27: Chapter 27 Why don't you feed some meat to the zombies too?

The locker room was filled with the smell of blood and sweat. Hu Jinsi leaned against a locker, resting his injured lower leg on a bench. The hem of his white lab coat was stained with dried black blood, and fresh pink flesh was visible through the tear. Under the catalysis of his 16 Constitution, the wound was shrinking and healing at a speed visible to the naked eye. He stared at Su Wan, suddenly dropping his usual carefree demeanor, his tone becoming unusually serious.

"Su Wan, let's talk about something serious."

Su Wan was wiping dust off her lyre with a cloth strip. Hearing this, she looked up: "Hmm?"

"You're already level seven, not far from level ten." Hu Jinsi's fingers tapped lightly on his knee. "When you reach level 10, combined with your specialty and after equipping the sirens voice collar, your spellcasting focus will shift completely to the sirens voice collar around your neck. By then, both of your hands will be free, and you won't be able to hold your lyre to cast spells anymore. Whether considering team synergy or your personal safety, I suggest you start now: hold a shield in one hand, and adjust your weapon in the other depending on the situation."

Su Wan's fingers paused on the strings.

"You've seen it in these last two dungeons," Hu Jinsi continued, his gaze falling on her slender wrists. "Elite monsters have brains, or rather, instincts. They prioritize attacking the person with the weakest defense. That time with Hogger, and these last two times with the Licker, they all went for you. As a Bard, you have almost no movement skills at low levels, and the few spells that can increase speed or jump distance require casting time; you can't react in time to sudden dangers. You need a basic means of protection. As long as you notice in time, you can completely shrink behind a shield and buy yourself some reaction time."

Su Wan pursed her lips, her eyes warming slightly. She lowered her head, looking at her fingertips, her voice softening a bit: "You... you guys don't have to stand in front of me every time. I..."

"It's not a question of whether we want to or not," Hu Jinsi interrupted her. "We are teammates, and even more, we are neighbors who grew up together. As long as we have time, we are definitely duty-bound... uh, duty-bound. But dungeons are ever-changing; we can't guarantee we'll be in position every single time. Just like last week facing Hogger, Lin Rui was knocked unconscious on the ground. If I had been two meters further away from you at that moment, Hogger's claws would have landed solidly on you. You are a Bard; you can't learn techniques like Animated Shield that let a shield float on its own, so you must practice basic shield Block."

Su Wan was silent for a moment, then suddenly looked up, a flash of mischief in her eyes: "How do you know I can't learn Animated Shield?"

Hu Jinsi's expression froze.

The next second, he slowly turned his head, tilting his neck toward the ceiling at an exaggerated, almost forty-five-degree angle. His eyes quickly turned red, his lips trembled, and he forced two crystal-clear tears from the corners of his eyes.

"I have... been preparing to become a spellcaster since I was a child!" His voice was choked with sobs, trembling as he pointed at the air. "For this, I prepared a whole childhood's worth of knowledge! I memorized the periodic table, I drew magic circles, I even researched how to make Fireball turn corners! Who knew, by some twist of fate, I ended up a Monk! I'm not convinced! I'm not convinced—!"

The posture, the tone, it was just like a melodramatic scene where someone had their protagonist role stolen. Su Wan was stunned for half a second, then immediately hugged her lyre and laughed until she couldn't straighten up, her shoulders shaking, tears almost coming out from laughing: "Stop, stop, stop! Quit acting! I'll practice! I'll practice tonight!"

She panted, finally stopping her laughter, and looked at Hu Jinsi seriously, her eyes clear and determined: "Jinsi, if you really want to change classes, Lin Rui and I will both support you. At worst... at worst we'll just repeat a year with you. You're so talented, you'd definitely be better than us as a spellcaster."

Hu Jinsi's performance came to an abrupt halt. He blinked, quickly wiped away the two wet tears he had forced out, and coughed: "It's fine, it's fine. My current class is pretty good, it just happens to suit our team. You go practice shield with Lin Rui; I'll take a rest and nurse my leg."

