The second growl appeared several seconds later. With Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword paying full attention, they naturally picked up the monster’s direction. They shared a look before moving together in that direction.
They did not move fast, but they did move very quietly. Feng Bujue switched the mask back to hidden mode and then retrieved the Eye of Hostility from his inventory to put it on. During the previous scenarios, either he was working alone, or it was something like the Death Quiz, so it had been a while since he had found a use for this piece of equipment. But this was the perfect situation for it.
Even though there were lights in the corridor, the lighting was not perfect. There would be a relatively well-lit section every so often, and then it would be followed by another fifteen meters of darkness. The alternation of brightness and darkness repeated itself as they went down the corridor. That was why Feng Bujue had taken out his flashlight. He was mainly worried about missing some clues in the dim corridor.
The two shuffled down the corridor and arrived at a split in the path. The growl of the unknown monster began again, and this time, it was even clearer than before. They stopped at the junction and looked to their left. After twenty meters, they would have reached the end where a thick, sturdy metallic door was situated. There was a circular valve on the door, and the monster’s growl came from behind the door.
Feng Bujue turned his head to the side and whispered, “Since the door is closed, this is an optional mission. Therefore… this monster won’t be too weak, and the system has given us the choice to face it or not. If not, we can just leave from the other direction. If we do take the risk to kill it, we should be given the corresponding reward.”
“What if this is a boss-level monster stronger than Jason?” Flashes of Sword asked back in a similarly soft voice.
“Impossible. Jason is the strongest monster in this scenario. There is no doubt about that.” Even though Feng Bujue had not been spending that much time with Flashes of Sword, he believed that this man was trustworthy and straightforward. There was no need to be too cautious around him, so he honestly revealed, “The skill of my title allows me to check the data of the scenario’s final boss directly. I activated the skill the moment we entered the scenario, and the boss of this scenario is definitely Jason.”
“Oh? There’s a skill that does that?” Flashes of Sword was intrigued when he heard that. “Eh, in the Pi Li scenario where we fought, who was the Boss that you saw?”
“I didn’t see any,” Feng Bujue answered.
“Why?”
“When the system finished explaining the mission, you rushed at me with your sword. Am I supposed to stand there dumbly, looking through the menu?”
“So, you’re saying it’s my fault?”
“Of course.”
“Haha… Then what about Jason’s data? How powerful is he?” Flashes of Sword asked again.
“How shall I put it? In terms of fighting capability, perhaps he is not as strong as alien or predator, but in terms of survivability, he’s even harder to kill than the undead,” Feng Bujue replied.
———
Name: Jason Voorhees
Race: ???
Level: 20
Height: 190 cm
Weight: 113 kg
Combat Style: Close combat, relying often on his blade, but he occasionally uses other weapons or fights with his bare hands.
Weakness: Mommy’s boy
Skill: Revival (Even though you might have vanquished Jason on a physical level, with any preposterous excuse, he will be able to reappear.)
Danger Level: Medium
Feng Bujue’s opinion was that the revival skill was mocking a certain series’ plot…
Roar!
Another roar came from behind the door. Due to the close proximity, Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword heard other noises this time. It sounded like metal grinding against metal. It was heavy, echoing, and quite close.
“Putting all those other things aside, since Jason has already been transported onto the spaceship, we are not going to run into him if we do not leave this lab,” Feng Bujue said. “So, shall we deal with this monster that is right before us?”
“Huh?” Flashes of Sword was confused. “Weren’t you the one who was supposed to come up with the strategy? Why are you asking me?”
“Oh… Is that it?” Feng Bujue said. “You’re going to listen to all of my orders, is it? Then this should be fun.”
He put the flashlight and sword inside his inventory and went forward to grab the valve with both hands. “I’ll open the door, and you will rush in to kill the thing. I’ll cover you from the back.”
“What?” Flashes of Sword only then realized… why Feng Bujue had asked for his opinion earlier. But it was too late to say anything. Feng Bujue had already started to turn the valve. With a mighty push, the metallic door creaked open. The monster inside the door noticed the change, and before Flashes of Sword rushed in, it had already started moving.
After pushing open the door, Feng Bujue quickly jumped back as he pulled out his steel sword. Flashes of Sword was about to jump right into the room when they heard that strange metallic grinding sound again. Acting out of pure instinct, Flashes of Sword pulled back his aggression and raised his sword to block before his chest, countering the shadow that was blasting out from the shadows.
