The owner of the footsteps soon turned the corner and entered the range of light lit up by the lamp.
“Jesus Christ… What is that?” With the dim light, Feng Bujue saw an extremely disgusting monster. The lower body of the monster was similar to human, and there was a cloth blocking the view of the crotch. The exposed legs though were bloodied and gory. There was iron branded into its legs like horseshoes. A circle of metal was embedded into the feet, and the pain was unbearable just from the sight. The upper half of the monster was even more curious. Its body was covered in tongues, from the front of its chest to the underarms, and every one of them was wiggling…
Its head was covered by a metal mask, shrouding its head to its chin. There was no hole for breathing or for the eyes. Two muscular arms hung by its side. It had no palm or fingers, and instead, a bone grew out from the wrist. They were as big as tusks. Feng Bujue instantly activated the Bell of Jin Gang at the monster. If this thing was an NPC, then function one would activate; if it was a monster, then function two would activate. In any case, he would find out more from the menu.
———
Name: Arthur’s Servant
Race: Synthetic Creature
Level: 26
Height: 190 cm
Weight: 120 kg
Fighting Style: Close and medium range physical attacks.
Weakness: Lacks sight and hearing. It can only use the tongues on its body to search for the target. The tongues themselves are rather weak.
Skill: Bone Bash, Head Bash, Tongue Bind
Danger Level: Medium
———
“Hmm… There is no list of related missions, events, or identity… so it’s a monster…” Feng Bujue read through the information and retreated behind the door. He closed it and locked it.
“This thing also does not have fingers. Hah…” Feng Bujue said. “Then it won’t be able to enter. Just now was probably a choice event. If I didn’t open the door, the thing with all those joints at its lower body would have died outside, but now that I have opened the door, the plot will proceed… I’ve saved it, so it will help me as an NPC.”
Bang bang bang…
The banging resumed, and it sounded like the monster outside was knocking against the door with the metal headgear.
“Hmm… As expected.” Feng Bujue chuckled. “Now I only need to wait for the thing outside to leave…”
A bone spur easily poked through the door and left a hole the size of a palm in the door. Thankfully, Feng Bujue was standing away from the door, or else there would be a hole on his chest already.
“He must be joking…” As nervous as Feng Bujue was, he still took out his main weapon, the wrench. “Or is the real choice… if I chose to hide inside the toilet, I wouldn’t be discovered, and if I chose to save the synthetic creature, I’d be attacked alongside it?”
With the sound of wood being torn, the toilet door was chopped down like it was a vegetable by the monster outside the door. During this process, Feng Bujue kept trying to figure out how to face the imminent combat. From the data given by the Bell of Jin Gang, the monster was not that strong. If they were in a wider space, as long as the player had a long-range weapon, they could fire at the tongue while being out of the waving tongues’ range. It would be a simple match. Unfortunately, this scenario was in a cramped space, and the toilet was the smallest room that he could have picked. So, even if Feng Bujue took out the only long ranged weapon, Death Poker, he could not pull the distance between them. At most, he could use the Shield effect to block two fatal blows.
The limited geography meant that he would need to face this monster in its most familiar close quarter combat. Feng Bujue had low Life Points, so obviously… things would not end well for him. One minute passed, and the door was mostly destroyed. There was only a ring left, and the hole was wide enough for someone to go through. The monster leaned forward and squeezed in through the hole. It slowly approached. Feng Bujue could only retreat, but the place was only several meters wide, and he soon backed into the corner. To his surprise, however, after the monster entered the room, it completely ignored Feng Bujue. It walked a few steps and then turned to face the other synthetic creature in the corner.
“Ke… Ke… Ke…” The tongue and chinless thing wailed, but it just sounded incoherent. Two pokes and blood squirted.
The monster who entered the door used the two bone blades to pierce the former’s chest. It then lifted its whole body and used the tongues to suction the other monster to its chest. It looked like it was holding a body but without using its hands…
Feng Bujue had no idea whether the former monster would die from this attack or not, but under those circumstances, he felt that it was better not to interrupt the close contact between the two.
