed open, its handle breaking apart as pieces scattered everywhere.
Consumed by towering rage, the Gourmand Eerie's body had become abnormally massive, its deformed muscles writhing**.
"Where's my liquor?"
Its scarlet line of sight swept across the room before locking onto the wooden bed.
But when the blanket was thrown aside, the bed was empty.
The Gourmand Eerie tugged at the corner of its mouth and said with a chilling smile, "Do you think you can run?"
In fact, Ji Yan's actions suited its wishes even better. From the very beginning, it had never intended to let him complete the task smoothly.
Through Ji Yan, it could occasionally get Blood Lyre from the Bewitching Eerie in Apartment 101 to satisfy its craving for alcohol.
But it could never drink to its heart's content every day. If it caught Ji Yan failing his task and kept him firmly in its grasp, it could negotiate with the Bewitching Eerie in Apartment 101. With a steady supply, perhaps it could achieve the freedom to drink Blood Lyre as much as it wanted through exploitation...
This plan might not work.
When that Bewitching Eerie woman went mad, even the Gourmand Eerie feared her.
But the Gourmand Eerie had become so obsessed with Blood Lyre that it no longer had the patience to think that far ahead.
It would not be easy to force Ji Yan into failing his task.
So, it had reached an agreement with Dong Chu.
Players could interfere with tasks, but it could only use Dong Chu to set a trap for Ji Yan.
What Dong Chu wanted was simple.
Food, and all the equipment on Ji Yan!
With one eye blinded and food scarce, he had to find his own way to survive.
Dong Chu's Term Talent, Narrow Escape, could only be triggered when his favorability fell to rock bottom and his living conditions became perilous.
The talent would grant Dong Chu certain privileges, allowing him to seize a chance at survival himself.
And the privilege triggered this time was the ability to initiate one hidden trade with any Family Eerie.
At first glance, this talent seemed rather useless.
It merely gave you a sliver of hope when you were about to die, leaving it up to you whether you could seize it.
But used properly, it could still be incredibly useful.
"Tonight, some people will sleep soundly, while others will be running for their lives. Heh."
With his hands behind his head, Dong Chu had a feeling that he would sleep exceptionally peacefully tonight.
As long as he waited until tomorrow morning, he could slowly collect the fruits of his labor.
The Gourmand Eerie could not smell Ji Yan anywhere in Room 404.
Frowning, it looked toward the doorway. "Did he hide in that woman's room?"
The Bewitching Eerie in Apartment 101 was the first one it thought of. That woman was always opposing it, so it was not impossible that she had taken Ji Yan in.
At night, many extremely vicious Eeries would refresh in the Apartment. They were not current residents of the Apartment, but former residents who had once been driven out.
These Eeries had many taboos and could easily turn hostile.
If Ji Yan was eliminated by another Eerie, all the Gourmand Eerie's efforts would have been wasted.
The living room was filled with shadowy Eerie figures.
They had all originally been residents of Room 404, but they had later been conquered by Players.
Their identity settings had changed, turning them into NPCs in night mode.
Though they were no longer the Masters of Room 404, each was still brazenly making itself at home—watching television in the living room, drinking tea, and sneaking food from the kitchen.
"A bunch of discarded trash, and you still treat this place as your home!"
The Gourmand Eerie wanted to leave and capture Ji Yan, but then it remembered its nemesis on the 7th Floor. If that thing noticed it had left Room 404, it would definitely go mad and chase it downstairs...
Its eyes darkened.
Its alcohol craving had struck. It felt as though ten thousand ants were gnawing at its body, making it convulse in agony.
It turned to return to its room, intending to take a few drinks and calm down first.
But as it turned around, it saw a disheveled Eerie sitting in the corridor, holding a bottle of brilliant red liquor and drinking itself into a stupor.
The moment the cork was twisted open, the Gourmand Eerie knew what kind of liquor it was.
Blood Lyre!
"Where did that liquor come from?"
The Gourmand Eerie asked. It recognized the bottle too—it was the Eerie item Dong Chu had possessed.
"I got it from a little Rat."
"Where's the Rat?"
"After I took his liquor, he ran away."
The Drunken Eerie swayed the half-empty bottle of Blood Lyre in his hand, utterly drunk.
"What do you think this liquor's brewed from? It hits so hard, hehehe..."
"..."
The Gourmand Eerie's face twisted savagely as it stared at the Drunken Eerie. "Damn it, don't you know he was my prey?"