Following the strange noise, the monster’s giant body slithered out from behind the door. When it showed itself fully, Flashes of Sword abandoned the thought of using his blade to block its attack and quickly retreated. The monster shuffled out into the light, and its appearance was hard to describe in words.
Just imagine opening a copy of a newspaper and placing all sorts of metallic objects on it like wire-hangers, screws, scissors, pipes, ball of steels, and so on… And then, the paper was used to wrap up all that stuff and squeezed tight to force out the air. It was unavoidable that the protruding edges of the metallic objects would pierce through the paper layer. And what you would have at the end would be a metallic ball with an irregular shape, covered in a layer of paper filled with holes.
The monster was something like that, but the surface was not made from paper but a layer of decayed skin. Its skin was thicker than a human’s, and some mobile, irregular metallic objects poked through the many holes on the surface. One could glimpse the handle of a bicycle, car parts, spines of iron gates, and so on. They were mostly rusted and abandoned trash.
It was hard to tell how big the monster was exactly, but it was about the size of a car. When it was inside the room, it had the shape of a bun, but once it squeezed out of the room, it turned into the shape of a burrito.
It used the metallic parts that poked out from its skin to move. It might slither like a snail, but actually, it possessed many ’legs’, and the grinding sound they had heard earlier was caused by its moving ’legs’.
The groan came from inside its ’body’. Feng Bujue had a hard time imagining what kind of organism would be hidden underneath this several ten centimeters thick of skin and a ball of living metallic objects…
“Is this thing of machine or an organism?” Flashes of Sword shuffled backward while keeping his alert eyes on the large monster that was trudging toward them. It was not that he was scared by this strange adversary, but he did not know where to attack.
Feng Bujue, who stood several meters behind Flashes of Sword, added, “In any case, it doesn’t look like a magical creature.”
He took out another weapon. He was holding a sword and a wrench in both of his hands while looking ahead. “Thankfully, I have two of these.”
“But how are we supposed to attack?” Flashes of Sword tilted his head slightly and glanced at Feng Bujue from the corner of his eyes.
“We cut it open,” Feng Bujue replied matter-of-factly.
“That is easier said than done. It has so many ’tentacles’ poking outward, and it is so large. Getting too close is not going…”
Before Flashes of Sword finished, Feng Bujue lunged forward. He waved both of his weapons and started mashing. The monster did try to retaliate, but surprisingly enough… it was very weak. The rusted metal fragments were not sharp weapons, and the monster could not wave them fast or strong enough. In any case, the monster’s attack was like a normal human being grabbing a bicycle to smash at them. It might cause real injuries in real life, but in-game, the gamers’ physical attribute was different. Since Feng Bujue was armored, it was no more serious than a mosquito bite.
After a haze of chopping, Feng Bujue managed to peel the monster’s ’skin’. A bunch of moldy, rusted metal appeared before his eyes. Without hesitation, he raised the blade and hack it forward. Robots-Must-Die cut through the bunch of metal like a knife cutting through butter. Soon, cracks formed on the metallic body.
Seeing how weak the monster was, Flashes of Body suddenly realized how cowardly he had acted. Therefore, he charged forward and activated Moonlight Slash. With the buff to attack speed, he chewed down the monster’s large body like a human shredder.
A liquid similar to mechanical oil leaked out from the monster’s thick ’skin’. It sprayed everywhere as the two went on the work on the monster. It did not take long for the floor to be covered in broken flesh, black oil, and decayed metallic pieces.
Strangely enough, the giant monster, which had been growling at the beginning, turned curiously quiet after the attacks from Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword started. Even though it kept trying to move the metal in its body to defend and counter, it did not elicit another sound.
In the subsequent three minutes, the two were like mice munching on cheese; they attacked the monster relentlessly. On the monster’s side, even though its retaliation did not amount to much damage, it did not stop either.
Killing this monster was more tedious than they imagined. If it was a werewolf that charged out from the room, then it would have ended much faster. Perhaps the attack damage would have been five times greater than this giant blob, but at least it would not have been so tiring.
Finally, after the duo exhausted about three hundred Stamina Points, they finally came to the core of the monster. Instantly, the curiosity surrounding the monster rose to a new level.