Monster - Chapter 100
Chapter 100: Thriller Paradise - Encounter
They each spent 20 points at Thriller Paradise for a 24-hour hunting ticket and received a wristband that looked like a sports watch. According to the ticket seller, this was for the hunters to calculate the number of prey after entering the park. When they left, they would return the wristband, and the park would settle their points based on the number of kills displayed on it.
To immerse the visitors more fully in the atmosphere created by Thriller Paradise, they were given a cool title: Hunters.
The three of them took their wristbands and pressed the button next to the dial. The first screen showed the kill count and accumulated points. Pressing it again showed the names of the prey and their corresponding point values.
Xu Lan had already told them about the wristbands back in Sally Village. It actually had another function the ticket seller hadn't mentioned: when a hunter kills another hunter, the accumulated points of the slain hunter are automatically transferred to the killer's wristband.
Since the park was huge, hunters were allowed to drive their own cars in. After Xu Lan helped bring their car over from the parking lot, the three of them didn't linger and prepared to set off immediately.
The land in Thriller Paradise was already somewhat desertified, but not too severely. The car could still drive, though they couldn't demand much in terms of speed.
It didn't take long for them to decide. Xing Meilu would drive, Lou would take the front passenger seat, and Lin Sandie would sit in the back.
Lin Sandie didn't feel slighted. When entering Thriller Paradise, she saw many other hunters who had bought tickets just like them—all sorts of strange people. Lou and Xing Meilu were less on guard against zombies and more on guard against their fellow hunters.
"Lin Sandie." Just as she opened the car door, ready to drive toward the ghost town, someone suddenly called her name from behind. She froze for a moment and looked back.
"It really is you." She saw a tall, burly man striding toward her. He had dark skin, and the bulging muscles beneath his dark gray suit made him look like a bear. He wore sunglasses and had his hair in dreadlocks. It was Mike, the captain who had led her team back in the Rose Society.
"Captain Mike." Lin Sandie greeted him calmly, showing no guilt for having left the organization without permission.
This was understandable. Logically speaking, she had been abandoned by Mike and the others in Taiyin Village, which was why she teamed up with Lou. She was the victim and had no reason to feel guilty. Her subsequent loss of contact with the organization was due to Yan Ting's phone cutting it off, which was a blind spot for the Rose Society, and Lin Sandie certainly had no intention of explaining.
"What are you doing here? With a newbie and a cop?" Mike directed the last sentence at Lou and Xing Meilu.
"We just happened to run into each other, so we're together for now," Lin Sandie answered perfunctorily.
"Does 'newbie' refer to me?" Lou asked with a smile.
"It's a nickname one of our brothers gave you. You know how it is—a lot of people don't like to say their enemy's name. But I have business to attend to today, so we can deal with the matter of Lin Sandie and our past grievances later." Seeing Lin Sandie safe and sound, her body intact, Mike felt a sense of relief. Personally, he didn't like it when subordinates he had just brought out died so quickly.
"This is Wei." Mike pointed to a middle-aged woman behind him with gaunt cheeks and a grim face. The woman was nearly 1.9 meters tall, also dressed in a black suit, with her black hair tied up immaculately. She carried a shotgun on her back and had a katana hanging from her waist. Her entire being looked like a mobile weapon.
"This is Morita Tsuyoshi." After introducing Wei, Mike introduced another man behind him, who had a genial smile. He wasn't tall, also in his forties, with a neat salt-and-pepper crew cut that made him look sharp. Unlike the others, in addition to his black suit, he wore a dark red haori. A katana also hung from his waist.
Morita Tsuyoshi didn't look at Lin Sandie, merely nodding at Lou with a smile.
"Let's go." Wei was even more direct. After saying this one word, she walked straight ahead. The only reason she had appeared near them was that Lin Sandie's group happened to be in her path.
As she left, Morita Tsuyoshi also followed at a leisurely pace.
"See you around." Mike gave a wave. The man who had been so composed in front of Lin Sandie was now completely relegated to a subordinate role next to Wei and Morita Tsuyoshi.
"You still haven't told me why you gave me the nickname 'newbie'," Lou asked.
"He said it's because you're like a newbie-type monster. I don't really get it either. That brother is a gamer." Mike smiled and turned to leave.
Everyone present knew that their battle was not for this time, nor this place.
"Let's go, too." Xing Meilu was the first to get into the car. "Who were those three?"
"They're from the Rose Society. You can take a look at this when you have time." Lin Sandie handed Xing Meilu the pamphlet she had received from the Rose Society, which contained information about the major factions in Disorder Land.
