"Waaah!!"
Jacob clearly hadn't anticipated the sudden attack and let out a cry of alarm — but fortunately Duanmu Huai had already been watching from beside him. He stepped forward, grabbed Jacob by the collar, and flung him backward, then drove a kick straight into the creature's chest and sent it flying.
"BANG!!!"
The creature slammed hard into the wooden box, but before long it was struggling back to its feet.
"Wh-what is that?!"
Under the dim oil lamp, what could be seen was a desiccated corpse that appeared to have once been a man, now reduced to skin and bones. In the center of its chest gaped a large hole, and inside that hole, an uncanny tangle of blood vessels like a spider's web pulsed and writhed without pause. At the same time, the other wooden box nearby also burst open, and a creature of similar appearance came crawling out, roaring as it lunged at the intruders.
"Tch. Walking dead. I knew it would be something like this."
Looking at the zombie-like things before him, Duanmu Huai let out a dismissive snort, then dragged the petrified Jacob toward the back while gesturing to Mary and Lorena.
"I'll leave it to you two. Finish them."
"Understood, Sir Knight!"
"Hm? Me?"
Startled by Duanmu Huai's words, Mary froze. Lorena, on the other hand, snapped her holy scripture shut with a firm clap, and gave a nod. Then Lorena leaped forward, effortlessly dodging the creature's lunge, raised her scripture high above her head...…
"In the radiance of God, be at rest!"
"BANG!!!"
Accompanied by Lorena's prayer, the scripture — thicker and heavier than two bricks stacked together — came crashing down directly onto the walking corpse's skull. The creature was driven hard into the ground, its head caving in, and went instantly still.
"The other one is yours then, Mary. Do your best."
Duanmu Huai stopped Lorena from pressing on to the second, hauled Jacob to the doorway, and turned to Mary.
"Hm? I have to do it???"
"Yes. If you want to work in this field, fighting comes with it. These aren't even humans — they're just zombies. If you can't handle this, how are you going to deal with cultists? Come on, come on — for you, this should be easy enough."
It was evident that Mary still had strong reservations about fighting these creatures. Even though they clearly didn't look anything like living people, they were fundamentally human in form. For a noble young lady like Mary, being asked out of nowhere to kill something that looked exactly like a human being left her genuinely at a loss.
But the creature didn't care about any of that — it fixed its gaze on Mary and came charging at her with a roar.
"ROAARR—————!!"
"Wah!"
Though Mary herself seemed to have gone rigid with fright, the Golden Eye activated at that very moment. Her body instinctively side-stepped, and she dodged the creature's attack. Then, with the eyes of a puppy begging not to be abandoned by its owner, she looked back at Duanmu Huai and Lorena behind her — but...…
"Hurry it up. We don't have time to waste."
"You can do it, Miss Mary!!"
"...…"
It seemed there was not a single ally on her side.
"Haah...haah...…"
Perhaps realizing she had no choice, Mary turned back to face the walking corpse. Back when Ranni had flung her into the hero graves for training, she had encountered plenty of difficult monsters — but most of those had been mutated, horrifying, and grotesque, so she had been able to bring herself to destroy them if she steeled her nerves.
But the thing in front of her looked just like an ordinary human being. Skeletal, yes, but not so different from a person...…and that made it considerably more challenging for Mary.
"Ugh...…the Grafted Scion and the Erdtree Avatar were both easier to deal with than this...…"
At least those things didn't look like people in any way.
Nothing for it — she had to go.
With that thought, Mary gripped her staff tightly, side-stepped the creature's next attack, raised the staff — and in the next instant, a blazing beam of light gathered above it, forming a massive luminous blade.
Carian Greatsword!
"WHOOOOSH—————!!"
The glittering blade swept through the air and cleaved the walking corpse clean in two — along with most of the furniture in the room.
"...…"
"I'm, I'm sorry — I was too nervous...…"
Looking at the furniture that had been split apart, Duanmu Huai was at a loss for words, and Mary hurriedly apologized.
"It's fine. After this much noise, they definitely know we're here — get ready to fight...…come to think of it, how did those two old men not notice us in here? Have their ears gone bad with age?"
While Mary had been fighting the zombie, Duanmu Huai had been keeping watch on the outside. With the racket they had been making, by all logic the two old men should have been alerted immediately. But to Duanmu Huai's surprise, even after Mary had taken her time finishing off the zombie, the two old men had still not appeared.
Could they really be so hard of hearing that they hadn't caught any of it?
That would be genuinely funny.
"Mrow!"
Just then, the black cat leaped out of Duanmu Huai's pocket and darted outside. Duanmu Huai and the others followed Lingnu out of the workshop and trailed after her.
With Lingnu leading the way, the group followed the lakeside toward the far end of the forest, and at this point Jacob seemed to have finally come back to his senses from the earlier shock. He looked at everyone with confusion.
"Hey, who exactly are you people? And what the hell was that just now?"
"I think it would be better for you if you didn't know too much. Incidentally, I'd suggest you prepare yourself — your friend is most likely beyond saving."
"...…"
Hearing that, Jacob fell into silence. In truth, from the moment he had found his friend's jacket, he'd already had this feeling. After seeing what he had just seen...…Jacob was fairly convinced that his friend was most likely already dead.
Led by Lingnu, the group made their way along the lake and through the trees, arriving at a clearing nearby.
