Thriller Paradise - Chapter 52

Chapter 52: The Peerless Garlic (6)

At 3 pm, inside the building of Allerbmu, Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong led Xiao Tan as they cut their way to the top floor. The elevator that went from the ground floor to the 52nd floor was broken, and the entrance to the fire escape was broken down at the ground floor as well. But the elevators that led to the other floors were still usable.

They took trips up different elevators from the first floor to the seventh floor and then from the seventh floor to the tenth floor, and then they changed elevator again. Repeating this process, they finally reached the 42nd floor.

Along the way, they ran into two other mini bosses, but before Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong, they were completely defenseless, and they were cut down in less than three minutes. Facing normal BW Zombies was even easier; they were cut down like grass.

Xiao Tan learned many things following behind them. When it came to battle, he did not even have a chance to join the fray; it felt like he was a mafia boss cleaning up the scene with his best fighters and only needed to stay back to watch.

“Big brothers…” On the stairs between 42nd and 43rd floor, Xiao Tan finally asked, “Are you planning to clear your way to the top and then go back down?”

“That would be a negative,” Hwa Xiong replied. “We’re going to go save that Professor Ashford.”

Xiao Tan was confused. “Er… I’m not sure if it’s too late for me to bring this up, but I glanced at the building layout when we were on the first floor, and the lab is in the basement, not on the top floor…”

Theoretically speaking, when they heard him say something like that at that juncture, they should come up with reply like, “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

But to his surprise, the two appeared completely unfazed. Hwa Xiong turned back to laugh. “Ha ha, little buddy, we know the lab is in the basement, but that doesn’t mean the professor will be in the lab, right?”

If the professor is not at the lab, where would he be? Xiao Tan thought internally. In the toilet?

Based on the common trope used in sci-fi movies, after the explosion of the virus, a researcher would normally find a relative safe location to quarantine themselves and find a way to control the virus or call for help. The top floor of the building was marked as an ‘office space’, so if Professor Ashford was really there, he would be zombie food already.

Even though Xiao Tan had his suspicions, he did not voice them because he was being carried. What grounds did he have to complain? Even if it was later proved that they had gone the wrong way, he only needed to follow those two back down the building.

…

Several minutes later, Feng Bujue successfully gained entry to the building. By examining the wounds of the bodies that he saw on the way and the bloody footprints that he found on the ground, he realized that there were two people accompanying Xiao Tan. One of them used a heavy weapon with a bladed side, and the other used something like a long javelin. Furthermore, they were very good fighters because they killed all of mobs with just one hit.

Since the trio had cleared most of the way, it was easier for Feng Bujue to find his way in; the monsters that he ran into while he was inside the building were only a handful. He looked at the building layout and headed down to the basement. He had no idea that the other three were heading to the top floor. Therefore, Feng Bujue found the elevator that headed down in one of the corridors and walked into it.

The elevator was spacious, and it honestly looked quite similar to the log-in lobby without the touch screen and full-body mirror. There was some dried blood inside the elevator, but at least there were no body parts lying around. Since the elevator only connected the ground floor and the underground lab, there were only five buttons on the control panel. Feng Bujue pressed the one that would lead him to the lab, and then after the doors closed, the elevator started.

Based on the ‘fight result’ that he had seen earlier, inside this enclosed space, BW Zombies would not have escaped from Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong. But he still gripped the wrench tightly as a precaution against stragglers even though he believed the chance of that was exceedingly low.

Just as the elevator doors were about to open, an echo of zombie groaning suddenly hit him like a wall, and this startled Feng Bujue. He saw an arm reach through the gap and then another one…

Before the door completely opened, three or four zombies were already trying to get into the elevator. Looking down the corridor, there were twenty to thirty zombies waiting in line. They were mostly wearing security uniforms or lab costs. Their mouths were dripping with saliva while their bodies radiated the stench of death.

Even though Feng Bujue was ambushed, he soon regained his senses. He bit on the clove of garlic that he already had in his mouth as he grabbed the kitchen knife to match with the wrench in his other hand. He aimed at the head of the zombie nearest to him.

After killing a few zombies, he made a startling discovery. The monsters that were rushing at him were normal zombies. Their faces were not pale, and they had no fangs and their bodies were free from werewolf furs, and the crucial thing was… they were not afraid of garlic!

