My Monster Keeps Eating Me

Chapter 3-Now, Who Is the Prey?

“Cough—cough, cough!”

Even after returning to the login screen, Tang Xiao remained on one knee, coughing uncontrollably.

He did not even want to look at the newly unlocked CG.

The phantom sensation of something forcing its way down his throat still lingered in his mind, leaving him profoundly unsettled.

Tang Xiao had played countless full-dive games, but never had one reduced him to such a miserable state. The Mycelial Age was simply too realistic. Had the pain simulation not been disabled, he might genuinely have believed his body was undergoing some grotesque transformation.

But then—

Tang Xiao clenched his fists.

He remembered the way the monster had looked at him at the end of the previous run, and a fierce smile slowly curved across his lips.

His competitive spirit had been awakened.

A player was allowed to lose.

A player was not allowed to be looked down upon.

Forget buying another account. He was keeping this storyline.

He refused to believe he could not beat it.

Subject 425, however, proved far more formidable than Tang Xiao had anticipated. It was like stepping into the beginner village only to find the final boss waiting outside the gates.

After enough failed attempts, Tang Xiao became almost numb to death. The moment a run showed signs of collapsing, he restarted without hesitation.

Only the fire inside him continued to burn hotter.

Until—

The thirty-ninth run.

“Look carefully, newcomers,” Babbitt said. “It is one of the experimental subjects belonging to Third Eye’s principal research initiative. If the project succeeds, the entire world will tremble beneath Its might.”

The moment he finished speaking, a strikingly handsome recruit stepped out of formation.

The young man placed his palm against the glass and leaned closer until his face was barely an inch from the barrier.

Babbitt stared at him.

That was perhaps a little more carefully than necessary.

He was just about to order the recruit back when something changed inside the laboratory.

Subject 425, which had been lying listlessly in the corner, suddenly hurled itself against the glass.

Its hyphae spread across the transparent wall like an opening net. Multiple eyes surfaced among the crimson filaments, all of them staring at the person standing on the other side.

“What the hell?”

“That scared me half to death!”

The other recruits immediately erupted into commotion, jostling one another in their haste to retreat.

Only one person remained where he was.

Tang Xiao stood beneath the vast web of bloodred hyphae in his immaculate white lab coat, like prey already caught in a crimson snare.

Yet there was no trace of uncertainty in his expression.

His gaze traveled slowly across the tangled filaments and the numerous eyes suspended among them.

He could almost feel the terrible tingling from previous runs—the memory of those hyphae invading his body.

The crimson fibers and orange-yellow eyes had haunted his nightmares. The creature had never looked at him as an individual. To Subject 425, he was an exquisite meal.

Prey.

Perhaps even a vessel.

Tang Xiao forcibly suppressed the faint fear rising inside him.

Ignoring the n***d hunger directed toward him, he smiled radiantly at the eye hovering only inches from his face.

“Hello again, little monster.”

This time, he would find the correct way to clear its route.

They stood so close that it seemed the creature might shatter the glass at any moment. Yet the narrow barrier between them might as well have been an uncrossable chasm.

Tang Xiao stared at the being that had devoured him again and again.

The corner of his mouth lifted in open provocation.

Come on, then.

Kill me one more time.

In response, the creature’s eyes trembled slightly.

A strand of hyphae swept across the place where Tang Xiao’s eyes rested behind the glass, almost as though answering his challenge.

That scent.

So sweet.

So sweet, so sweet, so sweet—

From the moment Tang Xiao stepped forward, an uncontrollable desire had begun screaming inside Subject 425.

The craving seemed to rise from the deepest layers of its genetic code, urging it to capture, hunt, consume, and merge with the source of that scent.

It did not notice what Tang Xiao said.

It did not understand what he was doing.

Every olfactory receptor distributed throughout its body was operating at full capacity, searching the air for every molecule that belonged to him.

But it was not enough.

Subject 425 had never encountered anything so irresistibly compelling.

It reminded the creature of the first time the white-coated humans had released it onto an open grassland to study its hunting behavior.

That primal, undisguised hunger had seized its entire consciousness in an instant.

Unable to resist, Subject 425 extended a hypha and “licked” across the young man’s eyes.

As expected, it touched only glass.

The electrical current running through the barrier scorched the filament badly.

Then the human walked away.

His scent grew fainter with every passing second.

Subject 425 paid no attention to the burn. Far more agonizing was the knowledge that the prey attracting it was moving farther away.

The bloodred creature abandoned its habitual lethargy.

Its many eyes turned toward the ventilation duct.

They blinked simultaneously, as though reaching a silent consensus.

Merge with him.

Consume him.

Then evolve.

It was not merely desire.

It was a mission carved into its genes.

An instinct.

…

Tang Xiao followed the same route as in his previous attempts, accompanying the other NPC recruits to the dormitory.

When the lights abruptly failed and darkness concealed the lobby, he smoothly lifted Babbitt’s thermal ray g*n.

Then he slipped away unnoticed, entered the kitchen, and switched on the deep fryer.

Through his previous attempts, Tang Xiao had already identified high temperatures as the creature’s weakness.

