Chapter 134

"Attention all employees: the fire has spread uncontrollably to the second floor! All employees on the second floor are requested to move to the third floor as soon as possible. Work will continue as usual. Third-floor employees, please accommodate those from below and share your computers with them after your work is done! Punch-in times remain unchanged; due to the fire, the punching window will be extended by five minutes~"

Overhead, the broadcast blared, repeating itself a full three times.

Accompanying the broadcast were the piercing screams from downstairs.

Lin Tu's warning had been timely, and with the obstacles piled on the stairs, many employees managed to follow the players up to the third floor.

However, the second floor had held a large crowd, and plenty of people hadn't made it up at all.

Cries for help and screams echoed through the stairwell. Even though Lin Tu suspected there might not be a single living person in this company, her heart still clenched.

"Anyone still down there? Hurry up!" an employee shouted down the stairs.

But as the flames consumed the obstacles in the stairwell in one fell swoop, the skeletons ascended to the second floor unimpeded, crowding around the emergency exit door. Anyone trying to rush up to the third floor had a layer of skin scraped off by the dense swarm of skeletons.

Lin Tu pulled out her long blade and slashed at a skeleton, but her sword light clashed against an invisible wall. It seemed that once you'd made it to the third floor, you couldn't return to the second—not even a breath of air could pass through.

"Save me! Save me!" Amid the skeletons, an employee wailed pitifully at those on the stairs, his outstretched hand quickly dragged back into the throng.

The people on the stairs watched in horror as blood splattered everywhere.

"Let's go back. We can't help them," Yi Ying said, tugging at Lin Tu's hand.

The players dragged their weary bodies back to the third floor.

By now, the second-floor employees were already blending in with the third-floor crowd—after all, the second through fourth floors belonged to the same department, and most of the employees knew each other. Many of the refugees from the second floor settled beside others' workstations to rest and chat.

"Go find out when the fire will reach the fourth floor," the players, who'd been through this once before, instructed. They sent Yi Ying, the social butterfly of the group, to gather intel.

A few minutes later, Yi Ying returned, her expression grave. "They don't know either."

The players exchanged uneasy glances, but just then, their phones buzzed. A message from Luo Yongzhi and the others: "We can go up to the second floor now. There are five or six monsters inside—we should be able to handle them. We've been told to report to the third floor at nine tonight."

The players brightened. Earlier, Luo Yongzhi had gone to the second floor around the time the fire reached it; now, their ascent to the third floor probably coincided with the flames climbing higher.

"We should still take shifts keeping watch, just in case something goes wrong," Lin Tu said.

The other players nodded in agreement. Luo Yongzhi's timeframe was only a rough guide—they wouldn't dare lounge around carelessly until nine o'clock.

"Those obstacles we piled up did help a bit. Should we set up more?" Guan Suixing asked.

"Keep going," the players agreed unanimously.

Another round of hauling began, though the third floor lacked a guest lounge. The group could only stack filing cabinets and storage racks into the stairwell.

And because there was no lounge, they couldn't scavenge any edible supplies from those cabinets either.

The players were moving company property, and at first, some employees tried to stop them. But after enduring one punch-in cycle, no one bothered them anymore.

For the players, that was one punch-in endured; for these employees, it was another day without food.

Looking around, the office that had been relatively cordial moments ago now felt tense and frigid. Some people were already snapping at each other.

"How could you drop your biscuit on the floor and step on it?! Do you know I gave you that biscuit even though I had none for myself?"

"I'm sorry! It was an accident, I swear! Can you give me another one?"

"I barely have any left myself! How can you be so selfish?! I never knew you were this kind of person!"

While the two argued over a biscuit that had been crushed underfoot, another employee nearby lunged over, dropped to the floor, and scooped up the crumbs into his mouth in two or three quick motions.

"Aaaah! You ate my biscuit!"

"What do you mean, your biscuit? Once it hits the floor, it's everyone's. I thought you didn't want it, so I ate it."

"I did want it! Of course I wanted it! Give it back!"

"No."

"..."

Similar scenes played out at workstations across the office—

"This is mine! I'm eating my own food—what's wrong with that? Why should I share with you?!"

"You're so selfish!"

"We're done!"

There'd never been much camaraderie between colleagues, and after four days of starvation, everyone was throwing courtesy to the wind.

Crouched in a corner, the players silently pulled out their bread and gnawed on it, not daring to make a sound.

It wasn't that they didn't want to eat well—but with no hallucinations currently appearing, they wanted to save their better provisions for when those might strike.

Besides, if they cracked open a steaming bowl of instant noodles or a self-heating hotpot here, those employees with hunger gleaming green in their eyes would strip the skin off their backs.

