Chapter 1 Arriving

*Buzz.*

The corridor floor vibrated at a high frequency.

Dust and wall plaster fell, spreading like smoke and mist. Illuminated by the flickering lights on both sides of the walls, they wove a silk-like curtain of light.

A rustling sound echoed from the end of the stairwell, as if a large number of rodents were crawling, scurrying, and rushing forward.

"It's coming."

Bai Haozheng's face was expressionless, and the profound thought power around him slowly swirled and churned like thick rain clouds, brewing a storm of thunder.

The psychic sentinels placed at both ends of the corridor emitted sharp cries, changing from an intangible spiritual state to a blood-red spherical mist. This indicated that the psychic sentinels had detected deep hostility and extremely high-intensity energy reactions.

The Plague Doctor tapped his staff, and green ripples spread out from his feet, skimming along the ground.

The players touched by the ripples felt lighter all over, and their muscles and bones transmitted a relaxed and pleasant sensation.

[Increased Resistance]

[Life Support]

[Bless]

[Protection from Evil]

...

In addition to battlefield first aid, the Plague Doctor also knew a few clerical divine arts. Divine arts did not necessarily require devout worship of a specific god or gods to borrow power from them.

They could also draw on the primordial energy contained in nature (like original shamans or druids)

or tap into their own mental power through the sacred meaning of vows (the more rigorous the vow rules and the more severe the penalties, the more power is obtained). (Similar to Great Vows, Silent Meditation, or the Knight's Ten Commandments.)

The players who received the buff were invigorated, while the Plague Doctor's face was slightly pale.

His right hand gripped the staff, maintaining the divine art output,

while his left hand reached into his coat and took out a bottle of dark green potion.

His thumbnail popped open the cork with a *pop*.

He raised the potion and *glug glug glug*, drank it all in one go.

Medical skills generally consumed a lot of spiritual power, sanity, physical strength, as well as non-quantified mental strength and concentration.

If medical specialization players wanted to persist in long, high-intensity battles, they usually had to drink dozens or even hundreds of potions with different effects.

Some potions sold in the system store only needed the action of drinking to take effect, without actually drinking them.

Other potions in the store, as well as the magic potions refined by players from different guilds, required actual consumption.

Moreover, some mystical magic potions even required the user to raise the bottle and allow the potion to enter the stomach through the esophagus—preventing players from directly injecting the potion into their blood vessels through a catheter.

All these factors combined meant that support players (including but not limited to healers) all had a good appetite and a good drinking capacity.

No matter the taste or ingredients of the magic potion, they could all drink it in one gulp without changing expression.

Half a kilogram of baijiu, unlimited beer.

Dedicate your youth to the small wine table, live and die drunk.

Some support players who hadn't significantly modified their bodies even prepared a pack of large-capacity adult diapers because they had to drink too many magic potions during each script mission, making it difficult to excrete during battles.

As for whether the Plague Doctor was wearing one...

That was a mysterious question of quantum observation.

The Plague Doctor waved his hand, and the glass bottle and cork disappeared. He suddenly let out a greenish burp,

accompanied by the fragrance of green grass spreading in the corridor,

enveloping the green ripples on the players even more intensely.

*Boom!*

The next second, the stairwell doors on both sides of the twelfth-floor corridor were violently smashed open.

Dark, ink-like shadows that blocked the light poured in from both sides of the corridor like a flood,

constantly emitting sharp, piercing noises, as if countless wild animal screams were overlapping.

That was...

The Rat King.

Wanli Fengdao took a deep breath, his scalp tingling.

The so-called Rat King was not the king of rats, nor was it a specific monster.

Rather, it was a special phenomenon in which the tails of multiple rats were intertwined.

In the Middle Ages, people witnessed large groups of rats moving together.

These rats were mostly brown rats or black rats. Due to the cold winter temperatures, the rats huddled together for warmth.

The hair on their tails and substances such as food, feces, sebaceous gland secretions, and sewage merged together to form an adhesive.

This tightly bound the rats' tails together. The more they struggled, the tighter their tails became intertwined,

eventually forming extremely complex knots, causing all individuals in the rat pack to be unable to break free.

They could only form giant rat groups, moving in a chaotic, circular motion.

They looked twisted, grotesque, and sickening,

nauseating and without the slightest hint of "kingly" qualities. Even more terrifying was that the Rat King did not end with the death of an individual.

