Just as Wu Xiaoming raised the baton above his head, the blonde female head on the monstrous shoulders opened her mouth wide - wider than any normal face could. A deafening screech exploded from between her sharp teeth and a shockwave blasted Wu Xiaoming away. The energy shield he conjured barely a second earlier was shattered, but it still absorbed quite a bit of the shock and impact.
Wu Xiaoming rolled on the ground and threw himself forward to get out of the way of an incoming palm slam. A thin layer of energy shield manifested around him again as he shot forward right at the belly of the creature.
But this time, another arm swiped him from his right side and he was sent flying into the wall. It was the creature's left arm - it somehow regained its shape after being torn. Just when he was about to get up, the creature's right palm was already above his head, coming down to crush him.
He jumped out of the way and swung his baton at this creature's right wrist, barking a loud "FUCK YOU" while at it.
Dark red energy flared, the creature's entire right hand and a major chunk of its forearm were incinerated in an instant. But just moments later, it began regrowing, fabric and skin that had been turned to dust re-manifested in the air and formed into its hand reconnecting its forearm.
This was definitely the first creature he had encountered that possessed this kind of almost instant recovery ability. Just like the zombies, it was almost a little cartoony. Common sense told him that this kind of recovery must be connected to an energy source somewhere, and if he destroyed the energy source it would be rendered powerless; the other way was to drain the energy it used to recover and regenerate with brute force. But something told him, there must be another way.
"Attack!" After dodging two consecutive attacks, he retaliated against the creature's right hand, blasting off three of its fingers. When they began regenerating, he focused all his attention on the hand and the area around it.
There was no single source of energy, but - the energy seemed to have come from the environment around them.
"Boom!" He barely dodged a heavy slam from a palm, the ground was cracked and debris burst in all directions.
An idea flashed through his mind. He pulled out the squirtgun, then just as he evaded another heavy smash attack, he splashed the creature's left wrist with one squeeze of the trigger.
The water was only laced with a little bit of coloring, but the skin of the creature turned completely red when it came into contact with it. He unleashed an energy blast on it and exploded it open.
The creature moaned and tried to grab him with its right hand. But Wu Xiaoming had already repeated this kind of attack against its left elbow. Fabric poured out of both wounds. And this time, they did not regenerate.
The creature realized that Wu Xiaoming had figured out its secret. With a desperate screech, it swept its right arm across the ground, in an attempt to bash him away. Wu Xiaoming jumped over the sweeping arm then rolled forward, taking a moment to aim the squirt gun forward and sprayed the creature's chest and abdomen area with water.
The creature screamed and unleashed another shockwave at him. He sidestepped, trying to get out of the way but was still thrown in the air.
"SLASH!" Wu Xiaoming unleashed an attack, even though at this moment he was not able to aim with a lot of precision.
More fabric sprayed into the air. The attack landed just below the creature's chest and opened up a gash in its belly. Following the fabric, out gushed a stream of semi-solid, pink substance. On some of the larger chunks, he could even see familiar folds.
Brains, lots and lots of brains, inside of this creature's own stomach.
The creature screamed and tried to crush Wu Xiaoming again with a swing of its one good arm, but he already jumped up onto its right shoulder, right on the position of its collar bone. His fingers kept squeezing the trigger along the way, dousing almost every corner of the creature's body around him with water.
"FUCK OFF!" Wu Xiaoming shouted at the top of his lungs as he swung the baton at the creature's lower neck area.
"Boom!" "Crack!" The entire body of the creature was blown into hundreds of pieces by the dark red energy released from the baton strike. Torn skin, fabric and crushed brains exploded in every angle possible. And almost at the epicenter of the explosion, Wu Xiaoming had to conjure a shield and jump back a few times to avoid being splashed all over his body.
"Brains…" "Brains…" The previously mute zombies now began to speak, though only simple words. They swarmed at the pink substances on the ground, on the wall and on the buildings, and began eating the brains off them.
"Geez." Without an active threat, Wu Xiaoming got a moment to wipe himself down. The "brain" from the inside of this creature did not smell as bad as he expected - it was just like tofu, with a bit of coloring and no smell.
The creature was now only skin, spread in a rough circle. The suits and blonde hair were still at the center, but they revealed nothing when Wu Xiaoming examined them.
He looked around one more time for any potential hostile forces before going into the ice cream shop.
Door open. Door closed. The stench that had been almost ever present and tormenting his sense was gone in an instant. In its stead was the creamy rich and sweet fragrance of ice cream, chocolate and frozen fruit.
Inside the glass counter were tubs of ice cream - vanilla, chocolate, mint, coffee, tiramisu and some other flavors he did not care for. No one was in charge, there was not even a cash register or credit card reader. There was no backdoor either.
He picked up a paper cup and circled behind the counter. The scooper was right there, so he just grabbed it.
One scoop of chocolate, one scoop of coffee, and then one scoop of vanilla, just in case he wanted something less rich.
He sat down by a table close to the window. The texture of the ice cream was quite real - more real than anything else he had seen so far in this limbo. He took a spoonful and raised the spoon to his mouth.
Everything around him faded away in the next second, and he fell on the ground, butt first. The cup of ice cream vanished as well.
"Oh, come on!" Wu Xiaoming whined as he got up.
He was already at the other end of the road, the wall to his left cut off, and a two-laned street was in front of him.
Current currencies: 22115 Spirit Fragments, 108 Vision Slivers. A total of 1250 Spirit Fragments and 5 Vision Slivers earned, including all the zombies and that creature at the end. It was not a lot, but it sure was a strange and special experience. Speaking of which, he was just a little over 20% from level 10.
He looked back at the road behind him, and then at the Sproutlinger Hotel at a distance. He was already past the spot where he was supposed to make a turn. But from this very spot, he was able to make out something he had not before: a trail of smoke, gray in color and relatively thin, connecting the hotel building and the middle section of this very road - like a tunnel, or a tentacle. It was not obvious if he was not paying attention. He walked back into the road a few steps, and the trail was almost invisible. He had to get a bit of distance away from the road to get a clear look at it.
More disturbingly, this was not the only trail of smoke. There were many, all coming from the building and connecting to other areas.