Chapter 199: Tycoon Town (15)
The four-faced monster swung its gory, mangled limbs at the players. Player No. 10, standing at the edge and near the front, couldn't retreat in time. He instinctively raised his scythe to fight back, slashing at the monster's tattered flesh-limbs.
They looked like layers of bone and flesh without skin, piled on top of each other. Though they appeared loose and flimsy, they moved with terrifying speed. And when the scythe connected, it only cut a notch that quickly sealed itself shut.
The monster seemed completely unaffected by the attack.
However, when its murky, fleshy fluid splattered onto No. 10's face, it immediately began to sizzle and burn.
"Aahh—" No. 10 clutched his face, screaming in agony.
Ji Ning and the others had all jumped back the moment the monster moved. Seeing No. 10 injured, they grew even more cautious, holding their weapons out in front of them.
The female Player No. 5 was close to No. 10. She helped him retreat and checked his wound. Facing the monster's assault head-on, that left only Ji Ning and her three companions.
Ji Ning was the first to aim her magic wand at the monster, but the rainbow beam that had previously been invincible proved completely useless. The swinging flesh-whip didn't slow in the slightest.
Jiang Ting grabbed Ji Ning by the waist and rolled to the ground with her, shielding her body to barely escape the strike.
"AHHH!!!" A woman's shriek came from behind them.
Ji Ning looked over and saw that No. 10, starting from his head, was collapsing inward, flesh and bone caving in together, gradually "melting" away.
The scene was so surreal that even the ever-unflappable Qin Yanshu furrowed his brow.
Just as No. 10 had melted to only half his original height, the system pushed a notification.
【Player No. 10 has failed to clear the tile. Complete death confirmed.】
It was still about clearing the tile!
While surprised, Ji Ning's mind raced. It seemed this thirty-first tile was the ultimate stage of this Tycoon game: an invincible boss that couldn't be harmed and possessed a lethal inherent poison.
Even more absurdly, the crimson, soft mass left from No. 10's melting actually began to wriggle toward the monster, merging with it.
Seeing this as they dodged the monster's attacks, the group's morale wavered.
Especially Ji Ning and Sheng Churan. One was a young woman who cared about her appearance; the other was a Big Star obsessed with his image. And Jiang Ting and Qin Yanshu were both meticulous men, too. If you had to die, you died—but who would want to be reduced to such an ugly, formless mass?
In this situation, Sheng Churan's light sword proved just as useless as Ji Ning's magic wand.
Only Jiang Ting's gun and Qin Yanshu's tang blade could be of any use. So the two brothers took the front line, blocking while Sheng Churan shielded Ji Ning to help her evade. The female Player No. 5, not daring to stray too far from them, also frantically dodged the monster's attacks.
The bizarre, hulking creature relentlessly swung its branching limbs at the group while rotating its gory head.
If you could even call it a head. It was nothing more than a twisted arrangement of indistinct features, utterly inhuman. And entirely skinless.
Ji Ning, her face tense with focus, scrutinized it for a long moment before finally spotting the clue.
Among the four loosely connected heads, only one—its eyes closed in a grieving expression—had two ears on its profile. The other three heads had no ears but kept their eyes open.
Inspiration flashed through Ji Ning's mind. She immediately opened the music box's switch and held it up high.
The cheerful, light melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" rang out. The head with the closed eyes reacted violently immediately, struggling as if trying to break free from the mountain of flesh.
Its anomaly caused the monster's heads to stop rotating, though the other heads seemed to be resisting the eared head's attempt to leave.
The monster's body began to convulse erratically and violently.
Seeing the effect, Ji Ning hurriedly took out all the items. "Quick! Each of us take one. Find the matching head and show it to them. These things are the key to clearing the tile!"
She held onto the music box herself, tossed the toy bear to Sheng Churan, and then pulled out the slingshot and the glass marble to hand them out.
Because of one head's abnormality, the monster had become even more dangerous. Distracted, Ji Ning was slow to dodge. Qin Yanshu grabbed the glass marble with one hand and wrapped his other arm around Ji Ning's shoulder, abruptly crouching down with her.
Ji Ning didn't steady herself in time, and her forehead knocked against his rock-hard shoulder, immediately turning a patch of skin red.
But the situation was urgent; she ignored the pain, pushing his hand away. "Don't mind me, quickly find the matching head!"
The moment Sheng Churan had caught the toy bear and it didn't turn to stone in his hand, Ji Ning knew this strategy had potential.
Qin Yanshu, understanding this perfectly, didn't delay. He took the glass marble and, while dodging the monster's frenzied onslaught, began holding it up for the heads to see.
The three men were each responsible for one item, so there were only three possibilities. They quickly found the correct target, each taking a position to stand their ground. Together with Ji Ning, they formed a four-way encirclement, attempting to subdue the monster using the items.
Player No. 5 hid behind them, awed by the foursome's breathtaking and seamless coordination.
After her shock subsided, she dashed over to Ji Ning's side in a few quick steps, using her wolf-tooth club to protect Ji Ning.
Once its attention was caught by each significant object, the monster's frenzied state gradually calmed. The hill-sized, soft mass began to disintegrate and contract, eventually becoming individual, decayed corpses.
The danger vanished. The group walked forward to look and discovered that the four corpses at the very center were exceedingly old, their clothes tattered beyond recognition.
"Three women, one man, all around thirty years old," Qin Yanshu quietly noted.
Beyond the nature of the monster itself, what the players were even more eager to know was: did clearing this final tile mean they had cleared the instance?
But instead of a clearance notification from the system, a crack suddenly split open along the previously seamless boundary of the tile.
Bright light poured through the door-crack from behind, revealing another world entirely.
The three men guarded the two women as they approached the door. Through the opening, they could see a desolate little town not far behind it.
No wonder. No wonder the system called this world "Tycoon Town." At the end of the Tycoon game, there truly was a town.
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