This sudden development took the advantage away from Feng Bujue. He had thought that there would not be that many monsters, but that was not true. To make matters worse, he was cornered inside a cramped space like the elevator. The garlic was of no use, and the normal zombie moved faster than the BW Zombies on the surface. They were as strong and as fast as a normal human.

Feng Bujue had already used Slowing Sands in the earlier scenario on Roderick Usher’s soul, so he was trapped. If it was a normal person trapped inside an elevator with tons of zombie, the best solution was probably… to kill themselves.

However, Feng Bujue did not even have the time to pull out the guns. He waved the weapons in his hands frantically, and thanks to the special effect from Brain Concussion, he managed to keep the situation until control somewhat. Still, the zombies attacked with their arms, not their heads, and the limitation of space within the elevator made it hard for him to hit the heads.

As expected, it did not take long for him to be bitten and not only on one spot. The sensation of pain was not acute, but he knew that he was probably infected. After dealing with the immediate threat, Feng Bujue stood in the corridor alone with twenty or so dead zombies behind him, and blood flowed like river. He inspected the wounds on his body. They were on his arms and legs, four in total.

Other than the cloth near the sensitive parts, the player’s outfit could be ruined. As long as the damage was less than ten percent of the overall outfit’s coverage, the system might delay or deny the recovery. Therefore, Feng Bujue’s sleeves and pants had openings that exposed the zombie’s bite wounds.

The status next to his Life Points showed that he was ‘Diseased’, proof that he was infected. Feng Bujue sighed and took out the Winchester from his backpack and loaded it before moving forward. Why the lab would contain normal zombies, he had no idea, but he knew that there was a buffer period before the infection took over. There would be symptoms like a high fever, so he still had some time left.

The plan was to find a serum inside the lab and to investigate whether Xiao Tan and the other two players were there or not. If they were not, it meant that they had headed upstairs; if they were, there had to be a reason to explain the ambush at the elevator.

…

At the same time, in front of the gun store, Atobe-sama and Ming Zi grabbed a sofa and placed it in the middle of the road. The two sat on it and used the zombies that were shuffling slowly toward them as target practice.

Of course, as relaxing as that was, they still maintained some caution. After all, with their accuracy, landing a headshot at a long distance was quite difficult. For those zombies that fell over from a hit to the legs, they would walk over to inspect whether the zombies were really dead or not. Those that were still alive would be rewarded with a shot to the head.

The guns in the shop were generally useable by those with F in general ability, so they had a lower equip requirement than the M1911A1 Pistol that Feng Bujue had found when he was level five. Obviously for scenarios above level ten, the limitation on the usage of firearms was relaxed so that players who had not unlocked the marksmanship mastery had the chance to do so.

“Hey, look, what is that?” Ming Zi suddenly saw a strange shadow that was coming from afar.

Atobe-sama was facing the opposite direction, but he turned around to look. “Could that be… another player?”

The person’s movement was not that of a zombie, and that was why it had attracted Ming Zi’s attention. As ‘she’ approached, the two finally got a closer look.

It was a young lady with great proportions and hair to her shoulders. She had a pretty, oval face. Her skin was fair with deep, rippling eyes, a high nose, and small lips. She was wearing a black tuxedo that was too small for her figure. It accentuated her slender frame, forming a great contrast to the volume around her chest.

“In any case, she’s not wearing the outfit made default by the system,” Ming Zi said.

“Hmm… You have a point, and from her looks, I don’t think she’d call herself Unparalleled General Pan Feng or Thousand Kills Hwa Xiong,” Atobe said. “That Feng Bujue told us Wang Tanzhi is his friend and is also a male player, so there shouldn’t be a female player in this scenario…”

“But she doesn’t look like a monster either. Is she an NPC?” Ming Zi asked.

“Let’s try to talk to her.” Atobe raised the TMP and aimed it at the beauty, shouting, “Stop! Who are you?”

The answer that he got was a smile on her lips. Several seconds later, the smile turned into a wicked grin, revealing the fangs that it had been hiding.

Chapter 53: The Peerless Garlic (7)

“Team Member: Atobe-sama, dead.”

“Team Member: So hard to find a name, dead.”

