It missed.

  Fresh sweat beaded on Nicole’s forehead. In the middle of this frantic chase, a darkly funny thought hit her, forcing a bitter smile. Even now, her mind could produce a joke this grim. The sadder part? She was the punchline.

  “Am I… really going to laugh myself to death here?”

  Nicole managed a strained grin. But her eyes held no humor. Only one thought burned:

  Survive.

  I have to survive!

  Even if… not for me, then for my sister!

  I have to live!

  With that fire in her chest, Nicole suddenly slammed to a stop, planting herself in the middle of the fog-soaked street.

  The Rot-Spider behind her seemed thrown by the prey’s sudden halt, but its hunting instinct drove it to strike with even more fury!

  Boom!

  The concrete where she’d just stood exploded. Debris and dust flew.

  But Nicole was ready. Before the pursuing appendage could fully materialize from the haze, she violently opened her mouth—and spat out a thick, spherical gland mixed with her own blood.

  The crimson, blood-streaked gland traced a tragic arc through the air, landing perfectly on the Rot-Spider’s body.

  KABOOM—!

  The gland detonated on contact with the chitin. Strange green flames, igniting on air, erupted into a roaring fire that swallowed the huge mutated monster.

  SCREEEEE——!!!

  The Rot-Spider shrieked in agony, several times louder than when it was blinded.

  The situation seemed to turn? No.

  Nicole knew her trick wouldn’t last. Her condition was too bad. Every violent move, every sharp breath, drained her life faster.

  Her face was paper-white.

  She spun around. The mental map of the city, etched from countless intelligence runs, shone crystal clear in her mind. She racked her brain, searching for any nearby safe spot she owned.

  The perk of being an “Information Broker” was this. Even fleeing blind, she knew exactly where she was, better than anyone. Even in this fog, she could pinpoint her location from memory.

  Only, the nearest safe house was still far…

  Huh?

  What was that sound?

  While running, Nicole’s ears picked up a strange noise from deep in the fog. A… rhythm? Music?

  What the…?

  She tried to focus. The sound seemed to have been there a while, but she’d been so fixed on the monster behind her, she hadn’t noticed until now. Only in that split-second lapse did she really hear it.

  No! Not the time!

  Nicole gritted her teeth, turning to sprint toward the safe house in her memory.

  But as if pulled by some unseen force, for no reason she could name, her body turned on its own toward the source of the music.

  And…

  She ran toward it at full speed.

  ………………

  The music… is coming from here?

  Listening to the hard, rhythmic beat—some kind of raw rock medley blasting with energy—Nicole stared at the structure before her. Was it a subway entrance? An underground walkway? Her feelings were a tangled, bizarre mess.

  This music… is way too hyped up! Seriously!

  This pumped-up vibe clashed absurdly with her current state—mortally wounded, running for her life. She even regretted following that sporadic, half-baked “business intuition” of hers to come here. If she’d gone straight for the safe spot, she might be halfway there by now!

  No time for regrets. The Rot-Spider hadn’t caught up yet, but she had to decide…

  Nicole’s mind raced. Her expression shifted several times. Finally, she clenched her jaw.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I’ll risk it! Sis, bless your big sister’s gut this time!”

  With that, Nicole darted forward and, without a second thought, leaped into the dark, yawning mouth of the passage.

  The world below wasn’t what she expected. Not a subway station. Not an underground walkway.

  But a… huge, long-abandoned underground shopping arcade.

  She scanned the area fast, surprised. This place wasn’t in her intel network!

  —Then again, in this city, forgotten spots like this were common. Missing one from the network was understandable. The Ruined City was huge. No matter how good she was, she couldn’t verify every inch personally.

  Even without full intel, as a top-tier broker, she knew the basics of this pre-collapse arcade type. Knew they were often mazes. Easy to get lost in.

  What was weird, though…

  Plip.

  A drop of icy water fell from some unseen pipe, landing by Nicole’s foot. Her expression turned odd.

  Weird as it sounded, aside from the music… it was actually “quiet” here. Too quiet. Not a single person… no, not a single zombie.

  Come to think of it, along the way here, the zombies she’d seen—both normal and mutated—had been unusually few…

  Could they have been… cleared out?

  Gritting through the pain, Nicole carefully checked the traces around her. She saw bloodstains. Lots of them. Everywhere.

  From the spray patterns, drips, and drag marks, whoever did this had seriously refined combat skills. Mostly one-hit kills. Clean. Efficient.

  But the strange thing was—no bodies. Not even signs of bodies being dragged off.

  Her focus, though, locked on another detail.

  These combat traces were fresh.

  Very, very fresh.

  Suddenly, the music stopped.

  Just like that. One second it was blasting, the next it was dead silent. Like someone hit a mute button on the whole underground arcade.

  The driving rock beat that had filled the space vanished.

  Nicole paused for a split second, her mind trying to process the bizarre change, when an overwhelming wave of rot and icy fog rushed at her from behind.