Su Wan nodded, picked up her lyre, and stood up. When she reached the door of the locker room, she looked back at him, a smile on her lips: "Drama queen."

"Much obliged." Hu Jinsi cupped his hands in a salute.

...

Not long after, Lin Rui walked in from outside. He had his hands behind his back, his pace steady, with no expression on his face, but a hint of something strange hidden in his eyes. He walked straight up to Hu Jinsi and looked down at the wounded man still leaning against the locker.

"I was thinking," Lin Rui said slowly, his voice low, "should you be feeding the Licker more meat from now on?"

Hu Jinsi looked up with an expression that said "You must be sick in the head": "What?"

Lin Rui didn't explain, just moved his hands from behind his back to the front, spreading his fingers.

Resting quietly in his palm was a pair of brass knuckles.

They weren't ordinary iron knuckles but were pieced together from dark brown hardened leather and dark silver metal backing plates, presenting a ferocious, streamlined shape. At its core was a crescent-shaped, ghastly white bone blade, about three inches sharp, protruding outward from the back of the glove. The surface had been polished at high temperatures, emitting a cold, porcelain-like luster. At the junction of the bone blade and the backing plate, faint blood-vessel-like patterns could be seen, as if some residual pulsation inside was still thirsting to tear through flesh. On the leather padding inside the knuckles, a few smears of dried dark blood remained, emitting a faint, fishy sweetness.

An expression of surprise appeared on Hu Jinsi's face.

[Licker's Ripping Knuckles]

[Weapon Type: Simple / Monk Weapon]

[Required Level: 5]

[Damage Type: Slashing]

[Bonus Damage: Monk's Unarmed Strike Damage + 2]

[Bone Blade Armor Penetration: Your attacks ignore 5 points of the target's armor]

[Silent Hunt: When attacking with this weapon, you gain advantage on Stealth]

[Pain Deprivation: When you land a Heavy Strike with this weapon, the target has a chance to fall into paralysis (Constitution save)]

Hu Jinsi felt like he had fallen into an unreal dream. An artifact! This was practically an artifact tailored for a novice Monk! Unarmed damage plus two, armor penetration, stealth bonus, and even a control effect—if he had gotten this thing two weeks earlier, that Princess Boar in Goldshire would have been on its knees in ten seconds at most, and Hogger would have lost a layer of skin too. He even started having wild thoughts: should he collect the fingernails he clipped and the hair he shaved off and feed them to the monsters in the dungeons to see if it would increase the drop rate and make them drop more equipment of this level?

"Wake up! Hu Jinsi!" Lin Rui's voice sounded as if it came from very far away.

A palm waved in front of his eyes, and Su Wan also leaned over, poking his cheek with her finger. With the two of them attacking from left and right with physical stimuli several times, Hu Jinsi finally snapped back to reality, his gaze refocusing from its unfocused state.

The first thing he said made Lin Rui and Su Wan both take half a step back.

"You two," Hu Jinsi's expression was incredibly serious, the fanaticism from just a moment ago still lingering in his eyes, "have you considered feeding some meat to the Licker? Maybe if they eat something good, and are in a good mood, they'll be willing to drop loot? This is called investment, understand? Venture capital!"

Lin Rui expressionlessly shoved the brass knuckles into his hand: "Take it. We can talk about your broken brain later."

...

Taking advantage of the fact that it was still early, Su Wan really did ask Lin Rui for a spare round shield.

It was a standard round shield about fifty centimeters in diameter, with iron-rimmed edges and an oak core, its surface covered in scratches and dents from previous battles. Su Wan used cloth strips to tie it firmly to her left forearm. Lin Rui stood in front of her, holding a short spear, correcting her posture bit by bit.

"Bend your knees, lower your center of gravity," Lin Rui used the spear tip to lightly tap Su Wan's knee. "Don't press the shield against your body; leave a fist's distance to cushion the impact. When you Block, it's not about hard resistance; it's about deflecting force, tilting slightly in the direction of the opponent's attack to let the force slide off."

