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“The factory’s down below.”

Having swept the first floor’s lobby clean of zombies, Floater led us to one of its rooms, at which point she pointed at an unassuming wall and pressed down on it. A second later, a rumbling could be heard as the wall split open, revealing an elevator large enough to fit an exosuit. Given its width, it could easily fit all five of us and our exosuits.

“I wonder what we will find down there? Unfinished suits? Or maybe even finished ones?” Qiaoqiao muttered to herself in anticipation. “Is there anyone still alive down there?”

“I doubt so.” As I said that, I eyed Floater. If there were really people alive, she would have already contacted them. The fact that she hadn’t warned us meant that they were probably all dead.

In no time at all, the elevator descended over two hundred meters. Floater stood before the elevator door, silently awaiting the door’s opening. Her guns stood ready to fire, as if she was already expecting something to leap at us the moment they opened up.

However, the door slowly slid apart and nothing happened. That wasn’t technically true, as there were two downed exosuits lying motionlessly on the floor near the elevator’s entrance. From the looks of things, they were the sentries tasked with guarding this exit.

They were dead now. Given that there were no visible marks on the exosuit, this was most likely the handiwork of those ghosts.

“I knew something must have happened to them. Everyone, stay back, I will have the detachable bits scout ahead.”

Not even bothering to touch the two fallen exosuits, Floater immediately sent out the detachable bits on her back. At the same time, she pulled out a holographic screen for everyone. Basically, whatever she saw, we saw.

The underground factory was deathly silent. There were no zombies, but everyone had a look of abject terror on their faces as they died. Through her view feed, we saw a workman, dressed in blue overalls, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as if he wanted to scream but couldn’t do so. Without a doubt, his last moments were horrific.

However, the truly concerning issue was that he had a gaping gash on his neck…

“There’s something strange going on here -beware, everyone.” Looking at the way they died, my first thoughts were that, and nothing else, really. “Purification Talismans ready?”

“Yup, already did so!” Qiaoqiao’s image appeared on screen, showing a piece of talisman stuck on her forehead, just like one of those zombies you see in old Chinese movies… But there’s no way those zombies were as cute as our Qiaoqiao!

With those talismans applied, we could at least be safe against any sudden ghost intrusions. No matter what, this factory had to be surveyed.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, for now.” Floater came to that conclusion after scouting the entirety of the factory.

“But we should still be careful. I will take the lead. Your detachable bits can show us the way.” No longer in an exosuit, I retrieved Icy Inferno from my inventory. As it appeared, a stream of red and white light particles flowed through the air, like a scene straight out of a fairy tale. A fairy tale about death.

“Ke, be careful.”

“Big brother…”

“His Highness will be alright.”

“I’ll be fine, mere ghosts couldn’t possibly hurt me.” Under the leadership of those detachable bits, I took point while the girls followed closely behind. Floater was our rearguard.

Our main goal was to locate a set of powerful exosuits; who was to say that the monsters wouldn’t get stronger with the coming days. Just relying on the system to grow stronger was too slow. We were better off banging on something more concrete like a custom exosuit.

In fact, a mobile armor would be nice. That way, I could just trample over all the monsters in this city, but that wasn’t really realistic…

Along the way, we found a number of blue-overalled corpses. None of them showed any signs of turning into zombies, but their wounds were strange, to say the least.

On some of the workers’ corpses, there were bite marks, scratch marks -all bloody and disturbing.

Previously, we had only seen these corpses through a video feed so they weren’t so shockingly gruesome. By my estimations, these scratch marks were all the rough size of a human’s finger…

But I thought the ghosts only attacked your soul? When did they start using physical attacks? Wait. That isn’t entirely true either. The only real encounter I had with one was last night, and that one died in an instant.

Questions left unanswered, we pressed forward towards what looked like an assembly line. So far, there were no enemies -did they all leave after massacring the workers?

“It’s safe to come out now. Just make sure to have your Purification Talismans on before doing so.”

After an inspection of the giant assembly line and finding no enemies in sight, I finally felt safe enough to let the girls dismount from their exosuits.

“Uwah! Look at all the exosuit parts! Wow! Look at that exosuit, it’s so cool… That one is so pretty…”

From the moment Qiaoqiao stepped out of her exosuit, she immediately sprang into action, running about like a kid in a candy store before finally stopping in front of a black, half-finished exosuit. She gingerly reached out for the suit, stopping halfway as if she was afraid touching it would destroy it.

Bitong’s was first act was to hook up with the factory’s internal systems. She was probably planning to search through last night’s surveillance footage.

Lixiang was more reserved in her approach. She merely stuck to my side like an attendant. Wherever I went, she went.

I waved at Qiaoqiao, beckoning for her to return. I gave the area one last look before turning towards Floater, currently resting cross-legged not too far away with her eyes closed. “Floater, you mentioned they were developing a special exosuit? Do you have any idea where it is now?”

“Behind you, there’s a room containing what you’re looking for. But I can’t guarantee what state it is in.” Floater stood up and walked towards us, arms folded across her chest. Using her chin, she pointed in the direction of the room. There stood a door marked with the typical ‘No Unauthorised Entry’ sign.

Naturally, there was no need to worry about that. The dead couldn’t very well be unauthorised personnel.

Floater walked up to the door to open it. Yet the moment she did so, the corpse of a middle-aged man dressed in a white lab coat came tumbling down, landing right in front of Floater.

Sudden as it might have been, the tumbling corpse did not even startle the seasoned soldier. In fact, she did not even bat an eye at it.

Shameless Self-promotion

Announcement: I’ve re-opened my Patreon in case anyone wants to sponsor more chapters. Every end of the month, those chapters in early access will be released for free for all to read. If you sponsored a chapter, you will gain permanent early access to these chapters. Essentially, everyone gets more chapters to read, but those who donated get to read earlier. More chapters will then be translated at the start of the month. Explanation on the Patreon itself.

LINK HERE