As they advanced near the mall's perimeter, the brilliant moonlight streamed through the massive glass curtain wall, casting a frosty silver-white sheen onto the polished tile floor. This ethereal glow illuminated the vast, previously pitch-black hall once more.
Near the glass wall, within a women's clothing counter, lay a creature beyond imagination. Towering over three meters tall, its immense height nearly brushed the ceiling. Its body was a mass of sickly white, flabby flesh piled in thick, overlapping folds. From a distance, it resembled a colossal mountain of meat, or perhaps discarded slabs of lard carelessly thrown aside by a slaughterhouse worker.
Its grotesque obesity had obliterated any semblance of its original human form. Even its face and limbs were buried deep within the suffocating layers of fat. Yet, from its lower belly, dozens of soft tentacles, each as thick as a baby's arm, writhed outward. The overall effect was that of a Fukushima octopus grotesquely mutated by nuclear radiation.
At the tip of each slender tentacle dangled a female dead body. Those strange, unsettling sounds originated from the mouths of these suspended corpses.
Adding to the horror, hundreds of purely female dead bodies surrounded this mountain of flesh. Pressed tightly against its soft outer bulk, they writhed and bumped incessantly, like a horde of fanatical devotees engaged in frenzied worship of their unholy deity.
"A Tentacle Demon?!" Nanjiri Kaori gasped instinctively under her breath.
"Li Muzi?!" Luo Jie's pupils constricted sharply in recognition.
Kaori shot him a bewildered look. Luo Jie shrugged, offering an awkward smile to indicate a slip of the tongue. Li Muzi had been a famous high-tier player in his previous life's guild, possessing the rare Cthulhu bloodline. Her transformed appearance bore an uncanny resemblance to this monstrosity.
If not for the middle-aged women corpses dangling from the creature's tentacles – and knowing Li Muzi was utterly looks-obsessed, capable of discerning beauty even in a transformed, mindless state – he might have genuinely believed she, too, had crossed over into this world.
"Do we proceed with the mission?" Luo Jie asked Kaori, simultaneously drawing the string of his [Feathered Serpent God's Indian Hunting Bow] to full tension. He aimed carefully at a spot slightly above the center of the creature's nipple area – presumably where its head might be located. Probably.
The other SAT team members instinctively turned their gaze towards Kaori. Though they were prepared to sacrifice themselves, it didn't mean they were eager for a pointless fight against a clearly formidable mutated entity, especially when the target's survival was uncertain.
Kaori's striking face, blending beauty with a feral edge, contorted with visible struggle. As the squad leader, the weight of the decision pressed down on her far more heavily than on the others.
Just as Kaori wrestled with indecision, Luo Jie's nostrils flared slightly. He detected a faint, peculiar odor drifting through the air.
Suddenly, the collar of his [USS CQC Battlesuit - Prototype Type 1] reacted. Countless blue-white grid lines surged upward, solidifying instantly into a full-face respirator, sealing out the strange scent.
Skill: Anti-Toxin (Passive) – Automatically deploys a respirator upon detecting hazardous concentrations of biological or chemical toxins.
"Gas! Toxic!" Luo Jie hissed urgently, snapping into alertness and signaling frantically to the others.
His warning came a fraction too late. One SAT member, evidently deeply affected, rose from behind cover in a daze. A disturbingly vacant, euphoric grin stretched across his face – the look of a parched bachelor beholding a naked goddess. With a noticeable bulge in his pants, he stumbled forward towards the fleshy monstrosity.
Kaori and the remaining two members, fighting off waves of dizziness, scrambled to don their own respirators. But it was futile; they couldn't reach their comrade in time.
Thwip!
A dark streak cut through the air with a whisper. The arrow traversed ten meters in an instant, punching through the creature's thick layer of fat and tearing a thumb-sized hole near the top of its chest.
The wound seemed minor. However, the arrow triggered the effect of his F-Rank Purple skill, Serene Shot: Guaranteed critical hit on stationary targets. Combined with the devastating 320-point power of the bow's fully drawn shot and the 100-point armor penetration of the [Kabaneri Black Feather Arrow], the impact unleashed nearly a thousand points of damage internally.
The arrow essentially detonated inside, carving out a cavity the size of a washbasin amidst its organs. Blood, mixed with shredded viscera, jetted from the arrow hole like a high-pressure hose, spraying several meters.
Only the unnatural resilience of a virus-mutated lifeform allowed it to endure. Any ordinary creature, even an elephant, would have dropped dead instantly from such a blow.
ROOOOAAAR!
Agonizing pain erupted from the grievous internal wound, triggering an earth-shaking bellow from the mountain of flesh. Its dozens of tentacles thrust the female corpses skyward, their mouths opening in unison to emit piercing, shrieking cries.
"Quick! Get him to safety!" Luo Jie yelled, seizing the moment of the creature's distraction. He lunged forward, delivering a precise chop to the neck of the entranced SAT member, knocking him unconscious. Grabbing the man's collar, he slid him swiftly across the floor towards Kaori and the others.
"Behind you!" Kaori screamed, catching her comrade while she and the others frantically dragged him backward.
With his Spirit attribute soaring at 400 points – granting senses nearly four times sharper than a normal human's – Luo Jie was rarely caught off guard by a rear attack. Hearing the distinct whoosh of something slicing through the air behind his head, he reacted instantly. He dropped low and slid backward, his blade, [Meitou · Fugu Poison], slicing upward in a fluid arc.
Schlick! Schlick!
Two attacking tentacles, missing their target, were severed cleanly. Filthy blood, mixed with viscous white mucus, sprayed from the thrashing stumps.
As Luo Jie prepared to press his advantage, he noticed the hundreds of female dead bodies surrounding the fleshy behemoth suddenly pivot in unison. Their dead eyes fixed on him, and they surged forward in a mindless, rabid charge.
Simultaneously, the unmistakable, enraged roar of a horde echoed down from the escalators and the emergency stairwell access.
"Damn it! This thing mutated from a Vomiter!" Luo Jie's heart sank like a stone.
Among the various special mutated dead bodies, the Vomiter lacked the Hunter's blinding speed and reflexes or the Tank's overwhelming, terrifying power and defense. But it possessed one uniquely repulsive trait: its vomit contained a potent chemical attractant that drove other dead bodies into a frenzy, drawing them en masse towards the source.
This mountain of flesh might not spew green bile like a standard Vomiter, but the white mucus ejected from its tentacles was undoubtedly far more concentrated. Its power to attract the dead was exponentially greater.
Luo Jie danced through a storm of whipping tentacles, his blade a blur as he parried and sliced. He shouted over the chaos to Kaori, who was firing steadily from behind cover, "Officer Nan! Forget the main target for now! Get your team and block the escalators and the emergency exits! NOW! Do it fast, or we're all dead!"