Autophagy

Song Lei left the room without making any noises. He felt his hair standing on its end and quickly jumped to the side. Something passed by him and hit the wall.

"Ow!" Someone shouted. "It's not nice to dodge people when they are trying to give you hugs!"

Song Lei slowly turned around and looked at the person on the ground without saying anything.

"Don't mind her, bro! She's a bit weird but you'll get used to it," someone said. Song Lei turned around again and saw the black-haired man that had voted no for his punishment in the meeting.

"I'm Damien. And that thing over there is Xu Chang," Damien said while pointing at the woman that had just tried to jump on Song Lei.

Song Lei briefly glanced at the blue-haired woman. She looked to be around 20 years old or so.

"Nice to meet you, Damien. Your Chinese is very good," Song Lei said. Damien's eyes widened.

"Pffft. Hahahaha!" Xu Chang started laughing.

"You don't have to laugh at him. He is a newbie..." Said Damien while facepalming. "Well, you see, there are no languages in the new world. I don't know Chinese and you don't know English. That mea-"

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"Wait wait! What do you mean by that? How does that even work? Did someone install a translating device on us or something?" Song Lei started asking question after question.

"Wow! Hold your horses dude! We too don't know how it works okay? Well... We know that there is no translation device," Damien said while scratching his head.

"How did you learn that?" Song Lei asked curiously. Damien didn't answer and averted his eyes. Song Lei turned to Xu Chang.

"How? We cut some lost one's body up and searched inside! There were no translation devices inside," Xu Chang said while jumping around happily.

Song Lei frowned and didn't say anything. He turned to Damien. Damien held Song Lei's shoulder and smiled.

"Xu Chang has very weird tastes. If you accept her advances, you'll experience very different things in the bedroom..." Damien whispered into Song Lei's ears. Song Lei instantly blushed.

"Wh- What are you even talking about?" Song Lei asked. He brushed off Damien's hand and backed off.

"Just telling... Anyways. Do you want to hang out with us for a little bit?" Damien suggested while smiling. Song Lei took a deep breath to calm himself down.

"Aren't we supposed to go back to our assigned floors?"

"We have some free time after each meeting. No matter what, we are still humans. We need to communicate with other people from time to time," Damien explained. Song Lei nodded.

"Well... I will pass on that offer. I still have a quake demon to feed," Song Lei said while smiling awkwardly.

"Oh? So you took over Xiang Yimu's pet huh? Did you leave the safe house to the demon, just like he did?" Damien asked.

"Not really. I live in the same room with it," Song Lei said. Damien frowned and took a step back.

"You're living in the same room with a quake demon?" Damien asked. "You're a weird fellow."

Song Lei smiled and scratched his head without saying anything. He suddenly felt someone tugging at his shirt.

"Do you want to come to my floor? I will take you on a trip!" Xu Chang said while smiling.

"I'm sorry. Maybe some other time," Song Lei answered. Xu Chang charged, held his arms, and started shaking him.

"Pretty please!" Xu Chang shouted. Song Lei turned to look at Damien to want help.

"Come on Xu Chang. Let him go," said Damien. It looked like he was hardly holding himself back from laughing.

Xu Chang pouted and let Song Lei go. Song Lei took a few steps backward and tried to recover. 'How strong! Even if I wanted to, I probably wouldn't be able to shake her off.'

"Hey. Come here," Song Lei heard a voice. When he turned around, he saw Old Wolf waving at him. After bidding Xu Chang and Damien farewells, he rushed to Old Wolf.

"What's up?" Song Lei asked.

"I will be giving you the details of your punishment and 14th-floor guardian duties," Old Wolf said without changing his stoic expression.

"Oh..."

"Come in," Old Wolf said. He opened the door of the room next to them and gestured at Song Lei to enter. Song Lei nodded and went in. There was nothing inside the house other than a simple table and four chairs.

Song Lei sat on one of the chairs.

"Do you want anything to drink? I can brew you some tea," Old Wolf said.

"You don't need to. Thank you very much."

Old Wolf sat opposite Song Lei. He crossed his arms and legs.

"First of all, I will talk about a guardian's duties," Old Wolf started explaining. "Basically, you have to keep the floor you're assigned to under check. Your job is to slowly clean the rooms on your floor and exorcise the newly spawned ghosts. If a new lost one spawns just like you, you have to properly understand them and bring them to us."

"Xiang Yimu didn't seem to be doing that," Song Lei said with an awkward smile.

"He was rather new like you. 14th floor is a newly conquered floor and it hasn't been a long time since we created a safe house there. Xiang Yimu was a psychopath and he would kill the newbies he found. He has killed two more people like you before."

"Do lost ones spawn that often? And why didn't you guys punish him?" Song Lei asked.

"No, they don't. That's why no one liked Xiang Yimu. He killed two people who would help us a lot. We punished him. But he didn't change his ways. We couldn't kill him as that would leave us no choice other than to abandon the 14th floor. As there's no guardian on floor 13," Old Wolf explained. Song Lei frowned for a little bit and then remembered.

"Oh! That's right! Why is there no guardian on floor 13? Is there a problem with it?"

"Well... Did you know that number 13 is considered to be unlucky in some countries?" Old Wolf answered Song Lei's question with a question of himself.

"I didn't... Is it like the number 4?"

"Mostly. Anyways... The problem with floor 13 is, these kinds of superstitions affect the new world a lot. There are incredibly dangerous ghosts on floor 13. But, for some reason, they don't overflow like the other floors even if you leave it alone."

"What does a floor overflow mean?" Song Lei asked.

"We're getting off-topic. The point is, we needed someone to guard floor 14 and that person is you," Old Wolf answered.

"Okay. Oh... I've actually already exorcised a ghost," Song Lei said. His heart ached a little bit when he thought about Yao Ai.

"Oh..? Explain," Old Wolf ordered. He straightened up and raised his eyebrows. Song Lei had already surprised him by managing to kill Xiang Yimu and Tao Cai. But if he had really exorcised a ghost, it would be an astonishing achievement.

"So, it went like this...."