Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 734 - 732: Light (4K)

DRRRING—

The landline phone in the corridor rang. Its elongated screen glowed orange, displaying the caller ID: 111#

The Scout, peering outside with the aid of his equipment's Special Effect, felt his pupils suddenly contract.

The incoming call from 111# meant it originated from the landline phone outside the elevator landing on the left side of the eleventh floor.

How is that possible?

Danfei, who lived on the eleventh floor, had died on the second night after the players arrived at the hotel. Both the Ghost of Hidden Eye on the twelfth floor and Kafei on the tenth floor had also perished.

Who could be calling?

Even if the players living on the left side of the corridor encountered an abnormal situation and needed to call for support from this end, they should have dialed from an occupied floor.

There was no need to specifically go to the eleventh floor, where someone had died, to make a phone call, right?

Or could it be that it wasn't a player who made the call, but something else...

The Scout's mind raced. Meanwhile, Li Ang, after a brief moment of consideration, tossed the Glass Bottle containing the mud-slicked eyeball to Liu Wu Dai. Propelling himself off the tips of his toes, he dashed out of the door. He picked up the phone as he entered the jammed elevator landing.

"Hello?"

No sooner had he spoken than a panicked, frightened male voice came through from the other end.

"I'm 13MARK, at the door of the elevator landing on the left side of the eleventh floor."

The man's voice was deliberately lowered and hushed, like a whisper.

"I've been attacked by a red-clothed old woman. I've deceived her with a substitute; she's now eating my mannequin on the tenth floor, room 1008. I really need help. No one answered on the fourteenth, thirteenth, seventh, sixth, fifth, or fourth floors..."

The man's tone suddenly shifted, sounding even more terrified and flustered. "She's almost done eating, she's almost done! Hurry up and come help me, please! I'm the Ant King's brother; I'll pay any price..."

"Understood, I'm on my way."

Li Ang spoke in a calm and steady voice. He swiftly turned to The Scout and Liu Wu Dai in room 0372 and said, "You two go support Wanli Fengdao first. I'll go find 13MARK."

With that, he hung up the phone. He ignored the elevator's ascent button and instead raised his right hand, pointing towards the ceiling of the elevator landing.

An abundance of vines sprouted from his fingertips. They entwined like snakes, spiraling upward toward the ceiling of the elevator landing. Deftly and swiftly, they pried open the steel plate on top, revealing the dark and profound elevator shaft above.

The dense vines latched firmly onto the edges of the elevator car's roof, stretching like a spring to their limit before violently contracting.

Like an arrow released from a bowstring, Li Ang was propelled upwards, ascending rapidly in the empty elevator shaft.

The murky air howled past his ears. The low-energy indicator lights in the elevator shaft emitted a faint orange glow; in his high-speed ascent, they trailed behind like comets with long, lingering afterimages.

THUD!

Li Ang's palm firmly grasped a steel support beam on the interior wall of the elevator shaft, forcefully arresting his momentum. Without pausing to stabilize himself, his two crossed fingers, forming a heart shape, began to chisel at the elevator doors.

His sharp, slender fingernails sank into the gap between the doors. Accompanied by a grating, teeth-cringing screech, the two doors slid to their respective sides.

Li Ang leaped onto the eleventh floor, looking towards the left side of the corridor.

Blood. At the end of the left side of the corridor, blood was everywhere.

Spatter patterns, drips, streams, pools of blood...

13MARK's upper body lay prone, face down, his right arm stretched forward and his left arm trailing behind him. His black suit was riddled with rents and tears. The dreadlocks on his head were soaked with blood. He was motionless, his status—alive or dead—unknown.

His lower body, however, lay in the elevator shaft on the left side of the corridor, being dragged swiftly into the depths of the shaft by something.

BANG!

The elevator doors slammed shut, leaving only a long, curved trail of blood on the ground.

Is that the red-clothed old woman...?

Li Ang bent his knees, a cloud of dust rising from the carpet beneath his feet.

In the next instant, he dashed across the entire corridor and rushed to the entrance of the left elevator.

Countless vines grew out from beneath his sleeves, like tens of thousands of Soaring Snakes, filling the entire space.

Li Ang threw a punch.

The wind from his punch howled.

A mass of vines enveloped his left fist and swiftly hardened mid-air, forming a spike.

With the momentum of the punch, it easily burrowed into the already shut elevator doors, smashing them open.

He stood on the edge and looked down, seeing the elevator car stopped around the sixth floor.

The protective doors of the elevator shafts on the 14th, 13th, 12th, 10th, 9th, 8th, and 7th floors were all open. The lights from each floor shone into the elevator shaft, illuminating the dark, deep space.

There was no trace of 13MARK.