Su Wan gritted her teeth, holding the shield with her left arm and a short sword in her right hand, repeatedly practicing basic shield-raising and side-stepping in the narrow locker room. The friction between metal and leather made dull sounds, and a thin layer of sweat quickly seeped out on her forehead.

Hu Jinsi leaned to the side watching, toying with the newly acquired brass knuckles in his hand. The bone blade gleamed ghastly white under the emergency light. He tried clenching his fist and could feel the bone blade fitting perfectly against the back of his hand, as if it were an extension of his own skeleton.

Dinner was still compressed biscuits and dried meat. The three of them sat in a circle in the center of the locker room, chewing in silence. The crows outside the window occasionally let out cawing sounds, like some ominous countdown. Hu Jinsi's leg wound, under the dual effect of his 16 Constitution and two healing spells, had basically healed, leaving only a shallow pink trace.

"Tomorrow's plan," Lin Rui broke the silence first, putting the chainsaw aside, "depends on whether the zombie crows on the playground disperse in the morning. If those beasts are still watching us, we might have to find another way to leave this area."

Hu Jinsi swallowed the last bite of biscuit, some blurry images flashing through his mind. Memories from his past life were like shadows submerged at the bottom of the water, vaguely visible but not truly graspable. He only remembered that Resident Evil seemed to have a sewer plot, but whether it happened in Raccoon City, he wasn't sure. But he couldn't say it directly; he could only beat around the bush.

"I remember," Hu Jinsi cleared his throat, speaking as casually as he could, "that case studies of urban combat were taught in general education classes. Buildings with this kind of modern urban style usually have sewer systems that people can walk through, right? Used for maintaining pipes, drainage, and can also be used as emergency passages in critical moments."

Lin Rui and Su Wan looked at each other, surprise in their eyes.

"Right!" Lin Rui slapped his thigh. "Urban underground pipe network! Why didn't we think of that?"

"But..." Su Wan's nose wrinkled subconsciously, her expression becoming somewhat subtle. "This city is already infested with zombies; the smell in the sewers... won't be too good, right? And there are definitely zombies down there, maybe even rats or something."

Hu Jinsi spread his hands, looking at Su Wan with a helpless arc at the corner of his mouth: "The current situation is a choice between two. Either you choose to fight the group of zombie crows in the sky head-on and get pecked into a sieve; or you choose to crawl into the sewers and deal with rats and unknown liquids. Pick one, Big Sister Su."

Su Wan opened her mouth but didn't say anything.

The reality was indeed very awkward. The three of them gathered together to take stock of their skills and found that they had no decent anti-air means. Su Wan's [Thunderwave] had limited casting range; by the time Su Wan finished chanting, the crows would be attacking her face. Lin Rui's rifle could hit the sky, but facing a dense flock of crows, a few bullets were just a drop in the bucket. Not to mention Hu Jinsi; all his skills were ground-based, and even if he jumped, he couldn't reach the flapping crows.

"No choice." Lin Rui sighed. "At first light tomorrow, we'll find a sewer entrance. Hope there's a maintenance manhole in this school that connects underground."

...

The plan was intended to be executed tomorrow, but an accident happened that night.

After dinner, Hu Jinsi found a place to relieve himself, carrying an emergency light into the shower room next to the locker room. It was a small room with tiled walls; the shower head had long since rusted, and a layer of sticky black water had accumulated on the floor. Just as he stepped in, the light swept across the corner and suddenly stopped.

On the floor in the innermost part of the shower room, there was a circular metal cover, about one meter in diameter, its edges rusted to a reddish-brown, with several gaps extending from the edge of the cover. A few blurry letters were cast in the center of the cover, and "Municipal Maintenance" could be vaguely identified.

Sewer maintenance hatch.

