Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-PerpetualMreow, Proofreader-adjective
In the corridor, the piercing alarm bell continued to ring, but the voice commanding everyone to retreat had disappeared. Most people were desperately pushing towards the stairs, and Ji Dong was among them.
He needed to go from the fourth floor to the third to find their weakest fighter, Fan Luming.
Ji Xiao’niao switched the communication channel to single-line contact with Fan Luming.
“Xiao Lu, where are you right now?”
“I’m rushing towards the stairs!”
It sounded like Fan Luming was also running, answering as he went, “About fifty meters away!”
In terms of room arrangement, Xiao Lu’s room was diagonally opposite the stairs, requiring two turns to reach.
Ji Dong estimated that at his speed, he would probably catch up with the person at the stairwell when he reached the third floor.
However, at that moment, there were suddenly multiple screams not far away.
Ji Dong, who was 175 centimeters tall, was just above the “short” level for a guy. The chaos around him made it impossible to see what was happening in front of him.
But soon, the screams continued, and the crowd began to push back in the opposite direction like a tide.
“Help! Help!”
“That’s the [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook]! It’s the [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook]’!”
“Help! Where are the security personnel!?”
“Run! Run!”
The crowd was in complete chaos.
People seemed to be deeply stimulated by these three words, like a group of blind flies, trying to escape the chaos.
After entering this [Film], even though Ji Dong had the identity of a B-level researcher, the [Peach Blossom Spring] didn’t give him any relevant knowledge about the SCP items at Site 7, and he was too busy escaping to go through all the containment files.
So, Ji Dong had no idea what this so-called [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook] really was, but seeing the terrified expressions on the others’ faces, it couldn’t be something easy to deal with.
Ji Dong stopped rushing towards the stairs.
Amidst the screams, the crowd gradually dispersed, revealing the “thing” that made everyone panic.
It was an emaciated-looking man in a gray suit.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The man’s arms were as thin as twigs, and when he swung the ax, the sleeves of his suit would flap emptily in the air. However, when the ax fell on a man who had collapsed on the ground, it instantly split open his skull, causing brain matter to splatter everywhere.
The ground beneath the man with the porcelain face was piled with bodies, and behind him, the blood had already formed a river.
Without saying a word, Ji Dong summoned his longbow, strung it, aimed, and released the arrow in one smooth motion.
The arrow shot out swiftly and accurately hit the man’s chest.
The man with the porcelain face dropped the huge ax, slowly reached out, covered his chest where the arrow had struck, and then fell backward onto the ground.
The next moment, the man and his huge ax both disappeared.
The arrow that Ji Dong saw was inserted into a pure black notebook.
Then, the notebook seemed to come to life, flapping its cover and flying up, shaking off Ji Dong’s arrow, and then crashing into another man who had collapsed in the corridor due to shock.
The next moment, the book turned into a blob-like slime, instantly filling the entire corridor.
Then, the slime suddenly extended seven or eight tentacles, rapidly shooting towards the people standing nearby—including Ji Dong, who was standing twenty meters away!
In that instant, time seemed to pass especially slowly for Ji Dong.
He saw the slime’s tentacles that were coming towards him split open from the top like a blooming flower, dividing into eight symmetrical pieces, all filled with jagged teeth, each just the right size to envelop a person’s head.
To deal with this thing… arrows definitely wouldn’t work.
So Ji Dong had to put away his longbow and instead drew a short knife from his waist, rushing towards the oncoming tentacles, skillfully avoiding the blooming flower-like tips, and then accurately cutting at the thinnest part of the tentacle.
Ji Dong felt like he had just cut into a very tough rubber.
Even if he used all his strength, he could only cut in about ten centimeters, and he was unable to cut off a tentacle with one swing.
At this point, his dynamic vision and the time gained from his quick movements were also used up.
Ji Dong hit the monster once, causing it to retract the tentacle in pain, but the other tentacles had already swept through all the nearby living people.
These people were bitten by the “flowers” in vital spots, and blood flowed immediately, spilling to the ground.
Only one researcher had a bit of luck, managing to escape with only losing a piece of flesh on his forearm. He ran in the opposite direction while frantically covering his wound.
In an instant, Ji Dong understood the situation.
This monster was not something he could easily take down in a short time.
And even if he worked hard to take down this large slime, it could likely turn back into a notebook and then transform into another monster.
