"Fuck." Wu Xiaoming shook his head. He did not expect this - nor did he have the time. If this "dungeon" or "memory replay" was like anything he had endured and braved through before, it would not allow a "normal exit", which, if he had a lot of time he would not object, but right now he happened to be in a bit of a time crunch.
He took a deep breath, walked out the door, focused on the backs of the necks of two zombies closest to him and uttered: "Slash!"
Clean, smooth, and not at all bloody, two zombies were decapitated by just one attack. The final one turned around and tried to lunge at Wu Xiaoming, but got instantly decapitated as well.
Wu Xiaoming approached the bodies and heads. None of the pieces looked very bloody or gruesome. There were blood stains and what looked like dangling guts, the bodies of the zombies were covered in rags, sores and other wounds, but everything looked just too - cartoony. The colors were too bright, too high in contrast, not dirty enough, and the blood and gore just looked exaggerated and plastic.
"Childish" or "Child-like" was probably the word for it. It was like what one would imagine what a young kid would imagine zombies and corpses would be like.
More zombies were wandering in the road ahead, and another shiny object was up ahead - a glowing sign at the end of the road.
"Alrighty." Wu Xiaoming came back into the house to search. Since this was very likely an illusion created from the imagination of a child, then maybe some kind of cartoony weapon would exist. Maybe a glowing, flaming sword? Or a gun that would shoot rainbows and cupcakes.
He did find a weapon on the second floor inside what looked like a child's room - a squirt gun.
"Squirt Gun: this innocent weapon could not stop what happened; cannot not exist beyond the limbo."
"Limbo", probably a more suitable word to describe this kind of "micro-realm" than "illusion". He checked the gun itself, it was filled with water - the water was showing a slightly red color, from the consistency it looked more like water color or paint, instead of blood.
He moved forward, another small group of three zombies were standing by the wall, all of them facing it. He snuck up behind them, then squirted a splash of water on the back of one zombie.
The zombie was only slightly disturbed. It looked back at Wu Xiaoming, its crooked mouth with ripped and swollen skin opened and let out a growl.
"Slash." He took a step back and repeated his last attack.
This time, the energy slash decapitated only one zombie, while leaving another's neck half-sliced. The zombie that took no damage lunged at Wu Xiaoming, but was once again brought down by another energy slash.
The squirt gun was useless against the zombies, this much was for sure. He still put the squirt gun in his inventory, just in case he could use it somehow.
He continued forward, more zombies came at him, but they were all as weak as the first ones he encountered. He even tried to line up a few zombies and test how many heads could he sever with one "slash". The highest number he got vertically was four and a half, horizontally it was three. It was as if the zombies had particularly weak necks.
After clearly one large group of seven zombies, he was met with a sight he had not seen in this limbo - tents, at least seven tents just randomly laying about; some flat on the ground, some half erect. All of which were dirty and covered with stains, with a far more intense stench coming from them.
He approached them with careful steps, shifting his eyes left and right. Before long and just as he somewhat expected, a bald, muscular zombie crawled out of the tent closest to him. Different from others, this zombie had no legs, and had only bulked up arms.
"Slash!" Wu Xiaoming backed off and launched an attack.
The head of the zombie flew off from its neck, the top of the tent from which it came was cut open and smoke arose along with more stench - this time with the smell of human feces and sweat mixed in. Wu Xiaoming covered his nose and shot forward - these zombies barely dropped any currencies and gave him almost no experience, there was no reason to endure the smell.
More wandering zombies and crawling zombies from tents tried to block his way, but all were either cut down or run past without being much hindrance.
Before long, Wu Xiaoming reached a small lot of open space before the house at the end of the road. It was a colorful ice cream shop with a glowing billboard - rather out of place. Standing in front of the shop were three women - a blond woman in the middle, in a gray suit with a white sweater underneath; she had a pearl necklace, and was wearing a pair of black thick glasses and bob hair. The two women on the side, were also blondes with bob hair but with their faces completely covered by hair.
The blond in the middle raised her hands - she was holding a pen in her right hand and a tablet in her left. "Would you like to donate 90 percent of your brain for the brainless?"
"Uh - what?" Wu Xiaoming frowned, maintaining his distance from the three women. The zombies behind him were closing in, but they seemed to be unwilling to come close to these three women for some reason.
"Would you like to donate 90 percent of your brain for the brainless?" The blonde in the middle asked again, her voice more demanding this time. "You know, a regular human only uses 10 percent of their brain. You don't even need the other 90 percent. You should be a good person and donate it to those in need."
"Uh - " Wu Xiaoming was speechless for a moment. It was hard to imagine what would have caused this kind of character to appear inside of a limbo based on a child's imagination, but instinctively it could never be something good: "Thanks - I want to keep my brains - "
"You should donate." The two women with their faces covered by hair spoke at the same time, with eerily similar voices, almost identical in tone, pronunciation and pacing: "You should be a good person. You should donate."
"You don't need the 90 percent." The woman in the middle raised her voice along with her tablet at Wu Xiaoming: "You should donate. Think of the poor brainless around you. How can you be so selfish?!"
"No, thanks." Wu Xiaoming backed off a few steps and tried to go around the women so he could approach the ice cream shop: "I need all of my brain."
This answer seemed to have triggered something inside all three of these women. The one in the middle let out a high-pitched scream, the two faceless ones on the side hopped to her side and merged into her body - they became two long, crooked arms with long, sharp but shiny nails. At the same time, the body of the blonde in the middle exploded in size and became a fleshy mutated torso with skin drooping and shaking like melted rubber or mud - and with the newly attached two arms, the three women turned into a giant humanoid monster with only the upper body.
"DONATE YOUR BRAIN!" The blonde head screeched. It was the only part of this monster that was of normal size and shape. The two mutated arms closed in on Wu Xiaoming from both sides, its glistening nails thrusting at him like swords.
Wu Xiaoming hopped to the side, then jumped onto the stained wall and tried to move to the other side so that he could have some cover - he failed, an invisible wall pushed him back. It was the "edge" of this very limbo itself.
"Crash!" The creature's left arm bashed against the wall, crumbling it and forcing Wu Xiaoming to jump back down to the road.
Wu Xiaoming decapitated two zombies trying to ambush him, then jumped onto a one-storey building to his right. The creature tried to swing its left arm again at him, but he just charged forward and jumped onto the roof of a two-storey building in front of him. The grotesque arm collided with the houses, shaking them, breaking bricks and walls on them but was still not able to topple them.
"Slash!" Focusing on the inside of the creature's left elbow, Wu Xiaoming roared.
A huge gash appeared on the rubbery skin on the crooked arm. It was deep, and colorful internal content poured out almost instantly. Not blood, not flesh or bones, but fabric, cloth and ribbons - green, blue, pink, black, white, colors one would expect to see in fashion stores instead of from the wound of a giant abomination.
Not giving this much attention, Wu Xiaoming shot down from the roof and unleashed an energy blast at the wound, just as the creature screamed in pain.
"Boom!" The energy blast exploded from inside the wound, completely tearing the forearm off the elbow. Ripped and broken fabric shot all over the air, yet at the same time the right arm ram through the rain of rags and came right at Wu Xiaoming's location.
"Lighten!" Wu Xiaoming barked at his own body as he jumped upwards.
The lighter body and the forceful jump at the moment of urgency launched him into a height of almost three storeys high. Just as he pushed away a few pieces of fabric that were either on his face or blocking his view, the first thing that came into his view was a crooked, rubbery shoulder.