January 18
The panel in front of Xiangzi was packed so densely with missions that it made her scalp tingle.
She had no idea until she looked, and once she did, she nearly jumped out of her skin. She had completed that many tasks? The rewards were absurdly generous.
[Corpse Tide Incoming: Due to the host's reckless actions, infected have gathered together and formed a small-scale corpse tide. Please defend yourself carefully.]
[Mission Reward: Random Vehicle Search Card x1, Random Equipment Reward Card x1, 2000 reward points, Trait: Veteran Driver — You can quickly get the hang of any vehicle. You will possess a basic level of driving experience with all types of vehicles.]
[Progress: Passively Completed.]
Passive completion?
It was the first time Xiangzi had ever seen that kind of evaluation. Before now, the only mission states she had seen were Completed and Incomplete.
What kind of nonsense was passively completed supposed to mean?
Did it mean that because she had failed to wipe out the corpse tide and had merely escaped it instead, the system judged the result as second-rate?
While Xiangzi was still mulling it over, the system's voice cut in.
[You know perfectly well what it means. Do you really need me to explain it? The newbie phase is over. From now on, task evaluations will be more detailed.]
"How much does the evaluation standard affect the rewards?"
[Naturally it affects them. Did you think you could do the least amount of work and still get the best rewards?]
Honestly, Xiangzi already knew the answer. She was just asking out loud so she could kill off the last little bit of wishful thinking in her head.
[Enough nonsense. Check your rewards, then go do whatever it is you need to do.]
The system sounded irritable. Xiangzi had no idea what had gotten into it lately, but for the past few days it had been unusually quiet and stingy with conversation.
Left with no choice, Xiangzi scrolled further down.
[The Rat Problem in the Sewers: In the apocalypse, it is not only humans who become infected. The rats gathering in the dark, damp underground have become terrifying reapers of life. Eliminate the Rat King lurking beneath the city of Nihonmatsu.]
[Mission Reward: Blind Box Coins x10, Trait: Hygiene — In clean environments, you will enter a state where you are less likely to fall ill. Conversely, if you remain in filthy environments for long periods, your body's resistance to disease will decline. So please maintain good personal hygiene in the apocalypse.]
[Progress: Completed.]
The reward was definitely good.
The only issue was that the Hygiene trait was awkward.
Used properly, it was god-tier. Used badly, it was garbage. If she ever lost her fixed base and had to live outdoors for long stretches while fighting infected, keeping up decent hygiene would become very difficult.
Still, she moved on.
[Field Exploration: Ensuring an adequate supply of resources is one of the fundamental laws of survival in the apocalypse. Explore special locations such as convenience stores and bars.]
[Reward: Blind Box Coins x3]
[Progress: Completed.]
Now that she had enough coins for a full ten-pull, Xiangzi still chose not to open them.
"I'll save these for when I actually need them. If I open them now and get a bunch of stuff I can't use yet, it'll just take up space. Better to keep them around and preserve a little sense of mystery."
These were the missions she had completed.
After obtaining two traits, two reward cards, 2000 points, and thirteen Blind Box Coins, Xiangzi noticed there was still one unfinished mission below. This one even had a special marker attached to it.
[Special Mission: Shadows Before the Apocalypse — Blooming girls kept vanishing. Strange smells leaked from the basement. Terrifying cries echoed in the dead of night. Who is the killer hiding in the dark? Uncover the truth.]
[Reward: 1500 reward points, Trait: Beginner Repairman [Vehicles] — You have now learned the basics of vehicle repair. At the very least, you can easily handle changing tires and replacing parts.]
[Progress: Incomplete.]
"...Looks like I'll have to go back down there," Xiangzi murmured, clenching her fist as she stared at the description.
What exactly had that strange basement she had wanted to investigate yesterday been hiding?
What had those pitiful dead suffered while they were still alive?
What truly lay behind that sewer filled with mysteries and horror?
Xiangzi didn't even want to imagine that such a monster might have lived beneath the same residential complex she called home. If not for what had happened yesterday, she might never have learned even a trace of it for the rest of her life.
Logically, a case this serious should have caused a social uproar.
Even if the Japanese police were slow and useless, there should have been some kind of reaction. Xiangzi did not go out much, but she spent enough time online that she should have seen at least a trace of this incident if it had been public.
Which made it even stranger.
Had the culprit been abducting girls from outside Nihonmatsu?
While thinking it over, Xiangzi began gearing up again.
She strapped on the old full-body protective armor and helmet, both scarred and damaged. She had already decided not to repair them. Once this mission was over, she would just buy herself a new set.