After driving into Thriller Paradise, all one could see was an endless wasteland of desertified land. Near the park entrance, there were still some trees and waist-high weeds, but further in, it was as if they had reached the edge of a spreading stain. The farther they got from Sally Village, the more the place revealed its true nature: dry, cruel, and desolate.
It was early morning, and the sunlight was growing stronger. The barren wasteland before them seemed to be covered in a layer of silver light. Lin Sandie surveyed the surrounding scenery and noticed that even inside the park, the same red automated game machines she had seen on the road appeared at regular intervals. The only difference was that there were no skeletons around the machines here.
After driving for some distance, some buildings appeared on the horizon. From afar, she could see gray-black roof ridges. Miu the crow had already flown ahead, sending back bits of information that Lou then relayed to Lin Sandie and Xing Meilu.
After about a twenty-minute drive, they finally reached the nearest attraction in Thriller Paradise: the Ghost Town.
The town wasn't very large, with most of its buildings clustered together. Lin Sandie drove in and saw a sign on the side of a straight, wide road that read: Varosha Town.
Most of the houses on either side of the main road were two or three stories high, many of which had already fallen into ruin and collapsed.
Unlike Taiyin Village, which Lin Sandie had visited before, Taiyin Village seemed gloomy and dark at first glance. But the ghost town before her, bathed in the bright morning light, was not gloomy. The steady stream of hunters entering the area also brought a sense of human presence. Yet, the perceptive Lin Sandie could still feel a repressive atmosphere blanketing the place.
This was a different kind of horror from Taiyin Village.
As the car moved slowly forward, Lin Sandie got a clearer view of the town called Varosha. She saw all sorts of trash and rotting corpses by the roadside. Many of the bodies had been picked clean. Looking up, she could see carrion-eating vultures circling in the sky, some of which would fly down, ignore the hunters, and peck at the corpses.
Even though Lin Sandie was wearing a mask, she could still smell the stench of decay.
Although there were traces of civilization here, that civilization had now been utterly destroyed. This place had become a simple, inhumane playground.
"There don't seem to be any zombies here. How are we supposed to kill anything?" They vaguely heard a complaint from a group of hunters passing by their car.
"I heard the zombies don't like the daytime and hide in the buildings. We could go take a look."
"Didn't they say most of the zombies in the ghost town have already been killed off? There are more zombies over in the Western World section."
The discussions of the hunters drifted into her ears. Lou hummed a tune, looking around here and there as if she were on an outing. But the way she looked at those hunters was as if she were looking at dead things.
"If we wait for these monsters to get a little fatter, won't we get more points when we slaughter them?" Lou glanced at the rearview mirror, her eyes meeting Lin Sandie's.
In Lou's view, these hunters were not only mutated monsters, but they were also lively and could accumulate points. Killing one of them would be worth more than any zombie here. All things considered, they aroused her desire to kill even more.
"Mm." Lin Sandie thought Lou's method was the most cost-effective. She was currently looking down, tapping on her phone.
"...Aren't you guys here on a mission? Why do you still want to kill people?" As an enforcer of laws and regulations, Xing Meilu was incredibly disheartened by the scene before her. She felt that everything here was wrong. All her normal beliefs, ever since she received that brooch, ever since she learned that Saya was the serial killer who mutilated her victims' faces, had been on an irreversible path to collapse.
"Little Police Flower, think about it. Most of the people who come to Disorder Land are exiles. And the ones who come here for fun are the scum of the scum. So, don't they deserve to be killed?" Lou replied to Xing Meilu.
"That's no reason for extrajudicial killing," Xing Meilu retorted weakly, lacking any conviction. She herself knew that the world couldn't possibly develop according to her ideals. In fact, Lou's words were just a way of comforting herself.
Lou killed people without ever caring if they were good or bad. She had killed Cheng Lina just because the woman had displeased her. Xing Meilu couldn't understand why Lin Sandie would fall for such a terrifying woman. Would she always please her? What if she displeased her—would Lou kill Lin Sandie too? She had been so preoccupied with her own affairs that she'd forgotten to warn her not to lay a hand on Lin Sandie... Xing Meilu's brow furrowed as she stared at the road ahead, her mind in turmoil.
Sitting in the back seat, Lin Sandie didn't know how to comfort Xing Meilu and simply remained silent. In her view, Leviathan was already finished. People were turning into monsters, the monster virus was highly contagious, monsters had trouble controlling their emotions, they enjoyed hurting others, and so on...
But this world had many good people like Xing Meilu, many innocents. They were people worth saving. But was there really any way to save this world that was already sick beyond cure?
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