Punishment deserved

"Eliminated!"

The charming male voice made the announcement in an almost gleeful tone.

The blurry black shadows on the containment chamber walls reacted like an audience. Some cheered and leaped for joy, while others hung their heads, adding another layer of absurdity and horror to the bizarre scene.

To the surviving Zhou Ze and the burly man, the sight landed like a sledgehammer blow, chilling them to the bone.

They stood frozen until the blue light screen swept silently through their bodies. Only then did they dare turn to inspect the unfortunate man's remains.

The skinny man's corpse was unrecognizable, reduced to a writhing mass of rotten flesh.

The burly man's stomach churned. A sour taste rose in his throat, but he forcibly swallowed it back down.

Zhou Ze's scalp prickled, too.

He wasn't feeling particularly sick, but he was genuinely terrified of dying.

Though Zhou Ze had long known that Class-D Personnel's lives were as insignificant as ants, this was his first real dance with death.

Yet their current situation gave neither man time to recover.

The red light screen rushed toward them from behind again. Gritting his teeth, Zhou Ze sprinted a couple of steps and charged through it, with the bald, burly man close behind.

They had barely passed through when that chilling, charming male voice sounded again, like a demon's whisper:

"The mood seems a little low in here. How about we spice things up? Another difficulty increase! Let's see whether our two brave warriors can push past their limits!"

Before the voice had finished, a green light screen as high as their lower legs extended from both sides of the box and began spinning rapidly counterclockwise.

"Fuck!"

Both men voiced their feelings at the same time.

The game's difficulty skyrocketed. Three differently colored light screens spun in different directions inside the containment chamber, making their heads spin.

The green screen, in particular, reached almost to their knees, and every jump over it consumed a great deal of stamina. If it so much as grazed their legs, even if it didn't kill them instantly, losing their mobility would leave them to die beneath the red screen.

"Fuck this shit!"

After another high jump over the green screen, the burly man stumbled. Off balance, he staggered through the red screen and fell beside the skinny man's skeleton. He cursed furiously, "This fucking bastard never meant to let us live!"

His eyes bloodshot and his expression crazed, he tore a rib from the corpse and raised it high. Flesh and blood still clung to the bone, gleaming eerily in the dazzling light.

An ominous feeling suddenly rose in Zhou Ze's chest.

"Don't!"

He shouted to stop him, but the burly man, already on the verge of a breakdown, was past listening.

The next second, the burly man hurled the rib at the box in the center of the room with all his strength.

"I win again, Kane."

In a monitoring room far from the Containment Zone, blue light from more than a dozen large screens illuminated the dim interior. The screens displayed various data streams and live surveillance feeds, with one of the largest showing the containment chamber.

A middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat held a cup of coffee, watching the surveillance screen intently.

A golden retriever with patchy fur lay on the small table beside him.

The man sipped his coffee and said contentedly, "I knew specifically choosing a mentally unstable Class-D Personnel would bring some new developments."

"What a tedious need to win."

The golden retriever raised his eyebrows, displaying a remarkably human look of disdain. Then he actually spoke, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "My dear Dr. Dai Yong'an, you could have simply ordered him to do that. Even so, I don't think anyone can make it through the third stage."

"Those are two different matters." Dr. Dai glanced at his old friend and set his coffee cup down steadily. "It seems losing your human body also cost you the most basic caution a researcher should possess."

The golden retriever rolled his eyes and sidestepped the subject. "Major Lu Fei has been waiting outside for a while. Aren't you going to see him?"

"Let him wait. Meddling in someone else's project without permission isn't a good habit..."

Inside the containment chamber.

The flying bone struck the box but caused no actual damage.

The endlessly spinning light screens, however, seemed to pause for an instant.

"Punishment deserved!"

The charming male voice sounded again, but this time its tone was clearly suppressing anger.

A wrist-thick green beam shot from the box like a sharp spear, heading straight for the burly man. The air warped around it with a piercing hum.

The bald, burly man reacted extremely quickly, rolling aside almost the instant the voice sounded. The green beam skimmed his cheek and gouged a bloody wound in his ear.

He screamed as he scrambled to his feet, yet his face twisted with savage satisfaction at having gotten his revenge. "Fucking idiot! Fuck your mother!"

"Punishment deserved! Punishment deserved! Punishment deserved!"

The voice was clearly enraged.

At the same time, the three colored light screens in the containment chamber began spinning at a frenzied speed, like an out-of-control storm of light.

Zhou Ze was scared out of his wits.

If you want to fucking punish someone, punish him! What the hell does this have to do with me?

As the green screen accelerated toward him, Zhou Ze was numb with shock, but he still remembered to gauge the distance and prepare to jump high.

"Zhou Ze! Get down!"

Old Yang's voice suddenly rang in Zhou Ze's ear like a thunderclap.

Already poised to jump, Zhou Ze jolted. In his frantic scramble, his left foot caught his right, and he crashed to the floor.

His knees and chin slammed into the hard floor. The pain made him curse inwardly: Old Yang, you fucking...

But out of trust in Old Yang, he rolled with the fall and lay flat, turning his head to watch the green screen sweep toward him from mere inches away. Faced with the threat of death, he actually gritted his teeth and suppressed his body's instincts, refusing to move.

"Close your eyes!"

Almost simultaneously, the light in the containment chamber vanished.

The next instant, a dense barrage of thin green beams erupted from the box like countless venomous snakes flicking their tongues. They filled almost the entire chamber, leaving only about thirty centimeters of space above the floor.

Lying on the floor with his eyes squeezed shut, Zhou Ze could almost smell the scorched tips of his hair. His body pressed tight against the ground, and every inch of his skin could feel the searing heat of the lethal beams overhead.

When the faint stinging faded, Zhou Ze cautiously opened his eyes.

As soon as his vision focused, he saw the burly man's skeleton lying a short distance away, surrounded by large chunks of charred flesh. The remains still gave off wisps of smoke and an indescribable stench.

Before Zhou Ze could react, the strange patterns on the box began flashing wildly, as though something was building inside.

"This is going to kill me..."

Zhou Ze murmured, his eyes vacant.

"That actually worked?!" Dai Yong'an spat out a mouthful of coffee, then coughed a few times. "He actually dodged it? Dumb fucking luck!"

The golden retriever called Kane first glared at him, then offered his assessment at a leisurely pace. "Hmm... it appears that accidental fall turned his misfortune into a blessing. Surviving almost certain death like that-this Class-D Personnel is fortunate indeed."

But immediately afterward, the image on the surveillance screen suddenly changed, freezing the expressions of both man and dog.

An alarm abruptly sounded, and harsh red light flashed through the room.

After a moment, Kane shook his fur and quickly got to his feet. There was a hint of schadenfreude in his voice. "Looks like someone's about to get into trouble..."

"Shut up! Move!"