At that point, Duanmu Huai suddenly stopped and signaled the others to halt.
"Careful. Look ahead."
"Hm?"
Hearing Duanmu Huai, Mary and Lorena quickly looked forward — and there in the clearing by the lake stood two old men. They were none other than the hotel owners. William was holding the double-barreled shotgun that had been hanging above the front desk, and the old man who had been in the wheelchair was no longer seated in it — he was simply standing there.
Before them, two people were bound and thrown on the ground, struggling desperately.
And beside those two people stood two figures that looked much like the zombies Duanmu Huai and the others had encountered in the workshop — their chests gaping open, standing there like puppets.
"Ah — those two tied up on the ground are hotel guests!"
Mary exclaimed in a low voice at the sight, and Lorena gave a nod.
"That's right — Miss Sarah and Mr. Bill."
Jacob, standing behind them, peered forward. When he saw one of the figures standing beside the captives, he immediately surged forward — only to be grabbed by Duanmu Huai.
"Let go of me — that's Abe!"
"Calm down. Look carefully — he's not alive anymore."
Duanmu Huai clamped a hand over Jacob's mouth and spoke in a low voice, then continued watching the scene ahead. This man was truly insufferable. He had no desire to be detected right now — he was half tempted to just knock the man unconscious and be done with it.
"What do we do now, Mr. Duanmu? If we wait too long, those two people are going to be killed!"
Mary was growing uneasy, and Duanmu Huai kept his eyes on the scene ahead and shook his head.
"Don't get worked up. Wait a little longer."
If what the players had recorded in the forums was accurate, the main event was still to come.
"SPLASHHH...!!"
Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. Suddenly, the sound of water erupted from the lake not far away, and then a massive, dark shadow slowly rose from within, making its way toward the clearing at the water's edge.
"Wh—!?"
"What is that thing?!"
"Nnn-nngh!!!"
At the sight of the black shadow, Lorena, Mary, and Jacob were all completely stunned. Jacob in particular was thrashing in Duanmu Huai's grip with the clear intention of screaming and bolting.
Haah, what a pain of an [NPC]...…
Looking at Jacob still struggling in his grip, Duanmu Huai frowned with mild displeasure, then applied a small amount of pressure with his hand.
"Crack."
In the next instant, Jacob's body stopped trembling and slumped to the ground.
"...…"
He hadn't overdone it, had he? He wasn't actually dead?
Mm, not dead — just unconscious.
Fair enough. The man was genuinely unbearable. He was supposed to be a man, yet he had less nerve than Lorena or Mary...…well, never mind that for now.
Duanmu Huai returned his attention to the lake ahead. The shadow had now fully emerged from the water.
It was a creature over four meters tall, resembling an enormous leech. Its entire body was covered in spines, and at the front end was a sponge-like face with walrus-like lips. All across its body grew sharp protrusions like steel barbs. The creature undulated its spine-covered form and moved slowly forward.
A Glaaki, just as I thought!
Seeing this, Duanmu Huai's eyes went wide and an excited expression crossed his face.
Glaaki was one of the Great Old Ones, but it was among the more unfortunate ones. Its arrival on Earth had been entirely accidental — the city where Glaaki had resided had become part of a meteor, which then crashed into the Earth and formed this lake. Glaaki, imprisoned at the heart of that city, had been trapped at the bottom ever since.
As a Great Old One, Glaaki was not particularly powerful by the standards of its kind. All it was capable of was generating dream-visions around the lake to manipulate humans, luring them to the water's edge, then piercing them with the spines on its avatar's body and converting them into zombie-like servants.
Well, calling them zombies was generous — these things were honestly worse than zombies.
The reason was simple. They were afraid of light.
In all the Resident Evil games and similar settings, you didn't see many zombies that were afraid of light.
That was also why the two old men never appeared during the day — zombies that rotted in sunlight. Honestly, that was laughable.
For players, Glaaki was exactly that kind of harmless idiot. Its power was the type that even an ordinary person, if they got serious about it, could overcome.
But Glaaki did have one very significant upside.
As mentioned earlier, Glaaki was trapped inside an alien city, and that alien city had been built on a meteor.
Which meant...…besides Glaaki itself, this location also contained an alien city and a massive collection of alien remains!
If he handed all of that over to the Foundation, it would absolutely net an enormous number of [points]!
The reason it had never become a target in the game was that there was only one Glaaki — once one player found and reported it, no other player could claim it. So unlike Mi-Go, whom players could hunt at multiple sites and research stations all over the world, this was inherently a single occurrence. In truth, that was exactly why Duanmu Huai hadn't thought of it in the first place — it was a rare, one-time-only discovery. He simply hadn't expected to stumble across it himself.
And yet here he had, just like that!
It was like strolling through the wild killing random wolves in a game, only to discover the boss was a rare elite Ghost Wolf!
This was pure profit!
His rabbit's luck was truly something else!
At this moment, Duanmu Huai even felt like pulling the little white rabbit out of his pocket and going "heh heh heh, what a lucky little bunny — surely a rabbit this fortunate was born to be eaten by daddy!" and taking a deep sniff — maybe it would even add a bit more luck.
Of course, that was just a joke.
"We move!"
In that instant, Duanmu Huai made his decision without hesitation.
"Take that thing down!!"
(End of Chapter)