Chapter 313: Surplus Man (2)

Chapter 313: Surplus Man (2)

"Oh. You're finally awake."

Vikir said as he stretched.

A giant flower bloomed atop the clock tower. It opened its gaping mouth like it was laughing and chewed on a human.

Crunch- crunch- crunch- crunch...

Bones and bits of flesh mixed with the gurgling blood.

As the blood soaked in, the surrounding vines, which had dried up like mummies, seemed to wrinkle ever so slightly.

All the students stepped back in horror at the ghastly sight.

The fairy chuckled and said.

[ Do es th is pla nt eat a per son onc e a day ? It's st ill sm all, so one per son a day wo uld be eno ugh, rig ht ? Do it eat th e liv ing and th e de ad ali ke ? ]

Danger level S. 'Daylily of Blood Tree'.

A powerful demon tree that, although it is an immature creature, must eat a person a day.

It was a dangerous creature that could not even be compared to the hellhounds they had encountered in the previous stage.

Realizing this instinctively, the students stared at the cannibalistic flower on the clock tower in disbelief.

"No way! You expect us to spend 69 days in a place where such a monster lurks?"

"Oh, no, it's only 68 days now!"

"Damn it, whatever!"

"Calm down! It's not important that one day is shortened, but why it was shortened!"

"Maybe we can reduce it further here!"

With the death of one person just now, there are fewer days to endure.

But even so, 68 days was not a short time.

With limited food and water, and with one person a day falling prey to the monster, it was a long time to wait.

Everyone is watching with fear and anxiety.

Meanwhile, Daylily stretched out its long tongue and pulled out the bits of meat stuck between its teeth, then went back to sleep.

[ Did you see it ? It's ok ay as lo ng as you don't att ack it ? ]

However, the fairy's words that followed caused the students' expressions to stiffen once again as they breathed a sigh of relief as soon as Daylily fell back to sleep.

[ We ll, I gu ess it wi ll wa ke up aga in, rig ht ? ]

The nightmare had only just begun.

Now, the students have to fight cold, hunger, and blood-sucking daylilies for 68 days here.

Some of the students gritted their teeth and tried to attack the stems of the daylilies, but there was no way they would be able to make a dent in the body of a Dangerous Class S monster in the first place.

Especially since they were a hundred times weaker than their strength outside the tower.

"That's wrong, I can't even gather enough mana."

"Ahhhhh! I don't want to be in the same room with that monster! I don't want to!"

"But the ruins are so cold. Even if you don't like it, if you don't stay close to that monster...."

"Ewww! I'd rather freeze to death in a concrete sewer!"

"Do you think that plant won't find you? Didn't you see the roots and vines growing out of it earlier?"

"Alas, what am I supposed to do, I'm hungry and thirsty and... how am I supposed to spend 68 days here...."

The students were frustrated. They were so confused and scared that they didn't know what to do.

Then. The fairy said good-naturedly.

[Do not be so discour aged, I will br ing you a spe cial gi ft ? ]

At the same time. strange things appeared before the eyes of all the surviving students.

... Pop, pop, pop!

With a loud firecracker sound, a box fell into each of the students' arms.

It was a black cube the size of a human head, with a red symbol '?' written near the lid.

[ I'm afr aid you wi ll be uncomfor table if the re's noth ing in it, so I've prep ared a spe cial gift for you – Wh at's inclu ded is ran dom ? ]

According to the fairy, it contains "items," tools that are called artifacts or Ooparts outside the tower.

"What? What kind of joke is that, it's not funny!"

"...Do you think it's a joke?"

"...."

The amount of time a person can go without eating is between three and seven days at most.

If you have access to some water, you can go up to 20 days.

So 68 days without food in a cold, desolate ruin like this is a long way to go.

And if the daylilies wake up at this time tomorrow, that's a problem.

"It only takes one to get eaten and then it goes back to sleep, so why don't we all run for our lives and let the slowest ones get eaten first?"

"That seems like the fairest thing to do. It's called natural selection."

"Yeah, right. If you're slow, you die."

"Is that daylily so strong in the first place? Can't we all just fight it?"

The students are talking to each other.

The fairy added, as if she had forgotten something.

[Isn't th at rig ht? Daylilies get annoy ed wh en you mo ve a lot ? Th ey can eat six or eig ht pe ople in a sing le bi te ? It's bet ter not to mo ve a lot, isn't it ? ]

After speaking, the fairy pointed to the inside of the window of the building next door.

Where everyone's eyes turned, there was a pile of bones.

All large, thick bones.

They were the remains of hellhounds, shattered all over the place, along with the surrounding terrain.

The fairy chuckled and pulled up a hologram window.

It showed scenes of the hellhounds from the previous stage fighting against the Daylily of Blood Tree.

Nearly a hundred hellhounds, each baring their teeth and claws, lunged at the Daylily of Blood.

...And the results were devastating.

-Bam!

The 100 hellhounds didn't last 10 seconds against the Daylily of Blood.

In the three-second window between 10 and 8 seconds, 50 of them were hit by the whip-like stems, separating their upper and lower bodies.

In the span of 4 seconds, from 7 seconds to 4 seconds, 40 of them, slightly less than half, were hit by roots protruding from the floor, turning into blood clots and stuck to the floor.

From 3 seconds until the count reached 0, the five surviving Hellhounds were hit by the poisonous breath that spewed out from the central tassel of the flower on the clock tower, melting into a handful of blood.

From then on, the daylily ate the hellhound's corpse for a while, but soon got tired of it and moved to another location.

Annihilation.

"...."

A silence descends among the students.

Even the Hellhounds that had harassed them so much in the previous stage were like this.

If it's true that Daylily grows more ferocious the more it moves, this means that in a worst-case scenario, it could kill all 68 of them at once.

That's one person a day, one human sacrifice.

An eerie silence falls over the ruins. The 68 surviving students begin to fight for attention.

Cold, hunger, and the risk of being chosen to be sacrificed to the monster.

What's more.

"That cannibal flower. If we throw a corpse at it, it will eat and sleep, right?"

"Of course it will, it said earlier that it eats both the living and the dead."

"So it doesn't just eat one person a day until everyone dies."

"No. If everyone's going to die, then all we can say is to die."

"...Okay, that's it. Anyway, it also eat corpses, right? It will make things easier."

"I'm thinking the same thing, maybe even easier than the last stage?"

Some of the students cast dangerous glances at the others.

The atmosphere in the ruins was getting increasingly out of control.