Green Frog Hospital, by the pond.
The female teacher's body crashed stiffly onto the muddy ground. Crisscrossing bloodstains crawled across her exposed wrists and neck, while her black suit had been soaked wet with blood.
Having reaped a human life, the shadow ghost curled up contentedly into an irregular mass only half a person's size. The shadows receded like a falling tide, vanishing beneath the umbrella.
A suspicious crunching sound rang out from beneath the umbrella, like a rodent gnawing on brittle bones, sending chills down one's spine.
Soon, the disturbing sound disappeared, and the world returned to a silence so complete that even the wind was rarely heard.
The item's effect had entered cooldown, but fortunately, the greatest danger had already been eliminated. All that remained was to watch out for ghosts and death traps.
Compared with humans brimming with malice, even ghosts seemed far more warm and harmless.
Lin Chen put away the black umbrella and stared fixedly as a drop of blood flowed backward from its tip, growing thinner and thinner along the way until it completely seeped into the pitch-black fabric.
All traces of red were swallowed by the deep blackness. Only then did he begin to shiver belatedly. His head throbbed and spun, and waves of intense nausea surged through his abdomen.
—He had killed someone, a player who had been confirmed to be human.
He had only just prepared himself to embrace the law of the jungle in the Eerie Game, yet he had used an item to take someone's life without a second thought. It had happened too quickly, too abruptly.
Even if she had been Sariel's puppet, even if it had been self-defense, it had still gone far beyond what he could accept.
Just a month ago, he had been an ordinary