After Arthur’s servant found the thing it wanted, it turned to leave the toilet. It was not hurrying or slowing, just the same as it came. Soon, it left the toilet. From its appearance to its departure, it did not even show any sign that it acknowledged Feng Bujue’s presence.
“It cannot sense my presence?” With that in mind, he hurried after it. “Then, I would like to see where you’re taking it.”
If this was a normal person, they would still be frozen where they were and not even dare to breathe until they heard the sound of the monster fade away. But Feng Bujue made a decision within seconds and moved it into action.
“Why wouldn’t it sense my presence? Can’t it sense the smell from me? Or… am I just a ghost?” Feng Bujue followed casually behind the monster with about one meter between them. Since this thing could not hear, Feng Bujue did not need to keep his footsteps light. “Hmm… Whether its sensory mechanism is based on the normal sense of smell is still unknown. I can’t make a further hypothesis. And if I am just a ghost, then the truth behind this scenario would be… After the introductory cinematic, I perished inside Cell 0, and since the moment I woke up, everything is the imagination of a ghost, and only the scene earlier was real. Haha… If that is the case, then I am quite a powerful ghost, since I am able to open and close door.”
Feng Bujue laughed because neither of these hypotheses sounded correct. Halfway through it, he realized how absurd they sounded.
He looked at the monster’s back. “Hmm? Could it be that it’s not that it cannot sense my presence but it does not wish to harm me?”
With that thought, a few connections were made. “Yes… assuming I am Andrew, then Arthur’s servant will naturally not attack his master’s brother. No matter what happened between the two, at least from the limited information, Arthur does not wish for Andrew’s death, or else he would have killed me at the start of the scenario.”
When he was thinking, the monster arrived at the stairs heading up. Strangely, the meat wall was still there, and it had not changed.
“Hey… How did you guys get out then? Earlier, the footsteps came from here…” Feng Bujue was about to mock when… the synthetic creature with the body stuck to its chest slowly moved into the staircase.
It ’squeezed’ into the meat wall just like that. Just like how one might squeeze their hand into a vat of dates or something dense, it squeezed and squeezed and pushed through…
The meat wall seemed to come up and melt around the frame of the synthetic creature. There was no gap, and it allowed itself to mold according to the creature’s movement. After the creature passed, it changed back into a perfect wall.
“So, this is how you go through it…” Feng Bujue regretted only poking at it with his fingers earlier. “No wait… Then how come this strange event was triggered after I found the three keys?”
He slapped his head. “Oh! The scene was probably to give me hint or to show me… how to pass through the wall.”
Feng Bujue took a deep breath, showed Goblin’s Mask, took quick strides, and squeezed himself into the wall. But he… pushed for a long time, and the wall did not change. Occasionally, blood would squirt out from the gap between the flesh, and it drenched his body.
The system also kept saying, “A wall formed by a curse. It looks to be made up of dead carcasses.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Feng Bujue grumbled. “A monster can pass through but I can’t? A monk can touch but I can’t?”
In his anger, he misquoted the character from ’The True Story of Ah Q’.
“F*ck you, when a tiger does not get mad, you think I’m Hello Kitty…”
He raised the wrench and activated Kyaaa! at the meat wall.
Who knew when the meat wall suffered a high power attack, a layer of magic circle would appear on its surface? Feng Bujue’s skill landed on the invisible force field, and a part of it even bounced back. He was launched backward, and his body slammed into the corridor wall. His Life Points dropped ten percent, and he wasted many Stamina Points.
“Fine… You win…” Feng Bujue extended his finger and told the wall like a man dropping some parting words after losing a fight, “Wait for me. I’ll be back to get you.”
Of course, even without that threat, the wall was not going to go anywhere.
After being knocked back, Feng Bujue had vented his grievances, and inspiration came. He returned to the toilet and examined the corner of the room. Finally, his eyes zoomed in on the wall.
When the earlier more voracious monster killed the other monster, it left two puncture holes in the wall.