The corpses of dead rats remained firmly fixed on the Rat King cluster,

slowly rotting, covered in maggots, yet still moving and crawling with this large, complex group.

The largest "Rat King" specimen in history, consisting of thirty-two rats, dated back two centuries and was now preserved in the Altenburg Museum in Thuringia, Germany.

And now, at this moment, the Rat King appearing at the end of the twelfth-floor corridor of the Dolphin Hotel,

how many rats were there?

Wanli Fengdao couldn't count them.

The vast, ink-like shadows pouring out from both ends of the corridor were composed of countless mutated rats with pointed snouts and monkey-like cheeks.

They filled the corridor space,

their tails tightly intertwined, inseparable from each other,

their eyes blood-red, two exposed upper incisors covered in brownish-yellow tartar,

and viscous saliva dripping from their mouths, exuding an unspeakable stench.

The rats at the bottom tried their best to move their short limbs, laboriously carrying their counterparts above them, moving forward.

However, they were too slow.

The bloodthirsty impulse had already dominated all individual rats in the Rat King cluster.

The rats perched above trampled ruthlessly on the bodies of their counterparts below, screaming and scurrying forward,

until they themselves were submerged by the rat swarm pouring in from behind.

"Open fire!"

Hei Shengzi roared, raising a dark gold tome in his left hand.

The tome opened on its own, flipping to a certain page.

Hei Shengzi recited its profound and obscure incantations at top speed.

Without his reminder, Wanli Fengdao and Yuyi Xinzhong, sitting behind the machine guns, had already pulled the triggers.

The muzzles spewed out a ghostly blue flame.

Averaging 1.19 game coins per bullet, consecrated standard-caliber 7.62x51mm heavy bullets spun and shot out, turning into metal chains spreading death.

*Da-da-da-da*—

The muffled and loud gunshots seemed so weak amidst the deafening screeches of the Rat King.

Wanli Fengdao felt the terrifying recoil of the machine gun shaking his shoulders, gritted his teeth, and swept the bullets back and forth.

The rat swarm at the front tumbled and fell like wheat stalks cut by a sickle.

Black blood blossomed like roses, dot by dot,

only to be swallowed by more shadows the next second.

These rats were made of flesh and negative energy.

Their bodies were not very tough.

Consecrated heavy machine gun bullets could inflict full damage, instantly killing or severely wounding upon contact.

The large-area arrow rain shot by Liu Wudai,

and the spider mines, pendulum traps, and saw-tooth sickles installed by Mule in the corridor,

could also easily kill a large number of rats.

But there were too many.

There were really too many.

The two machine guns had been firing at full efficiency for three minutes, and the remaining special-effect bullets were running low, but they still hadn't killed the Rat King.

They couldn't even see that the opponent's numbers had decreased by one iota.

Hei Shengzi continuously chanted incantations, causing a large number of purple semi-solid tentacles to grow from the corridor floor, weaving into a net to block the rat swarm.

Li Risheng took out ten bags of material ingredients from his backpack and refined them into a ten-meter-long metal mace, standing inside the Vajra Circle and rotating the mace.

The spikes on the mace slaughtered the rats.

The Plague Doctor, who had drunk several large bottles of magic potions, also paused his divine art output, leaning on his staff with one hand and taking out bottles and jars from his coat with the other, smashing them at the rat swarm,

releasing poison mist to poison a large area.

Thanks to the efforts of the players, the swarming Rat King cluster was always restricted to within five meters outside the Vajra Circle.

Supplies were consumed, spiritual power decreased, skills and equipment entered cooldown, and muscles began to ache.

"This can't go on."

Hei Shengzi waved his snake-shaped short blade, cleaving open the bodies of dozens of rats in mid-air, black blood splattering everywhere. "The mission guide says that every time we eliminate a life form existing in any form in the Dolphin Hotel, we get 500 experience points and game coins.

We've killed so many rats, but we haven't received any kill notifications.

Moreover, these rats melt quickly after death.

They are not real life forms.

Like the stationery monsters Yuyi Xinzhong encountered before, they are puppets created by someone."

"The strength of the anomalies has changed."

Li Ang swung his mace, sweeping away a large number of rats. When he pulled the mace back, the spikes on it had been corroded and melted by blood and negative energy, making it difficult to use.

This corrosive effect was almost as fast as the black oily substance on the Terrifying Old Man.

Was the Rat King the latter's pet? Or a relative of the Xenomorph?