Babbitt’s thermal ray g*n was the only weapon Tang Xiao could reliably obtain.

The kitchen was the most suitable battlefield.

He waited silently in the darkness.

Before long, screams erupted outside.

It was here.

At first, no one understood what was happening.

Then Subject 425 forced its way through the dormitory entrance, and the recruits scattered like a terrified flock.

The creature swept aside several people blocking its path without wasting time on them.

The scent was deeper inside the building.

While the others fled in every direction, Subject 425 moved directly toward the kitchen.

The instant it entered, it destroyed the lights.

Darkness engulfed the room.

A quiet gasp came from somewhere inside.

The final note trembled faintly in the air.

Subject 425 remembered the first fawn it had ever hunted.

The white-coated humans had taken it outside for the first time and placed a young spotted deer before it.

The fawn’s slender, trembling legs, its terror-filled eyes, and the instinctive movement as it turned to flee had awakened Subject 425’s hunting impulses almost immediately.

Just like now.

The quiver in the kitchen stirred those instincts once more.

In its mind, the young deer appeared again.

But this prey smelled far sweeter.

He possessed something Subject 425 desired with a desperation it could not comprehend.

If possible, it did not intend to consume him all at once. That would be wasteful.

It wanted to incorporate him into its hyphae.

Into its flesh.

Into the foundations of its existence.

Sticky filaments spread across the kitchen, weaving a soundless web for the sake of capturing a single quarry.

Subject 425 heard the young man’s unsteady breathing as he moved frantically through the confined room.

Each time the hyphae struck, he narrowly evaded them.

Subject 425 did not become suspicious.

It did not even take the chase seriously.

Perhaps it was deliberately allowing its prey room to struggle.

The human seemed so weak.

During its first hunt, Subject 425 had watched the fawn flee blindly through the forest with a strange, almost playful curiosity.

It did not normally toy with its prey.

Yet now it found itself enjoying the human’s trembling breaths—and the scent that grew richer with his fear and exertion.

It was, after all, a terribly greedy hunter.

Still, the game needed to end soon.

Otherwise, it would not be able to savor its prey properly.

Subject 425 accelerated.

Its hyphae twisted together, becoming harder than steel and sharper than a blade.

They swept toward the prey’s legs like the stroke of a reaper.

This time, the creature did not restrain its speed.

An orange-red beam of concentrated heat met the attack head-on.

For an instant, the ray illuminated the darkness.

Subject 425 saw the beautiful prey’s pale lips trembling. His eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his glasses, concealing his expression.

The weapon in his hands, however, remained astonishingly steady.

The searing beam destroyed two of Subject 425’s eyes.

Recoiling from the sudden injury, the creature halted its attack and withdrew into the shadows beneath the kitchen cabinets.

Had that been planned?

Or was it merely chance?

Subject 425 could not determine the answer.

Even a harmless herbivore would lash out with hooves or horns when driven beyond endurance.

Usually, such resistance only meant that the animal had reached the end of its escape.

Subject 425 wanted to remain cautious.

But time was running out.

It could hear reinforcements approaching outside.

If it intended to carry away this irresistibly enticing prey, it had to act now.

The little monster struck again.

It hurled shards of glass toward the young man’s face, while concealing its true attack in the darkness from another direction.

Tang Xiao instinctively raised the weapon and fired at the incoming glass.

In doing so, he exposed himself to the real assault approaching from his side.

Caught you.

Subject 425 could already see the fawn trapped at the end of its flight.

It imagined the animal raising its vulnerable neck.

Without hesitation, the hunter concealed within the shadows lunged toward the opening.

Crimson blossomed across the white laboratory coat.

Tang Xiao raised one arm to shield his chest as the creature seized him.

The instant Subject 425 touched his skin, its remaining reason was overwhelmed by instinct.

Hunger flooded every part of its consciousness.

Because of that, the little monster failed to notice that there was no fear on its unusual prey’s face.

There was only excitement.

The fierce joy of someone standing on the brink of success.

Tang Xiao grinned in the darkness.

His expression carried a wildness even he had never seen in himself.

The fawn truly had been driven to the end of its path.

But it had chosen where that path would end.

It stood at the edge of a cliff hidden by tall grass, offering itself as bait.

The instant the predator leaped, hunter and prey exchanged places.

Subject 425 raised its eyes.

Behind the reflective lenses, it saw Tang Xiao’s gaze.

Cold.

Mechanical.

Utterly without mercy.

Those were the eyes of a hunter.

A fungal organism possessed no heart, but in that moment every biological signal and every neural impulse within Subject 425 descended into chaos.

The soul that had never wavered since the day of its creation began to tremble.

An unfamiliar and impossibly complex emotion spread through every strand of its body.

Subject 425 did not yet understand what that emotion meant.

Tang Xiao spun without hesitation, dragging both his captured arm and the creature attached to it into the preheated oil.

The sudden heat overwhelmed the bloodred filaments, causing them to wither almost instantly.

And amid that unbearable blaze, the prey seized the hunter—

and pulled it down with him into a bottomless abyss.