This time she did not bring along her beloved "Little Princess." She had not maintained it since yesterday's battle, and the gun's overall condition had clearly degraded.
Instead, she replaced the G18C's slide, put on a fresh grip sleeve, and swapped out the unreliable 50-round polymer drum for a sturdier 33-round aluminum magazine. Yesterday's fight had proven that the large drum magazine was far less dependable than she had hoped, so she switched to the metal mags.
She filled her mag pouches, replaced the batteries in her head-mounted tactical flashlight, tightened her laces, hung several knives on her thighs, and picked up the newly purchased Genesis Arms Gen-12, which had cost her 2200 points.
Despite looking almost identical to an AR-platform rifle, it was actually a shotgun chambered for 12-gauge buckshot.
It measured 84.3 centimeters long, weighed 3.54 kilograms unloaded, and with its twenty-round drum magazine, it struck a perfect balance between power and sustained fire. Its theoretical rate of fire reached 300 rounds per minute.
At twenty yards, the shot pattern remained tight, ideal for rapid response. It was compatible with both 2.75-inch and 3-inch 12-gauge shells.
Its barrel recoil-buffer system reduced felt recoil during firing, making it more controllable than traditional shotguns. The FBI had even listed it as a standard breaching weapon, used for low-noise assault tasks. With a HUXWRX suppressor attached, it could reduce the report by about thirty decibels.
That was why Xiangzi had chosen it as her main weapon for indoor operations.
For outdoor missions, she would still rely on Little Princess. This new weapon was meant for Miranda later.
Before leaving, Xiangzi instructed Huaxiu and Doris to keep a close eye on the two patients upstairs.
After shoveling down a little food and politely refusing Huaxiu's attempts to stop her, Xiangzi departed once more in full gear.
The return underground
Under the bright daylight above, the snow-covered ground reflected the warmth of the sun. Yet just five meters below that surface, the underground remained pitch-black, like the air itself had thickened into congealed crude oil and frozen in the silence.
Gun raised, Xiangzi descended the stairs with deliberate care, her footsteps nearly soundless.
She had expected that when her flashlight beam reached the bottom, she would see the flattened corpse Miranda had used as a cushion yesterday.
Instead, she saw something else entirely.
Several rats, each about the size of a rabbit, had gathered around that infected corpse. The body that had frightened both Xiangzi and Miranda yesterday had already been gnawed down to white bone, with even the scraps of flesh and torn fabric devoured into the rats' swollen bellies.
When the beam of her flashlight struck them, the rats did not flee.
They abandoned the corpse at once and charged straight at Xiangzi instead.
Their red-glowing eyes burned with hunger for fresh flesh. Running on all fours, they had no idea these were the last seconds of their miserable little lives.
Xiangzi squeezed the trigger.
The shotgun roared. Flame burst from the muzzle for only an instant, but the 12-gauge buckshot spread outward in a wide circular pattern of destruction.
The rats did not even get to squeal.
They were blown into shredded gore so thoroughly that not even the greatest Lego builder in the world could have reassembled a complete rat from what remained.
Most of them simply burst into blood mist.
Only then did Xiangzi step fully out of the doorway, sweeping the corridor with the flashlight and muzzle.
The hallway was clear. No other creatures stirred.
The remaining rats elsewhere, having seen their companions turned into scraps, wisely chose not to test their luck.
"Nice. So these little bastards are still afraid of hard truth after all."
With the gun in her hands, Xiangzi strode past the remains.
There was no point looking at that corpse now. Whatever external evidence had once been visible was gone. The rats had erased it, and Xiangzi had lost an important clue.
Her boots crunched over tiny rat bones as she crossed the scene.
Yesterday, everything had happened in a rush, and she had failed to notice something obvious: the mysterious basement door that had opened by itself opened outward, not inward.
That was why she had failed to force it.
Only now, as she approached, did she realize that the reason it hadn't been locked was not because the owner had left it open—but because the cheap metal latch itself had already broken.
She pushed the door shut behind her. The beam of her tactical light swept over the room.
At last, the basement that had so completely captured Xiangzi's attention lay exposed before her.
It did not match the image in her head at all.
There were no mangled corpses strewn across the floor, no walls soaked in gore, no obvious signs of carnage.
Instead, it looked almost... normal.
Small, yes, but fully furnished. Like someone had genuinely lived there.
"So much dust... and blood."
Xiangzi stepped too quickly and kicked up a cloud of dust. Thankfully, the velvet face covering she wore filtered out the grime.
There was trash on the floor.
A mop and broom rested against the wall, clear signs that someone had been cleaning this place not long ago.
