Monsters Can Be Killed

"It turned out to be just like when I first faced the city's malice."

The cracking meant that the natives' malice toward him had reached a certain limit and they had completely torn away their original disguises. Although he did not understand why he had encountered this with more than four hundred points, Xiao Xiao already had experience dealing with it.

In his field of vision, the workers were already closing in on him.

Shattered human skins lay discarded to one side, while bright-red tentacles waved wildly like enormous pitcher plants.

Through the countless twisted tentacles, Xiao Xiao could see shattered faces and eyes hanging at all sorts of crooked angles.

From those wormlike mouths came sinister, mocking laughter.

The enhancement brought by Extreme Sensitivity allowed him to deeply feel the hatred surging toward him like a tide, layer upon layer.

Every hair on his body had already stood on end, so he simply struck first.

"Whoosh..."

One monster had charged the closest. Its huge tentacles whipped toward Xiao Xiao's neck.

Yet faced with such a bizarre and twisted sight, Xiao Xiao remained exceptionally calm. As he rushed forward, he tilted his body slightly to the left, easily dodging the writhing tentacles. The hand he had tucked into his pocket shot out, and he flicked it backward.

A dim flash of sharpness swept past. The monster's tentacle split apart with a sound, fell to the ground, and bounced and flopped.

Xiao Xiao held a fruit knife in a reverse grip and looked at the people before him without retreating.

He had not used a gun. When he had dealt with the Despair Swamp incident earlier, he had used up all six bullets, and Ruan Ruan had not replenished his supply yet.

So he could only use a knife now. This was the fruit knife he had bought on the street after deciding to undergo enhancement for the first time.

Its quality was poor, but who said a fruit knife could not kill monsters?

The surrounding Shedding Skin monsters were caught off guard by this sight. They all flinched, and their forward momentum slowed.

The monster whose tentacle had been severed instead retreated fearfully.

"Scared already?"

Xiao Xiao tilted his head at them. His expression was blank, yet his manner seemed utterly relaxed.

Sometimes, when an expression was too relaxed, it made people wonder whether a smile was hidden beneath it.

Xiao Xiao really was relaxed.

These monsters that had shed their human skins possessed not only nightmare-like, grotesque bodies, but also intense malice that seemed almost tangible.

It was like Jiang Cheng, whom he had encountered at the class reunion. Even without shedding his human skin, Jiang Cheng had been enough to make one's flesh creep. Yet after these things truly shed their human skins and revealed their twisted essences, Xiao Xiao instead felt that they were extremely weak and pitiful.

He had easily killed one right after awakening. How much more so now?

More importantly, he had no burden weighing on him now.

Monsters could be killed.

Just like when he had killed Jiang Cheng earlier. Had Jiang Cheng not quickly returned to normal afterward?

He had even become more polite toward people.

Xiao Xiao had already figured out this rule. Natives who had not "shed their skins" could not be killed, or points would be deducted.

But those who had already shed their skins and become monsters were different. Killing them instead forced them to put their human skins back on!

So he tightened his grip on the fruit knife and stabbed without mercy toward a bright-red heart beating wildly in his field of vision.

"Whoosh..."

Yet Xiao Xiao's charge sent the monsters into a panic, and countless tentacles surged toward him.

On countless cold, shattered faces, expressions of panic appeared instead. Mouths of all different shapes shouted:

"Get him! Kill him..."

"Destroy his face..."

"Take his knife first! Don't let him hurt anyone..."

"..."

"Heh heh. You want to take my knife?"

Xiao Xiao sneered. Mind Burst and Extreme Sensitivity had already brought his control over his body to an exceptional level.

Even when facing the oncoming mass of bright-red tentacles, he easily avoided them.

With the support of the Violence Factor, the fruit knife seemed to possess a terrifying sharpness.

As he swung it, tentacle after tentacle was torn apart, falling to the ground like earthworms. The surrounding monsters retreated in panic.

However, under the influence of Extreme Sensitivity, Xiao Xiao suddenly felt that something was strange.

The countless workers around him had torn away their human disguises and exposed their blood-slick tentacles. They glared at him with eyes full of malice and charged viciously. There were many of them, they were fast, and they possessed far greater strength than Jiang Cheng had before. For a moment, Xiao Xiao felt that twisted tentacles were everywhere around him, while shattered faces flickered before his eyes.

