My Monster Keeps Eating Me

Chapter 1-Game Start

Morning sunlight spilled gently across the waking city.

In an urban village tucked into the heart of downtown, industrious vendors had already set up their breakfast stalls. Office workers with eight-o’clock shifts streamed out of the apartment buildings, snatching up fried dough sticks and steamed buns on their way to the subway.

The instant a strip of dough slipped into the hot oil, it erupted in a cheerful hiss, filling the street with the warmth and bustle of ordinary life.

Inside a rented apartment, a phone call jolted Tang Xiao awake just as he had finally drifted off after staying up for most of the night.

He lifted his head in a daze and glanced at the phone beside him.

The caller ID read: Little Li.

It was a video call.

Tang Xiao swiped the screen with long, slender fingers, and a handsome face he had known since childhood appeared before him.

“Those dark circles are awful. Were you up all night again?”

“Yeah. Double gifts last night.”

Tang Xiao yawned. The shadows beneath his eyes were dark enough to earn him honorary-panda status.

Li Mu clicked his tongue on the other end of the call. “Your roommate told me you skipped class yesterday.”

Tang Xiao opened a game as he answered, his voice hoarse from lack of sleep. “Don’t you have anything better to do than investigate me?”

“Not really. The project in my lab failed recently, and our principal investigator has been in a foul mood. Luckily, we got some unexpected results during the experiments, so we’ve shifted our focus in that direction—”

Li Mu abruptly stopped.

“Wait. Don’t change the subject. You still haven’t answered me.”

Tang Xiao switched the phone to his other hand. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. It’s not like I plan to make a living with this degree. As long as I graduate, that’s enough.”

“Well, that’s true. Worst case, you can always go work for your family’s company…”

Li Mu muttered for a moment, but since Tang Xiao clearly had plans of his own, he did not bother lecturing him further. His childhood friend was hardly in danger of starving to death.

“If you’re serious about becoming a gaming streamer,” Li Mu continued, “you should try that game everyone’s talking about. It’s supposed to be insanely difficult. A lot of professional players have already failed. If you manage to clear it, you might become famous overnight.”

The mention of an exceptionally difficult game caught Tang Xiao’s interest.

“What’s it called?”

“The Mycelial Age.”

Tang Xiao immediately closed the game he had just opened and checked his email. His inbox was drowning in spam, but one particular message caught his eye at once.

You Have Been Invited to the Closed Beta of The Mycelial Age.

“So they really did send me one.”

Muttering to himself, Tang Xiao began searching online for information about the game.

Strangely enough, although The Mycelial Age had sparked widespread discussion, very few screenshots or videos had surfaced. After searching for quite some time, Tang Xiao managed to piece together only the broad outline.

The game was supposedly set in a world overrun by fungi, where the remnants of humanity struggled to survive within isolated strongholds.

Then Tang Xiao’s hand froze on the mouse.

His finger stopped just before scrolling past a rare leaked image.

The picture showed a peculiar bloodred creature.

It was roughly the size of a dinner plate.

A creature was the only word that seemed remotely appropriate. Some people had even questioned whether it could be considered an animal at all. It possessed neither recognizable organs nor skin, and one glance was enough to tell that such a thing could never have arisen naturally.

The visible portions of its body resembled bundles of muscle fiber, woven together into an irregular sphere. As those fibers pulsed, several eyeballs concealed within them emerged, glaring viciously toward the camera.

One look was all it took for Tang Xiao to become entranced.

His sense of beauty had always been somewhat unconventional. The fluffy animals adored by most people held little appeal for him. Instead, he was fascinated by creatures that ordinary people found disturbing—newborn aye-ayes, star-nosed moles, and other such oddities.

There was a certain beauty in the absurd, in forms that exceeded the boundaries of human imagination.

It captivated him.

His phone’s photo gallery was filled mostly with high-definition images of Lovecraftian creatures. When he had applied to college, he had inexplicably listed biology as his third choice, driven by a subconscious desire to seek out the strange organisms that might—or might not—exist somewhere on Earth.

Of course, after he was actually reassigned to the biology program, he discovered that real biology was nothing like what he had imagined.

The monsters found in video games were much closer to his tastes.

Tang Xiao stared at the picture for five full minutes before slowly exhaling and clicking Save.

He was already beginning to look forward to the game.

…

Three days later, the full-dive headset arrived.

Tang Xiao put it on immediately and launched the game.

The login screen was unremarkable: a futuristic interface bathed in technological blue. There was no character customization and no class selection.

There was only a disclaimer.

This game is currently in closed beta. If you experience any discomfort during gameplay, please log out immediately. The game does not currently feature a resurrection system. Proceed with caution.

Please regard this world as your second life.

An interesting warning.

