Crazy

Crazy.

"Why did so many people go?"

The bespectacled boy looked very young, probably a high school student before all this. He frowned slightly as he looked at the companions still remaining in the cafeteria.

However, he clearly understood his companions' personalities. With new prey, they would naturally rush out to chase it. Those who remained did not necessarily not want to go; they simply saw that too many had gone and knew there would be no share left for them even if they followed, so they stayed put.

Thus, without waiting for anyone to answer, he added, "Tomorrow, go out and catch some more people. We only need three more. I'll give you a few addresses. Whoever catches one and brings them back will earn the qualification."

"But don't let there be another incident where you kill the prey before bringing them back."

He spoke clearly and logically, obviously unlike the other lunatics. Through his words, Xu Zhi confirmed that he seemed to have a way to locate where survivors were. Perhaps that was how they had discovered her location in the first place.

Moreover, he demanded that his companions bring people back here. There had to be some special reason. Three more? It sounded as though they were gathering some sort of stakes.

Unfortunately, Xu Zhi had no intention of asking what he was planning. She only wanted to kill him. Whatever schemes he had, once he was dead, nothing would remain.

On the screen, Little One was hiding in the shadows and slowly approaching the man surrounded by the crowd. But his position was far too central, and Little One could not silently slip directly to his side. So, once it was relatively close, Little One immediately enlarged its body to the maximum.

In an instant, it was as though a gigantic snake had appeared out of nowhere in the cafeteria. Its tail swept toward the center of the crowd before anyone could react.

On Xu Zhi's screen, several lunatics were sent flying by Little One's tail and smashed into the walls. Even the man in the center could not escape.

The difference was that the others immediately scrambled back to their feet, red-eyed as they charged at Little One. The bespectacled boy, however, could only barely stand with his companions supporting him, and he even coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Sure enough, the price of having a good brain is having a bad body."

Only a dozen or so people remained. Like madmen, they ignored the disparity in size and strength between themselves and Little One and kept lunging at it. If they had merely been ordinary people, even ten more would not have affected Little One much. But these people's physical abilities were no different from those of wild beasts.

For a moment, Little One truly was entangled by them. But it only lasted a few seconds. In the next instant, Little One directly shrank its body and used the gap created by its reduced size to dart out of the encirclement, arriving before the bespectacled boy as he tried to flee.

It did not repeat its previous trick. Instead, it slithered swiftly to the bespectacled boy's feet and bit down on his ankle!

Level 6 venom. Even a little was enough to be fatal to an ordinary person.

But in the next second, the person who had been guarding the bespectacled boy immediately grabbed an axe and hacked down at Little One.

Fortunately, Little One's hide was tough and thick. Even though the axe struck it heavily, it did not seriously injure it.

Yet this bought the bespectacled boy time to escape. Though his body was not as strong as those brainless lunatics, he was undoubtedly a superhuman, with resistance far beyond that of ordinary people.

The bespectacled boy being injured again seemed to enrage the others. They attacked Little One with even greater madness, as though they would gladly throw away their lives for him.

".Truly insane."

Their desperate struggle did cause Little One trouble. Their teeth and nails were as sharp as beasts', and under their biting and tearing, even Little One had many scales ripped away. Blood began pouring from the great snake's body, but it still held the upper hand.

That was because the lunatics were gradually being killed by Little One or losing the ability to move, while the bespectacled boy's venom was worsening alongside his injuries, making his escape extremely slow.

Finally, when Little One reached the playground, it thoroughly dealt with the people still clinging to its body and attacking with nails and teeth. The bespectacled boy, meanwhile, collapsed to the ground from exhaustion as the poison grew more severe.

Little One's once beautiful body was now pitted with wounds, vivid red flesh exposed. One eye could not open due to its injury. Seeing this, Xu Zhi was glad she had found Shen Jinwen to cooperate with and lure away a group first. Otherwise, if they had all remained here, it was hard to say who would have won.

The bespectacled boy had probably given up. His breathing rasped like a broken bellows. Watching Little One slither before him, he spoke with some difficulty. "Why?"

His tone was filled with utter confusion.

Naturally, Little One did not answer him. It simply swung its tail, with a large chunk of flesh missing from it, and smashed it down again, directly ending the life of this boy who seemed to have been plotting something.

Xu Zhi had read very few novels, but she had watched many television dramas. She was somewhat tired of villains always escaping at crucial moments or completing their plans, only for the protagonist to turn the tables against all odds.

That was why she had chosen to wipe out this lunatic's den so early.

Any villain who appeared in her life, if possible, Xu Zhi did not want to give them any chance to grow.

After Little One killed the bespectacled boy, Xu Zhi noticed that instead of immediately going to find Doggie as planned, it shrank down and approached the bespectacled boy, searching for something.

A few seconds later, a prompt suddenly appeared in the bottom-right corner of the game screen.

[Attribute Core +1]

".It really dropped a core?"

Xu Zhi was pleasantly surprised. What surprised her even more was that Little One retraced its path, lingering for varying lengths of time beside the lunatics' corpses.

Then Xu Zhi watched several lines of [Attribute Core +1] repeatedly flash across the bottom-right corner of the screen.

By the time Little One finished collecting them, the words had flashed a total of eight times.

"That's quite a high drop rate. Is it because they became stronger?"

Xu Zhi could sense that these people were much stronger than that female student from before. How had they become stronger?

Did they naturally grow stronger in the mist like Aberrations, or was there another reason?

Such as killing people?

One of the conveniences the Game Console provided was that Familiars could sense each other's locations. Seeing Little One heading toward Doggie, Xu Zhi opened the inventory to see what attributes the cores inside these people had.

Then she saw eight identical crimson cores, as bright as blood.

When Xu Zhi tapped one, a single word appeared beside it: [Cup].

"They share the same attribute. This definitely isn't a coincidence."

The color of these cores reminded Xu Zhi of the blood that covered the cafeteria. With that, she could almost confirm that there was something wrong with the severed limbs in the cafeteria.

She decided that once Little One had recovered from its injuries, she would personally visit the cafeteria. Perhaps her eyes would be able to see something.