Chapter 646: Third Floor
Third floor!
For Iron Lion to have made it this far, he clearly had used almost all his strength, stopping just short of triggering his Titan transformation.
If he used that ability, it would be like playing his last trump card.
With two rooms left, there was no way he could force his way through by himself.
Still, Iron Lion didn’t look pessimistic.
This time, he had fought with real satisfaction.
That feeling of repeatedly crushing ever-stronger opponents made him feel good, made him feel exhilarated.
Opportunities to let himself loose and go all out were rare now.
Every fight against anomalies was a life-or-death struggle; the more you walk on the road, the more your shoes get wet.
So Captain Chu and Chen Ye always avoided fights whenever possible.
Even though Iron Lion wanted to brawl with those things every time they scavenged supplies, he held back in the end.
Because Chu Che and Chen Ye were looking out for him.
They had their reasons.
According to the information Captain Chu had gathered, among other convoys’ casualty statistics, users of the Titan Sequence were the most likely to die.
Iron Lion liked facing increasingly powerful opponents. He was looking forward to the enemy in Room 8322.
He pushed the door open.
The room was an extremely ordinary, utterly plain room.
There was nothing inside—no bed, no table, no bathroom…
Only the floor, the walls, and the ceiling—nothing else.
To be precise, the room was a shell, a raw unfinished space.
Even the standard floor-to-ceiling glass window that other rooms had was missing.
By all rights, Room 8322 should face the sea on this side, boasting a great view; therefore each room usually had a large glass window.
Half a person sat cross-legged on the balcony of this shell of a room.
Yes, it was an anomaly with only the lower half of a body—no upper torso, just two legs.
Those two legs were far stronger than a normal person’s.
You could imagine that the owner of those legs must have been someone even stronger than Iron Lion in his current state.
Of course, that’s if Iron Lion didn’t transform.
The skin of those legs lacked normal human rosy color, instead a grayish white.
And the most grotesque detail was that countless maggots burrowed in and out of the muscles of the legs.
Those maggots clearly treated the legs like a warm bed; many of them poked their tiny heads out of holes, tilting upward slightly and swaying gently in time with the sea breeze.
The door opening drew the maggots’ attention.
All of them turned their heads slightly to look toward Iron Lion.
“You… finally came!”
A hoarse voice came from who-knows-where.
It sounded like a man in his sixties speaking.
Iron Lion scratched his head blankly and looked around the room!
In that instant he sensed something wrong.
Before, he had only stood at the doorway.
Now he was inside the room.
He hadn’t moved an inch.
And Room 8322… was much larger than before!
Previously the room had been at most seventy or eighty square meters.
Now it looked like nearly a thousand square meters.
This…
“Don’t be afraid, this is my dojo, just some little rules, nothing to make a fuss about!”
Iron Lion scratched his head stupidly and grunted, “Oh.”
“You seem to be a bit slow in the head!”
The old hoarse voice said again.
If someone said that to Dantai Bie, Dantai Bie would probably hiss in rage.
But Iron Lion just scratched his head: “I know I’m slow. Yezi says I’m slow, Xixi says so, Little Fish says so too!”
Iron Lion grinned foolishly, not angry at all.
“You…”
The old hoarse voice uttered one word, then stopped.
Many of the maggots on those massive legs stared at Iron Lion with curiosity.
Iron Lion wasn’t afraid at all; he even waved at the maggots, as if greeting them.
“You… aren’t afraid of them?”
The old voice asked in surprise.
Iron Lion shook his head: “They’re just bugs. I’m not afraid of bugs. Xixi and Ding Dong are the ones afraid of bugs! Little Fish too, she’s afraid of bugs.”
“Ah… I never expected that, after waiting so long, I’d finally wait in vain for a fool!”
The old voice sounded regretful.
“Why are you here?”
Iron Lion asked curiously.
“I was taken here, who’d willingly stay in this damned place!”
