Main God: I Can't Save Them, I Really Can't...

It was already past midnight.

Standing in the shadow nearest the window, Li Yun continued to silently watch the movement below.

One particularly interesting point was that, by now, he had confirmed that the Blood Moon overhead clearly possessed certain previously unnoticed properties that defied conventional physics.

—For instance, no matter which side of the building one looked out from, that blood-red glow could now be seen shining down in almost direct, brilliant beams.

Considering that this "moon" should have been constantly moving, it nevertheless seemed to have no obvious "angle" relative to the land below.

From its initial pale red hue to its current terrifying, dripping-crimson, heavy blood-colored moonlight, it could somehow be easily blocked by nearly any inanimate object, rather than producing the more intuitive propagation and scattering effects of normal light waves...

Just as he was thinking, he heard footsteps behind him.

He turned his head slightly and looked at Old Li, whose complexion was already terrible—an unnatural flush showed through his deathly pallor, and his eyes were still half-closed, though at least he was awake now.

Li Yun shook his head as well.

"In your condition, you'd better keep resting for now."

It was not that he feared this veteran would collapse on the spot. He simply considered that if the man caused another accident and turned into one of those things outside, it would be rather troublesome.

"Brother Li, I really have to thank you. Otherwise, I reckon I would've died here this time."

Unexpectedly, the first thing the other man said was a thank-you. He was exceedingly polite, which caught Li Yun slightly off guard.

Sure enough, no one was truly stupid.

"No need to be so polite."

Too much explanation could sometimes seem like an attempt to cover something up. Naturally, Li Yun had no intention of dwelling on the matter.

Seeing Old Li squinting stubbornly, he knew just how red the man's eyes were beneath those lids. Pushing up his glasses, the young man changed the subject. "What is it?"

Li Qingzhi hesitated. Since the other man had completely refused to pick up the thread, most of the speech he had prepared was instantly rendered useless.

After pausing several times, he finally said, "I looked outside just now too. Those things are getting stranger and stranger. To be safe, should we consider climbing a few more floors?"

Feeling several seemingly indifferent but actually attentive gazes quietly turn toward him, Li Yun did not react much. "Your concern is valid, but I'm afraid we can't."

He could naturally understand the feelings of Old Li and the surrounding newcomer Visitors.

After all, Li Yun was the one who could see the situation most clearly among them.

...By now, as the blood color flowing through the moonlight deepened and that increasingly eerie glow blanketed everything, the situation outside was clearly becoming more and more "boiling."

Those forms bathed in the thick moonlight—or rather, bloodlight—were undergoing further horrifying transformations.

Their outlines, which might once have barely retained traces of their original forms, had now completely shifted in an incomprehensible direction.

With crazed distortions, elongations, and swelling beyond the limits of imagination for flesh-and-blood life... they had even changed into bizarre, almost "indescribable" shapes.

They were horrors that had never appeared even in humanity's deepest nightmares.

Some monsters had just leaped down from the buildings, and it was clear that something beneath their skin was rapidly stretching and multiplying.

Then, in less than half a minute, they violently tore apart their already abnormally shriveled old skins. Long limbs with scythe-like legs unfurled into the air, producing teeth-grating crackling sounds.

Others crouched on all fours. After briefly winning a slaughter, they hurriedly gnawed at the fallen monsters of their own kind nearby, while thin, worm-like tubular appendages extended from between their skin, constantly poking their heads out to greedily draw in the blood flowing across the ground.

At this moment, anyone could see their extreme craving for that scarlet substance.

As they devoured and tore apart their prey without restraint, dense bone spurs continuously burst from their spines, joints, and other places, reflecting the blood-red light that seemed to be pouring down from the sky.

Even some clearly dead monsters had their remaining broken heads, limbs, and even abdominal cavities rapidly split open. As their flesh underwent widespread mutation, they looked like giant rotting sunflowers, or some fusion of predatory sea anemones.

Yet protruding from those "wounds" were trembling new organs, and suction-cup mouthparts lined with sharp teeth...

The boundary between life and death was beginning to blur.

And this endless mutation had bred even more extreme brutality.

Among these "lives," which no longer bore much trace of natural organisms, mutual slaughter was no longer intermittent. It had become the most direct theme of madness.

By now, almost any object showing obvious signs of movement—even the shattered remains of one of their own kind flying through the air—was enough to instantly ignite their most primitive urge to kill.

Someone frowned slightly at the sight.

In fact, aside from their bloody slaughter of one another, even their "devouring" had become increasingly strange.

