January 12
Ever since Kyoko had sealed off the stairwell entrance, she had stopped paying much attention to the issue of light.
After all, the most dangerous zones were the seventh floor and the twentieth. What infected thing was supposed to come all the way to the fifteenth just to look for her?
And yet, after spending all day hunting geese, she had finally been pecked in the eye by one.
Firelight reflected off the glass, glaringly obvious in the dead of night—like a lighthouse cutting through sea fog to guide ships at sea.
Ordinary lamps attracted moths.
Kyoko's fire had attracted one as well.
Only this moth was far larger, far uglier, and far more disgusting.
At ten o'clock that night, Kyoko had just finished oiling her beloved blade against rust and was preparing to add more fuel to the stove.
Because of the little "hot spring" she had rigged up, the indoor temperature was now rather high. Thick steam clung to the face like a damp hand.
"Looks like I'm going to have to make use of 1503 too. I'll probably store the equipment over there."
Yawning, Kyoko muttered lazily. She had just finished bathing in hot water, and every bone in her body wanted sleep.
She was right to think about moving the gear.
Heat and humidity were both terrible for preserving equipment. Even simple cold weapons would suffer, let alone delicate mechanical items.
A cool, dry environment was ideal. There was a reason real armories were often built inside mountains or underground.
At present, Room 1501 was piled full of furniture Kyoko had dismantled. Those old, expensive hardwood pieces had all become firewood. No matter how much they once cost, if they were still made of wood, then into the stove they went.
Using an entrenching shovel, she scraped out the spent ash and cleared away the caked soot on the floor.
Clad in nothing but a bathrobe, Kyoko fed logs into the stove one by one, extending the life of the fire.
To make it burn longer, she had already built a support rack slightly higher than the stove mouth. The bundled logs rested above it, pointed downward toward the opening. As the wood inside burned away, the next pieces would slide down from the rack and feed themselves into the fire.
Of course, that method came with risks too.
For example, if the wood on the rear rack failed to slide down properly and caught fire where it sat, it could start a blaze outside the stove.
But clever Kyoko had stored the reserve firewood in the next room over, and all the chopping and splitting was done elsewhere as well. Room 1501 itself had already been burned out once by Kyoko; there was very little left in it that could still catch.
Beside the stove sat emergency buckets of snow and stored water. If the fire got too large and reached the barrier wall, the snow and water there would absorb the heat. Even if the firewood inside burned to nothing, those supplies would barely evaporate.
And even if things did spin fully out of control, it would only mean losing the boiler room.
That was acceptable.
With that done, Kyoko wanted nothing more than to return to her warm bed.
Soft, sweet Huaxiu was still waiting for her.
These past few days, Huaxiu had practically imprinted on Kyoko's bed. She napped there, slept there at night, and every time Kyoko woke up, she would find that Huaxiu had rolled under her blankets yet again.
Kyoko might have lived two lifetimes, but even so, a girl like that was difficult to ignore.
She was not made of wood.
A pretty girl had made herself this obvious—what else could it mean?
If Huaxiu had been older, Kyoko might well have acted on it already. But doing anything now was too early.
Far too early.
It would be wrong.
"Ahh... hnngh..."
Kyoko yawned again.
This time, she was genuinely sleepy.
She possessed a body at the peak of human performance—or something close to it—but it still regulated itself, and that self-regulation now meant exhaustion crashing down on her all at once.
Just as she reached for the door of 1501 to leave, she froze.
Her instincts screamed that something was wrong.
Before she could pull the dagger strapped to her thigh, a sharp sound split the room—
another pane of glass in 1501 shattered, joining the other broken fragments on the floor.
The attack had come from outside.
Sharp whistling sounds tore through the air. Kyoko threw herself aside, narrowly dodging the glittering projectiles.
"Hummmm—"
The little things embedded themselves fully into the wall.
If even one of those hit a human body, it would punch straight through.
Kyoko swore inwardly.
At the moment she was wearing only a bathrobe, and the only weapon on her was that dagger. Against an enemy that could attack from range, the situation was perilous.
Huaxiu would be no help here. If she came running, it was hard to say who would be saving whom.
The system still had not returned online either.
This time, it was all on Kyoko.
Crunching over broken glass came the sound of something entering.
A shadowy figure stepped in through the ruined window.
Under the dim yellow firelight, Kyoko could just barely make out its shape.
It was tall and gaunt, almost dragonfly-like: huge eyes, a segmented torso like bamboo joints, a pair of gaudy wings, three pairs of hooked claws sprouting alongside them, and shimmering scales covering its whole body.
The creature lunged at her at a speed too fast for normal eyes to follow.
There was no time to draw the dagger properly.
Kyoko had nothing else within reach. The axe was in the wood-splitting room next door, and the torch was over by the fire-room on the other side of the apartment. She could only fight barehanded. There was not even time to bend and pull the weapon free.
The monster shot toward her.
Instead of retreating, Kyoko moved in to meet it.