Tang Xiao had not spent the three days waiting for the headset in idleness. He had searched online for every guide and scrap of information he could find.

According to the rumors, the entire game was monitored and managed by artificial intelligence. Players were not confined to any established style of play. It was a completely open, highly realistic sandbox, and even the main storyline differed from one player to another.

Most importantly, the game was difficult.

Extremely difficult.

Judging from the complaints of the beta testers, there was no resurrection mechanic whatsoever. Death was final. Some players had even been killed by monsters the instant they entered the game, without ever understanding what had happened.

A brutally difficult game.

That alone was enough to seize Tang Xiao’s interest.

Beneath the headset, the corner of his mouth curved upward. He checked the box confirming that he had read the disclaimer and began the game without hesitation.

“May you survive in safety. Enjoy the game.”

A cold mechanical voice sounded beside his ear.

Tang Xiao opened his eyes within the darkness.

“Hurry up. Take off your clothes.”

Things were getting exciting rather quickly.

Tang Xiao surveyed his surroundings and found himself standing in a cold, sterile room resembling either a changing room or a decontamination chamber.

“Take off your clothes and disinfect yourselves.”

A man in a white lab coat stood inside the chamber. An identification badge hung from his chest. He cast a cold glance at Tang Xiao, who had yet to move.

“Is this the quality of the new recruits these days? How did someone this slow-witted even get selected?”

A line of information appeared above the man.

Ferdinand Babbitt — Researcher, Third Eye

The corner of Tang Xiao’s mouth twitched. He had no choice but to follow the others, disinfecting his hands, removing his outer clothing, and changing into the white lab coat that had been prepared for him.

Once everyone had completed the decontamination process, the guards departed.

Babbitt led them through the exit and into the corridor beyond, explaining their circumstances as they walked.

“You have been selected by Third Eye to serve as laboratory assistants. You should consider it an honor. There are many rules within this facility…”

Tang Xiao listened for a while and gradually pieced together the relevant information.

The identity he had been assigned was that of a minor newcomer to the organization—a future research grunt destined to perform the laboratory’s most tedious work.

Third Eye, meanwhile, was one of the game world’s most infamous criminal research organizations. It was a gathering place for mad scientists who specialized in developing all manner of bizarre biological weapons.

Tang Xiao had not expected to be dropped directly into the enemy’s headquarters the moment he logged in.

Was this supposed to be nightmare difficulty from the very beginning?

His main storyline would probably take place within this research facility.

But what exactly would it involve?

Destroying the facility?

Infiltrating the organization as a spy?

Tang Xiao was still considering how he might trigger his main quest when Babbitt led the group into the central section of the laboratory.

A faintly mysterious smile appeared on the researcher’s face.

“You’re fortunate. You still have a chance to see it before it’s disposed of.”

He turned toward the recruits.

“Look carefully, newcomers. 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.”

Everyone looked up curiously.

Tang Xiao was no exception.

He turned toward the enclosure beyond the bulletproof glass.

The moment he saw what was inside, his pupils contracted involuntarily.

The game’s real-time monitoring system registered a sharp increase in his heart rate.

It appealed to his tastes even more than he had imagined.

A photograph could never compare to seeing the creature with his own eyes.

The small bloodred monster writhed slowly beyond the bulletproof glass, leaving thick, stringy trails behind it. Viewed directly, the fibers composing its body did not resemble muscle at all. They were closer to some form of fungal hyphae.

They looked like delicate blood vessels stripped from beneath flesh and skin, left exposed to the air.

As the crimson filaments gathered and separated, orange-yellow eyes with vertical pupils appeared between them. Like a non-Newtonian fluid, the eyes seemed capable of surfacing on any side of the irregular sphere.

Grotesque.

Uncanny.

Was it a fungus?

An animal?

A plant?

It was impossible to say.

It seemed to possess characteristics of all three, yet it remained fundamentally distinct from each of them. Its existence contradicted everything modern biology understood. No established system of classification could contain it.

It stood entirely beyond the borders of science.

A faint, instinctive terror rose from the depths of their genes, screaming at them to distance themselves from the creature.

The expressions of everyone present changed, as though they had encountered a natural predator from far above them on the food chain.

Tang Xiao’s expression changed as well.

A trace of color crept unconsciously into his cheeks. The muscles around his eyes trembled as reason and madness pulled him in opposite directions.

Reason urged him to retreat.

Madness clamored for him to move closer.

Closer.

He wanted a better look at this beautiful monster.

Tang Xiao unconsciously took a step forward.

The movement made him stand out among the new recruits.

He did not notice the laboratory’s ventilation system slowly operating overhead.

At that exact moment, the flow of air shifted.

The monster went still for two seconds.

Then, under the astonished gazes of everyone present, the dinner-plate-sized creature crossed the laboratory almost instantaneously and slammed into the bulletproof glass.