Hu Jinsi's back stiffened instantly. He tiptoed out, called Lin Rui and Su Wan over, and the three of them held up emergency lights to confirm again. The light filtered down through the gap in the lid, and they could vaguely hear the faint sound of dripping water from below, along with some kind of sticky, bone-chilling friction sound.

Their first reaction was not excitement, but a bone-deep sense of lingering fear.

"If..." Su Wan's voice trembled, "if any zombies or Zombie Rats had crawled in through this gap earlier, and we were completely unprepared in the changing room, we would have given up our first blood right here."

"Block it off." Lin Rui decided decisively, "First, Block the door between the changing room and the shower room. No matter what is down there, we absolutely cannot let it come up tonight."

The three of them worked together to pile lockers, broken tables and chairs, and even the discarded water dispenser at the door frame between the two rooms, sealing the passage tightly. After doing this, they retreated back to the changing room, backs against the wall, listening to the occasional "thump-thump" sound echoing up from deep underground in the shower room next door, and did not sleep all night.

...

On the morning of the third day, the sunlight was filtered by smog into dull yellow Blocks of color, slanting in through the window.

The three moved away the clutter piled at the door and entered the shower room, fully armed. Su Wan had the spare round shield strapped to her left arm and a short sword in her right hand; although her posture was still a bit awkward, she could already hold it steadily in front of her. Hu Jinsi wore the Licker brass knuckles, the bone blades gleaming coldly at his fingertips. Lin Rui held his short spear, with his round shield protecting his chest.

Following the sound, they found the source of the knocking from the middle of the night—it was precisely the sealed manhole cover of the sewer maintenance shaft. The metal lid was being continuously bumped from below, making a dull "thump-thump" sound, as if something was desperately trying to break out.

"I'm going to open a small gap." Lin Rui said in a low voice, inserting the tip of his short spear into the gap of the lid, "Get ready."

The lid was pried open just enough to create a palm-wide gap.

In an instant, six black shadows darted out from the darkness!

They were six Zombie Rats, three times the size of normal rats, their rotting gray-black fur matted into clumps, turbid red eyeballs embedded in their sockets, fangs exposed, and drool dripping from the corners of their mouths. They let out sharp squeaks, lunging straight at the face of the nearest person, Lin Rui.

"Well come!" Hu Jinsi was already prepared; he planted his left foot and suddenly rotated his body—[Spinning Crane Kick]!

His leg shadow turned into an arc, and the force of his energy whipped up a whirlwind in the narrow shower room. The six Zombie Rats had just jumped into mid-air when they were simultaneously swept by this power, like six stones struck and sent flying, slamming hard back near the maintenance shaft opening. Hu Jinsi kept rotating, the bone blades of the brass knuckles carving out pale arcs of light in the rotation, [-12] [-10] [-11], rotten blood splattering, and the six Zombie Rats dissipated into points of light under the chain of kicks.

Hu Jinsi stopped rotating, patted the non-existent dust off his body, and pretentiously straightened the collar of his lab coat: "It seems the sewer isn't very peaceful either. This environment is more favorable for zombies—damp, dark, narrow, it's practically their playground."

He turned his head to look at Lin Rui: "Have the crows outside left yet?"

Lin Rui walked to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain, looked up and observed for a moment, then shook his head with a solemn expression: "Still there. On the roof of the teaching building, on the surrounding trees, a dense black mass, coldly staring over here."

Hu Jinsi whistled, the sound appearing exceptionally crisp yet also exceptionally helpless in the deathly silent shower room: "Alright, no choice then. But the probability of being ambushed if we jump straight down is too high; let's clear out what we can lure over first, before considering going down the shaft."

Lin Rui nodded in agreement. To conserve resources, they decided to have Su Wan play music near the maintenance shaft, using the sound wave vibrations to attract the monsters below to come up on their own.

Su Wan took a deep breath, braced her shield with her left arm, sheathed her short sword back at her waist with her right hand, and picked up the lyre. Her fingertips plucked, and a rapid, sharp melody flowed out from the strings; the sound waves poured into the underground through the gaps of the maintenance shaft, echoing and spreading through the pipes.

