Enforcer's Handbook

After leaving the fourth area and being transferred to prison, Vadim always suffered from the same nightmare.

It was a place forever shrouded in darkness, and he was like a traveler who mistakenly entered the darkness. After passing through layers of fog, what greeted him in front was always an extremely weird building.

Vadim didn't know how to describe this kind of building. It had countless cave-like spaces, and each space seemed to contain statues. But whenever he wanted to go deeper to find out, he would start from Waking up from a nightmare, followed by a tremor from the soul.

That's it now.

He exhaled a cold breath and used the nail of his index finger to record the contents of the nightmare within the limited range of movement.

"Life", "Time", "Domination", "Nothingness"...

This was the only room open to him.

Vadim guessed that these four should represent the power of the spiritual path. However, after being imprisoned, the blessing of "emptiness" disappeared, allowing him to return to a state where his prosthetic body was scrapped and he lost his spiritual power. He couldn't even tell if he was dead. It was his remaining soul that kept lingering in the nightmare.

Reality is more despairing than nightmares.

His body was trapped in some kind of container, and he could no longer remember how long it had been since he had seen light. He was only accompanied by boundless darkness and loneliness, and the concept of time had long become blurred.

At first he would try to call out to get someone's attention, but it turned out that he was alone here.

The only hope lies in the recurring nightmare.

These four nouns must represent something.

Or what Vadim wanted them to represent.

Before being escorted to prison, "Nothingness" once told him that his future would be dire. What awaited him in prison would be unprecedented suffering, but there was no lack of hope amidst despair.

If he's lucky enough, he can get a new lease of life here.

During the time he was imprisoned, in addition to the recurring nightmares, Vadim recalled the farewell warning of "Nothingness" over and over again. The same situation may have been played out hundreds of times.

But this time, things seemed to have turned around.

The tip of his index finger felt the scorching temperature, and Vadim knew what the temperature meant almost immediately.

"nothingness".

He used his fingernails to carve into the surface of the container what he had discovered in his nightmare.

Then, meditate…

Vadim didn't know why he had such an idea. The idea came to the back of his mind like an instinct, and it didn't seem difficult to put it into action.

Then something lit up deep in the darkness.

Some invisible force answered his prayer. He felt that his body had changed and became lighter than ever before. The restraints in the container could no longer control his actions. When he had the desire to "escape from the container" When you think, your body takes action.

Everything has become so strange.

In a meditative state, his actions seemed to become some kind of turn-based game, and now, he was controlling his actions from the game's God's perspective.

He did not struggle, nor did he need to break the container.

The sight floated up with the invisible force, breaking away from the container in a way that violated the rules of physics.

His eyes were exposed to light for a long time, and for the first time, Vadim saw clearly the container that enclosed his body - an egg-shaped object more than two meters high, with black tentacles wrapped around the surface. It made him feel nauseous, but it was urgent. Then, he discovered something even more incredible.

After leaving the egg-shaped container, his feet did not touch the ground, but continued to float in mid-air, overlooking everything in the room.

This is more like a post-death perspective.

The soul and consciousness are separated from the body. He once heard people from military technology talk about how, under certain extreme circumstances, human consciousness will not dissipate with death, but will continue as a conscious body.

Vadim looked around. The place he was in seemed to be an experimental facility.

At least it used to be.

The experimental facility looks like it has been abandoned for a long time. Slender black tentacles are crawling all over the walls, and the ground is covered with a black-purple carpet. The drainage system is occupied by mucus, and there are ominous things rolling inside. Foam.

A sudden experimental accident turned this place into a hell on earth. The creatures that escaped from the accident devoured the researchers and used it as a lair.

Devourer.

This is undoubtedly the most suitable name for this monster. It has an appetite that can never be satisfied. It is its instinct to swallow everything it can reach.

Thinking of this, Vadim was suddenly stunned.

Research accidents in the company are not uncommon. Colo Films has produced many superhero movies based on laboratory accidents, but...why does he know this?

When he thought about it carefully, he couldn't remember when he came into contact with the Devourer's information. Vadim was very sure that he had never dealt with such a disgusting monster before today.

Reality did not leave him much time to judge the current situation. He heard the heavy sound of the security door. The sound came from far away and approached the compartment where he was at an alarming speed.

An unprecedented sense of crisis came to mind.

"Back off."

An option emerged in his mind, and almost at the same time he did so, a claw as sharp as a sickle broke through the safety door of the compartment, and a huge insect like a mantis Got in.

