Fèi Míng nudged the decapitated head aside with the tip of his shoe. Lifting his gaze, he saw the entire Carnival street bent into a warped fairground.
The lanterns flickered with dull, dying colors.
Something large moved behind the striped curtains of a booth. For a Carnival game arena, it sure was too eerily quiet, contrasting the horror he'd just witnessed.
He strode further into the Game. Halted, and glanced at the tired troops of players meters away from him.
Then the Runic Board appeared above the main banner. Its harsh light spilled over the players gathered near the entrance.
[Stage 2 of Game Completed!]
[Stage 3 begins in 5 minutes!]
[Don't turn purple yet!]
Most of them looked half-dead already. Clothes torn. Their hands shaking. Someone's sleeve was soaked all the way to the shoulder, and another player's face was smeared with something thick and brown-black that wasn't dirt.
Fèi Míng stood at the edge of the group, silent. He internally groaned. 'I hate walking into a place of uncertainty. I need to learn about the game setup, and fast.'
Flicking a lint off his hair, his eyes captured the inhumane design of the Carnival. The balloons looked ridiculously like a human severed face stitched together. 'Maybe this is better. I'd get to know more about the Core absorption.'
Suddenly, one of them turned. A tall guy with broad shoulders, and wearing a long black duster that had been stitched together from the sleeves of other coats. His hair was shaved on one side, dyed a dirty steel-blue on the other.
His eyes swept over Fèi Míng from head to ruined clothes.
"Hey—hey you." His voice was hoarse, squinting as he continued, "What in the hell's incarnation are you doing here?"
That call-out brought more eyes to Fèi Míng.
He measured the scruffy looking young boy, again, slower this time, then snorted.
"This is an S-tier game. Are you trying to die?"
'If I had known that building was an entrance to a game arena, I wouldn't have walked in, fucker.'
However, he lowered his gaze. "I-I don't know how I ended up here," Fèi Míng replied as he cowered to himself.
The tall guy snorted. "Another stupid blind player walking into any catastrophe, huh." He beckoned Fèi Míng in with a wave of his hand. "I don't want another chicken idiot dying uselessly again. Why do you stand there? Join in."
He nodded, shuffling towards the group of players.
The tall sleeve-patched guy dragged Fèi Míng closer by his collar. "You've got one thing to know, dude. Don't let your fear seep out. Your fear alerts whatever booth beast. Got it?"
Fateless bobbed his head.
But the players near them flinched when another scream echoed from somewhere deeper inside the Carnival, muffled by distance and walls.
"AHH! It's that scream again!" A woman desperately clutched a grown man's arm in a white blood stained suit. His expression was grim, staring at the woman in pure distaste.
The woman continued, her face streaked with dry tears. "Please— please! Please let me go back! Tha-that scream sounded like my daughter's! My DAUGTE—!"
The man pushed her away from him, proceeding to dust the dirt off his suit. "Your daughter is dead. That was a hallucination. Push down your fear, or you won't survive."
The woman dropped to her knees. She clutched her head, screaming her heart out. But the other players no longer paid attention to her.
Fèi Míng moved closer to the tall guy. He noticed how these players emphasized 'fear'. Just like RiaKai, could this game feed on human emotion to hunt the players?
'Usually, I calculate to foretell a much more accurate result on a future game, but this was sudden… I should be fine.'
The Runic Board crackled to life again, brighter than before.
The tired players straightened against their will. Some swallowed hard. Others clenched their weapons tighter.
[Stage 3 of Carnival begins!]
[Welcome to the Mini Game: BURIAL GROUND!]
A crude image unfolded, looking like a booth shaped oversized pit, dirt mounded around its edges. Dozens of small round holes lined the bottom. Something pale and writhing moved underneath.
"Huh? Whack-a-mole?"
[Let's play… Whac-A-Mole!]
[The Buried Ones Will Rise From Their Holes.]
[Hit Them Back Before They Crawl Out Completely.]
[If You Don't, You Get Dragged In The Holes With The Bodies!]
Someone whispered, "Bodies?"
Another whispered back, "No… corpses. They're corpses."
[Be Careful.]
[Not Every Corpse Is the Same! Avoid The Weird Ones!]
The blue image flashed to show random "moles" filled with swollen heads, broken jaws, eye sockets leaking old blood. One had an open unhinged jaw as flies flew around the corpse.
A murmur spread through the players.
[Warning: DO NOT DISTURB THE PERFORMER.]
[The Performer for This Attraction: Marrow Lass!]
A sketch of her appeared. She was tall, thin, looking like porcelain skin dusted with dry cracks. Her ribs were exposed on one side. A spine-shaped whip hung from her hand.
The board paused as if waiting for reactions.
Someone whispered, trembling, "She's the one who— who stitched those screaming heads on the carousel animals…"
[Time Limit: 5 Minutes.]
[Survive to Advance.]
[Players Will Enter in 30 Seconds.]