Several recruits standing nearby recoiled in terror, nearly crashing into the laboratory tables behind them.

The impact tore Tang Xiao from his trance as well.

Across the transparent wall, bloodred fibers writhed and twisted. Eyeballs pressed themselves against the glass, rolling wetly in their sockets.

The creature resembled a wolf that had caught the scent of meat.

With olfactory receptors that might not even exist, it seemed to search for every molecule of scent drifting through the air.

The hair on the back of Tang Xiao’s neck stood on end.

His heart rate climbed so rapidly that the game nearly issued a warning.

What was it… smelling?

Tang Xiao retreated instinctively into the crowd.

The recruits around him whispered among themselves, but their presence offered him no sense of security.

The creature’s strange orange-yellow pupils were staring directly toward his position.

Sweat gathered in Tang Xiao’s palms.

For reasons he could not explain, meeting the bloodred monster’s gaze nearly sent goose bumps across his entire body.

Within that solitary eye was an emotion so intense that even a human could interpret it without difficulty.

It was so vicious, so malevolent, that Tang Xiao felt his heart begin to sink.

It was an all-consuming…

Greed.

And hunger.

Although the monster was the one imprisoned inside the laboratory, Tang Xiao felt no safer for the glass between them.

Instead, he had the unsettling impression that he was the prey trapped inside a cage—waiting to be washed, arranged on a platter, and served as the creature’s dinner.

Everyone’s breathing had grown heavy.

A blond man asked curiously, “Dr. Babbitt, is that bulletproof glass truly secure? Can the creature see us from inside?”

“It cannot,” Babbitt replied in a grave voice. “You have nothing to fear. This entire experimental enclosure was constructed from the strongest materials available. Even the ventilation ducts are lined with PESA composite. There is no possibility of it detecting our scent.”

“PESA composite…”

At the mention of the material, the blond man visibly relaxed.

Babbitt strode toward the control panel and pressed a button.

A violent electrical current surged through the inner layer of glass. The creature clinging to the wall was instantly scorched by the resulting heat and fell away from the surface.

“It usually lies around half-dead. I have no idea why it’s so agitated today.”

Babbitt looked back at the group.

“In any case, you may relax. Subject 425 cannot escape this enclosure. It is nothing more than a failed specimen. It will be disposed of in a few days.”

Main Storyline Initiated

As Tang Xiao’s gaze met the cluster of eyes across the room, a game interface suddenly appeared before him.

Main Quest: Raise Subject 425 into the King of Fungi and obtain maximum Affection with Subject 425.

Reward: Title — Caretaker of the Fungal King

Title Effect: The holder gains limited authority over fungal life-forms.

Tang Xiao stared blankly at the notification.

What was this supposed to mean?

Who was 425?

That monster?

Wait.

Was this some kind of dating game?

And his romance target was not even human?

Had the gaming industry really become this adventurous?

“You called it a failed specimen,” the blond man said, interrupting Tang Xiao’s shock. “Wasn’t it part of your principal research initiative?”

“I said if the project succeeded.”

Babbitt showed no trace of regret.

“Unfortunately, the experiment has already failed. We have wasted too much time, and the higher-ups have run out of patience. This specimen will be disposed of soon.”

He gestured dismissively toward the enclosure.

“When I referred to the principal initiative, I meant the objective shared by this entire research facility. There are many laboratories involved in related experiments. This is only one of them.”

His gaze swept across the recruits.

“In any case, none of that concerns you. It has not yet been decided which laboratories you will be assigned to.”

The others relaxed immediately.

None of them wanted to waste their careers in a laboratory destined to be shut down. They were still dreaming of promotions and higher salaries.

Tang Xiao, however, frowned.

Disposed of?

What would happen to his quest if they destroyed the creature?

Before he could give the matter further thought, Babbitt had already lost interest in remaining there after the disturbance.

“Come. I’ll show you the other sections of the facility.”

The other recruits followed Babbitt eagerly out of the room.

Tang Xiao remained at the rear of the group.

An inexplicable sensation tugged at him, compelling him to glance back just before the door closed.

The monster formed from bloodred hyphae had lifted most of its body from the cold floor.

Its orange-yellow eye had pressed too close to the electrified glass. The heat had cooked it black, and its charred structure was slowly sinking back into the surrounding fibers.

Yet the tips of its filaments continued to writhe through the air.

They stretched toward the doorway.

Toward Tang Xiao.

A faint numbness prickled across the back of his skull.

He turned away at once and hurried after the others.

Because of that, he failed to see what happened once everyone had left.

The bloodred creature slowly climbed into the ventilation duct.

The perfectly fitted material that should have been all but indestructible began to dissolve beneath the acidic substance secreted by the monster.