It was not easy for him to avoid it. If it weren't for this prophetic thought, he might have been torn apart by the insect's sickle.

No, to be more precise, he had seen himself being torn apart.

In that fleeting moment, Vadim saw his chest being torn apart by a scythe. The giant mantis tore open his prosthetic body easily, and the bulletproof coating under his skin was torn apart like a toy.

But the crisis was not eliminated, the amber eyes of the giant mantis locked on him again.

The prosthetic body was damaged and he lost the blessing of nothingness. Now he was no match for this mantis.

Just when the giant mantis pounced on him again, instructions appeared in Vadim's mind again. In this moment of life and death, a certain door seemed to open to him.

Vadim just hit the inevitable scythe, and the sharp blade cut through his body, and even the tentacles behind him were cut off.

He witnessed another death for himself.

He was chopped in half by a giant mantis and his internal organs were scattered on the ground.

But not this time.

For some reason that even Vadim himself could not understand, the blow that was supposed to cut him in half was missed. The giant mantis also paused for a while, its eyes staring at the sickle-shaped forelimbs. A very human expression of doubt.

"Escape through the drainage channel."

New instructions appear.

Vadim didn't doubt him, and he didn't have time to estimate the viscous foaming liquid, because the illusion in front of him made him understand the consequences of hesitation - as long as he wasted one more second, the mantis would catch up with him, and he would be there. Before he was submerged in the liquid, he left his legs in this room forever.

You can't leave the smell of blood in the slime, it will attract other things.

…

What on earth is going on from just now?

When Vadim floated up from the other end of the drainage pipe, he finally had time to think about this problem.

Why could he see the way he died over and over again?

Each one is so real and tragic, as if it had really happened.

There is also the huge mantis, which is more than two meters high. It frightens Vadim in terms of speed and strength. Its physical speed is close to the state where the overload system is activated. He never thought that one day he would be A bug chases.

This is still an abandoned experimental facility. There are two giant eggs placed on the floor of the compartment, and the blood vessel-shaped black tentacles are beating from time to time.

Just like in those thrilling adventure games, after evading the initial monster, Vadim found the first text in the room.

"The Devourer Observation Data Part 5"

Yes, it was in this room that he first encountered the concept of Devourer.

The entire process of the experimental accident is recorded in the observation data.

The Devourer should be properly kept in an isolation area, but due to an experiment error, the researchers did not discover the piece of meat that was separated from the Devourer's body during the experiment. This piece of meat the size of a fingernail went unnoticed. He hid in a gap in the cabinet, then slipped into the lounge at night, and finally parasitized the body of a senior researcher.

The next day, the parasitized researcher took advantage of the guards' unpreparedness and opened the door to the quarantine area after the experiment.

The person who wrote this text was full of regret. When his life was about to end, he finally understood the biggest flaw in the entire research project-that is, they never treated the Devourer as an intelligent creature.

The human perspective makes them blind, and they eventually become food for monsters.

This is the last observational data.

This is the end of the identifiable records. When writing these records, the author seemed to be in an extremely unstable state of mind.

The second half of the observation data is filled with tadpole-shaped unknown words. This is a symptom of the mind being distorted by the devourer after being parasitized.

After taking control of the entire experimental facility, the Devourer did not immediately kill all the researchers, but instead parasitized pieces of flesh into their bodies.

When I wrote this last note, half an hour had passed since the parasitism.

This is an extremely important textual material. It not only records what happened in this laboratory, but it also has a more important purpose today.

When Vadim came up with this idea, the content of the text also changed, and it became simple and clear:

"1. Devourers are intelligent creatures who are good at setting traps to lure prey."

"2. The cut pieces of flesh and tentacles are still alive and cannot be completely destroyed."

"3. The time limit for being parasitized is 30 minutes. You only have 30 minutes to end the corruption."

"4. You will definitely read the data reports. Being parasitized is inevitable, but this is also your only chance."

Seeing this, Vadim felt as if his heartbeat stopped for a moment.

If what he was experiencing was a game, then the designers of the game must be malicious and take pleasure in torturing players and causing them pain.

But there is no regret medicine in this world. When he read this text, he felt a pinprick feeling between his index fingers. He saw some kind of tiny creature getting into the wound. Before he could react, the wound The scab has healed.

With a splitting headache, Vadim had to stand in front of the table for a long time to stabilize his condition.

At the same time, he also understood why the above said this was his only chance.

The headache not only made the world in his eyes swell and blur, but also made him understand the words that were like tadpoles.