At first, there was silence. Then, a scalp-numbing commotion came from deep within the bottom of the well. The sound was like countless claws scratching against concrete walls, and also like thousands of teeth gnawing on bones, moving from far to near, rapidly amplifying.

"It's coming." Lin Rui gripped the Molotov cocktail.

The next second, a black cloud surged out from the gap in the maintenance shaft.

It was Zombie Rats, an unimaginably large number, like a rotting black tide, surging crazily up from underground. Their eyes merged into a sea of scarlet stars in the darkness, and the squeaking sounds converged into a deafening wave of noise, giving one goosebumps all over. The density was so high that it would be enough to cause anyone with trypophobia to faint on the spot.

"Throw!" Lin Rui shouted, pulled the cotton stopper of the Molotov cocktail, lit it, swung his arm fully, and smashed it down towards the bottom of the shaft!

"Boom!" The flames exploded in the narrow pipe, the scorching shockwave burning the front row of Zombie Rats into charcoal, the smell of burnt flesh and rot mixing into a nauseating toxic gas that spewed out from the shaft opening. Su Wan followed closely behind, releasing [Thunderwave] downwards along the maintenance shaft, the powerful sound vibrating back and forth inside the pipe, shaking the swaths of Zombie Rats until their internal organs ruptured, black blood spraying wildly from their mouths and noses.

Hu Jinsi guarded the edge of the shaft, continuously activating [Spinning Crane Kick]. The brass knuckles' effect tore through the air during the rotation, and each circle minced any fish that slipped through the net trying to rush out of the blockade of flames into pieces. Rotten blood, bits of meat, and broken teeth splattered like raindrops onto the surrounding tiled walls; the shower room instantly turned into a slaughterhouse.

The number of Zombie Rats was simply too many; the corpses piled up like a mountain, at one point completely blocking the maintenance shaft opening, forming a mound of flesh made of rotting meat. Only until these corpses gradually dissipated into points of light could the three of them catch their breath, and with the help of the strong light from their headlamps, see the scene below the shaft opening again.

The rat swarm had been cleared. But at the end of where the light shone, in the stagnant water at the turn of the pipe, appeared a pair of orange-yellow, cold slit pupils. Scales faintly reflected light under the water surface, and a low hiss, as if squeezed from the depths of an abdominal cavity, slowly rose from the darkness.

Down there, there was still a crocodile waiting for them.

Hu Jinsi stared at the orange-yellow slit pupils appearing and disappearing in the sewage, his brain flashing through countless fragmented images like a carousel. Raising crocodiles in the sewer? Why did this recipe sound so familiar... In those horror stories and infinite flow novels from his past life, it seemed there really had been such a plot point. Did the great Zheng Zha ever crawl through such a stinking ditch back in the day? No, that's not right, Zheng Zha went to other places, and as for who or what was hidden in the Raccoon City sewer, it had been too long, and there were too many versions, he couldn't remember clearly anymore. Anyway, now was not the time for flashbacks; surviving was more important.

He maintained that perplexed expression of "this world is truly wonderful," slowly turned his head, and looked at Lin Rui and Su Wan with a look that said "have you ever seen this kind of situation before," his eyebrows raised high.

Lin Rui looked down following his gaze, the strong light of the headlamp piercing the darkness, revealing the behemoth crouching in the stagnant water. The beast was covered in gray-green horny scales, with a row of hideous bone spurs raised on its back, and its tail was submerged in the sewage like a thick steel whip. It slightly opened its mouth, revealing uneven sharp teeth, emitting a low and threatening hiss at the light above, and a foul, fishy stench surged up from the shaft opening.

"Counting on it to climb up and let us gang up on it is unlikely." Lin Rui sighed, shouldered his short spear, and said with a solemn expression, "This shaft opening is too narrow; it can't come up, so we can only jump down and go head-to-head with it."

