Chapter 321: The First Player's Death

Underground Parking Garage.

The air is filled with the sharp sting of evaporated gasoline, mingled with the rotting odor unique to Mutants.

The emergency lights overhead have long since shattered, leaving only a few that stubbornly flicker, cutting the darkness into irregular, grim white patches.

Zhang Wei rides atop a Mutant Giant Dog.

The dog's spine, swollen beyond limit, has pierced its flesh, and the exposed Bone Spikes are slick with congealed black blood. With each step, the sound of its claws shattering floor tiles ricochets through the cavernous garage.

Zhang Wei straddles the dog's flanks with his legs, while his right hand holds aloft the intricately engraved Seal of Domination.

The seal emits a dim red glow, casting his whole face in stark chiaroscuro.

Behind him, a mass of dozens of people follows like a black tide.

Calling them humans is not quite accurate.

The survivors bound by the seal have long lost any independent thought. Their sclerae are rolled to a thin slit, drool clings to their mouths, and their steps are mechanical and orderly, producing a rapid "pat‑pat" on the floor.

Around the perimeter of the living human formation, seven or eight tamed Mutants glide.

Some resemble skin‑stripped giant lizards, others sprout countless human fingers, writhing in dense masses. Bound tightly by the seal's Rules, they circle Zhang Wei's squad, patrolling and emitting low throaty sounds.

This grotesque army is driving a man toward a dead end.

In the deepest part of the garage, beside an overturned van.

A man in his thirties kneels in a pool of blood.

His left arm is missing from below the elbow, the raw bone ends jutting starkly outward; the blood has dried, leaving only dark‑red flesh clinging to shredded cloth. His shirt is torn into strips, exposing deep gouges that reveal bone between his ribs.

He is a holder of a Divine Gift.

Ten minutes earlier, he tried to use the handheld device that grants brief acceleration to escape.

But Zhang Wei blocked every Exit with thirty living humans.

The man's knees are submerged in his own blood; he lifts his crippled right hand, his voice trembling into incoherent fragments.

"Please... please..."

"I'll give you the thing, just let me go..."

"I still have a wife and child..."

Zhang Wei tilts his head, taps his chin, and nods at the one‑armed man.

"You know, when you were running earlier."

He leans half‑out from the dog's back, his tone airy.

"I counted; you ran from that corner to here, passing seventeen vehicles in total."

"I hid two people behind the third vehicle."

"A Mutant crouches beneath the ninth vehicle."

"There are three more beside the fifteenth vehicle."

"You didn't notice any of it."

Zhang Wei raises his index finger and swings it side to side.

"What does that indicate?"

"It shows you don't deserve to take this."

"You're too cowardly; even with power, you can't change that inherent flaw."

"I'm not being cruel; I'm merely aiding nature's natural selection."

The man's lips tremble, trying to speak, but only garbled bubbling sounds emerge from his throat.

Zhang Wei loses his patience.

He lifts his right hand and swings forward carelessly.

From the blurry‑faced slave formation behind the dog, four of the biggest emerge, clutching assorted metal tools scavenged from the garage—crowbars, jack levers, and ripped car‑door hinges.

The four surround him.

No hesitation.

The first strike lands on the man's back, his spine cracking sharply; he collapses, spitting a froth of blood mixed with broken teeth.

The second blow hits his right wrist.

That pleading hand, along with the Divine Gift clutched inside, is smashed into the floor‑tile cracks.

Zhang Wei sits on the dog's back, his legs swinging.

He closes his eyes, tilts his head, and presses his ear toward the source of the sound.

A dull thud of breaking bone.

The "puk‑ji" of muscle being repeatedly bludgeoned.

At first the man shrieks in agony, his high‑pitched wail making the Mutants in the garage twitch their heads irritably. The scream dwindles to a whimper, then only the muffled thud of metal striking wet flesh remains.

Zhang Wei's expression is one of enjoyment.

It's not the manic grin of a killer, but something far more chilling.

He is savoring it.

Like a gourmand tasting a meticulously prepared dish, he discerns each layer and texture of the sounds.

The low‑level employee who, three months ago, was summoned back and forth in the office pantry, has now fully transformed into a different creature.

The cadence of falling metal grows sparser.

Zhang Wei opens his eyes.

The heap on the ground no longer resembles a human shape; broken bones and rotting flesh mingle, soaked in blood into a dark‑brown sludge. The four slaves stand listlessly nearby, their tools still dripping viscous fluid.