The tall sleeve-patched guy beside Fèi Míng exhaled shakily. "Shit… they're really throwing us into that one already."
He turned to Fèi Míng again. "Call me Olive, and listen. Don't fall into a hole. Don't let them grab you. And— for the love of every corpse here— never look Marrow Lass in the eyes."
Fèi Míng nodded once.
[Teleporting Players in 5 seconds.]
Bling!
The world spun sideways.
Fèi Míng's feet sank into a packed dirt inside an enormous rib cage.
The bones arched over the players, acting like pillars of the arena. The floor vibrated with a low, steady rumble, as over two hundred round holes lined the ground, each one just wide enough for a head and shoulders to rise through.
Olive swore under his breath. The other players tensed, gripping crude bone mallets handed out by the system.
A wet crack sounded at the far end.
The corpse bodies shot upward. Their rotting gray flesh hung loose against their bones, their jaws broken.
'Are these… Zombies?'
The pungent, nauseating foul smell instantly filled the air.
Most of them held their shirts over their noses.
"GO!" someone shouted.
The first corpse lunged out of its pit. A player smashed its head down. And the old flesh splattered across the dirt.
Another corpse burst up. Its neck was split open, exposing dark muscle. A man struck it again and again until the skull collapsed and the body slid back into the hole.
[Ahoo! Jackpot!]
More bodies erupted. The ground quickly became a storm of rotten green sloppy teeth, and twitching heads.
The woman from earlier swung her mallet. She struck a pale corpse straight on the forehead. The head caved in with a wet crunch.
Then its skull split apart.
And a thick wave of moving larvae and maggots erupted out.
They poured across her face before she could scream, forcing their way into her eyes. "AHHH!!!! HELP! HELP ME!!! MY EYESSS!!!" They wriggled into her open mouth. Her throat bulged as the larvae crawled down.
She dropped backwards, choking, her heels scraping the dirt in blind panic.
Fèi Míng froze for one second. His chest tightened, and his breath stuttered. Although he enjoyed death scenes, this was less bloody and more disgusting in sight. He recoiled.
Another corpse shot upward near him. Its skin shone faintly purple.
Inside the cracks, he saw the movement of more larvae.
He stepped back. His grip tightened on his mallet. His mind clicked through the difference in color. 'Oh. The grays are safe to hit. The purple coloured is not!'
'Hit only gray. Avoid purple.'
A gray corpse lunged at his leg. Its nails tore through the fabric of his pants, hand clamped around his ankle with a dry squeezing sound.
He slammed the mallet down. The corpse fell, snarling at the ground.
But, before he could recover, another one rose behind him. Its hand wrapped around his wrist. A second hand gripped his back as three bodies crawled out at once, pulling him in different directions.
'No. No. No.' His pulse spiked, heart hammering in his ribs. 'They're fucking disgusting. I don't want them touching me.'
Fèi Míng tried to manipulate the weight of the mallet. Maybe if it weighed more, he'd strike them down easily. But it was too heavy to handle, and it dragged his arm down, nearly pulling his shoulder out of place.
His eyes widened in shock. 'No. I'm not strong enough! Can't I just—?!'
His control slipped.
Yet, the corpses kept rising. One grabbed his waist. Another hooked fingers into his hair. Dirt poured down his neck as the bodies pulled him toward one of the pits. There were too many. He tried screaming, but one clamped his mouth shut.
'I'm going to— I'm going to die! I should fight!'
He lifted his head to strike—
And everything stopped. His weapon rolled out of his hand. This was… this was—!
The corpse in front of him stared with empty sockets.
Then the sockets filled with eyes he recognized.
The corpse's body morphed into a blackened skin. Its cheeks melted off, lips burned away, exposing his bare teeth.
Then, he saw a faint red glow behind those ruined eyes.
"Lin?"
The man he let sink under the lava.
'What the hell?! Am I hallucinating?'
Lin's fingers dug into his shoulder. His jaw opened, revealing a throat charred down to muscle.
"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?!" Lin's broken voice vibrated inside his skull.
Fèi Míng's breath caught. His lungs constricted to the point of pain, arms shaking. The corpses continued dragging him toward the pit, but he couldn't move. His vision blurred around the edges.
More hands rose from the hole behind him as larvae crawled into his eyes and nose.
Lin leaned closer, his burnt nose almost touching Fèi Míng's face.
"You should have died with me." The face formed into a disfigured crooked smile. "Why aren't YOU laughing now? Won't you let your old man enjoy your death?" The voice distorted, changing into a deep cracked inhumane sound.
"Smile for us… Fateless. Not even a god's favour would save you."
Something cracked inside him.
A raw scream ripped out of his throat. He thrashed, kicking against the dirt. His eyes reddened as more corpses clawed at him, pulling him downward. Dirt scraped his knees. Fingers closed around his arm, his neck, his ribs.
"AHHH! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME!!! IT BURNS! IT HURTS!!!"
His nails dug into the ground as the hole widened beneath him.