Autophagy

"Why? I need to search some corpses," Song Lei said. Sugihara looked at him while raising one of her brows.

They went back to the corpses of the two officers.

"Are you really going to do this? I mean... They are dead you know? Shouldn't we be like... Respectful to their corpses?" Sugihara asked. Song Lei sighed, it wasn't like he enjoyed scavenging corpses.

"I can't be respectful to their corpses if I'm dead. Our priority is surviving," Song Lei said. He wore the gloves he had just gotten and took the officer's gun. After inspecting it, he held it out to Sugihara. "Here. Take this. We don't know what we may meet later. You will probably need it," he said.

Sugihara took the gun hesitantly. However, when she actually held the gun in her hands, she seemed very comfortable with it. Much more than Song Lei who had never held a gun before.

"Have you ever used a gun before?" Song Lei asked curiously.

"Well... You know my father is the dean right?" She asked. Song Lei's face darkened for a second.

"Yes."

"He sometimes has to go abroad. From time to time, he takes me there too. I had the chance to go to various shooting ranges in the USA," Sugihara said. She locked the gun's safety just to be safe. 

"I see... Be sure that you don't shoot me. That's enough," Song Lei said. Knowing how to handle a weapon and being able to actually kill something and cope with it were two very different things. Although it was easy to aim at something and shoot it, the hard part was after that. He didn't expect a lot from Sugihara. If she did help him, it would be great. If she didn't it was still okay.

Song Lei kept searching the corpses and took anything that could be useful. He found a flashlight that was better than his phone's, another gun that he didn't really intend to use unless it was needed, and a few identification documents.

Other than that, the officers didn't have anything on them. They seemed to be really unprepared for coming here.

'They must've thought that it wouldn't be dangerous,' Song Lei thought. He sighed and left the room together with Sugihara.

After walking for another minute or so, they reached the stairs again.

"How did you guys come here by the way?" Song Lei asked. The officers had entered from the stairs. He himself had entered the basement by using the window that was left open. From what he could deduce, the window had been forced open by someone.

"We? We entered through the stairs. It was a bit hard to get through the boy's dorms but we somehow managed," Sugihara explained. "What do you even mean by that? Did you use a different way?"

"Yes. Actually, I entered through the bathroom window. However, it seemed to have been forced open by the time I found it. If you guys weren't the ones who did that, that means that there is someone other than us here," Song Lei explained in one breath.

"That seems to be the case," Sugihara confirmed while touching her chin.

Song Lei's head was hurting because of all the information he was trying to process. Just being in this inescapable basement was making him nervous and tired. He just wished to go back to his room in the New World and take a good sleep.

'I wonder how the others are doing...' Song Lei thought. He didn't know how fast the time passed in this Remnant World compared to the New World. He was wishing that it wasn't that much. If it was the same, he would've spent about two days in the Remnant World. He could only hope that Damien and the others were doing fine.

Sugihara and Song Lei ascended the stairs to relocate into a new floor. This floor was just like the others with little to no changes. Song Lei really wished to not encounter any of those monsters again.

Unfortunately, his wishes went unanswered as he felt chills running down his spine after taking a few steps. Unfortunately, their retreat path had already disappeared. He could hear footsteps and growls from a room just next to them. Sugihara and he looked at each other with terror in their eyes. They both knew that they couldn't make any sounds. They both closed their eyes to silently relocate before being noticed by the monster.

They counted till four and opened their eyes. Weirdly, they were still in the exact same place. They silently agreed to try again and closed their eyes to wait for four more seconds. Unfortunately, they still were in the same place.

'Fuck,' Song Lei cursed inside his head. 'There's another human in this sub-space.'

Seeing that they couldn't relocate, Song Lei chose to get as far as they could from the monster and search for the other person while doing so.

They took a few steps.

"*CREAK"

"GROWL"

'Oh fuck...' Song Lei cursed inside his head. The floorings had just made an incredibly loud creaking noise. This had alerted the monster.

"Run," Song Lei said to Sugihara. Sugihara seemed to be paralyzed by the fear. The door of the room just a few meters behind them was broken by the monster with a bang. Hearing the explosion, Song Lei understood that he had no other choice left.

"SLAP"

"Run," he repeated while slapping Sugihara square on the face. Sugihara's face reddened instantly. Fortunately, this was enough to wake her up. She and Song Lei started running as fast as they could. Sugihara was a really fit girl so she could easily keep up with Song Lei. They didn't dare to look behind as they knew that the monster wasn't very far from them. They could hear its footsteps right behind them.

It was growling and breathing erratically. Song Lei's mind was running at full speed without stopping, trying to figure a way out of this situation. He clenched his teeth and decided to use his one and only trump card.

He turned around while he kept running. There it was, the monster was running backward at full speed with its head twisted 180 degrees. Song Lei took a deep breath and got ready to summon Guyaa.

Suddenly, however, a door right next to him was opened as a leg came out of it. Song Lei's eyes widened at the sudden interruption. Unfortunately, he couldn't react in time and fell down to the ground. Seeing this, Sugihara was about to turn around and help him.

"Keep running!" Song Lei shouted. He knew that she couldn't help him in any way. His last chance was to summon Guyaa.

The innards of his backpack poured out as he hit the ground. There were less than a few seconds left before the monster reached him. As Song Lei was just about to summon Guyaa, the calculus book of Toda Anzai dropped right in front of him. It had a random page open with lots of notes on it. For some reason though, the texts were all glowing in golden.

Seeing the words glowing in golden, Song Lei had a hunch that he couldn't explain. Instead of summoning Guyaa in the last few seconds he had, he took the calculus book from the ground and started reading it out as loud as he could.

His voice resounded in the whole corridor. The sound and the vibrations his vocal cords made could actually be seen in the form of golden shockwaves that covered the whole hallway. These shockwaves hit the monster square. Stopping its movement.

Seeing that he was actually able to stop the monster from moving, he raised the voice he was reading the notes with and put more of his energy into it. He actually had no idea what these notes meant. They were all related to insights and certain knowledge about calculus, which Song Lei didn't understand. He was just reading whatever he was seeing in the book.

Fortunately, this book seemed to carry some kind of importance in this Remnant World.

As Song Lei's voice kept shaking the basement, the monster started dissipating into thin air. Seeing this, Song Lei raised the pace he was reading in. He currently looked like a holy preacher that was spreading the word of god. Washing away the evil.

As the last bits of the monster disappeared, Song Lei stopped reading too. He felt incredibly tired. So tired that he couldn't properly move his arms at the moment.

[Congratulations! You've managed to cleanse a "Twisted Monster". You've gained Exp!]

[You've highly exhausted your soul. It's advised to rest properly]

Two waves of notifications appeared in front of his face as Song Lei collapsed on the ground. Sugihara's eyes sparkled with excitement as she ran to Song Lei's side.

"I thought you didn't have your ghost hunting equipment with you," she said.

"I don't," Song Lei answered weakly. "I just figured something out at the spot."

"Whatever you did seems to have worked," Sugihara said while looking at the place the monster had just been in. It had disappeared without leaving any signs behind.

"Yes. Now let me rest for a little bit...."