  The Rot-Spider. It was here.

  Nicole’s expression tightened. She didn’t hesitate. Before her body had even registered the shock of the silence, her feet were already moving, shoving her forward. She followed the rough direction from memory, sprinting toward a dark fork in the passage ahead to the right.

  Where… where was the source of the music?!

  The abandoned underground arcade was getting visitors. And it turned out, today, it wasn’t just one group.

  Nicole was in the second group.

  She fled through the twisting, dark corridors, heart pounding with a frantic anxiety. As the crushing pressure from behind got closer, the anxiety wound tighter and tighter around her chest. She started doubting her own judgment.

  That flaky, unreliable broker’s intuition of hers…

  Was that music just a “fleeting glitch” from some old equipment? Maybe there was no one down here at all? Was the music a hallucination? A misfire in her brain from her wounds?

  Was there no safe spot here?

  Thoughts crashed through her mind. Anxiety poured out as cold sweat. Her steps grew unsteady from the exertion…

  Suddenly, she slammed to a halt.

  All the anxiety, the doubt, the racing thoughts were wiped clean by an invisible hand.

  “Sway to the beat! Hey! Summer’s wild dream!”

  “(Hey!) Shake off the chains, let the sweat gleam!”

  “Jump to the drum! Hey! The galaxy will scream!”

  “(Whoa!) Tonight, we are freedom’s beam!”

  The music was back.

  But the light, peppy synth-pop tune didn’t capture a shred of her attention now.

  Because the figure at the end of the dark corridor, standing in a patch of light, those eyes—they seized every bit of her focus.

  There… really was someone at the source.

  Her gut was right!

  Only, what stood before her was a girl who looked about fourteen. Her expression was calm. In one hand, she held a sword—its blade narrow and long, reflecting a gross, bloody sheen under the flickering RGB lights of nearby speakers.

  She looked tired. Her small frame rose and fell slightly with each breath. Her face was pale, like someone anemic from being a picky eater.

  If Nicole were an ordinary person, she might think this was just a lost, scared, sickly kid. Not the “sliver of hope” she was looking for…

  But Nicole wasn’t ordinary.

  Her perception, sharpened as a broker and boosted by her “Corpse-Plague Acolyte” abilities, let her see clearly what was hidden deep in this seemingly frail girl’s eyes:

  Bloodlust. Madness…

  She was anything but ordinary.

  Who was she? Why was there no record—not a trace—of this girl in her intel network?

  The girl noticed her too. Those eyes, which seemed to swirl with crimson light, turned toward her with casual indifference.

  Then her voice—flat, like asking if she’d eaten—cut through the noisy music backdrop, sounding clear in Nicole’s ears.

  “Who are you?”

  The question itself held no threat.

  But the moment those three words hit Nicole’s ears, a tangible, intense sense of danger exploded from every cell in her body. A soul-deep feeling of imminent death erupted through her whole being.

  “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead…”

  Horrifying visions flooded her mind uncontrollably. Nicole saw “herself” being severed limb from limb by countless invisible, terrifying blades until she died a gruesome death.

  It felt like… if she misspoke even one word in her answer, the very next moment, she’d die horribly on the spot.

  Nicole’s intuition was sharp. In the flood of near-death hallucinations, she could faintly tell these fatal illusions were directly caused by something this calm-looking girl had done.

  But the truly lethal, “erasing” threat—the one that felt like it would slice her to pieces—didn’t come entirely from the girl in front of her. At least, she didn’t detect a flicker of obvious killing intent in those calm eyes.

  Yet… she felt it clearly. That emotionless killing intent aimed purely at “erasing” her seemed to come from… everywhere? How was that possible?

  Nicole didn’t dare follow that thought. She quickly shoved down the turmoil and all her questions, answering in as steady a voice as she could, keeping it short.

  “We are not enemies.”

  “...So we’re friends then?”

  The girl’s tone stayed flat.

  But… that suffocating killing intent from all around seemed to ease up a bit after her reply?

  Nicole didn’t really want to answer. “Not enemies” covered a lot—strangers, passersby, business contacts. “Friends” was narrower. It implied a bond. A degree of… responsibility.

  But…

  “Yes.”

  Nicole answered anyway.

  As the word left her lips, the killing intent that had felt ready to flay her alive began to fade, until she couldn’t sense it anymore…

  Nicole wasn’t sure if the hidden “killer” had really left, but she understood she was safe for now.

  She let out a long, quiet sigh of relief.

  She looked again at this seemingly young, deeply mysterious girl, and felt… a sudden spark of recognition. A feeling rose up: she knew how to talk to this girl. Be frank. Direct. Don’t overthink it. State her purpose and needs straight out.

  The feeling was familiar. It was a bit like how she talked to her slightly airheaded, shut-in little sister.

  The similarity was maybe thirty percent. But it should be enough.