Some particularly bizarre monsters on the ground no longer seemed to be simply "feeding" in his eyes. It was more like... hunting and merging?

Those strange things that seemed relatively less eager to fight were indiscriminately stuffing all manner of freshly torn limbs into cracks somewhere in their bodies, or into inexplicably opened wounds and cavities.

As these foreign "parts" rapidly merged into them as though plug-and-play, more and more blood-red color naturally gathered within their bodies.

At the same time, under the intense illumination of the bloodlight across their surfaces, which seemed to have some kind of "catalytic" effect, their entire bodies began to swell and mutate in extremely unstable ways.

...Li Yun could see that within that bloated, writhing flesh, some parts were growing while simultaneously rotting away.

The two or three largest individuals among them had gradually "expanded" to the height of several floors. From afar, they looked like terrifying conglomerates crudely pieced together from countless chunks of corpses, still constantly writhing and reconstructing themselves.

A... living colossus.

Even looking down from the eighth floor, one could feel the "height" of their slowly approaching bulk.

No wonder everyone was growing uneasy.

Yet regardless of the shrieks, hisses, bones grinding, flesh colliding, skins splitting, or even those "mountains of flesh" whose every "great mouth" was still crazily searching for new food, wholly immersed in the act of "eating," deep and heavy vibrations sounded from within their bodies, as though some organ buried deep inside was still functioning...

Amid those chaotic, piercing, mad monster noises...

Perhaps because they had glimpsed that "blood-red pupil" in the sky through someone else's eyes and had been affected to some extent as well...

Some people could now vaguely make out, beneath those seemingly lawless and almost purely bestial roars and strange sounds, the repeated trace of a cry containing nothing but obsession—

"Blood..."

"My blood... give it to me..."

"...Where is the blood? Blood..."

Even after these pitiful creatures had lost all reason and completely fallen into the abyss of madness and pain, some instinct lingering within their bodies still drove them to mournfully chase that unattainable thing.

Endlessly.

It sent chills down one's spine.

...Drawing back his gaze, Li Yun glanced at the veteran beside him. From the man's somewhat baffled reaction, he confirmed that Old Li either could not hear the sounds below clearly or could not understand those "words."

Li Yun nodded.

In any case, since this "honest man" did not seem likely to step on any further landmines for the moment, that was more or less good news in itself.

Still, to be safe, he needed to calm these people down.

"...Old Li, you need to understand that the reason we can still hide here is probably because this place's 'owner' has no intention of paying attention to us yet."

Seeing that the man before him was still utterly confused, he spread his hands and explained calmly, "As guests, we should have some self-awareness. Getting too close to the owner's home would be rather rude."

"Brother, what are you talking about? What owner—"

As if he had suddenly thought of something, the guide's voice abruptly stopped halfway through.

It was replaced by confusion mixed with dawning realization, and even disbelief.

"Mm, you should have noticed it before too... that feeling of being watched."

"After all, don't be fooled by how lively those things below are."

"But really... in a city, what place would be most thoroughly illuminated by the moon in the sky, almost completely unobstructed?"

Hearing the young man's words, the veteran nearly lost his composure.

His eyelids even opened, revealing those red eyes. Yet Old Li wore the complicated expression of someone who had just swallowed something disgusting. "You mean... above our heads..."

He pointed upward, even lowering his voice as though two spies were exchanging intelligence.

"It's fine. No need to be so nervous."

Seeing him like this, Li Yun comforted him rather thoughtfully. "Because being nervous won't help."

"The owner is probably sunbathing right now—oh, no, it should be called moonbathing. That's why it has no time to care about little nobodies like us, who slipped in through the cracks without permission."

"But if it really wakes up grumpy, disturbing it at a time like this would be rather tactless, wouldn't it?"

"Ah, right, right, right. We'd better not go up and disturb it..."

He nodded like a pecking chicken and repeatedly agreed, but before long, the veteran came back to his senses.

"But that doesn't seem right either, brother... Even if there really is some living creature up there, how can you be sure it's the same kind of thing as those outside? What if it's a person? What if there are survivors like us hiding inside this pitch-black building?"

Even though he was objectively in a somewhat "brain-damaged" state, his thinking ability had merely declined. He had not become an idiot.

But upon hearing that, the young man observing the window turned around and silently stared at him again.

There was clearly no expression on that bespectacled face, but for some reason, Li Qingzhi vaguely sensed a strange implication from it: Look, this is what a brainless person looks like.

Uh... that had to be an illusion, right?

Just as he was comforting himself with that faint hope, he heard the other man speak coldly again. "There are almost no birds in this city. And judging by the state of those things below, creatures exposed to this moonlight undergo obvious mutation. They may even retain certain original biological characteristics in the early stages, but they do not die."

