Chapter 174: Chapter 174: Have You Forgotten What You Did?
Somewhere unknown.
Lin Yi heard that cute voice again.
[Congratulations! You have won the bonus level!]
[Reward received: A bottle of Healing Potion!]
"Ha, thanks! You tortured me to death and then throw me some potion as a reward?"
Lin Yi muttered, looking down at his left arm, which was swollen and bruised, with inflammation slowly spreading to his shoulder.
[You are poisoned!]
"Give me the damn potion now!"
After Lin Yi shouted, a small one-liter bottle appeared before him.
He drank it down in one go, feeling much better.
"What’s going on? Why don’t I feel anything?"
[Snake venom can relieve pain, so even though your ribs are fractured and you have other severe injuries, you can continue to fight!]
"Wait... then why is my arm still turning blue?!"
[The potion you drank only healed your wounds, it doesn’t cure poison!]
"Will I die?"
[Indeed!]
"I don’t want to die, even if it’s a dream. I heard if you die in a dream, you die in reality as well."
[This isn’t a dream; after touching the Rainbow Gemstone, you were teleported to the Trial Dungeon!]
"Rainbow? Bullshit! You rainbow crap!"
Lin Yi cursed, but didn’t panic.
He started thinking of ways to get out of this predicament.
In truth, he already sensed this wasn’t a dream, whose dream has such real pain and still doesn’t wake up.
After thinking for five seconds, he thought of only one way to ensure his survival...
And he had to do it now, while the potion was still working, and the poison was still numbing the pain.
Lin Yi leaned against a shelf, extended his left arm, and swung the axe down with all his might.
A sickening crack sounded, but the arm was still attached...
Due to the angle, he had to chop at a spot close to above the elbow...
He chopped three times in a row and finally severed the arm!
There was no pain, and the wound almost immediately started sizzling, cauterizing itself to stop the bleeding, but the potion wore off before the bleeding was completely stopped...
Besides this, his strength was rapidly fading.
Soon after, he lost consciousness...
~~~~~~
"Roar..."
What’s roaring?
"Did I oversleep and miss breakfast again?"
Lin Yi slightly opened his eyes, mumbling.
"Looks like I missed more than just breakfast!"
He woke up and stood up.
He had been sleeping on a snake’s corpse and a pile of broken antiques, with his back hurting badly, and other parts of his body, also hurting badly.
At his age, he thought it would be more comfortable to sleep on a flat orthopedic mattress.
"Ha, my arm really hurts..."
Lin Yi murmured and then looked at his severed arm, the wound still slightly oozing blood.
Then he suddenly remembered what happened the day before and felt a bit nauseated...
Wobbling to stand up and tearing his school uniform with difficulty, he managed to bandage the severed arm, then looked at the part of his arm that was chopped off...
It was all that was left.
It had turned into a blob of goo...
"Killing the snake seems to come with a reward?!"
The crippled Lin Yi started searching for the reward.
He didn’t have to try very hard before he quickly found a Coin and a strange cube.
[You have received 30 Trial Coins!]
[Your current balance: 48 Coins]
[You received an Enchanted Item: Poison!]
[Embed the Gemstone into your Weapon and think of the Enchantment Effect you want to apply to use it!]
Lin Yi did as instructed.
He embedded the cube into his axe.
The cube, about the size of an orange, was absorbed by the axe, which began to glow, its size slightly increasing.
The runes on it changed from white to green.
"This looks pretty cool, but I’d still rather have my left arm back..."
"Gurgle..." his stomach growled.
"Shut up! I’m not eating that snake; its meat might be poisonous. I need to find that merchant... he has food and water..."
After leaving the room, Lin Yi walked down the corridor, steering clear of every half-open door he encountered.
He didn’t see any trace of the merchant, but he did run into two Zombies.
Despite missing his left arm, he felt pretty good overall at the moment, apart from the headache and growling stomach.
Lin Yi swung his axe.
The quicker Zombie’s head was chopped off on the spot.
With another swing, his "girlfriend’s" arm went flying off as well, but he didn’t deliver a fatal blow to this Zombie girlfriend; he just kicked it once and moved on.
The infected creature groaned and tried to get back up, but its legs suddenly began to tremble, and its skin turned green.
Moments later, the Zombie girlfriend’s body dissolved into a puddle of slime...
That’s the power of the Poison Enchantment!
"That solves the problem, but... there’s no sense of accomplishment! Oh well..."
Lin Yi picked up two Coins and continued on his way.
An hour passed, and another hour.
He wandered through the endless corridors, deliberately ignoring every half-open door.
But he still hadn’t encountered that merchant, and he was growing increasingly weak from hunger.