So someone really had been living here.
Most likely, the infected thing that had come out of here yesterday.
If she looked carefully, she could even make out traces of the infected woman's movements preserved on the dusty floor.
"So... was she the killer?"
With that question in mind, Xiangzi began searching the room for clues.
This place had clearly once served as a home.
Ignoring the passage of time, one could imagine how, several weeks ago, it might have been a cramped but complete little nest.
There was a single bed against the left wall, with an unmade quilt still on it—a bright red floral blanket that looked almost festive.
Beside it stood a cabinet with a kettle on top.
In the center of the room sat a simple table and chair. A half-finished drink was still there, along with a plate of blackened, spoiled food.
Against the right wall stood a large bookcase packed with books. A few of them still lay open on the desk.
She could not yet tell whether they were merely decorative or actually used, but the room did not immediately feel like the den of a serial killer.
On another wall hung various kitchen utensils. There were cupboards full of pots and bowls, an electric hotplate, and even a small radiant heater with its cord trailing across the floor.
"This really is where a sadistic murderer lived?"
At least at first glance, the place showed no glaring sign of madness.
But a space could appear ordinary in broad strokes while its details gave everything away.
Xiangzi focused on the books.
Maybe the bastard had kept a diary.
If he was the type to write journals, then Xiangzi might be able to piece together the truth from whatever he had left behind.
This was no longer just about completing a mission and collecting a reward.
The cruelty of the crimes described by the system was unforgivable. If the culprit were somehow still alive, Xiangzi had already decided how it would end.
She would drown him in metal rain.
She slung the Gen-12 from her shoulder and crouched by the bookcase, brushing the dust off the covers with her gloved fingers.
The titles leapt out at her one by one:
Common Knowledge for Hunting Wild Animals
Counter-Surveillance Techniques
Medical Lexicon
The Secrets of Human Nature
Forensic Science
Even from the covers alone, the owner's interests were disturbingly clear—hunting, surveillance, medicine, psychology.
The rest of the shelves were much the same.
She began flipping through them carefully, checking whether anything had been hidden between the pages.
Nothing.
No photographs. No notes. No immediate evidence.
"All right. There's no longer any doubt. Whoever lived here was the culprit."
Any one of those books might have looked harmless on its own.
Together, arranged in the same tiny room, they painted a vivid psychological portrait in Xiangzi's mind—a predator obsessed with hunting people, tormenting them, dissecting them.
"Still... this only proves the suspect lived here. It doesn't prove the crime itself."
Thinking that, Xiangzi crouched beside the desk and pulled open its drawers.
Pens in the first drawer.
Nothing in the second.
The third one—
Locked.
"There we go. So that's where you hid it."
A little thrill shot through her. She immediately began looking for something suitable to pick the lock with.
A lock like this meant nothing to her. All she needed was a bit of wire.
A little searching turned up a bent paperclip on the floor.
Perfect.
She straightened and twisted it into something barely recognizable, then carefully inserted it into the lock.
Click. Scrape. Click.
Then—
Snap.
The drawer opened.
"Let's see what you've been hiding."
Heart pounding, Xiangzi pulled the drawer wide.
Inside lay only two things.
A chipped kitchen knife.
And beneath it, a diary, still in remarkably good condition.
[Mission Progress 50% — Special Mission Item Acquired.]
"A diary..."
She flipped open the cover.
The first page did not read like a journal at all.
It was a confession. Or a testimony.
"Hello. My name is Tachibana Sayo. I've already been bitten by an infected. If anyone finds this notebook, please burn everything here..."
This was not the suspect's diary.
It belonged to a victim.
Xiangzi sat down at the desk and began reading under the beam of her headlamp, forcing herself to stay calm.
The handwriting was messy. The pages smelled faintly of soot. There was a layer of grime embedded in the paper.
"I know this is a difficult request. If you've come here, then the infected in this room is me. I've already stabbed myself in the heart many times, but I still won't die. The virus has altered my body too deeply. My body's resistance to death is too high. I don't dare destroy my brain yet. If you kill me, you may do whatever you want with the body. But I truly hope you will reduce this place to ashes. As for why... I want you to read what happened here to me and to the other unfortunate girls."
The paper was puckered with little dimples in several places.
Tears, Xiangzi guessed.
She kept reading.
"...I don't know where I was brought. I was abducted and brought to this place. The moment I woke up again, I found myself in this basement.
"But not this room. This is only that beast's everyday living space. The actual hell where we were kept lies beneath the passage hidden behind the cabinet on the right."