Electric currents crackled in Li Ang's palm, and alchemy activated instantly. He refined the mace into a slightly smaller glaive, stabbing it into the rat swarm and continuing to slaughter. "According to what Judy Cecil said before,

the Rat King would at most be composed of twenty or thirty rats, bloodthirsty and cruel, and would actively chase humans, but they were not very intelligent. Closing the door could block them outside.

The current rat swarm has obviously increased countless times. Either their restrictions have been completely lifted,

or they have gained new power provided by the hotel.

It may be related to us leaving our own floors and gathering here.

One thing that can be determined is that staying on a floor where someone has died does not prevent abnormal attacks."

"Then what do we do? We can't retreat at this time, right? It's still far from the elevator safety time. Once we scatter, the defense line will be broken immediately."

Wanli Fengdao put down the machine gun that had run out of bullets, rushed to the back of the Vajra Circle, drew out his Dragon-Slaying Sword, and released sword qi at the tide of rats.

Unfortunately, the ground and walls of the Dolphin Hotel had the special property of absorbing energy. The released sword qi could only fly forward less than ten meters before being weakened into a gentle breeze.

The same was true for spells and divine arts.

"The energy attributes on the Rat King are very strange. We can't use the formation to recycle them."

Bai Haozheng, pressing his hands on the ground, looked up and said calmly, "Relying on myself alone, and including the remaining potions, I can probably last another thirty minutes."

The number of Rat Kings was almost endless. Eight players worked together to try to block them in the middle of the corridor,

but every second, a few lucky rats would still break through the layers of blockade and crash into the arc-shaped translucent light curtain of the Vajra Circle, being burned to ashes,

while also causing dense ripples like raindrops falling on a lake on the golden light curtain.

"The Rat King is not a life form in the true sense. It must have a central command system like a cerebrum.

Killing it will eliminate the Rat King."

Mule's horse head mask transmitted a muffled voice wearing a gas mask (the Rat King was really too smelly), "I have a skill that

can use a large piece of flesh from the opponent

to lock down the specific locations of all their direct relatives in the world.

During the locking process, I must be fully focused and cannot be attacked or disturbed. There cannot be any hostile targets within a fifteen-meter radius around me.

I'll find the Rat King's center. You protect me."

"Okay."

Liu Wudai, standing next to her, didn't ask why Mule was only now saying that she had a way (presumably the side effects and limitations of this skill were extremely large, and it wasn't good to say it out loud—no player wanted to have a teammate who could find their entire family's household registration).

He directly used an arrow equipped with a robotic arm to grab a living rat from outside the Vajra Circle, put it in a glass bottle, handed it to Mule, stood in front of Mule, drew his bow, and released explosive arrows to suppress the swarming Rat King at a distance.

Right now, everyone was in the same boat.

No need for further words,

other players increased their output levels, released skills, and activated equipment to suppress the rat swarm.

They would not let any stray fish approach the Vajra Circle.

One minute,

two minutes,

The mace in Li Ang's hand was corroded into a glaive, and then corroded from the glaive into a spear.

His swamp divinity was restricted by the Dolphin Hotel. The plant vines he grew could not exceed ten meters from his body.

It was also difficult to use the biological weapons grown from the vines—whether it was producing venom or explosives,

it essentially needed to be deducted from Li Ang's body mass.

The material materials of the Dolphin Hotel could not be used, and the currently besieged environment also determined that he could not take soil from the [Automated Pet Feeder].

Li Ang's battle was a battle of quality and resources.

The Rat King in front of him was probably just the vanguard of the Dolphin Hotel's corridor anomalies.

The Terrifying Old Man, the Red-Clothed Old Woman, and other highly threatening anomalies had not yet appeared...

"Found it!"

Mule, holding the glass bottle in her left hand and pressing the live rat with her right index finger into the mouth of the bottle, suddenly opened her eyes and looked in a certain direction at the end of the left side of the corridor.

"It's in the ventilation duct on the ceiling!"

*Buzz*—

The wallpaper on the side of the wall seemed to shake for a moment.

The Apocalypse Sunset Mechanical Golem pulled off the invisibility cloak covering its body, raised its arms towards the left side of the corridor, and red energy beams were brewing in its hands.

*Boom!*

The beam melted the densely packed Rat King, tearing a circular gap in the top of the Rat King, and the fragrant aroma of barbecue filled the air, slightly diluting the decaying stench.

The sword hilt in Bai Haozheng's hand suddenly extended into a beam of light, and he shot out.