84: Chapter 84 She really went all out!

Just as those specks of light were about to dissipate completely, one small clump gathered together again.

With a clink, half a rusted key fell out.

As soon as this thing appeared, Fang Che's pocket suddenly became scorching hot.

Before he could even reach in, the half-key he was carrying flew out on its own.

The two pieces of metal met in mid-air, flashed, and seamlessly fused into a complete item.

An old brass key fell into Fang Che's hand.

It felt quite cold to the touch.

The moment he clenched his hand, the system notification exploded in everyone's minds.

[Ding! Key item Brass Key obtained. Main quest updated: Head to the third-floor stairwell, find, and enter the non-existent Fourth Floor!]

The non-existent Fourth Floor!

As soon as this quest popped up, Mu Waner's voice trembled.

"The Fourth Floor... do, do we really have to go there?"

Jiang Ning's expression turned ugly instantly, and she irritably tugged at her hair.

"All the damn monsters we've encountered so far have some connection to the Fourth Floor! Is that a place anyone can go?!"

The pile of mutants in the Library, and Li Wei, whom Fang Che killed, all mutated because they wanted to go to the Fourth Floor.

Now the system is forcing everyone to head there; it's clearly pushing us to our deaths.

Fang Che clutched the ice-cold key in his hand and silently unzipped his backpack.

Before the girls could react, he had already grabbed the potions he had obtained from the Critical Hit earlier.

"Come here, all of you."

The few of them paused for a moment before stepping forward.

Fang Che stuffed an adrenaline enhancer into the hand of Su Qingxue, who was closest, and then pulled out a few more to distribute.

"adrenaline enhancers—they can save your life. Keep them close to you, and don't use them recklessly unless it's a life-or-death situation where you're bleeding."

Mu Waner gripped the tube in her hand tightly, her knuckles turning white.

She looked at Fang Che and opened her mouth, but in the end, she didn't say anything.

Teacher Qin Bing took it without a word and nodded firmly.

Su Qingxue glanced at the syringe in her hand and looked up at the boy opposite her.

"Thank you..."

Fang Che waved his hand dismissively, then took out the pile of antibiotics and the remaining miscellaneous medicines, distributing them one by one.

"Pack them away quickly; who knows what kind of monsters we'll run into later. Carrying more means having a better chance of survival."

The group stuffed the medicine into their pockets, and the panic they felt earlier stabilized a little.

A scratching sound suddenly rang out outside the Infirmary door.

The sound was sharp and dense, as if countless hard objects were desperately clawing at the iron door.

Immediately after, the entire Teaching Building began to shake; the cracks in the floor tiles vibrated, and debris fell from the ceiling.

The safe time had ended.

"Damn it! They've found us!"

Jiang Ning immediately gripped her weapon tightly, staring fixedly at the door.

Fang Che rushed forward in a few steps, bracing the wooden handle of his fire axe against the door panel.

He turned his head and glanced at the people behind him.

"Follow me closely, damn it! Get ready to charge!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he lifted his leg and kicked the Infirmary door with all his might.

Bang!

The door was kicked open by force, and the scene outside slammed into everyone's faces.

The hallway was nowhere to be seen.

A corridor covered in lumps of flesh blocked the way.

The walls were covered in dark red soft tissue, with blue-black veins bulging on the surface, expanding and contracting at a certain frequency, dripping foul-smelling slime from the rot.

The scene on the ground was even more terrifying: it was densely packed with dead-white severed hands clawing upwards.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of palms were flailing and grabbing at the ground, completely covering the floor tiles.

"Where, where on earth is this..."

Mu Waner's voice trembled, sounding airy.

Before the group could recover, a dozen large bumps swelled up on the wriggling flesh wall with a squelching sound.

A large group of mutant students without facial features forced their way out of the flesh tumors.

The aura these things emitted was much more troublesome than before, and within two seconds, they had crowded the entire path ahead, blocking the way completely.

