The sound came from the dark corner ahead.

Very slow.

Very heavy…

It was also mixed with some indistinct whispering.

“Cold…”

“So cold…”

“No… no injections…”

“I’m not…”

The voice was as raspy as scraping sandpaper.

“Is someone there?”

Monica stood up, gripping her dagger tightly.

Phil did not answer.

She stared at that dark corner, her red eyes narrowing slightly.

In the damp darkness, it felt as though something rotting, wrapped in a coldness like the chill mist of early morning, was slowly approaching.

Phil suddenly had a premonition.

The rats Monica had dealt with were perhaps not the true culprits behind the disturbances in the sewers…

The next second, a figure stepped out from the corner, exposed under the beam of Monica’s phone flashlight.

It was a tall, thin man.

He wore a tattered coat. Dirty, messy long hair clung wetly to his face, and his skin had a sickly grayish-white pallor.

He walked with a staggering gait, looking as though he might collapse with every step.

His left hand was clutching his neck, and a patch of tiny black markings could faintly be seen through his fingers.

Phil looked at the markings, her emotions suddenly surging like raging waves.

“Help…”

The man raised his head.

His cloudy, lifeless eyes looked at Monica.

“Help me…”

Monica’s expression changed.

“Is he injured?”

She almost subconsciously started to step forward.

But Phil’s voice rang in her ear.

“Stop.”

Monica paused, hesitating.

“But he looks like he needs help.”

“I said, stop.”

Phil’s tone was even colder than before.

Monica froze for a moment.

She had never heard Phil speak in such a tone.

Gone were the usual teasing and laziness.

Instead, it carried a genuine warning.

Monica looked at Phil and found her staring fixedly at the man, her eyes revealing an emotion Monica couldn’t understand.

But the man was still reaching out to her.

“Help… help…”

His voice sounded like something was blocking his throat.

Monica gripped her dagger tightly, hesitating as she said:

“Maybe we should at least confirm the situation first—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the man’s body suddenly twitched.

Crack.

The sound was very faint.

Yet it made all the noises in the sewer seem to vanish instantly.

Monica’s eyes widened.

The man slowly lowered his head, looking at his arm.

Something was writhing beneath his skin.

“Ah… Ah…”

The man cried out as if in a delirium.

A piece of grayish-black chitin pushed out from the back of his hand.

Then a second piece.

A third.

Dense black veins crawled along his neck toward his cheeks, like living fissures greedily devouring his human body.

“Ah…”

The man opened his mouth.

His voice no longer sounded human.

“Graaaaaaaahhhhh!”

A shrill roar, sharp as a blade, exploded in the sewer.

His body suddenly swelled, his bones letting out teeth-jarring sounds of dislocation. His spindly limbs were forcibly stretched apart, his knuckles deformed, and sharp spikes of chitin pierced through his skin.

A grayish-black carapace covered half of his face.

The face that had been begging for help just moments ago was turning into something hideously monstrous in the blink of an eye.

Monica froze in place, terrified by this completely unexpected scene.

Phil’s pupils slightly contracted.

Under her shocked gaze, a system prompt popped up.

Mutant.

A type of Calamity recognized by SAVE.

Unlike Calamities born from The Wasteland, Mana-Polluted Lands, or even descending from beyond this world, Mutants usually suddenly changed from ordinary people who completely lacked supernatural powers.

They would gain physical strength far surpassing humans, as well as a certain special ability similar to an Ability User, in an extremely short period of time.

But the price was their sanity.

The vast majority of Mutants possessed extremely high aggressiveness and destructive desire. They could not be communicated with, could not be pacified, and it couldn’t even be confirmed whether they still retained their consciousness from when they were human.

There was related research in SAVE’s data indicating that negative emotions seemed to have a certain correlation with the probability of Mutantification.

Long-term suppression, extreme anger, despair, and self-destructive tendencies could all become precursors before Mutantification.

Some people undergo a drastic change in temperament before turning into a Mutant.

Some mention hearing the voice of the universe.

Others exhibit strong suicidal tendencies.

But these were all just data, words and photos Lin Han had seen in his office, cold numbers on a screen.

He had never seen a human turn into a Mutant right in front of his eyes.

This was the first.

It was as if something was hatching from inside the human body, like an adult insect breaking free from its cocoon.

Tearing skin, splitting bones apart, emitting terrifying sounds, and swallowing the person’s original appearance.

But what shook Phil so deeply was not just the gruesomeness of this scene—

It was the things on that person’s body.

The grayish-black chitin, the markings spreading along the neck…

And that rotting texture.

It was too familiar. It couldn’t be more familiar.

After all, she had just spent the entire day dealing with these very things.

“What exactly… is going on…?”

Scenes flashed through her mind—

The photos of the West Business District Incident.

The five Mutant incidents that occurred in W City this month.

Those Mutants secured to stretchers with restraint straps.

That grayish-black chitin covering their skin.

It was almost exactly the same as what was growing on the man before her.

Why?

It felt as if Phil’s brain had been violently struck by something.

This is a game.

This was supposed to be just a game…

So, why would the characteristics of the real-life W City Mutant incidents appear in this game?

Did the game’s production team use real-world news as a reference?

Or was SAVE’s internal intelligence taken by the game company to use as material?

Reason after reason surfaced, but none could convince Phil.

Or perhaps…

Before another, far more absurd thought could even take shape, she was interrupted by Monica’s trembling voice.

“Miss Phil?”

Phil snapped back to her senses.

Monica gripped her dagger, her face pale, yet she still stood protectively in front of her, even though she couldn’t actually block anything.

The Mutant had completely hunched over.

Half of his face was covered in chitin, while the other half still retained the man’s twisted expression of agony.

His lips parted and closed.

As if he were speaking, or perhaps silently crying.

“I’m… not…”

“Not…”

The next second, his neck suddenly twisted, and his cloudy eyes locked dead onto Monica.

Phil’s eyes darkened.

No matter what, the most pressing matter was to deal with the situation at hand.

She suddenly had a feeling: if she continued to treat this like a game, holding onto the idea that she could just restart if she died, then something she would regret beyond repair was bound to happen.

“Run. This is a B-Class Mutant, not something you can handle.”

Hearing Phil’s command, Monica did not hesitate this time.

For someone who couldn’t even defeat a C-Class Calamity, hesitating for even a second when encountering a B-Class was an insult to her own intelligence.

She turned around and ran.

Dirty water splashed everywhere under her boots, and the beam of her flashlight swung violently inside the tunnel.

“If you encounter a Calamity, please contact official SAVE personnel immediately.”

The phrase, which had been broadcasted countless times on TV, mall screens, the radio, and everywhere else, surfaced in Monica’s mind.

So she frantically tapped her phone screen, trying to dial the X City SAVE organization’s emergency hotline. The dialing tone sounded exceptionally clear in the sewer.

“Please, please let it go through!”

Looking at her phone, which had almost no signal in the sewer, Monica gritted her teeth and silently prayed.