"Don't be in a rush yet." Hu Jinsi grabbed Lin Rui's arm, the force so great that Lin Rui was taken aback, "We just finished fighting the rat swarm, and neither Su Wan nor I are at full status. My qi pool is bottomed out, and her spell slots are empty; going down now is equivalent to delivering takeout to the crocodile. Let's take a short rest first and recover our status."

He paused, then added: "Besides, who knows if there are any remaining Zombie Rats or other things hidden down there besides this crocodile? We have to scout it out first; we can't just jump in with our eyes closed."

Su Wan leaned against the wall, the round shield still strapped to her left arm, her face a bit pale, fine sweat hanging on her forehead: "Then what do we do? Just wait for it to rest and recover?"

"Not waiting." Hu Jinsi looked at Lin Rui, the corners of his mouth pulling into a crafty arc, "Captain Lin, take out that rifle of yours. No need to go down; just stay here and take a shot or two every now and then down there. It can both test the crocodile's reaction and see if any other monsters will be drawn out by the gunfire. This is called firepower reconnaissance, understand?"

Lin Rui was taken aback, then nodded, and pulled out the standard-issue rifle from his backpack. He lay on the edge of the shaft opening, aimed at the pair of orange-yellow eyes below, and steadily pulled the trigger.

"Bang!" The bullet hit the scales on the side of the crocodile, sparking a faint cluster of sparks. The beast jerked its head, let out an angry hiss, and its thick tail slapped the stagnant water, creating a huge splash that made the shaft walls soaking wet.

"Bang! Bang!" Two more shots, one hitting the bone spurs on its back, and one grazing its ugly snout. The crocodile was clearly completely enraged by this harassment from above, but its massive body couldn't turn around at all in the narrow pipe, so it could only futilely open its mouth in a show of threat, its claws digging trenches into the mud at the bottom of the water. More importantly, the sound of gunfire echoed back and forth in the sewer, like throwing a stone into a deep pool, with layers of sound waves spreading into the distance.

The three held their breath and waited. In the darkness, besides the crocodile's hissing, a few faint shrieks of Zombie Rats could be heard, but the number was clearly not large, and they seemed to be suppressed by the crocodile's aura, not daring to approach this area.

"It seems the vicinity has been cleared." Hu Jinsi squinted to observe, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the edge of the shaft, "Only this big guy is left."

However, just as Lin Rui was preparing to fire another shot, the mutated crocodile suddenly made an unexpected move. It seemed to realize that in this narrow shaft, it could only passively take a beating, and a trace of near-crafty malice flashed in those orange-yellow slit pupils. It glared at the three of them one last time, its massive body slowly retreated, its four claws scraped a few times on the slippery pipe wall, and it actually turned and crawled into the depths of the sewer, quickly disappearing into the darkness that the headlamps couldn't reach, leaving only expanding ripples behind.

"...It ran away?" Su Wan poked her head out, looking at the empty stagnant water below in disbelief.

"It ran." Lin Rui put away the rifle, his expression complex, with a hint of relief in his tone, "It got hurt, knew it couldn't get the upper hand, and slipped away. It seems this beast is smarter than we imagined."

Hu Jinsi let out a long breath, sat down on the edge of the shaft opening, and patted the dusty tiled floor beside him: "Alright, the crisis is temporarily resolved. While it hasn't returned, let's quickly take a short rest. In fifteen minutes, we'll go down and explore. Hope that guy ran far enough away and won't throw us a welcome party halfway there."

Su Wan unstrapped the round shield, sat cross-legged, and began to pluck the strings to enter a short-rest state. Lin Rui stood guard at the shaft opening, the rifle across his knees, his gaze vigilantly staring into the darkness below, his finger always resting near the trigger guard.

Hu Jinsi closed his eyes, his qi slowly circulating through his meridians. The question was still turning in his mind: the crocodile in the sewer... in which version of the "story" from his past life was this thing in? Forget it, it's not important. What's important is, don't run into its mealtime when going down later; that mouthful of sharp teeth doesn't look like it's for a vegetarian diet.