"In the days I spent there, there was cursing, whipping, sexual torture, carving flesh, cutting off limbs, opening bodies alive... The one responsible for all of it was a bastard named Nishio Kazuma, an old man close to fifty."
"No one knows how many people he killed. No one knows who his first victim was. By the time I arrived, there were still three women there before me. He was unspeakably cruel. If anything displeased him, the lightest punishment was losing a finger. The worst was being flayed and dismembered."
"The most terrifying thing was not only what he did to the body, but how he controlled and humiliated the mind. Once a girl had been broken for long enough, whether just to survive or for any other reason, she turned into a soulless walking corpse—obedient, unable to resist. Yet even then, the ending was the same. Toys he had grown tired of were discarded. He would calmly dissect them into pieces."
"The worst part was that it was not for profit. Not for organs. Not for trade. He simply enjoyed it. The parts he found interesting, he would preserve. Some organs he would vacuum-seal after processing and keep as trophies. Others he cooked... and fed to us. Every time I realized that the meat in the soup came from another woman suffering the same fate as me, I wanted to vomit my guts out. But if I refused to eat... then the next one being eaten would be me..."
The next stretch was heavily scribbled out, black ink slashed across it until the words were unreadable. Xiangzi skipped ahead. Even what she had already read was enough to conjure the victim's suffering far too vividly in her mind.
Her jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.
She forced herself onward.
"...After the virus outbreak, I lost all hope. By then only I and one other woman remained. That thing had grown frustrated with the outside world after the apocalypse. Food was no longer easy for him to get.
"So he cut off the other woman's thighs, her forearms, carved meat off every part of her body that still had flesh, then fed her infected blood. And after doing all that, he suddenly showed what he called 'mercy.' He dumped her, still barely alive, into the sewers."
"Heaven help me—then only he and I were left. I knew I would be next.
"And I was.
"My chains were taken off. He was preparing to butcher me.
"But then, thank God, the infected broke into another basement nearby. In the panic, he grabbed his weapons and equipment and fled into the sewers.
"The infected didn't notice me. Not then. And in that moment, my desire to kill him became stronger than my desire to survive.
"I took his kerosene lamp and lighter. I soaked my clothes in alcohol. I followed after them.
"In the end, the infected cornered him in one place. He killed most of them. But then I arrived."
The handwriting after that was almost unrecognizable, shaky and wild, but Xiangzi kept deciphering it line by line.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I did it. I drenched him in kerosene and set him on fire. He burned. His weapons burned with him. Maybe heaven pitied me, because somehow I was still alive in the flames. So I wrote this. I hope someone will see it...
"Please... burn this place."
That was the last coherent line.
Xiangzi no longer needed the rest.
She understood.
The woman who wrote this had gotten her revenge.
"Damn it...!"
For the first time in a long while, Xiangzi completely lost her composure.
Her fist slammed down onto the desk with a crack.
Then she went to the cabinet mentioned in the diary.
Behind it was indeed a hidden passage, leading downward into the ventilation network beneath the garage—and there, beneath it all, lay hell.
The room below reeked of rot and blood.
Body parts were still there.
Various instruments of torture lay where they had been discarded.
On shelves rested those revolting trophies.
Xiangzi said nothing.
She went into the system store, bought gasoline, and drenched the entire place with it.
Then she set it alight.
The flames blazed high, washing the room in orange light. The brightness at least made what she had seen a little easier to bear.
She burned both basement rooms.
She even went back and ground the killer's charred corpse into fragments.
Then she gathered what remained of the victims.
When the fire finished its work, nothing was left but blackened ruin.
At the stairwell, Xiangzi stood staring up toward the pale daylight beyond.
So this was what the mission had wanted from her.
Tears spilled from her eyes before she could stop them, striking the floor in tiny splashes.
Only then did the system prompt finally sound again, though Xiangzi did not move.
The things she had seen in that basement... she had seen plenty of horrors before, but this one still made her sick.
How could anyone see their own kind treated like that and feel nothing?
[Special Mission: Shadows Before the Apocalypse — Blooming girls kept vanishing. Strange smells leaked from the basement. Terrifying cries echoed in the dead of night. Who is the killer hiding in the dark? Uncover the truth.]
[Reward: 1500 reward points, Trait: Beginner Repairman [Vehicles] — You have now learned the basics of vehicle repair. At the very least, you can easily handle changing tires and replacing parts.]
[Progress: Completed.]
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 138)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter155)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter172)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 158
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 144
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 165
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 140
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 120
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 95
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 80
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 50
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 40
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 50
Still playing traditional Honk 30
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