Those zombies... not only had they drained his last bit of strength, but there was nothing edible on their bodies.
Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, followed by another and another.
After the tenth shot, Lin Yi stopped counting and just followed the sounds.
About 30 seconds later, the gunfire ceased.
When he arrived at the site of the gunshots, he found a young man lying on the ground with a mutated zombie atop him.
The kind that turns its neck 180 degrees.
This zombie was busy greedily devouring the victim’s flesh and blood, completely unaware of the one-armed Lin Yi in the distance.
Lin Yi hesitated, unsure whether to intervene.
On one hand, this guy had a gun and possibly some food. On the other hand, it was a dangerous mutated zombie...
"Grrr..." His stomach growled.
"Okay, fine, I get it!"
His stomach forced him to muster the courage.
He was so weak that he might pass out in a few hours.
The potion he drank earlier had healed his wounds, depleting all his body’s life force. If he didn’t eat something soon, he could actually die.
Lin Yi wielding an axe, moved forward.
The zombie immediately noticed him and roared.
But Lin Yi wasn’t scared, so the mutated zombie launched an attack.
It assumed a sprinting posture, then charged straight at him like a rugby linebacker, hoping to knock him down.
Lin Yi knew he couldn’t use the same trick, so he dodged to the side and slashed the creature with his axe.
Despite the mutated zombie’s impressive speed, it halted immediately after about ten meters, swiftly turned around, and swung its hand.
However, Lin Yi, who once possessed level 2 Combat Reflex Skills, knew exactly what to do.
He nimbly twisted his body to dodge the attack, then used the momentum to strike the mutated zombie with his axe, knocking it down.
He didn’t finish off the creature immediately, instead purposely retreating as far back as possible.
The mutated zombie flipped over quickly, landed on its belly, jumped up, then turned around and charged fiercely.
But the Enchanted Poison began to take effect.
The mutated zombie suddenly staggered and fell; it tried to stand but collapsed again.
It glanced at its own leg and was stunned; the leg had turned blue, and the skin seemed about to peel off.
Lin Yi stood to the side, smiling.
Poison enchantment is good stuff, but trading a limb for it is still a bit costly.
The mutated zombie moaned and roared, but a minute later, it was nothing but a pool of slime.
Lin Yi walked to the deceased, picking up the gun.
[You cannot use other players’ weapons!]
[To prevent players from dueling each other, the system disallows them from using each other’s weapons!]
"Hehe..."
Lin Yi began searching for food.
This zombie had no food on it... but there was a small bottle of whisky.
Lin Yi thought for a moment and took a few large gulps. He was off medicine, so he could afford a little indulgence.
This whisky was quite good!
It alleviated his hunger...
Ten minutes later, both the mutated zombie and the deceased man’s body melted away.
Disheartened, Lin Yi got up and set off to find something useful for him.
He quickly found his first target!
It was a middle-aged woman; at least that’s what she used to be, but now she was just a mutated creature.
It had six spider-like long arms, fingers twice as long as those of a normal person, and a mouth large enough to seemingly swallow an entire basketball in one gulp.
The woman crawled along the ceiling, then suddenly jumped down, trying to catch Lin Yi off guard.
This move seemed to work, but in the process, the "Spider Queen" lost a leg.
The mutated woman reacted violently to the poison, screeching madly as she quickly retreated back into the hole she emerged from.
Lin Yi chased after her, but hadn’t run far, when twenty seconds later, the "Spider Queen" collapsed on the ground, turning into a pool of slime.
He considered for a moment, sat down by the slime, took another sip from the bottle, and began discussing life and the universe with the corpse of the Spider Queen.
He talked endlessly about how she might have been a good person once, how unfair life was, and various things he’d later think back on and feel embarrassed about.
Unfortunately, about five minutes later, the "Spider Queen" melted away too.
Lin Yi was alone again!
~~~~~~
"Lin Yi, wake up, wake up quickly, our time is running out!..."
The sleeping Lin Yi heard a melodious female voice urging him to get up.
His mind started working, eyes opening abruptly.
He saw a young girl with blue hair standing above him, both of them naked...
The hangover made his head throb painfully, and he murmured.
"I- I mean, where are we? Who are you? What’s all this about..."
"It’s me, Tatiana. You’re quite hurt, and you’ve forgotten what we did..."
The blue-haired girl spoke, licking her lips.
Lin Yi squinted at her.
She was an attractive young girl, a bit short, not particularly curvy, but proportionate.
Then he began to recall...
After killing the "Spider Queen," he wandered the corridors, slaying zombies while talking to himself, when he heard a woman’s scream.
Drunkenly, he decided to help her and walked into an open door.
He saw a girl climbing some factory equipment, fighting against a group of... heads with legs...