No bloodstains, no smell of blood, not even the faintest scent of a living human.

No, 13MARK and that red-clothed old woman must have been here. The open doors of the elevator shafts on each floor were a trick by the opponent, to confuse me so I wouldn't know which floor it had fled to.

Why? It had already devoured five players and was in the process of consuming a sixth. Possessing immense strength, why wouldn't it fight me here and directly eliminate a potential witness?

Was it because the devouring wasn't complete, and it wasn't as powerful as the players imagined? Or was it unable to fight during the devouring process? Or could it be that the opponent could only kill one player each night, feeding just once?

While his mind was still pondering, his body acted first.

Li Ang's left pupil transformed into a vertical, beast-like slit, and his Spiritual Sense surged like a torrential river, sweeping over the entire elevator shaft.

Lines. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Dense, invisible lines filled the space, emitting an extremely faint glow under the detection of his Spiritual Sense.

What were these lines?

The Swamp God Power wasn't adept at reconnaissance or detection. Li Ang primarily channeled his Spiritual Sense through his Cat's Eye, an ability that could recognize and create illusions.

However, Cat's Eye was only of Rare-grade. While it could discern the presence of the invisible lines, it couldn't identify their specific effects.

The red-clothed old woman was an anomaly of the hotel and inherently possessed strange powers. Not to mention, after devouring numerous players, she carried who knew how many special abilities.

Then I'll just go around them.

Li Ang's body suddenly underwent a drastic transformation; his shoulders, back, and limbs became limp as if boneless.

THUMP.

Several vines burst forth from various parts of Li Ang's body. They brushed past the edges of the invisible lines, eventually anchoring themselves into the inner walls of the elevator shaft.

Like Spider-Man's webs, they suspended the boneless, limp Li Ang as he plummeted down the shaft.

Bai Haozheng and Black Holy Son were staying on the fourteenth and thirteenth floors, respectively. Although 13MARK had mentioned in his call that no one answered on these two floors—they were possibly engaged in their own note tasks or had taken the elevator to assist others residing on the left side of the corridor.

But the red-clothed old woman, an anomaly of the hotel, might not know this. From its perspective, descending and fleeing to the unoccupied tenth or ninth floor would certainly be safer.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The plant vines dragged him downwards. The boneless, flexible Li Ang contracted, stretched, and deformed his body, nimbly avoiding all the invisible lines without slowing down.

He was even more agile than those canned, springy, boneless lemon chicken strips sold on Taobao.

If Chaichai were here, he would undoubtedly be salivating, thinking: This meat looks delicious!

Descending, descending.

Li Ang flipped into the tenth floor. The next second, all the invisible lines in the elevator shaft behind him suddenly blazed, emitting a glare as intense as the sun.

Then, the lines shattered.

BOOM!!!

A ghostly blue flame filled the entire space. The heat it radiated was intense enough to melt steel, turning the indestructible elevator shaft a dark, magma-like red. A scorching shockwave of air impartially surged into every floor with open elevator doors.

Standing at the entrance to the tenth floor, Li Ang was swept from behind by the fiery shockwave.

The white lab coat he wore over his clothes instantly burst apart, along with the Dragon Head Mask, turning to ash, revealing the Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat he wore beneath.

The Perfect-quality Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat ultimately withstood the explosion of the unknown invisible lines. The excess heat from the radiation was counteracted by the healing effect of the Origin of Life.

If any other player had entered the elevator shaft, they might have been caught off guard and instantly killed. After all, even I hadn't anticipated that the array of invisible lines would release an attack with such terrifying energy.

He slowly straightened up, looking around.

The bones in his body, which had been contorted, snapped back into place with a series of cracks.

On the tenth floor, there was no sign of 13MARK or the red-clothed old woman...

CREAK! CREAK!

A squelching sound, like water-logged sandals treading on the floor, echoed from the stairwell to the left of the tenth-floor corridor.

Li Ang glanced sideways; the door to the stairwell had opened.

A bright red oval balloon, hanging by a slender green plastic ribbon, floated in slowly.

This balloon hovered in mid-air. It neither rose nor fell, moving almost perfectly horizontally as it drifted to the center of the tenth-floor corridor.

CREAK! CREAK!

The comical sound of shoes on the floor drew closer. A pair of boots stepped out of the stairwell into the corridor.

They were black-and-white fabric boots, resembling riding boots but without heels. They had black laces, long narrow toe caps, and the tops were adorned with dusty red pompoms.

They looked like… the kind of shoes a circus clown would wear.

GIGGLE GIGGLE GIGGLE...

A high-pitched, short burst of laughter sounded. A bizarre clown in a dirty white costume, wearing white gloves and holding many red balloon strings in both hands, stepped out of the stairwell.

