“No. 114, death row inmate. Before participating in this Scumbag Game, you killed twelve women and set fire to a church, resulting in the deaths of twenty-three people.”
“After joining this game, over the course of nine stages, you have killed one hundred and fourteen people using extremely cruel methods. Among them was your own younger sister, No. 724.”
The cold, mechanical voice echoed in the abandoned church at midnight. In the darkness, the man called No. 114 was suspended in midair by two tentacles. Before he could even let out a roar, the body of a woman, sliced open horizontally from the middle, her internal organs and bones gouged out, appeared before and behind him, then violently clamped onto his body.
No. 114 stood two meters tall with a sturdy build. The 1.6-meter female body was like a doll in front of him. So what the tentacles did was shatter the man’s bones and carve away his excess muscles. When the female bodies pressed against his flesh like red-hot iron plates, emitting a nauseating sizzle that set one’s teeth on edge, the surplus waste of flesh and blood was squeezed out from the seams.
A tentacle picked up the woman’s delicate face—a thin layer with perfectly clear features.
It was pasted onto the man’s face. The skin grew madly, replacing his original features.
Turning a mass-murdering death row inmate into a delicate, pretty woman. Everyone in the square looked up to watch; the entire place was silent.
Those who could participate in the Scumbag Game were either lunatics, murderers, or patients suffering from severe mental illnesses. As they watched this scene, there was only madness and a hint of confusion in their eyes.
Sitting on a small building at the edge of the square, Bai Yu did not look up at the man who deserved no sympathy. This game had already reached its final stage; he needed to figure out how to clear this impossible game.
The final stage was absurd, yet somehow it also seemed perfectly normal. Their group of lunatics had to enter a manga—a school romance manga.
And the reason they had to turn No. 114 into a woman was simple: the manga was short of female leads.
To be precise, No. 114 was not the only one who needed to become a woman. Everyone still alive had to undergo “modification.” As for the mission objective, it was also simple. On the surface, there was not even any difficulty; compared to the previous nine stages, it was practically child’s play.
They had to use their modified identities to conquer the corresponding characters in the manga. The requirement was to make the other party fall in love with you sincerely. They could not actively harm the target, nor could they use forceful means to make them submit.
Looking at the mission objective alone, it truly was nothing special and fit perfectly with the school romance manga genre. However, the people participating in this game and the mission world seemed somewhat incompatible.
Sending a bunch of lunatics, murderers, and psychopaths to play a romance game was indeed a hell-difficulty mission.
They were perfectly fine with arson and murder, but falling in love? You’d be better off killing them.
“The final stage won’t be that simple. Based on the past patterns of the Scumbag Game, the problem should lie within this manga itself. The current intel only says it’s a romance genre, but it doesn’t say there can’t be other genres mixed in.”
Bai Yu pondered, holding a black mobile phone in his hand. His thumb gently rubbed the screen, which displayed a photo—a cute little girl in a white dress, hugging a rabbit doll.
Just one more stage, and he would be able to find her.
The square suddenly grew noisy. The other game participants were also undergoing their modifications. Aside from Bai Yu, not a single one could escape it.
One could see the notice board outside the church, carved with many names. These names seemed to be etched with bloody threads—distorted, maddening, and carrying a nauseating stench of blood.
The notice board listed the survivors and their rankings. The order was based on how many participants they had killed across the past nine stages. The names left by the living had a number suffix, each digit representing a fresh life. And these bloody names were dimming at an extremely fast pace. Those that dimmed indicated that the “modification” had been completed.
The darkness spread to the second place on the list. Only the character “Zhou” could be seen, the following two characters seemed to have been intentionally smudged out. Of course, that was not the key point. The key was the three digits inscribed at the end of this name, blood-red to the point of being black.
“999”
After the woman surnamed Zhou disappeared, Bai Yu stood up and walked to the entrance of the church, lost in deep darkness.
The notice board beside him now only displayed his name: [1. Bai Yu (Doctor): 1124]
“No. 2004, death row inmate. Before participating in this game, you killed eight people. However, considering the reasons you killed, you are not a complete and utter piece of scum.”
“But, in the past nine games, you killed 1,124 people. Your madness was praised even by those lunatics. They even thought you were curing the ‘patients’ you killed, and they called you Doctor.”
The mechanical voice rang out beside his ear. Bai Yu remained silent, one hand pressing on the hilt of his blade beneath his long black leather coat.
“You do not need to undergo modification. This is your reward. However, for the sake of fairness, you require some small changes.”
The doors of the church slowly opened, revealing a blood-red world beyond.
“The answer you seek lies in the world behind this door. Are you ready?”
Bai Yu frowned. He took one step and walked into the church. Almost instantly, he felt his body being broken down by a bizarre force. He forced himself to open his eyes but only saw a world of blood red. The trouble was, in just a short time, his body was completely dismantled and then reassembled.
His body turned into countless blood threads as fine as strands of hair, as if breaking out of a cocoon for rebirth, or as if weaving a new “cocoon” for himself.
What he could not see was his long saber and black phone floating beside him.
The black phone still displayed that yellowed photo—the cute twin-tailed girl in a white dress, capable of draining one’s entire HP bar—while also showing a stream of comments.
“Whoa, the Number One Killer has been reborn as a girl!”
“So excited! So excited! So excited!”
“Ha, making someone who’s killed ten thousand people play a romance game. One second of prayer for that lucky unknown manga character.”
“Wow, that little sister is so cute! I hereby declare that from today onward, the Blade Devil is my big brother-in-law!”
“Hey, you’re just asking for jail time. But before the cops find you, the Blade Devil will probably have already sliced you into mincemeat.”
“I just want to know if I can buy the same rabbit doll.”
“Word on the street is that this world isn’t just a school romance. It supposedly also has elements of ghost stories and supernatural tales. It’s going to be super thrilling! Better bring an extra pair of pants!”
Within the blood-red world, Bai Yu’s mind gradually cleared.
[You are dead]
[You have obtained a new identity: Fierce Ghost (Female)]