A sweeping kick missed. She immediately dropped low, barely dodging the thing's strike.
In the instant she crouched, she drew the dagger and stabbed several times into the monster's body while it was still locked in place from its own motion.
The blade bent.
It had not pierced the creature's armor.
"What the hell? This thing's that hard? This was an expensive tungsten-forged dagger!"
The shock ran straight through her.
The creature, now enraged, lashed out with its claws and landed a heavy blow.
With a ripping sound, Kyoko's bathrobe was shredded.
To keep herself from being caught and slashed, she tore one arm out of the sleeve, spun like a dancer, and abandoned the robe to the claws, rolling away from the follow-up strike.
A few wooden splinters on the floor scraped across the smooth skin of her back, leaving red marks behind.
The creature had ripped away her only outer layer.
Now Kyoko was left in nothing but her basic underclothes.
"You filthy bug—die already!"
Embarrassment and fury crashed together inside her. Face burning, Kyoko's attacks sharpened at once.
The tide began to turn.
In the span of a few seconds, the dagger traced more than a dozen cuts. Even with scales all over its body, the creature could not completely ignore that. Persistence paid off—at last, Kyoko's attacks found weak points. A few of the glittering scales were torn free.
The creature shrieked in pain and lashed out with all six hooked limbs, attacking from two directions.
But Kyoko was no amateur.
Her body had already entered another gear now.
It was time to show the monster what a human being could do.
She gathered herself, then sprang forward in a violent leap, aiming for its head.
No matter how heavily armored a creature was, there would always be a weakest point.
And for this one—
that point was its eyes.
Kyoko drove the dagger straight toward its face. At that instant she was like a living drill, boring through the space between them.
"Got you."
To the monster, Kyoko must have looked like a cannonball.
The dagger plunged into its eye.
The collision knocked the creature flat onto the ground with a thunderous crash that made the ears ring.
"Skreeee—ughhhh—!"
Green blood burst out in a spray, barely missing her.
Was this thing seriously still alive?
Alarmed by its sheer vitality, Kyoko twisted the dagger savagely. The blade ground around inside the eye socket, sending the creature into a frenzy of pain.
Its movements grew wild and uncoordinated, but it succeeded in throwing its attacker off.
Kyoko lost her dagger with it.
Its bones were simply too hard.
The creature staggered back to its feet and tried to flee, limping toward the broken window. It was far less impressive now than when it first entered. Kyoko had damaged one of its wings badly enough that flying again was doubtful.
But she could not let it escape.
Once you started cutting weeds, you had to rip out the roots.
In desperation, Kyoko snatched up her discarded bathrobe and threw it over the monster's head like a sack, yanking it backward and dragging it down.
Then she hauled it into the next room, all the way to the stove.
One knee pressed against the creature, one hand clenched the robe tight around its head, and with the other she grabbed a burning torch and began beating at it.
The creature struggled like a trapped beast, twisting with all its strength, trying to break free.
At that very moment, the door to 1501 burst open.
A pair of bare feet stepped in first.
Huaxiu had arrived—barefoot, weapon in hand.
The battle was over.
The moment there had been movement next door, Huaxiu had reacted. She had not even stopped to put on shoes before grabbing Kyoko's weapons. She could not find the pistol in time, so in a panic she snatched up Kyoko's long saber instead and rushed out.
The scabbard had been flung somewhere behind her.
In her haste, she had fumbled with the door, failed to open it properly, then simply kicked it open barefoot after realizing it had not been fully locked and was only jammed by a piece of wood.
The instant she saw Kyoko, she swung the blade down at the creature pinned beneath her.
The cut did not split the armor.
"Give me that—now!"
Kyoko shouted, and Huaxiu shoved the weapon into her hands at once.
By then, the monster's struggling had nearly thrown Kyoko off it entirely. But now she had the right weapon.
The meter-and-a-half-long blade became a saw.
Kyoko slid it beneath the monster's neck and dragged it back and forth like she was cutting through timber.
Its throat opened.
The wet inhale became a ragged tearing sound, broken and uneven.
"Haaah!"
With a final roar, Kyoko tore through the creature's neck, ripping away its head along with part of the spinal column.
Thick green blood shot out like a fountain, making an appalling mess of the room.
It was over.
Still gripping the severed head, Kyoko pulled her dagger free, tossed the head aside, and completely ignored the wreckage around her.
Instead, she dragged Huaxiu straight off to wash up.
After being splashed with something that revolting, Kyoko felt like scrubbing her skin off.
She had just bathed, and now she had to do it again.
Miss Kyoko was furious.
And when Miss Kyoko got furious, the consequences were severe.
Tomorrow, she decided, she was buying security bars from the system shop.
No way was she going to let something like this happen again.
And after that?
She would build an even bigger fire outside and wait beside it like a hunter at a trap, just to lure in and kill more of these things.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter108)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 99
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 95
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 26
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 32
Uma Musume: From Beginner 26
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