The hunter's body remained hidden in the darkness, but a conspicuous health bar floated above its head, just like a minor monster in a game.
Only, that health bar wasn't looking too healthy. It had already dropped to 48%.
Was it injured?
Had the fat man in room 201 done that last night?
Besides that, when Zuo Cheng'an focused his attention on observing it, the Eye of Truth activated.
He discovered that even the hunter had an annotation!!
[Hunter E! The Red-Hat Witch's proudest creation in the Alchemy Life Series! Give it some appropriate praise in her presence, and you'll get an unexpected surprise!]
Live comments:
[Who's going to be tonight's lucky winner? I can't wait.]
[I'm hoping it's the girl in 203. A pretty girl must look cute even when she's being dismembered.]
[Then your wish should come true. Screaming Night is a basic level-one instance. Veteran players figured out all its rules ages ago, and there are plenty of ways to clear it.
[You can take the brute-force massacre route, kill all the hunters, and clear it early.
[Or you can use the killing rules to avoid them. The rules are simple, too: they either kill from front to back or back to front. Tonight it's 202, tomorrow it's 203. You'll get to see what you want soon enough.]
[That's a relief. Just enough time to order takeout so I can eat while I watch.]
[Killing in room-number order? That's so fucking brain-dead! Even a three-year-old could clear it, right?
[A low-level world really is a low-level world. The people in it are so stupid.]
[They're still a little smarter than monkeys. After all, the instance has other traps. Screaming Night wiped out entire groups of players back in the day. It's not that simple.
[But people in low-level worlds really do have underdeveloped brains. Watching them sets off my intolerance for stupidity all the time.]
[Another vote for intolerance for stupidity. There was one instance where all they had to do was kill their teammates to clear it quickly.
[But they just had to pick the most troublesome route. I was so angry I got a pimple on my face. Absolute idiots.]
The comments kept chattering endlessly. Reading their guesses, Zuo Cheng'an tightened his grip on his axe.
Tonight it was 202, tomorrow 203. Would it be his turn the night after?
The hunter had passed the door of Zuo Cheng'an's room, 204, about a minute ago. At its speed, it should already have turned back from 201.
On its way back, it would choose a room and break down the door.
Zuo Cheng'an took a deep breath, then held it and concentrated on the sounds outside.
Bang! Bang-!
"Aaah!! Fuck! Fuck!! Why are you so ugly?! Aaah!!"
The sound of the hunter breaking down the door came almost simultaneously with the screams of the occupant of 202.
Although the screams were somewhat cracked, Zuo Cheng'an could still tell it was Lezi-ge, the one who had said, "Where the hell have I ended up?" when the game first started.
Lezi-ge had initially been in pretty good spirits, even in the mood to crack jokes to lighten the atmosphere.
But after seeing the scene the hunter had left behind after killing,
he had fallen silent, going from the joker to the silent type.
He had even uncharacteristically stayed out of the discussion during their daytime review.
There was only one scream, followed immediately by the sounds of a struggle at the door of 202.
The hunter was injured and couldn't finish off a player as cleanly as it had yesterday, giving Lezi-ge a chance to call for help while fighting back.
Lezi-ge's cries of "Someone, come help!" spread through the darkness.
Hurried footsteps came from some of the rooms, as though people had heard his plea and instinctively moved to open their doors and save him.
But their fear of death pulled them back from the doors, sending them into hiding again.
They weren't the ones being targeted. Why take that risk?
Seeing the six tightly shut doors, Lezi-ge began to despair.
He had seen the scene in 201 during the day and had some guesses about how its occupant had died.
Although it sounded horrifying, he felt that the occupant of 201 had still had a breath left after the hunter attacked him and hadn't died completely.
What had ultimately killed him was the hunter dragging him out through the narrow hole in the door.
To prevent himself from also being dragged out by the hunter while half-dead and having to experience the agony of his flesh being stripped away before he died,
Lezi-ge had decisively opened his door himself when the hunter came for him, moving the battlefield from the cramped room to the more spacious corridor.
He strongly suspected that the fat man in 201 last night had met his end because he had been trapped inside his room without enough space to move.
Everyone heard Lezi-ge's pleas. In fact, because of the corridor's peculiar structure, even those in 208, the farthest room from 202, could hear him perfectly clearly.
Just then, Zuo Cheng'an flung open his door and joined the fight, axe in hand.
Almost immediately afterward, the schoolgirl staying in 203 also emerged, trembling as she clutched her axe.
Lezi-ge had been thinking he might as well die-the wounds hurt too fucking much-but the sight of two people coming to help lifted his spirits and rekindled his will to survive.
The hunter was immensely strong, and with its sharp claws, it was practically an executioner in the night.
Seeing Zuo Cheng'an raise his axe in the dim light, Lezi-ge panicked as he grappled with the hunter.
"Wait! Bro! Hold on! Let me lure him over somewhere the light from the doorway can reach!"
As he shouted, Lezi-ge writhed and crawled forward, too busy to worry about the pool of blood he left behind. He was clearly terrified.
He was afraid Zuo Cheng'an would chop both him and the hunter.
"Don't worry. I won't miss." Zuo Cheng'an had the health bar to pinpoint his target, so even if he couldn't see clearly, he wouldn't hit the wrong person.
At that moment, the hunter's claws were embedded deep in Lezi-ge's abdomen. Its face had no eyes, only a huge mouth that took up its entire head.
That enormous mouth hadn't been idle, either. After anchoring itself to its prey with its claws, it had eagerly begun to eat.
Zuo Cheng'an held nothing back, bringing the axe straight down on the hunter's head.
Squelch.
The axe struck the hunter cleanly, but its hard bones stopped the blade, leaving it lodged halfway through the skull.
A strength stat of 5 really was too low.
"Hiss-roar!!!"
The hunter reeled in pain, releasing Lezi-ge and turning its attack on Zuo Cheng'an.
Zuo Cheng'an wasn't particularly worried, because he was standing behind the hunter.
But the hunter couldn't be judged by normal standards. Whatever the structure of its shoulders was, they could flip over with ease.
Bang! Sharp nails pierced the wooden shield. Having blocked the blow, Zuo Cheng'an abandoned the axe, which was now completely stuck, and prepared to retreat two body lengths.
Just then, the schoolgirl filled the gap and shouted, "Take this-Double Kick!"
Thump! Thump! Two inspired kicks
drove the axe lodged in the hunter's head another seven or eight centimeters deeper.
Now the hunter's head had split completely in two, but it still wasn't dead!
In Zuo Cheng'an's eyes, the hunter's health bar instantly dropped to 10%, and because its head had split in half,
that 10% was still falling. 10%-9.2%-8.5%... Death was only a matter of time.
Seeing this, Zuo Cheng'an thought, Too far.
His motive for coming out to help was to do as much damage to the hunter as he could, leaving its health bar in poor shape.
That way, when his turn came the night after tomorrow, he would be able to survive on his own even if no one came to help him.
He had originally planned to stop once he whittled the hunter's health down to somewhere in the teens, but with the schoolgirl's unexpected fighting strength added to the mix, his original plan clearly wouldn't work.
Who could have imagined that such a harmless-looking little girl could kick away 20% of the hunter's health with just two kicks!
Was this the power of game skills?
Before you continue