In the world of SCP, one of the survival rules is to never underestimate an SCP item you don’t understand. When guessing something about it, you must imagine the worst-case scenario.
Ji Dong dashed out and caught up with the injured researcher before the slime launched another attack, grabbed his collar, and swung a steel fire extinguisher at the window.
Ji Dong’s strength may seem ordinary to the participants in the [Peach Blossom Spring] but among normal people, it was easily at the level where he could effortlessly handle twenty opponents at once.
This building was the dormitory for the site staff, with bulletproof glass. When Ji Dong put all his strength into smashing it, a a spider web-like pattern immediately appeared on the glass.
At this moment, the huge slime had already launched a second attack.
This time, it shot out seven or eight tentacles toward Ji Dong and the researcher, each with a deadly “flower” at the top.
Ji Dong didn’t even have time to look back.
His mind was completely focused, and in two slow-motion seconds, he swung the heavy fire extinguisher into the glass for the second time.
This time, the glass shattered with a sound.
Ji Dong grabbed the completely bewildered researcher and jumped out of the broken window.
They didn’t fall directly from the fourth floor.
Before they hit the ground, Ji Dong timely grabbed onto the decorative elements on the exterior wall, hanging on for the two of them.
Looking up at the broken window, Ji Dong noticed that the slime monster hadn’t followed. He spoke to the researcher he had just saved, “Okay, grab onto that railing yourself. Can you do that?”
The researcher nodded with a dull expression, wrapped his unharmed hand around the railing, and then wrapped his legs around it, hanging like a koala.
His brain was still in a state of almost crashing due to excessive shock, feeling like a person saved by Quicksilver in a movie. His eyes couldn’t keep up with the speed of the other person, it was just a dazzling move, and he had narrowly escaped death before he could even despair.
As an SCP Foundation staff member, this researcher dealt with things that could not be judged by common sense.
He never knew that there was someone in their facility who could move at such speed, and from the way they were dressed, they seemed to be a researcher just like himself!
“Xiao Niao, how’s it going over there?”
At this moment, Fan Luming’s voice came through Ji Dong’s earpiece, sounding extremely anxious.
“Encountered a monster, not sure what it is,” Ji Dong said. “Where are you now?”
“Near the stairs,” Fan Luming replied. “About twenty meters away.”
“Okay, stand still.”
Ji Dong said, “Move away from the window.”
Fan Luming on the other end of the call: “???”
A couple seconds later, he was able to understand what Ji Xiao’niao meant.
Ji Dong, holding a fieldwork hammer – a disposable prop he had exchanged for in the [Peach Blossom Spring], smashed the window glass on the third floor and jumped into the corridor from the outside.
“Wow!!”
The third floor wasn’t attacked by the monster. Many staff members were still fleeing. They were startled when they saw someone break the glass and jump in from outside.
“Xiao’niao?”
Ji Dong landed less than five meters away from Fan Luming and quickly ran over. “What’s going on?”
“Hurry, let’s go!”
Ji Dong, amidst the surprised looks of others, grabbed Fan Luming’s arm and ran towards the stairs. “We don’t have time!”
At the same time, the researcher who had just been saved by Ji Xiao’niao clumsily climbed in through the broken window.
He was holding his injured arm and shouted, “It’s the [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook]! We just encountered the [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook]!”
His words were like a drop of boiling water in hot oil, and everyone went crazy.
“Oh my goodness, what’s going on!?”
“Wasn’t 104 supposed to be contained?”
“How could the [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook] also show up?”
“Hurry, let’s go! Hurry!!”
“Where are the security personnel? Why haven’t they arrived yet!?”
The three words [Nightmare Illustrated Notebook] were familiar and extremely frightening to the staff at Site 7.
Ji Dong had personally experienced the difficulty of dealing with that thing, and Fan Luming, being such a clever top student, wouldn’t waste time on meaningless questions in a life-or-death situation.
The two squeezed through the crowd, descended the stairs step by step, and arrived at the exit of Zone C.
By this time, a team of six armed security personnel had arrived. They stood by the door, and were attempting to evacuate the crowd fleeing the building.
“Over here, this way!”
The leader shouted.
“Everyone, head to the C-zone parking lot! There will be a car to pick–!”
However, his words were cut off halfway.
A black notebook, like a crow spreading its wings, plummeted from the sky and struck the back of the security team leader’s head.