"So where did those mutated birds go?"

"Did the things crawling around on the ground jump straight into the air and catch them on the spot to eat them?"

Seeing the other man make a gesture as if something were being instantly refined.

"The lack of birds in this ruined city most likely means it is a 'no-fly zone.' Aside from the fact that we did not find any ground-level threats during the day, that means there is a high probability that, once a certain altitude is reached, something exists in the air that causes birds exposed to this blood-red moonlight to either die almost completely or leave the city of their own accord to avoid it."

"And setting aside the special possibility seen in nature, where some 'king of birds of prey' has claimed this place as its territory—a situation where, if we encountered it, we would have virtually no chance of escape or survival, making discussion pointless—"

"I am more inclined to believe that there is something high up in this city that restricts the existence of those blood-red mutated birds."

"...And compared to that, the only places in this ruined city that can still be considered high are these buildings that have not yet collapsed."

A streak of bloody light from outside reflected in his black-rimmed glasses, making it impossible to see his eyes behind them.

"I admit that this is still merely speculation in essence. It would be understandable if you don't believe me. But at least when we've only just arrived and still don't understand the situation, we'd better not go creating unnecessary complications."

At this point, seeing the obvious confusion slowly appear on the veteran's face and knowing that the man's mental state truly was poor right now, the young man finally shook his head.

"...Surviving in the cracks without using your brain is not a good thing. Go rest first. Don't let yourself get too muddled."

"...All right."

Hearing the clear dismissal and unable to refuse this "kindness," Li Qingzhi could only agree. Suppressing his dizziness, he recalled what he had just heard as he returned to the wall and sat down to rest.

Li Yun did not pay much more attention to the injured man.

He looked up at the ceiling above, which was covered in gray mold, narrowed his eyes, then turned back to continue observing the changes outside.

Just as he had said earlier, the task facing their group was nothing more than surviving in the cracks.

This situation, which seemed as though it required no direct combat and could be cleared simply by dragging things out for three days, could actually end in disaster the moment they stepped into any hidden pit while probing with insufficient information.

Li Yun could now more or less confirm that individuals like himself and Old Li, whose mental potential exceeded that of ordinary people, had likely been deliberately placed by the Main God into this Newcomer Trial to "lead the team."

After all, when information might be obtained with delays, or when an entire temporary team might lack anyone truly willing to think, intuition and perception could at least attempt to make up for the missing link.

Unlike Old Li's half-baked Psychokinesis, Li Yun's current spiritual power was also extremely weak. However, the "quality" of what he projected was still comparatively higher. Especially in terms of sensitivity, he had no idea how far ahead of the other man he was.

At the beginning, after combining his deductions with that strange sensation of being "watched" and realizing that something was probably wrong within these high-rise buildings—

He deliberately slowed his ascent. While confirming the safety of his surroundings, he maintained a subtle thread of spiritual perception probing outward.

Sure enough, after reaching the current eighth floor, at the vague limit his spiritual power could reach—roughly the height of six or seven more floors, around the fourteenth or fifteenth floor—he sensed a faint difference.

In the space above, an extraordinarily vigorous signal of "life" had unknowingly radiated outward. It even carried an aura seventy to eighty percent similar to the red moonlight outside.

After barely extending his perception and confirming that the vague fluctuations of this unknown living consciousness persisted all the way up to at least the sixteenth or seventeenth floor, occupying nearly every area he could vaguely investigate—

Li Yun knew that they most likely could not go any higher.

From the perspective of the Blood Moon's influence, it might even be some gigantic aberrant creature occupying the fourteenth or fifteenth floor and above—most of the upper portion of the entire building.

Even if he could not determine the other party's precise sensing range, nor whether similar buildings elsewhere in this ruined city had the same situation—

He knew very well that under such circumstances, even a "half-baked" person like Old Li, who might only sense something unusual when he got as close as the thirteenth or fourteenth floor, could be crucial to avoiding such a hidden "bottomless pit."

Or rather, only an "insider" like Li Yun, who understood the relevant operating mechanisms, could clearly see it—

When objectively implementing certain predetermined "screening" standards had made it clearly inconvenient to further reduce the difficulty of the Newcomer Trial, the Main God could only start by selecting more suitable team compositions. It had even arranged for veteran "guides" to participate, in the vague hope of giving them a helping hand...

Just like professors who finally roared in frustration after university final exams, yet could do nothing about it, it had truly done everything possible to "save" these all sorts of uneven newcomer Visitors.