A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

The six of them spent the entire day surveying the first three floors. The shelter had food and water—vending machines at the end of each floor's corridor sold supplies with game coins. But the prices were outrageously high: a bottle of water cost 50 coins, and a pack of compressed biscuits cost 100 coins.

"Heartless." Zhao Qiang cursed as he looked at the price list, then obediently put in his money.

The sun—or rather, the grayish-white light source that serves as the sun—began to set at six in the afternoon.

"Get ready," Zhou Lang said.

The six people retreated to a large conference room on the second floor and blocked the door with tables and chairs. The windows were already sealed with iron plates, so it was relatively safe.

At 6:30, the light completely disappeared.

There were sounds coming from the hallway.

It wasn't the sound of dragging, nor the sound of footsteps—it was a murmur.

Countless voices whispered simultaneously, like hundreds of people talking to themselves while leaning against a door. Zhou Lang couldn't make out what they were saying, but the dense, fragmented sounds had a penetrating power, drilling straight into his brain.

Zhao Qiang covered his ears, his face turning bright red.

Ji Yuan—the tall, thin man in Lin Tong's team—took out six pairs of earplugs from his backpack and distributed them to everyone. "Soundproof, dungeon item. Wearing them will filter out over 70% of mental interference."

"Good stuff." Zhou Lang took it and put it on.

The murmurs indeed weakened considerably, transforming from a piercing roar into distant background noise.

The first night passed peacefully.

The next day, trouble struck.

They weren't "residents" from the shelter—but rather the four in black jackets.

While exploring the fourth level, Zhou Lang's team encountered one of the people. It was a woman, in her early twenties, with short hair and an expressionless face, codenamed "Thorn".

She was squatting alone in the corridor, with a portable testing device in front of her.

"What are you doing?" Zhou Lang asked.

"Detect the concentration of the anomaly." The troublemaker didn't even look up. "The concentration of the anomaly on this floor is three times that of the other floors. You'd better not stay on this floor for too long."

"Would someone who devours souls be kind enough to remind others?" Han Yingying's tone was not friendly.

Ci stood up. She was half a head shorter than Han Yingying, but her aura was not weak.

"You have a problem with me?"

"Not to you, but to the union behind you."

"I also have a problem with that union," Thorn said.

Neither Zhou Lang nor Han Yingying could respond to these words.

"The Smoker sent me here on the mission of 'observing and disrupting the Waves' team,'" Thorn stated bluntly. "But I have no interest in being someone else's pawn. Before entering the dungeon, he promised me an A-grade piece of equipment, and I agreed. After entering, I discovered that the strangeness of this dungeon was abnormal—far exceeding the standard value of S-grade."

She turned the monitor's screen toward Zhou Lang. It displayed a set of numbers: Current eerie concentration index 8.7.

"In a normal S-rank instance, the eerie concentration is between 4 and 6. This is almost 9," Thorn said. "At this concentration, my chance of completing an assassination mission is about 3%, and my chance of dying here is 97%. I'm not crazy."

Zhou Lang looked at her and remained silent for ten seconds.

"Would you like to team up?"

“It’s not a team effort,” Thorn said. “I don’t trust you, and you don’t need to trust me. I’m just stating a fact—this instance has a problem, a problem more serious than any of us anticipated. If the anomaly concentration continues to rise, by the seventh day, the ‘residents’ here will be so strong that no one will be able to leave alive.”

"So what's your suggestion?"

"Find the exit beforehand," Thorn said. "I found some clues on the fifth floor."

---

The clues provided by the thorn were indeed valuable.

In a room on the fifth floor, the walls were covered with maps. Not maps of the containment facility—they were maps of the entire instance world. Seven red dots were marked on the maps, each corresponding to a room on one of the seven floors. Next to each red dot was the word "lock."

"Seven locks, seven rooms," Lin Tong said after looking at the map. "Does the exit require unlocking seven locks?"

"We haven't been to the eighth floor yet," Su Bai—the burly man in Lin Tong's group—said. "If the exit is on the eighth floor, these seven locks are the key."

Zhou Lang stared at the map for a long time.

One of the red dots is marked in room 417 on the fourth floor—the area with the highest concentration of eerie activity.

"What about the other three in black jackets?" he suddenly asked.

He paused for a moment. "One is already dead. Last night, he broke the rules by making eye contact with a resident. The other two are on the sixth floor; their status is uncertain."

One person died.

The twelve people became eleven. And it was only the second day.

"I'm going to 417," Zhou Lang said.

"I'll go with you," Han Yingying said.

"No, the strange concentration on floor 417—"

"If you go alone, who will watch over the back?" Han Yingying interrupted him.

Zhou Lang opened his mouth, but couldn't find a point to refute.

Zhao Qiang raised his hand: "Then I—"

"You stay here and guard the door," Zhou Lang and Han Yingying said in unison.

Zhao Qiang silently lowered his hand. "Alright. You're a high-class burden, stay on standby."

The door to room 417 was unlocked; you could just push it open and go in.

But once inside, Zhou Lang understood why the concentration of eeriness was the highest there.

In the center of the room floated something—a constantly writhing black mass, about the size of a basketball, its surface flowing like liquid metal. It had no fixed shape, changing every few seconds, sometimes resembling a human face, sometimes a hand, sometimes an open eye.

Zhou Lang's system panel was flashing alarms incessantly:

[WARNING! High concentration of strange source detected!]

[Current level of anomaly: 12.4 – Exceeding the instance's design limit!]

[Immediate evacuation recommended!]

"Exceeding the limits of the dungeon design." Zhou Lang read out the sentence.

"What do you mean?" Han Yingying asked.

"It means this thing shouldn't be in this instance." Zhou Lang took two steps closer. Sensing his approach, the black substance increased its wriggling speed.

He took out the chip fragment he had found in the manor's basement—a fragment of the eerie tracing device (1/5)—from his pocket. The fragment began to glow as it approached the black substance, its vibration frequency increasing rapidly.

Then, something fell to the ground in the corner of the room.

A fragment of the same chip, numbered (2/5).

"It's been drawn out." Zhou Lang picked up the fragments. "These fragments resonate with each other. Getting close to the source of the strange phenomenon will activate the hidden fragments."

Han Yingying crouched down to examine the inscription on the back of the fragment. Her fingers traced the tiny characters before suddenly stopping.

"Zhou Lang".

She rarely called him by his real name.

"What's written here... I feel like I've seen it somewhere before." Her voice was slightly unsteady. "Not in the game. It was—before. Before the game came."

Are you sure?

"I'm not sure. But the feeling is strong." Han Yingying pressed her temples hard. "I remember... there was a laboratory. White walls, lots of screens. Someone was talking, saying—'Anchor point offset, project termination recommended.'"