This is the suicide note of the person under study. Before he completely lost consciousness, he used his last sanity to write this text.

Because he knew that after the accident broke out, the company would definitely send a security team to go deep into the facility and rescue the research reports as much as possible.

Maybe the security team will come to this room and see this last piece of information.

The antibody vaccine is in the east area of ​​the experimental facility, but that is the hardest-hit area. The Devourer seems to be able to seize the memory and knowledge of the parasitized person through parasitism. If you want to go to the area where the vaccine is located, you must face the aberrant monsters hatched by the Devourer. .

The researcher who left this text laughed at himself that he no longer had the courage. For him, staying here and waiting for death was the final outcome.

The tadpole text also mentions other regional information.

The weapons depot was less than 300 meters away. Maybe he could find some thermal weapons there that could be used to deal with the giant mantis.

Like other creatures, Devourers dislike fire.

Vadim waited for a long time, but this time the dense text did not change again.

The new game prompt never appeared again, and there was no detailed plan of the laboratory for him, nor a detailed route of action for him.

To make matters worse, there was a chilling sound coming from the drainage pipes.

Action must be taken as soon as possible.

After Vadim confirmed that there was no more noise outside the cubicle, he ran towards the door before the approaching object jumped out of the drainage pipe.

Even if there was no prompt, he would escape from this ghost place.

The weapons arsenal seemed like a good place, he needed some weapons that could roast the bugs, or at least use their fear of fire to temporarily drive them away.

Then there's the East End, which the researchers mentioned in their data report.

…

Vadim's thoughts stopped abruptly.

As he was leaving, his vision shifted.

The whole world was spinning, but he still saw the scene "behind" with his vision blurred by parasitism.

A headless body stood at the door, still running forward.

Contaminated by blood, he could barely see clearly the trap set on the isolation door - the sharp metal wire.

"Dong——"

The head landed on the fungus blanket and made a slight sound, and the remaining sight was quickly obscured by the proliferation of tentacles.

"When you go out, be careful of the metal wire on the door."

As his consciousness fell into darkness, Vadim's last thoughts came to mind.

"The experiment is over and the consciousness has dissipated"

"Number of experiments 23 times"

"Should we continue the next experiment?" 』

"continue."

Qi He stood in front of the mechanical instrument and gave the artificial intelligence a positive reply.

"Did you fail again?"

Gustav sighed and said sympathetically, "It's so pitiful. I'm afraid he doesn't even realize the fact that he has become a guinea pig, right?"

"maybe."

Qihe concentrated on observing the impact the instrument showed them.

In the cubicle of the abandoned laboratory, Vadim was awakened from a nightmare again, but the witness of his experiment did not feel happy to be a person outside the "box". On the contrary, a lingering... The thought of going lingered in his heart.

Qi He looked at the mark of "nothingness" lit up by the light in ecstasy.

He always felt that the light on the mark had become a bit brighter than when Vadim woke up last time.

"By the way, Gustave, be quiet."

He said without looking back, "How can you be sure that we are in a 100% pure real world now?"

Small theater its three hundred and thirty:

Tuesday, a certain day of a certain year, a certain month, in the evening

Song Lan participated in the meeting for the first time as a representative of the guild. He confidently and bravely put forward his own ideas at the meeting.

With the District 2 Food Festival just around the corner, the Council should show its humanity to the coalition government by approving a holiday for food lovers in the public sector.

This bold and over-the-top proposal led to Lu Xiang being named to stay after the meeting.

"Didn't you say you've got him? Why did he make such an unreasonable request as soon as he entered the council?"

The chairman of the jury had a serious face in his office.

They hoped that the guild representatives could play a role in calling on everyone to work overtime and create a good and diligent workplace environment. But this Song Lan was better. Before they could speak, this guy had already started calling for a holiday.

"President of the Jury, have you ever heard of the strategy of boiling a frog in warm water?"

When questioned, Lu Xiang responded fluently, "Song Lan is a person who takes soft things rather than hard ones. Tough methods are ineffective against him, so we have to do the opposite."

"Why do you do the opposite?"

"We can start by approving his proposal and letting him take it lightly."

"Great, then how do we control him?"

"This is the subtlety of boiling a frog in warm water. His enthusiasm will be mobilized and he will attend meetings on time every time in the future. He will not even realize that he has fallen into our trap. Day after day, year after year, This continued until twenty or thirty years later, until the day he retired, and we remained calm as if nothing had happened."