3: Chapter 3: One Punch to the Head, Server-Wide Announcement

The moment the basement iron door was blasted open, Chen Fan's back molars ached from clenching.

A stench mixed with the smell of rust flooded out. He saw the thing first stick out half an arm—thicker than an adult's waist, with root-like veins bulging beneath its grayish-green skin. A steel rebar pierced straight through its forearm, looking like a skewer for roasting meat.

Next came half a face. The left eye was just a bloody socket, while the right eyeball was cloudy green. Half a safety helmet was stuck in its gaping mouth, and shreds of torn cloth still clung to its teeth.

"Holy crap, is this a Wandering Corpse?" Red Hair's voice cracked with a sob. His hand gripping the green-grade dagger trembled violently, the blade clinking against the awning.

Zhao Iron Pillar snatched up his pickaxe and rushed forward two steps, then slammed to a halt—when the behemoth stood up straight, its head nearly brushed the ceiling, which was nearly three stories high.

It clutched a broken crane arm in its hand. Black blood dripped from the rusty metal tip. A health bar flashed across Chen Fan's retina: [Construction Site Zombie King LV5 (Bronze Grade BOSS)].

"What are you all standing around for?" Zhao Iron Pillar roared, swinging his pickaxe in a wide arc towards the Zombie King's knee.

The green-grade weapon struck the grayish-green skin, sparking a few times, but the health bar only dropped an amount the size of a fingernail clipping.

Chen Fan narrowed his eyes—the damage was far less than when he cut down Wandering Corpses. It seemed the BOSS had a different defense mechanism.

The Zombie King suddenly swung the crane arm.

Chen Fan instinctively ducked. The metal tip swept over his head, the resulting gust of wind knocking over the nearby scaffolding. "Bang!" Red Hair was slammed against the wall, his dagger flying into the rain; another skinny, tall player was hit in the waist, his entire body smashing through a concrete pillar like a rag doll; Zhao Iron Pillar reacted quickly and rolled into a pile of sand, but the pickaxe was shaken out of his hand.

"Retreat! We can't even scratch this thing!" The skinny player clutched his bleeding ribs, struggled up, and bolted towards the outside of the construction site. Only the sound of their footsteps faded into the rainy curtain.

Chen Fan crouched even lower, pressed against a concrete pipe.

He stared at the Zombie King's movements—the first swing was horizontal, the second downward chop, the third a full circular smash into the ground.

The instant the third attack finished its momentum, the monster's neck tilted slightly to the right, exposing a patch of pinkish-white flesh behind its right ear, like a walnut gnawed halfway through.

"Stunned for 1.2 seconds." Chen Fan's Adam's apple bobbed.

He had counted during his previous kills of Wandering Corpses; ordinary zombies had a 3-second attack interval, but the BOSS's attack pattern was more predictable.

After those three attacks, the Zombie King braced itself on the ground with its right claw, its knuckles emitting crisp "kaka" sounds—this was the opportunity.

"Come back! All of you, get back here!" Zhao Iron Pillar crawled out of the sand pile, his face smeared with grass clippings. "The First Kill reward is Gold Equipment! Don't you guys want it?" No one answered him. He kicked an iron bucket at his feet, then turned and saw Chen Fan shrinking behind the pipe. His eyes suddenly lit up. "Hey! Aren't you pretty good at killing Wandering Corpses? Come over and help!"

Chen Fan didn't move.

He stared as the Zombie King began charging up its fourth attack—this one a horizontal sweep.

The pinkish-white flesh behind the monster's right ear wobbled with the motion, and the position of its brain stem was automatically marked with a red circle on his retina.

He touched the coarse cloth wrist guard on his wrist. The inside was still sticky with the black blood of a Wandering Corpse, but it steadied his heartbeat.

"I'll count to three, old man!" Zhao Iron Pillar snatched a piece of rubble and threw it, smashing it near Chen Fan's feet. "One—Two—"

The Zombie King's horizontal sweep arrived.

Chen Fan rolled out from behind the pipe, spun once in the muddy water, and scrambled up the scaffolding.