After stuffing every movable object into the stairwell until it was packed to the brim, they endured another punch-in.

Now, the players—who had been forced awake at five in the morning and had slept in the office last night—were beginning to flag.

There were still eight hours until nine o'clock at night. They could take turns resting and catching some sleep.

Lin Tu went upstairs to retrieve the small cot from her office and Kou Lin's cot, then set them side by side in the stairwell, making a bed that could fit three people.

The players would split into two teams to rest. Of the five, Hei Mawu was the only man. Owing to her lingering suspicions about his identity, Lin Tu volunteered to pair up with him for the first watch.

So for the first four hours, Yi Ying, Guan Suixing, and Kou Lin slept, while Lin Tu and Hei Mawu stood guard. For the next four, the cots were separated—one for Lin Tu, one for Hei Mawu—and the three women took over watch duty.

During the first half, Lin Tu kept a close eye on Hei Mawu, expecting him to pull something. But he did nothing at all, simply watching intently for any sign of flames creeping up.

Since the other three players were asleep, Lin Tu didn't make any noise or ask superfluous questions.

In the second half, she was genuinely exhausted and drifted off quickly on her cot.

Time slipped to nine o'clock at night.

Yi Ying woke Lin Tu ahead of schedule. She blinked her groggy eyes and sat up on the cot to find the three women quietly stowing away the bedboards, not making a sound.

"What's going on?" Lin Tu asked in a barely audible whisper.

"A fight broke out outside over food. We didn't want to draw their attention," Yi Ying whispered back.

Lin Tu peered through the gap in the emergency exit door but couldn't see anything, nor hear anything. Yet with her enhanced senses, she caught a faint trace of blood in the air.

"Someone died?" she asked.

"Not sure if they're dead," Kou Lin replied. "The argument got pretty heated, and I was worried something might happen, so I used [Camera Intrusion] to check. Someone got hit in the head with a keyboard—blood all over their face. They were carried into the bathroom to wash up."

"There's no camera in the bathroom, so I don't know what happened after. But that person never came out again. My guess is... they're probably dead."

Lin Tu rubbed her forehead and glanced at her phone—it was 8:55 PM.

"Forget them. Get ready to head upstairs."

Lin Tu thought for a moment, then drew her long blade.

Six punch-ins had already passed. For these employees, that meant six days of starvation—they were nearing their breaking point.

A starving person is capable of anything. Especially if they suspected those above them of hoarding food.

Peaceful coexistence with the people upstairs was looking less and less likely. Force was the only language they'd understand.

As soon as nine o'clock struck, thick black smoke billowed upward.

This time, the players were smarter. They didn't wait for the flames to devour the obstacles—they rushed into the offices and shouted the warning ahead of time. As soon as the employees learned the fire had reached them, the invisible wall vanished.

Screams erupted everywhere. Accompanied by the broadcast's repeated reminder, smoke from the flames engulfed the entire stairwell. A flood of employees poured out of the offices and scrambled upstairs.

The players sprinted up the stairs ahead of them, but what greeted them wasn't the concerned gaze of colleagues.

"Hand over the food!"

Employees stationed on either side of the emergency exit door, gaunt and sallow with hunger, clutched iron bars they'd wrenched from chair legs, staring menacingly at the colleagues who'd just fled up from the third floor.

Wordlessly, Lin Tu produced her long blade, previously concealed. With a flick of her wrist, it cleaved into the iron emergency door beside her as easily as if slicing tofu, sinking in about an arm's length.

"Uhh, uhh..." The employees immediately retracted their arms and began trembling from head to toe like frightened quails.

"Get lost!" Lin Tu snapped.

"Yes, yes. Sorry, sorry." The employees chuckled nervously and scattered.

Under the hungry, green-tinged stares of the entire fourth floor, Lin Tu and her group stepped into the floor proper.

The other employees who'd fled up from the third floor also surged through the opening Lin Tu had created, crowding in smoothly.

Because the players had piled up so much debris in the stairwell, it genuinely hindered the flames' advance and the skeletons' ascent, so more employees than expected had managed to escape from the third floor this time.

The fourth-floor employees eyed them hungrily, glancing at Lin Tu's group repeatedly. Seeing that she'd set her blade aside and made no further moves, the same few employees who'd been crouching by the door swarmed forward again—

"Hand over the food!"

"I don't have any food!" a man wailed.

"Move it!" the people behind him shoved. "Go on! What's the holdup? People are still coming up! If you keep crowding the doorway, the third-floor folks won't make it up!"

"We don't care!" the employees snarled. "Hand over the food!"