The system audio announced their deaths, and Wang Tanzhi quickly opened the game menu to take a look. Both of their names had the status ‘dead’ next to them. After recovering from his brief shock, Xiao Tan opened his lips to ask, “Big Brothers, do you think they could have died inside this building’s underground lab?”

“Oh? Why would you think so?” Pan Feng continued to move forward and replied without turning his head. From his tone, it sounded like he did not care so much about the deaths of the two players, like their deaths would not have affected their success rate. Then again, with the combined forced of Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong, there was a basis for that confidence.

“Well, think about it, one of them is level fourteen, and the other level is level twelve. They’re at least stronger than I am, and I am not afraid of the BW Zombies on the street, so they couldn’t have fallen victim to them. If they came to this Allerbmu’s building, saw the layout map, and went to the underground lab…” He paused before continuing. “We’ve not been to that place yet, so there might be great danger. It might even be guarded by a boss. Could it be that they ran into a Zombie Werewolf?”

“Hmm… You have a point,” Hwa Xiong said, but his tone implied that he had considered that as well and was merely saying that to brush Xiao Tan off. “But since they’re already dead, we won’t be able to do anything if we turn back now. Plus, we’re already so close to the top floor, so why don’t we finish clearing our way to the top and then…”

“How about this?” Xiao Tan interrupted him. “Big Brothers, you can continue to move toward the top floor while I go back down to the ground floor.”

He took out the baseball bat from his inventory. Since he had been free from battle, Xiao Tan had even put his weapon away. “The remaining player is my friend, and he might not have arrived at this building yet, but I’m sure he’ll eventually arrive here. I’ll go wait for him at the ground floor, and when I meet up with him, I can warn him from going to the basement. Then, we’ll come to meet up with you.”

The two stopped moving and turned to look at Xiao Tan before exchanging a look between themselves. Hwa Xiong shrugged. “Okay then. Little buddy, you’d better be careful. We’ll go on ahead.”

Xiao Tan nodded and turned to retrace their steps. He turned around the bend and rushed into the emergency staircase. He had no idea that Feng Bujue was already inside the underground lab and did not realize that his prediction for the location where Atobe-sama and Ming Zi had died was wrong; he was merely acting on his instinct.

After he wandered away, Pan Feng suddenly used a serious tone to say, “Before the two players died, they stayed at the same coordinates for a long time, and that place is very far from this building.”

“Ah, I noticed that as well,” Hwa Xiong replied. “The place shouldn’t have a mini boss, and before night falls, there will only be a handful of BW Zombies that roam the city. Plus… their time of death is only several seconds between each other… So, unless they jumped off the building together…”

“So, it is the work of the ‘anomaly’,” Pan Feng said. “They’ve reached out toward the players so soon… We should work faster to prevent the other two players from encountering the anomaly.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing that the little buddy has gone. Now we don’t need to hold back. After all, the way back is relatively safe since most of the mobs have been killed already, so he should be safe for now,” Hwa Xiong said. “But the status of that ‘Feng Bujue’ is not that good. Even though he still has 73% of his Life Points, but he’s infected. When he reaches the transformation stage, the system will deem the player as dead. We’d better settle this before that happens.”

He took a deep breath. “Four players are arranged into this scenario, and we can’t do much for the two dead players, but if three or more players are killed before the scenario is cleared, then our work will fail.”

“Hmm…” Pan Feng nodded. “You’re right. We must ‘kill’ Ashford as soon as possible. As long as we enter that ‘path’ of the plot, we’ll soon clear the scenario. No matter what… we must send the players out of the scenario so that we can focus on dealing with the anomaly.”

…

Feng Bujue travelled down the corridor of the lab with his Winchester. The lighting system there was operating just fine, and there was not that many zombies around. Other than the ambush at the elevator, the rest of the time, it was no different from the experience he encountered on the surface, one or two zombies at every three to five corridors.

Feng Bujue’s shotgun was very effective inside this small corridor. As long as he waited to shoot until the monster was close, no matter how bad a shot he was, it would end the battle there and then. After all, even if he just hit the limbs, the monsters would fall; but should he hit the torso, the monsters would be sent flying or riddled with bullet holes.

He explored a large area, and most of the electronic doors could be opened. Most of the rooms only had metallic shelves, and they were filled with paper boxes that contained paper documents and files. Feng Bujue naturally read through the files, but the content was meaningless. The files had a lot of repetition, and the important details were blacked out by markers.

