CH 7

Another victim.

By the time QiLeren came back to himself, he was already standing in a hallway nearby the OB-GYN block, soaked through with cold sweat.

“QiLeren?” The head of a silhouette poked out from a doorway, astonished to see that he was still alive. “You’re still alive?!”

“I’m beginning to think that you do this on purpose,” QiLeren said dryly. Seeing Dr Lu’s lively (alive) demeanour grounded QiLeren somewhat.

Dr Lu ran out of the room and gave him a once-over. “You okay?”

“Yeah…” QiLeren looked down at himself. There were no bloodstains on his clothes and his sleeve, previously severed by the chainsaw along with his arm, had been fixed after reading a save – basically, his S/L skill had restored him to his body at the save point perfectly, erasing any evidence of the horrific nightmare he had been through. Mere minutes may have passed, but the encounter seemed lifetimes away.

Dr Lu shot him a perplexed look. “What about the serial killer? Did you kill him?”

“…Unfortunately not, I was lucky and managed to get away,” QiLeren brought a hand to his forehead, deciding to tell Dr Lu about his skill card after some hesitation, “I actually have a skill card that lets me load saves. It saved my life.”

“Let’s continue this inside, it’s not safe out in the hallway,” Dr Lu interrupted, dragging QiLeren into the room behind him.

XueYingying, lying on a hospital bed and looking a bit weak but spirited nonetheless, lit up at the sight of the two. “Are you okay, Leren? Dr Lu said you ran into the murderer – we were both worried to death!”

A corner of QiLeren’s lips pulled up into a wry smile before he recounted his encounter, not leaving out the bits about his skill card. The near-death experience had changed QiLeren’s mindset; trusting others may not be such a bad decision after all. It was the three of them, all normal human beings, against a bloodthirsty serial killer – nothing short of a miracle was going to get them out of this one.

“I… I actually got a skill card just now,” XueYingying mumbled after QiLeren finished.

Dr Lu gave her a quick glimpse before offering guiltily, “Actually, I…”

“…” So basically everyone had one.

XueYingying generously held her card out for the two to see:

[Bloodstained Youth] (Binding skill card): Grants the holder bursts of explosive strength when in pain from blood loss. Go forth and awaken your inner berserker – after all, nothing stands a chance against the power of youth!

“I got it as the reward of an achievement after my abortion,” XueYingying said, sliding the card back into her belt. “It’s thanks to this that I feel a lot less weak now.”

This was definitely a skill made to mock the myriads of young adult literatures chock-full of unplanned pregnancies and painful miscarriages…but it sure was useful here, QiLeren thought. God knows how many times better than Law of S/L this skill was. Getting raw power from shedding blood was too broken, did game balance even exist anymore?

Was it really okay to make a girl who had recently undergone an abortion tank for them though…?

“My skill’s pretty boring – it just makes me lucky when activated… It might be because I’ve always been lucky, all the way since I was a kid. Maybe it’s a reward for that?” Dr Lu said.

“Let me guess,” QiLeren said, annoyed, “do you always win lotteries, draw SSR cards in gacha games with a single summon and pick up money off the side of the road?”

“…Not exactly. I’m pretty sure karma’s a thing, so I don’t buy lottery tickets that often, but you’re right about drawing SSR cards in gacha games.”

As someone who had been plagued by misfortune for almost his entire life, QiLeren could do nothing but fall silent.

After much discussion, the three decided to take a risk and head out. Their situation was only going to get worse with the approaching nightfall if they don’t find food and a way to kill ghosts within the hour.

“If you think about it, the murderer’s just one person in this two-block building! It’s not that likely we’ll bump into him, right?” XueYingying reasoned optimistically. She was truly a brave soul with nerves of steel; QiLeren’s impression of her had changed drastically from the young girl threatening her boyfriend on the bus after a bad break-up to someone capable of staying in a room where they fought off a ghost.

Unfortunately, her words offered no reassurance to QiLeren. His mouth twitched, opting to stay quiet.

“We should be fine – I activated my skill right after we ran into the murderer, so it’s theoretically, as you said, pretty unlikely for us to run into him with my skill active. There’s still seventy-five minutes left, but after that it’ll be on cooldown for three hours,” Dr Lu said.

QiLeren and XueYingying both let out a breath of relief at Dr Lu’s words, the three disembarking on their quest without too much anxiety.

XueYingying was still a little weak, but she didn’t have any trouble walking normally and suggested that perhaps it’d be best if they were to look for food first. The other two shifted in mild shame – they had wanted to find food after getting weapons as well, but the appearance of the murderer may have thrown a wrench into that plan. Getting food was quite possibly the last thing on their minds.

“What do you think that stuff outside the window is?” XueYingying murmured in the silence.

“You see this kind of fog quite frequently in horror movies,” Dr Lu began in confidence. “First of all, it helps to create an oppressive atmosphere, and second of all…ah, it can be used to hide monsters. Using it to separate the real world from the one inside the fog is also pretty common.”

The three swept through all the nearby offices, finding a surprising amount of snacks. XueYingying gained some well-deserved colour back into her complexion after downing a cup of water-dissolved brown sugar. The outpatient section was big and empty with deathly stillness that gave off a feeling of unease to all its occupants; it was as though unpleasant scenarios lurked around every corner, waiting for them to stumble upon.

As the trio approached a fork in their path, Dr Lu felt an icy chill run up his back, opening the floodgates to a myriad of hair-raising emotions. “I feel like there’s something off about that path. Quick, come over here,” he hissed in hushed tones, waving the others over. Almost immediately after they turned the corner, the heavy thudding of familiar footsteps approached.

There was no doubt as to who these footsteps belonged to.

They anxiously held their breath, waiting until the murderer passed by and vanished out their peripheral vision before carefully stepping out into the open. There were a few inconspicuous drops of blood on the floor that weren’t there before – another victim? Or was it the one from before?

“Jesus, what the hell is up with this game? You can’t just have a floor boss spawn randomly all over the map!” Dr Lu griped quietly.

QiLeren nodded in fervent agreement; the worst part about this was that the boss wasn’t even an NPC mob – it was a bloody player character! Where was the humanity?

XueYingying pointed at the way the murderer had come from. “C’mon, he passed us over so this way should be safe now.”

It wasn’t long before they discovered the mangled corpse of the previous victim. A bloodied “6” was smeared next to it – this was the sixth victim.

XueYingying averted her eyes out of disgust, but Dr Lu pressed on in spite of the pungent smell of copper in the air to examine the body, frowning. “Female of roughly thirty years old, cause of death is blood loss from the rupture of a major artery in the neck area, likely inflicted through brutal means. Time of death should be within a few minutes prior to our arrival, accounting for the fact that her corpse is still warm. A number has been written by the culprit on the wall beside her – classic serial murder scenario.”

“You do forensics too?” XueYingying asked, swallowing down her nausea.

“I’m just a physician who specialises in internal medicine and loves horror movies,” Dr Lu corrected.

Seeing no further information to be gathered from the corpse, the trio followed the trail of blood up to the rooftop. QiLeren was worried about the rooftop being shrouded in thick fog as well since it was technically outdoors, but his fears were evidently unfounded – the fog here existed only in fine wisps, as if thinned out by an invisible barrier.

Not far from their position was a corpse, lying on the ground, and at it a figure crouched with his back to them. He stood up cautiously at the commotion, revealing a face that would elicit a gasp of surprise from even those of the same gender.

XueYingying’s unrestrained “wow” and subsequent harsh swallowing reached QiLeren’s ears with resounding clarity.