A thumb‑sized red crystal drifts slowly up from the pile of shredded flesh.

It hovers in mid‑air, emitting a lurid red glow that stains the surrounding few meters in a hellish hue.

Divine Gift.

Zhang Wei's pupils contracted sharply.

He flipped off the giant dog's back, leapt down, covered three steps in two, rushed over, and seized that crystal in his palm.

Scalding.

The crystal's temperature was absurdly high; the skin of his palm emitted white vapor the instant it touched, and a burnt smell spread.

Zhang Wei didn't care.

He pulled his fist back to his chest, clenching his five fingers tightly, and the red light seeping between his knuckles grew brighter.

The red crystal shattered into countless tiny specks of light, drilling under his skin along his palm lines. Those specks spread along meridians and blood vessels, burning from his arm to his shoulder, then surging into his chest cavity.

Zhang Wei let out a discordant howl.

It wasn't pain.

It was pleasure.

That sensation of power seeping out from the gaps in his bones was even more exhilarating than the first time he tamed the giant dog.

Rule Power surged within his body, flushing every nerve ending, flushing every cell.

But the price for just having used the power arrived as well.

His hair.

His once jet‑black, thick hair began fading from the roots at a visibly rapid rate.

Black turned to gray, gray to silver‑white, and finally to a dull, lifeless pallor.

As if it had aged forty years overnight.

The seal is overdrawn on his life force.

Zhang Wei lowered his head, stared at his sickly white strands hanging before his eyes, and froze for half a second.

Then he smiled.

Not a bitter smile, a genuine laugh.

He laughed, his shoulders shaking up and down.

"Price?"

He swept his pallid hair back, his gesture flamboyantly exaggerated.

"What does this broken hair count as a price?"

"Before, to bow low before Liu Qiang's dog, I looked in the mirror every day and felt disgusted with myself."

"Now?"

He spread his hands, feeling the overwhelming power nearly spilling from his palms.

The seal's Rule Power combined with the energy of a second Divine Gift, forming a terrifying resonance inside him.

A faint hum began in the air, the floor tiles beneath his feet cracked into fine fissures, and the surrounding slaves and Mutants stepped back two paces in unison.

Zhang Wei lifted his head.

On the garage ceiling, dirty water seeped down through gaps in the Reinforced Steel Bar concrete.

He stared at those stains, the red light of the Divine Gift reflected in his pupils.

"God."

When that word left his mouth, it carried an unabashed obsession.

"I am God."

"What does Liu Qiang matter? What does Wang Dayong matter? What do those bastards stepping on my head matter?"

"Ants."

"All are ants."

He lowered his head, his pallid long hair hanging beside his face, paired with eyes reddened by the red light, looking exactly like a lunatic who'd escaped a mental asylum.

He pulled out his phone.

The screen was half shattered, but the Blood Moon game's Radar interface was still running. Of the fourteen red dots, one had already been erased by his own hand.

The remaining red dots continued to drift slowly across the map.

Zhang Wei's gaze swept over, locking onto a lone point lingering toward the Abandoned Factory.

Motionless.

Just staying there quietly in place.

Isolated and unsupported.

Zhang Wei licked his cracked lips. As his tongue brushed the corner, he tasted a rust‑like metallic blood flavor, unsure whether it was someone else's or his own.

"Another little mouse."

He shoved the phone back into his pocket, flipped and mounted the giant dog.

One hand patted the protruding bone armor on the giant dog's head, as effortlessly as a knight handling a horse.

"Depart."

His voice echoed through the garage.

Behind him, dozens of slaves stepped forward in unison. The Mutants let out excited roars, their claws sparking strings of fire on the ground.

This army, a mix of living humans and monsters, surged grandly toward the garage Exit.

The moment the Giant Dog surged up the ramp, the blood‑red moonlight poured overhead, making Zhang Wei's pallid hair glaringly conspicuous.

He stood on the Giant Dog's back, spread his arms, facing the fetid night wind, and bared his teeth toward the distant red dot.

"Wait for me to reap you."

"Just gather them all."

That's enough to make a wish.

The giant dog's claws shattered a withered corpse on the road, carrying its master and slave horde, and vanished at the far end of the blood‑red street.

In the garage behind, only that pool of shredded flesh, its features no longer discernible, still emitted its final wisp of heat in the lingering warmth.