“Ah~~~”
“Never mind, you wouldn’t understand!”
“You’re like me! A bit foolish!”
Iron Lion said blankly.
The old voice paused, sounding somewhat angry, and the maggots in the hollows of the legs seemed irritated too.
But they made no move.
“You just said you waited for a fool. So what were you waiting for?”
Iron Lion asked.
“Actually, I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. I’ve been here a long time, bored out of my mind, so I wanted to wait for someone I could talk to!”
“Sorry, I’m not much of a talker. Want me to call Dantai Bie over? He talks a lot!”
“Forget it, you can’t leave!”
“Ah~~~”
They exchanged a question and an answer.
Iron Lion didn’t care what the thing was.
If it asked, he answered.
If it wanted to fight, he would fight along.
That was how he thought.
“Look at them, they used to be the hotel staff!”
“That somewhat vain one was called Li Hong. She used to work the reception desk!”
The voice prattled on.
One of the maggots that looked pink and plump straightened its body proudly, even forming an S-shape.
Iron Lion observed and said in a muffled voice: “Now the front desk there, it’s all paper figures!”
Iron Lion couldn’t understand why this person had named the maggots.
As his strength rose, he grew dumber and could not comprehend many things.
“Paper figures? Right, it must be paper figures!”
“You want to get the hotel’s orders from me?”
The old voice asked again.
Iron Lion scratched his head: “Yezi said orders aren’t important, just break through here!”
“Hmm, I think he said something like that.”
Iron Lion couldn’t quite remember Chen Ye’s exact words, but that was probably the gist.
“Haha… strength conquers skill. It seems the Yezi you speak of is a wise fool in his own way!”
“Before the apocalypse, I was the manager of this hotel; life wasn’t bad!”
“But some people locked us in here later!”
“From that moment, many things changed.”
“Li Hong and the others were locked in with me!”
“They couldn’t survive, so in the end I let them live inside my body!”
“They became maggots!”
“And I turned into what you see now!”
“As for why I became like this, I don’t know!”
Iron Lion scratched his head, looked at the sun sinking toward the horizon, and said in a muffled voice: “How about we start? It’s getting late. We need to be back before dark!”
“Young man, truly impatient! Fine, fine, I haven’t moved my body in a long time. You big guy should be able to withstand my strength!”
Saying that, the half-body rose from the ground.
The ragged pair of pants was full of all kinds of holes.
Every hole housed a fat, white maggot.
Those maggots came out from the hollows in the pair of legs, as if many ribbons had grown off those legs.
Each maggot’s head bore an exquisitely detailed little face.
It seemed those maggots, when they were human, had already had such faces.
Those faces glared angrily at Iron Lion.
Iron Lion remained naively curious.
“All right, all right, start fighting, take it seriously!”
The old voice seemed to be ordering the maggots.
After those words, the maggots began to move.
Under Iron Lion’s watchful gaze,
the maggots started to entangle and weave with each other, as if crafting a suit of armor for the legs.
In only a few seconds,
the already immensely thick legs had gained a flesh-colored lower-body armor woven from long maggot bodies.
Even the feet acquired woven boots.
Iron Lion marveled.
You could do that too.
“Big Fool, I’m going to start attacking. Are you… ready?”
As the fight loomed, Iron Lion instantly became extremely focused.
All four arms formed the opening stance of Diamond Demon-Subduing Fist.
His body faintly shimmered with golden light.
Mad Lion’s head also woke.
“Big Fool, this one is beyond what you can handle. I’ll take over!”
With that, Iron Lion’s head tilted slightly to the side. Mad Lion’s ferocious head faced the half-formed anomaly directly.
Mad Lion’s body also began to change.
Muscles writhed under the skin like moving rats, and his whole body grew stronger and larger.
“Old thing, come on, don’t be too weak!”
Mad Lion felt something burning inside him; the battle filled him with unprecedented excitement.