NOVEL NEXT Chapter 176: Abandoned?
Checkpoint room.
The girl is stronger than she looks, Lin Yi climbed onto her shoulders, and she easily lifted him up.
Lin Yi grabbed the edge of the vent, climbed up himself, and then pulled Tatiana up as well.
Then they climbed onto a massive pipe and began to climb towards the opposite wall.
Just then, the pipe above them suddenly burst, a waterfall full of fish pouring down, falling into the "lake" below that was continuously rising.
Although they weren't hit by the water, the water level was rising at an alarming rate.
Lin Yi shouted to the stunned girl, "Move quickly!"
"I can't move! My arm won't move..."
Tatiana cried out hysterically, surrounded by waterfall fish, all filled with monstrous piranhas...
These fish defy natural laws, swimming upstream.
One of them jumped directly out of the stream, nearly biting Lin Yi, who reacted in time and sliced the deadly fish in half.
"If you don't start climbing now, I will push you down. I mean it, I swear!"
Just as Lin Yi was talking with the frightened girl, a cunning fish jumped out of the water and bit his leg.
He was about to cut the fish off with an axe but changed his mind at the last moment, grabbed the fish with his fingers, and crushed its head.
Then he carefully removed the fish's mouth from his flesh.
"Move quickly!"
"Okay, okay!"
The girl cried out, and thanks to Lin Yi's shout, she regained some composure.
Lin Yi immediately began to climb after her, then suddenly stopped and looked towards the waterfall on the right.
"I really am a genius!"
He muttered to himself and then dipped the poisoned enchanted axe into the water.
After only five seconds, all the fish in the waterfall collapsed and were washed away by the current.
Lin Yi also felt weak, suddenly feeling astonishingly feeble.
"…What's happening?"
[You have exhausted too much endurance to create poison, there's no free lunch!]
"You could have... told me in advance."
Lin Yi replied with difficulty, pulling the axe out of the stream, nearly falling in the process...
He braced himself with his legs but soon ran out of strength...
It took him a whole minute to recover enough strength to continue acting.
During this time, his leg was even bitten by three big fish, helplessly.
He and the fish were in a stalemate.
If the fish opened their mouths, they would fall into the poisonous water, but Lin Yi also had no strength to deal with them at this moment.
In the end, he decided to keep climbing.
Tatiana had already climbed to the other side, staring at the now 4-meter deep water.
Dead piranhas floated on the surface, so many that even the water couldn't be seen.
The girl stared at them in shock, her mouth wide open.
"Lin Yi! They're all dead... why hasn't the reward stage ended?"
"Not... all dead."
With his last bit of strength, Lin Yi climbed from the single pipe to the large cluster of pipes where Tatiana was.
After sitting down and catching his breath, Lin Yi killed the three fish biting his leg one by one.
[You have completed the reward stage!]
[Reward received: You can choose one attribute to increase by 5. This reward does not count when purchasing attribute pills!]
"Add it all to agility."
"Did you say anything just now?" The girl now looked very happy, she looked at Lin Yi.
"Hey... are you eating something?"
"I paid the price to kill those fish, and it wasn't small."
Lin Yi said while devouring the last portion of food, then drank some water to swallow it down.
"So what do we do now?"
"Take a break, there's a bunch of zombies outside, so you might as well rest too."
"What about the coins? Coins dropped by the fish!"
"The fish didn't drop coins."
Upon hearing this, the girl was very disappointed, after all, there were so many fish, if they turned into coins...
After a while, the bodies of the fish melted and disappeared, but Lin Yi didn't care much about it.
There were four rows of bite marks on his leg.
Although it wasn't bleeding, it still hurt.
"I should have chosen endurance..." Lin Yi murmured while checking his wounds.
Tatiana stood aside, gazing into the distance, seemingly pondering something deeply.
...
"Did I fall asleep?"
Lin Yi suddenly opened his eyes, and sat up, realizing that after a short nap, he felt quite good.
The wounds didn't hurt at all and had improved a lot.
"Starving! Ha... she left?"
After looking around the room, Lin Yi didn't see Tatiana, but he quickly became unhappy.
"That idiot even stole my gun? ...You can't even use it, can you... Fortunately, I was still holding the axe when I fell asleep, women are just trouble..."
After crawling down from the pipes with difficulty, Lin Yi took a peek outside.
No zombies, no people, and no trouble.
Easygoing!
As soon as he entered the corridor, the door behind him closed tightly, but he didn't care at all.
He began to wander around aimlessly, his only plan was to earn some coins and find the merchant.