The distorted static of the school broadcast sounded again.

"Hee hee hee... hide-and-seek has begun... game time starts now..."

"The children who are found will be eaten, oh... eaten slowly, one bite at a time, hee hee hee..."

The sound made one's scalp crawl.

However, not two seconds later, the noise from the loudspeaker suddenly changed tone, becoming incredibly manic.

"Wrong! All wrong! Shut up, all of you!"

"The Principal is going to make an important announcement! All students and teachers must immediately assemble on the playground! You must go!"

"Everyone to the playground! Those who disobey die!"

The two commands completely conflicted—one telling people to hide, the other telling them to go out and die.

The rules of this shitty school had completely collapsed; all that was left was the blatant killing of people.

"Should... should we go?"

Mu Waner's teeth chattered from fear.

"Go my ass!"

Jiang Ning cursed loudly.

"It's clearly a trap! But if we don't go, the loudspeaker says we'll die!"

Teacher Qin Bing turned to look at Fang Che, waiting for him to make the call.

Fang Che stood in front of the messy pile of monsters, his face expressionless.

"No more stalling! We're going to the Fourth Floor!"

He held the brass key and pointed it toward the ceiling.

"The broadcast has gone insane! Listening to it is just asking for death! We aren't going to the playground, and we aren't hiding!"

"Follow me closely, damn it!"

Fang Che roared at the top of his lungs.

The fire axe in his hand whistled through the air, and relying on his boosted strength, he smashed into the pile of monsters, hacking out a gap.

The monsters blocking the front and the flailing severed hands on the ground were all swept by the edge of the axe.

Rotten flesh and broken bone fragments exploded on the spot, splattering everywhere.

He had just killed the first circle of them when more mutants immediately crawled out of the wall cracks.

A large number of monsters were squeezing toward the center from all sides, and the left, right, and rear of the formation looked like they were about to collapse.

Fang Che hacked through a body in front of him with an axe, then turned back and roared at Su Qingxue in the middle.

"Qingxue! The center is up to you!"

Su Qingxue nodded firmly.

"Leave it to me!"

The ability she had just obtained yesterday, combined with Fang Che's back blocking the front, suppressed all the panic in her heart.

She stood in the very center of the formation, her eyes turning completely ice-blue.

This was the first time she had fully unleashed her reinforced talent in actual combat.

"Ice Wall!"

She shouted fiercely.

A thick, several-meter-high ice wall erupted from the ground, the solid ice making creaking, grinding noises as it knocked all the monsters rushing from both sides flying.

Su Qingxue whipped her arm forward.

"Ice Spike Storm!"

The surrounding air temperature plummeted, and dozens of sharp ice spikes condensed in mid-air.

These ice spikes plunged into another wave of monsters with immense force, punching out bloody, hole-ridden wounds.

She didn't stop at all.

"Blizzard!"

A massive wave of cold air swirled up behind them, and the group of mutants chasing them was caught in the extreme cold current, freezing into a thick layer of hard ice on the spot.

Fang Che swung his axe back, and the frozen monsters couldn't withstand the hacking, shattering into shards of ice all over the ground on the spot.

The large-scale ice attack reduced the team's pressure by nearly half.

Jiang Ning and Teacher Qin Bing watched from the side, stunned.

"Holy shit..."

Jiang Ning couldn't help but curse.

"Did Qingxue just use her ultimate? This is too fierce!"

Su Qingxue's moves had suppressed the monsters' momentum, and she had also found her footing, her ice-blue eyes shining bright.

At this moment, a series of notifications flooded Fang Che's mind.

[Ding! Your teammate has killed 36 mutants. Absolute Critical Hit has been triggered. This experience point share settlement has received a 6x Critical Hit bonus!]

[Congratulations, you have gained 2160 experience points!]

Fang Che swung his axe without looking back, splitting a mutant that had slipped through to the side in two.