It was the eighth day since entering the game.

Every infected housed temporarily at the rescue station on the 90th floor had woken up by now. The place had transformed into a living hell; thousands of monsters poured forth, devouring everything in their path, leaving only desolation, like locusts stripping a field bare. Humans became nothing more than entrees laid out on a platter, helpless before the feast.

"Someone, please save me!"

"No, no, monster... stay back!"

"I'm the deputy captain of the Royal! Come back—ah! Stay away!"

The 90th floor boasted the best medical resources—its residents were all figures of influence and power, the elite among passengers. Even the captain was there. His rotund figure struggled to take more than a few steps, but what did it matter? The infected moved too fast; it took less than minutes before he was torn apart.

Blood splattered the corridors, long claw-marks scored across countless doors. Every soul on the 90th floor was living in dread—infected prowled every level, and with chaos so widespread, anyone could see the cruise liner's days were numbered. Instinctively, many players rushed to the deck, hoping to escape the infected by diving into the sea. The passageways to the deck were choked with desperate people.

"How did I not think of this earlier?"

"The game never said we couldn't go into the water! I'd rather take my chances swimming than facing these monsters here on the ship."

"Damn it! Is that even allowed? You took all the spare life rings! What about the rest of us? I'm Zhang San and I demand a protest—I want an inflatable boat, or at least a swim ring!"

But as the infected closed in, the bravado of these men rapidly deflated.

Ye Shu was the first to reach the deck. Out of caution, she didn’t go down immediately. She paused to watch. She knew all too well—no way would this twisted game let players off the hook so easily!

"Li Xiao, what are you doing? Aren’t we supposed to be together?"

"Sorry, gotta run! Thanks, Liu Laoge, for the inflatable—I'll never forget your kindness, even after death!"

Li Xiao leaped into the water. With a flash of pain beneath him, the smile froze at his lips as a gargantuan head emerged—a mutant shark snapping him and the surrounding players into bloody pieces. Dark blue waves bloomed into a vivid scarlet.

Ye Shu stared in disbelief at the grotesque half-face of the fish that broke the surface. It bristled with fleshy tumours; its cloudy, grayish eyes seemed ready to pop out; a jet-black tailfin bristled with spines.

That... was a shark?!

Things just kept getting worse—even her last possible route was cut off. She'd thought the ocean was her way out, but clearly, the creatures deep below had mutated just as much as the humans above. So the sashimi hadn’t been the true source of contamination after all.

Staying on the ship seemed the lesser evil.

God knows what horrors roamed beneath the waves at their feet.

"Hss—"

"That was brutal! Farewell, Li Xiao. I’ll live in your stead—serves you right for your betrayal!"

A moment ago, Liu Laoge had been on the verge of panicked collapse. Now he wore a look of schadenfreude.

"The monsters are close... Run!"

He dropped the life ring he’d been clutching and bolted for the nearest escape passage clear of infected. If the water was off limits, what good was the thing? More dead weight, nothing more!

And the monsters weren’t slow, not one bit.

Ye Shu swung her axe and charged straight into the fray—two swings, two monsters down.

"What’s she doing? There’s no way she can kill them all!"

"Who cares? She buys us time, right? Works for me."

"Yeah, let’s go!"

The crowd surged for the escape passage, each person desperate to put distance between themselves and the infected.

Ye Shu’s axe rose and fell in swift, decisive arcs, cutting her way through the mass of infected with practiced ease. Dozens of corpses trailed in her wake before she finally slowed.

A frown creased her brow as she noticed the infected’s scales turning darker. If her memory served, they’d been charcoal gray just the day before. And today, the monsters were even harder to kill: despite her increased strength, it took two blows to bring one down.

They were... evolving.

Casting a glance at the few infected straggling about on deck, Ye Shu hurried back to her room.

But she arrived to find someone jimmying her lock. Fury flared—she landed two fast punches before the would-be thief could react.

She’d only been gone half an hour, and already her home had nearly been pillaged.

"Spare me! I’ll leave, I swear—I'm gone, I'm gone!"

The young thief recognized Ye Shu at once. She might look soft and girlish, but last night he’d seen her dragging a dozen corpses—enough to nearly make him wet his pants. Of all places to rob, he'd picked the Devil’s own lair—and now he’d been caught red-handed. His life was surely forfeit.

Ye Shu said, "...Wait."

He went rigid, too terrified to even breathe.

"Fix my lock."

She’d painstakingly pieced it back together, and now he’d ruined it again. There was no way she’d risk waking at night to find an infected had wandered in.

.........

Day nine in the game.

Ye Shu woke early. A glance told her—wow, the population had dropped by another tenth. That meant a hundred thousand new infected. Bad news for everyone.

She took out her pan and fried up an egg pancake, splurging for bacon and ham. The world outside was eerily quiet.

Last night, she’d cleared out the infected from nearby. As she'd expected, the monsters were getting stronger—not just faster, but also physically mightier.

Even after a hearty breakfast, she was still hungry and made herself a bowl of hot and sour noodles.

Suddenly, the tranquil air was shattered by a blaring ringtone: "Good luck is coming… I wish you joy and love…"

Ye Shu’s expression went cold.

She knew that voice instantly—it belonged to the irritable mother of the local brat.

The sound was swiftly stifled, but not before it attracted unwanted attention. A mass of infected gathered at her neighbor’s door across the hallway, hammering at the wall—soon enough, even more infected joined the ruckus.

A clever opponent she could handle—a foolish ally was the true bane.

The neighbor’s child started wailing in terror, which only whipped the infected into a greater frenzy. The pack made wet, snarling noises and clustered outside, pounding so hard Ye Shu’s own door shuddered on its hinges.

Her already flimsy door was barely holding up.

She spat a familiar curse. The camera outside her door had its wires ripped out—the monitor showed nothing but static. Only the peephole remained: through it, the corridor was a sardine tin packed with infected, pressing so tight they seemed almost to fuse into a single, grotesque organism.

"Creak, creak—"

The door warped under the pressure, groaning. Something slammed into it with tremendous force, triggering a wild crash—like a catalyst, it sent the monsters into a renewed frenzy. They hurled themselves at the door, again and again, heedless of their own exhaustion.

Dozens of infected finally broke through. Screams rang out, mingled with the crunching of bones.

Ye Shu shoved a bookshelf against the door and doused the air with perfume.

Eventually, the infected melted away.

The rest of her day became a cycle: killing monsters, eating, resting, then killing more. The way things were going, the infected would only grow more numerous and more powerful. If she didn’t cull them now, then when?

Within a few hundred meters of Room 9906, not an infected lingered. Ye Shu took the opportunity to gather supplies from every empty room—she wound up with quite a stockpile of food.

There was plenty of bottled water, too. She’d only drunk from sealed bottles since entering the game. The ship’s water source was fouled—its black-yellow torrent was thick with a nauseating, fishy stench. The water filtration systems had long since broken down; there were no staff left to tend them.

Ye Shu stared at the yellowish slop pouring from the faucet. It looked every bit as lethal as a biochemical weapon.