His forehead was unusually high and broad, with messy, short orange hair growing above it. Pale, grim white makeup covered his face. His lips were painted a blood-like crimson, with two red streaks extending from the corners of his mouth, up along his cheeks, to above his eyes.

A clown wandering around with balloons... Is this one of the aberrations in the corridor Judy Cecil mentioned?

The clown stood still, head slightly bowed, laughing eerily.

His creepy gaze locked firmly on Li Ang in front of him.

He opened his fanged mouth wide and blew a bubble with thick saliva.

POP.

Li Ang's expression remained unchanged as a scythe materialized in his hand.

「——————」

What was happening upstairs?

The deafening explosion seemed to still echo in Black Holy Son's mind.

He sped through the stairwell on the left side of the corridor, continuously stepping on the wall, using the recoil to bound and climb upward swiftly.

He had gone down to the sixth floor with Yuyi Xinzhong earlier to support the Plague Doctor, only to encounter the decayed elderly creature from yesterday.

During the day, Bai Haozheng and 13MARK had detailed some of the characteristics of the decayed elderly creature to the others. For instance, this aberration's body was extremely resilient, significantly reducing elemental or physical damage from the outside, and it had healing abilities; wounds would gradually heal after a period without sustaining further damage.

The black oily substance covering it had a strong corrosive effect; once splashed with it, one had to cut away the affected skin and muscle with a sharp instrument to prevent further corrosion. Additionally, the black oily substance could also serve as some sort of spatial teleportation device, allowing the decayed elderly creature to pass through solid objects via one black oil slick and emerge from another, all without any energy fluctuations. And the pouch it held seemed to be a type of dimensional bag; if caught by it, one would likely be transported into a special space, making escape difficult.

Unlike last night's "Don't Breathe" note, the Plague Doctor had received the malicious "Don't Get Killed" note tonight. Correspondingly, the decayed elderly creature no longer seemed to need to rely on breathing to locate players. It attacked with greater frequency and speed, each strike pushing the players to the brink of desperation.

At first, Black Holy Son and the others struggled under its assault. Time and again, they were nearly dragged close and ensnared in the dimensional space by the decayed elderly creature's Cut Space ability.

Luckily, Yuyi Xinzhong's power system was especially compatible with the Plague Doctor's. Yuyi Xinzhong's veins bulged, his skin taking on a black and crimson hue, his eyes as red as a Shura's. His strength, agility, and constitution all surged. The katana in his hand danced with Thunder Python Electric Snakes, each swing unleashing a torrent of lightning. Meanwhile, the Plague Doctor deployed healing skills. A thick, orange beam extended from the top of his staff, connecting to Yuyi Xinzhong's back, continuously healing Yuyi Xinzhong's body as it broke down from activating his secret techniques.

The three players coordinated smoothly. The Plague Doctor urgently healed injuries, Yuyi Xinzhong focused on attacking, and Black Holy Son restricted the enemy while protecting the most vulnerable Plague Doctor. They managed, through kiting and tactical repositioning, to barely maintain the situation until the elevator's safety event at 01:11 was about to occur.

However, a resounding explosion from above shattered the stalemate.

The silently attacking decayed elderly creature glanced upstairs, seemingly impatient, and suddenly accelerated its attack speed. It almost finished off Yuyi Xinzhong, who had charged forward, as if the previous deadlock had been merely an illusion it crafted to toy with the lab rats.

Alarms blared in the minds of the three players. Black Holy Son quickly deployed a one-time-use trump card item to temporarily block the enemy, letting Yuyi Xinzhong and the Plague Doctor enter the elevator that was about to initiate its safety mode. He himself dashed out of Room 0610 and into the stairwell, running upward to investigate the source of the explosion.

The soundproofing at the Dolphin Hotel was excellent. What kind of explosion could have caused such a strong shockwave?

THUD. THUD.

A soft sound echoed in the tenth-floor corridor, like something heavy continuously striking the ground.

Black Holy Son's right hand tightly gripped the Golden Dagger. His figure shot like an arrow into the tenth-floor corridor, his skill bar primed, ready to unleash a skill's Special Effect at any moment.

This is....

In the tenth-floor corridor, a large amount of sooty smoke lingered from the explosion. Numerous bright red balloons floated near the ceiling.

A figure wearing a clown suit with twisted limbs lay on the floor. Kneeling beside it was a red figure.

THUD. THUD.

With his back to Black Holy Son, the red figure seemed to be doing something to the clown. Each thud made the clown's arm or leg twitch.

THUD. THUD.

The red figure turned its head, revealing a pair of deep, black eyes. "You're here," Li Ang's voice said.

THUD.

His fist, covered in pitch-black blood, slammed again and again into the clown's flattened, split face.