Yet in this nightmare-like environment, their tentacles merely swept toward him from all directions.

They wove into enormous nets, as if intending to surround him.

An odd thought flashed through Xiao Xiao's mind:

Could it be that they don't actually want to kill me? Do they only want to capture me?

But then he saw the blood-red eyes hanging from the monsters' shattered faces like lanterns. He saw the twisted, vicious malice in those eyes and instantly understood. That's right. They want to capture me, then eat me...

"..."

He sneered inwardly and immediately stopped holding back.

In such a harsh environment, where it was like being engulfed by a crowd, an individual's strength was actually limited. It was like an ancient battlefield: no matter how valiant a general was, once surrounded by a crowd, it was difficult to fight his way out, because there was hardly any space left around him.

But Xiao Xiao had already been enhanced by Extreme Sensitivity.

He had seriously analyzed this before.

For his Mind Burst ability, the element that could complement it best was the Extreme Sensitivity element, which could strengthen his information-gathering ability.

Now, he immediately felt the advantages brought by this enhancement element. Even surrounded by countless monsters, he could keenly sense the malice surging around him and feel every powerful tentacle curling toward him. Combined with Mind Burst, information analysis, and a body enhanced by the Violence Factor, he moved through the monster horde as though he were in his element.

Amid layers of twisted malice, he dodged and retreated with ease, flashing and weaving like a wandering ghost.

At that moment, even the fruit knife seemed to shine with an eerie sharpness in his hand.

Cold light flashed. Bright-red tentacles rose around him one after another, and sprays of blood splattered across the ground.

This further proved Xiao Xiao's earlier conclusion: the Observer route was the enhancement path best suited to him...

"What happened?"

"Damn it, where did this lunatic come from?"

Even with Xiao Xiao's merciless counterattack, the monsters continued to surround him. Every inch of space around him was filled with nightmare-like scenes. Looking into the distance, he saw workers at the docks occasionally spot the commotion from afar. They seemed shocked too, waving their hands vigorously and shouting questions as they rushed toward him, their faces filled with astonishment and anxiety.

But as they drew closer, their expressions grew more ferocious.

By the time they reached him, the human skins on their bodies had also torn apart. They whipped their bright-red tentacles around and joined the battle one after another.

They were endless. It seemed that every time he forced one monster back, two more appeared around him.

They even extended their tentacles to seize the sharp pickaxes nearby, or pulled out streetlights standing three meters tall to use as weapons. Some tentacles plunged into the ground, sending large chunks of broken concrete flying toward him.

This was the first time Xiao Xiao had faced so many monsters. Several times, he had already wanted to summon Pain Hound.

But he held back.

With his thoughts racing, he had already made the calmest analysis possible:

He still had not found the source of the malice hidden among the crowd. This was not yet the time to summon Pain Hound.

As he thought this, he took a single step and reached the front of a face filled with anger and malice.

This was the monster Foreman had become after shedding his skin.

It had originally charged at the very front, but after seeing Xiao Xiao draw the fruit knife and begin to counterattack, it had hidden behind the others.

Even so, it continued shouting tirelessly, urging the surrounding monsters to attack and surround him.

Xiao Xiao could even see that the face, already split into three parts, wore a different expression on each section. If the pieces were put together, they would reveal its complete hatred, fear, and vicious determination to kill him at any cost.

Kill him first!

Xiao Xiao twisted his body to dodge two tentacles curling toward him from behind. Then he held the fruit knife in reverse and prepared to stab it into Foreman's heart.

"Huh?"

Just as the blade was about to pierce its heart, Xiao Xiao suddenly heard it let out a panicked cry.

That cry made Xiao Xiao pause slightly, and the fruit knife did not come down.

Within his nearly time-stopped thoughts, he considered many things every second, and he gathered just as much information.

For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly felt that the scream from the monster Foreman had become sounded a little like...

...a human?

That realistic, humanlike cry faintly affected Xiao Xiao's mood.

At the same time, more information entered his field of vision.

He suddenly noticed that the monsters whose tentacles had been severed had not disappeared, nor had they stood back up like Jiang Cheng.

Then was it because all the monsters had to be killed before they returned to normal, or...

...was this time different? Was killing them truly killing them?

This sudden guess made his heart tighten. It was as if an invisible shudder instantly surged into his scalp.