The rusty steel pipes scraped his palms raw, but he climbed incredibly fast—he had worked on construction sites for three years; these scaffolds were more familiar to him than his own bed planks.

"Are you trying to run?" Zhao Iron Pillar roared and lunged over, but he was struck in the stomach by the Zombie King's tail (Chen Fan now clearly saw that the monster dragged a section of rusty rebar behind its lower back like an iron tail). He slammed into the concrete wall with a "thud," slid down, and lay still for a long time.

Chen Fan climbed to the second level of scaffolding and reached for the crossbar on the third level.

Rainwater dripped from his safety helmet brim into his eyes. He blinked, locking onto the target—the Zombie King had just completed its third horizontal sweep, exposing the brain stem behind its right ear. The veins on its neck were bulging as if ready to explode.

"Now!" He took a deep breath, gripped his shovel, and jumped down.

While falling, he inverted the shovel, aiming the blade edge at that patch of pinkish-white flesh.

Wind rushed into his collar. He heard his own heart pounding like a drum—he couldn't expose a critical hit; it had to be a one-hit kill.

When he killed Wandering Corpses earlier, the system notification mentioned that critical hits were triggered randomly, but if the damage wasn't enough, even a critical hit might not kill a BOSS.

The instant the shovel tip touched the flesh, Chen Fan felt like he was hacking into an old tree root. "Ding! Base Damage 18!" The system prompt exploded in his ear. The sweat on his forehead mixed with rainwater and streamed into his eyes. In the blur, he saw the Zombie King's health bar begin to fluctuate.

"Critical Hit Judgement Triggered! Damage x 4.3 Multiplier!"

Chen Fan's pupils contracted sharply.

The shovel suddenly became searing hot, as if thrown into a furnace. He gritted his teeth and pushed down, hearing a "crack"—the sound of a skull shattering.

The Zombie King's right eyeball popped out with a "pop," spraying him head to toe in black blood.

The monster let out a piercing shriek, its iron tail wildly slamming the ground. But the moment Chen Fan pulled the shovel out, it crashed down.

"System Announcement! System Announcement!"

The electronic voice hurt Chen Fan's eardrums.

He wiped the black blood from his face and saw golden subtitles floating in mid-air: "Player [Chen Fan] has achieved the First Kill of the [Construction Site Zombie King]! Visible to all New Players!"

"First Kill Reward issued: 500 Experience (Critical Hit x 2.1 Multiplier → 1050), [Reinforced Shovel] (Blue Grade, Attack + 30), Skill Scroll [Beginner Parry]."

The surroundings suddenly fell silent.

Chen Fan heard the rain hitting the Zombie King's corpse, heard his own ragged breathing, and heard Zhao Iron Pillar coughing in the distance.

He looked down at the shovel in his hand—the originally rusty blade now emitted a faint azure glow, etched with tiny runes, feeling cool to the touch.

"You... how did you do that?" Zhao Iron Pillar leaned against the wall to stand up, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. "My Green Grade equipment couldn't even scratch it..."

Chen Fan quickly tucked the Blue Grade shovel behind his back and picked up the White Grade wrist guard that had dropped from the Zombie King's corpse—he did this intentionally; he had learned from killing Wandering Corpses that revealing too many good items made them easy targets for theft. "Just lucky," he said, his voice hoarse like sandpaper.

The rain was still falling.

Chen Fan looked up towards the construction site fence and saw a flash of red—like a fox's tail, or perhaps the lantern of a Teahouse.

He narrowed his eyes, vaguely making out a few words in the rain curtain: "Frost Moon Teahouse."

"Ding!" The system prompt sounded again. "Detected Player Chen Fan has completed a Bronze Grade First Kill. Silver Grade Instance will open in 24 hours."

Chen Fan wiped the rain and black blood from his face, tucking the Blue Grade shovel into his waistband.

He heard footsteps approaching from a distance; they were likely other players drawn by the announcement.

But he didn't move, only staring at that faint red glow beyond the fence, a fire slowly burning in his heart.

Critical Hits... this was just the beginning.