Without women, everything went smoothly.
That is, until he encountered something extremely bizarre, barely describable as a "human centipede."
But this strange thing was quickly dealt with by Lin Yi, and then he encountered a small group of zombies, which he easily dispatched thanks to 20 points of agility.
It wasn't until he killed the fifth zombie that he realized it would be a bit troublesome without a new weapon.
The axe was effective against mutants but each swing drained his endurance, so after killing multiple enemies, he was somewhat exhausted.
Lin Yi searched the corpses and found a misshapen chocolate bar. Who knows how long it had melted in a dead person's pocket, but...
When one is extremely hungry, they'll eat anything, but now he had a new problem: he was desperately thirsty.
However, for a survival master, this wasn't a problem.
He quickly found some water!
The corridor led him to a strange room of immeasurable size.
Inside the room were several strange-looking steel cylinders, each about 5 meters in diameter and 1 meter high.
There were many pipes connected between them, and one pipe was dripping water.
"The taste is okay."
Lin Yi caught a droplet of water and muttered to himself.
Lin Yi stood still, drinking the water drip while scanning the surroundings for threats with his eyes.
The room was too large.
If he were the creator of this labyrinth, he would definitely set a bunch of traps and enemies here.
But he wasn't, and there were no traps or enemies in sight, so he just stood there quenching his thirst.
Just as he was about to leave the room, he discovered an iron staircase.
The staircase had many steps and looked fairly sturdy, so he walked down and found himself facing an open metal door.
It looked like the door had been opened by someone, not some horrifying monster.
On the other side of the door was a small corridor and another staircase leading to yet another door at the end.
To Lin Yi's surprise, the door wasn't locked, he just needed to press the big green "open" button.
The door opened!
On the other side of the door was... a corridor, which looked quite nice, and seemed to connect to some kind of office or laboratory.
The lighting was good here, with lighting and vents installed all over the ceiling, bright and with fresh air.
It was much better than the basement he had come from, which was stuffy, damp, and smelled bad.
Lin Yi cautiously walked along the corridor, waiting for something unexpected, but saw no one except a young woman in a lab coat.
Of course, this young woman was a zombie, but she must have been a beauty when she was alive.
High heels, black stockings, a tight black skirt, a white shirt, a white lab coat, black long hair...
Unfortunately, she had a large, conspicuous wound on her neck that somewhat ruined her overall image.
Noticing someone, the zombie ran towards him but then stepped wrong and fell.
A gentleman never abandons a lady in distress!
So Lin Yi ran over and immediately finished her off.
"Two coins! This level is getting more and more fun, let's see what I can scavenge..."
Lin Yi said as he removed the intact shoes from the female zombie's feet.
"This can be used..."
He looked at the long and durable heels and smiled.
Just to be safe, he sharpened the heel a bit using his axe.
Then he removed the other shoe from the female zombie and sharpened it as well.
The axe was handier to use but carried too high a cost.
...
One-armed Lin Yi, with a shoe tucked into his belt, wielded the other to finish off the sixth zombie.
He used the heel to stab into the zombie's ear or eye...
With his current power and agility, it was easy, it just looked rather ridiculous.
Luckily, the people in the shelter were not watching him, or it would ruin his leader's perfect image.
Everything was going smoothly until he encountered a new type of zombie...
This was a zombie wearing riot gear.
The heel had little effect on it.
This zombie was fast and strong, so Lin Yi had to expend effort to chop off its head with an axe.
He gained three coins again.
Four hours passed by.
Lin Yi still avoided half-open doors, ensuring he wouldn't stumble into another bonus level.
He hadn't found the merchant, but he found a water cooler with plastic cups.
Another hour passed.
The man encountered the first mutant he'd seen on this floor.
It was a male zombie, wearing some kind of heavy special armor, but judging by the wound on its chest, the armor didn't do much.
However, what was truly terrifying was what this mutant was holding...
Because it was a modified flamethrower!
One-armed Lin Yi prayed to God, hoping this zombie's weapon had no fuel, but God apparently wasn't listening.
The creature bared its terrifying, fang-filled mouth, aimed the flamethrower, and unleashed a burst of flame.
Needless to say, Lin Yi hurriedly ran, but the creature was surprisingly fast.
Lin Yi ran and cursed...
He rounded a corner, dodged another burst of flame, saw a half-open door, and dashed towards it.
But this mutant was not about to let him escape.
The zombie roared angrily, suddenly doubling its speed.
Just as Lin Yi reached the doorway, the mutant unleashed a fifteen square yard blast of flame...