The Drunken Eerie did not respond. Still dazed, he muttered something under his breath.
The Gourmand Eerie snatched the liquor from his hand and began gulping it down. Driven mad by its craving, it could not care about anything else...
It drained the entire bottle without leaving a single drop. The Gourmand Eerie let out an ecstatic howl.
But its head also became severely dizzy from the anesthetic.
It threw away the bottle, its head heavy as it staggered toward its room.
But after taking two steps, its head became even dizzier.
Its room split into multiple blurry afterimages.
Lowering its head, it vaguely saw a mottled, rust-stained Knife Blade piercing through its chest...
Why did this knife look so familiar?
The next second, his pupils contracted and veins bulged.
The gloomy drunkenness and numbness vanished completely!
He whipped around and stared fixedly at the Drunken Eerie behind him, forcing out a twisted voice through his broken teeth. "That knife... where did you get it?!"
The drunkenness had vanished from the Drunken Eerie's terrifying face. He smiled without smiling. "An old friend of yours gave it to me."
"He asked me to pass along a message."
"His wife misses you very much!"
As the Chopper pierced through him, blood sprayed out under pressure from the deformed tumors, cracks spreading outward.
At those words, the Gourmand Eerie's fleshy face trembled violently, filling with terror.
He grabbed the Chopper with both hands.
But the Chopper seemed welded to its chest, continuously sinking deeper into its flesh!
"No, no..."
"Who are you? Why are you helping that bastard from Apartment 702?!"
The Drunken Eerie did not dare relax in the slightest until the Knife Blade had completely sunk into the Gourmand Eerie's body, confirming that its heart had been pierced!
He raised his head, and under the Gourmand Eerie's terrified gaze, the corner of his mouth curled up. "Guess who this is?"
"I'm your useless slave son!"
As soon as the words fell, the Chopper was violently pulled out.
The Gourmand Eerie staggered through the corridor, the wound in its chest continuously widening.
The Eeries that had refreshed at midnight in the living room and kitchen all gathered around, blocking the corridor entrance and watching the scene as the place became lively with chatter.
In the end, the Gourmand Eerie collapsed to the ground. The flesh on its body visibly withered and dried out, its two eyeballs bulging as it glared fixedly at Ji Yan.
Ji Yan remained expressionless, gripping the Chopper tightly in his hand, though his hand trembled slightly.
Only when the corpse on the ground had completely become a pile of dried flesh and blood did he relax.
"You killed him... hehehe... killed him..."
"You... why do you smell so delicious?"
The Eeries behind him gradually crowded closer. They surrounded the corpse on the ground, but several of them seemed to have smelled something, their noses wandering over the Drunken Eerie's body.
His cheek hurt sharply.
When he touched it with his fingers, the entire skin of the Drunken Eerie's face began tearing apart bit by bit!
Ji Yan inwardly cried out in alarm.
"The Murderer Mask's effect is about to wear off!"
He squeezed through the crowd of Eeries and hurried back to his room.
He shut the door and locked it.
Outside, there came sounds of tearing and chewing as the midnight Eeries devoured the Gourmand Eerie.
"With this, even a Dungeon boss should be guaranteed to die, right?"
Ji Yan sat down before the mirror.
Since the Eerie item's duration was nearly over, his entire face looked terrifying at that moment.
His facial features were tearing apart and separating, exposing pale facial bones to the air.
At a glance, it looked as though his head were about to split into pieces!
His cheeks hurt excruciatingly because the bony spikes at the mask's edges were being pulled free from his flesh, blood staining his neck...
This had been his plan.
Lure Father Eerie out of his room, then use the Murderer Mask to turn his Player identity into an Eerie identity. Taking advantage of Father Eerie's numb complacency from his life-consuming addiction to alcohol, he would deliver a fatal blow!
At that moment, the Eerie aura belonging to the murderer was fading from his body, restoring the scent of a Human Player.
He reached out and carefully removed the mask.
Clumps of viscous black blood dripped onto the table. With a clatter, the human-skin mask was tossed into a corner of the table...
Ji Yan touched his intact face and finally let out a sigh of relief.
"I actually killed the Gourmand Eerie."
Even he, the one who had carried out the murder, found this desperate, dead-horse-as-a-live-horse solution surreal.
Then the game panel popped up, further confirming that he had truly broken this deadlock.
"Ding! Because the Player killed a Family Eerie from Room 404, a new achievement has been successfully unlocked!"
Before you continue