Some rooms had large computers with big monitors and control panels, but all of them were broken, and Feng Bujue could not even switch them on. In a way, it was quite convenient because Feng Bujue did not need to spend time looking through such rooms.

After some walking around, Feng Bujue finally found a door with a higher security clearance. The door needed to scan both someone’s retina and fingerprints to open, and the game was kind enough to provide a zombie in a white lab coat not far away from the door.

Feng Bujue shot the enemy on its waist and the zombie crumpled to the floor with its intestines spraying everywhere. Feng Bujue grabbed the baseball bat from his inventory to break the bones of the zombie’s legs and arms. Then, he changed into the kitchen knife and cut off the zombie’s head and one of its arms. He even took the opportunity to look through the zombie’s outfit and only left when he discovered nothing.

After the scan was done, the door opened. Feng Bujue tossed the head and arm away since he had no use for them anymore.

This was obviously a space that was connected to the plot. On the wall facing the door, there was a large metallic valve, not dissimilar to the one at the bank safe. On the left side of the wall was a row of glass tubes. They were one meter tall and around thirty centimeters in diameter. They should have been filled with liquid, but since the glass casing was shattered, the content had flowed onto the ground. It was a kind of half-transparent liquid that was light green in color. The floor of the room was stained with the substance.

The few computers in the room were broken, and the monitors were all black. Next to one of them lay two dead bodies in lab coat. Feng Bujue approached them cautiously and, after some observation, confirmed that they were normal dead bodies, not monsters lying in ambush.

They were both males, and one of them looked over fifty, with a balding head and wearing spectacles. The other had gray hair and small goatee. Both of them were advanced in age. The balding guy had a gunshot wound in his skull, and the goatee had two gunshot wounds on his chest and torso. They were left unmoved after death; the positioning of their dead bodies proved that.

Feng Bujue tried to reconstruct the assault in his mind. The killer should be someone they knew. He entered the lab through the door and suddenly pulled out the gun. At a close distance, he fired the bullet at the balding guy’s head. The bullet entered the skull and killed him on the spot. The balding guy was sitting in the chair, so after his death, his body slipped down from the chair and was lying on the ground.

With the first shot was fired, the goatee, who was several steps away from the computer, was facing away from the door. He turned around when he heard the gunshot, but the killer did not give him any chance to react. He instantly fired two more rounds to kill the man. The goatee’s body was leaning forward as he fell. Before he died, he even grabbed the edge of the table for support before collapsing to the ground.

From the pose, blood stains, and expressions of the dead bodies, Feng Bujue came up with this hypothesis. As a crime novel writer, he was good at reconstructing the criminal process from the crime scene. He had acted out such scenes who knew how many times in his mind. Sometimes, to write out specific murders, he would conduct related experiments. It might sound troublesome, but at the end of the day, they were strategies that came from his mind, so it would be quite meaningless if they could not be replicated in real life.

Feng Bujue looked at the two bodies and laughed. “Since they’re not infected, they must have taken the serum already…”

He faced the bodies and talked to himself. “There are so many people in this base, and I believe that only researchers who have to deal with the virus directly would have a privilege like that.”

As he reconstructed the case in his mind, he said, “No matter the purpose, if we make the assumption that the killer is a researcher with the serum, he killed these two people, broke the container with the virus, and then escaped the room with a miniscule amount of the serum. Out in the corridors, he continued to kill and used the virus to cause the zombie transformation. Then, he escaped from the lab and allowed the virus to spread to the surface, but for some reason, the people on the surface transformed into a different kind of zombie.

“Or rather… the killer didn’t have a chance to escape the lab and was killed by security or something. The BW Zombies outside the lab have nothing to do with the virus here, and they’re caused by a completely different thing.”

At that point, Feng Bujue was reminded of another thing, and he mumbled to himself, “But the guy at the door had the qualification to enter this room, so he should be a researcher who had taken the serum, so why did he zombify?”

Feng Bujue needed more information to understand the situation, so he inspected the two bodies again and found a key inside the pocket of the goatee.

There was an office table several meters away. Feng Bujue walked over with the key and opened all the drawers. He found two syringes, a stack of papers, some stationery, a stapler, pins, and so on. Only the lowest drawer was locked. He tried the key that he found, and the lock clicked open.