Chapter 2860: Face to Face with the Boss
"Whether the research institute was actually attacked is still in question," Xu Huo said. "But it seems the human experiments here are real."
"Let's go check the basement."
Compared to the ground floor, the basement was in a far more gruesome state. Several skeletons were piled up in some of the small cubicles—some intact, others dismantled and scattered.
Just by looking at the scene, Cong Lei and Dark Circles could tell what these people had endured before their deaths.
Items could be devoured by space, and people could too. Although it still looked like a research institute after arriving, there was no food here.
Xu Huo didn't find any trace of the players who had been swallowed during the day. He didn't know if they had vanished into some unknown space or turned into ash piles like those killed by the instance boss at night.
"There's an ash pile here too!" Cong Lei spotted a small, inconspicuous patch of dust in the corner—clearly the remains of a slain player.
The three of them had entered the instance at different times, but none of the other players they'd met had mentioned this layer of space. That meant the instance rules made it difficult for players to get in. But since someone had entered and been killed, it meant the instance boss would come to kill them if it discovered them!
"We need to find the exit fast!" Dark Circles said immediately.
Xu Huo didn't dare waste time either. He immediately began searching the basement rooms for a spatial portal. However, just as they made a full circuit, the small pile of dust in the room suddenly stirred without any wind, then drifted up into the air, forming a shadow taller than a person.
Dark Circles and Cong Lei were seasoned enough not to hesitate. Without a word, they split up and fled. Xu Huo ran too, but he kept an eye on the situation in the room. The instance boss had taken the form of dust—this must be its original form when it was born from the instance. He wondered what kind of substance it actually was...
The dust didn't immediately chase them. Instead, it hovered over the corpses in the cubicles for a moment before emerging from the basement. The dust cloud expanded as it moved. The moment it touched the items and decorations piled in the corridors or elevator shafts, they disintegrated into ash. The path of decomposition traced the boss's movement—it rose from the elevator shaft, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and ascended step by step like a real person!
The ever-growing dust cloud made Cong Lei and Dark Circles' faces shift repeatedly. Just as they were frantically searching for an escape route, a rhythmic bell sound came from the basement.
The moment the sound rang out, the dust stopped moving. It suddenly vanished from the stairs and reappeared in the basement, beginning its patrol from the fifth basement level. The clear sound of footsteps echoed.
The instance boss had started its patrol, but it wasn't even eight o'clock yet!
That bell that had fallen in!
It could instantly interrupt the boss's actions and force it into patrol mode!
Xu Huo had already found a suitable spatial portal, but he decided to risk retrieving the bell.
The patrol had just begun. The boss's focus was on the area outside the cubicles. However, when the bell rang, all the cubicle doors had sealed shut. None of the three happened to be standing inside a cubicle, which meant they were now the boss's primary targets!
In an instant, the dust pierced through several floors of the building, bypassed the connecting corridors, and flashed right in front of Xu Huo!
His pupils contracted as he immediately retreated from the building through a spatial passage. He layered time power with space power, but it didn't buy him any time—time power was ineffective against the instance boss, and it passed through countless spatial barriers as easily as air!
Feeling the boss sticking to him like a shadow, Xu Huo threw instruments in different directions to create noise. The sharp alarm sounds made the dust pause in its pursuit, but there was no one near the instruments. Apart from the three of them outside the cubicles, the entire research institute was empty. So the boss followed its killing pattern and still targeted Xu Huo as its primary objective.
Xu Huo could dodge the first strike with his perception advantage, but avoiding a second was far harder. The boss could appear anywhere in the area, and his level of evolution was insignificant in comparison. He released the dark substance of "Darkened Heart," using the surging black power to slow it down slightly. But in the span of a single breath, he had already darted and dodged through the research institute over twenty times, until he finally reached the basement!
The bell was in the room at the very end of the fifth basement level—a button-type pet bell!
Just as he reached for it, the dust swirled and coiled above the bell first!
Xu Huo couldn't directly touch the dust, nor could he throw it into the dark space. The breath of death swept over his face. He immediately used the "Instance Holder's Ticket" he had obtained from the puppet instance, which he had cleared through the backdoor connection with the Painting Woman!
The dust stopped advancing but didn't move away from the bell either. After weighing his options, he abandoned the idea of using "Heavenly Light Domain" and turned back to the spot where he had previously found a spatial portal.
"Follow me!" Cong Lei and Dark Circles weren't far away. Hearing his voice, they immediately moved over. The three of them exited this layer of space through the spatial portal.
Standing again in the empty, abandoned research institute, all three breathed a sigh of relief. This dusty air—one whiff and it was enough to wake you up!
Yue Yan'er and her companion, along with the three in silver armor, were all in this layer of space. They ran straight into Xu Huo and his group as they suddenly emerged. Their reactions were completely different.
Yue Yan'er and the Sparrow were naturally delighted—this meant Xu Huo could easily shuttle through space. With any luck, they might even avoid the killings in the cubicles.
The silver-armored woman, on the other hand, felt that Xu Huo's strength far exceeded the Hundred Forest Society's estimates. Not only was his spatial evolution advanced, but he must also be carrying high-level spatial items. He had both power and backing.
It was clearly a familiar face. Cong Lei and Dark Circles exchanged a glance and said nothing about what had just happened.
"What's the situation here?" Xu Huo asked Yue Yan'er.
"Another layer of space, but we haven't run into any lost players from the Purple Life Research Institute. Instead, we encountered a few people who just entered." Yue Yan'er pointed to the next building, where several people were scanning the area with instruments.
Those five were the ones who had left Cong Lei's space. They hadn't expected to run into them again so soon.
"It's safe to say there are at least three layers of space." Xu Huo completely ignored the danger they had just faced and said to the others, "I'll keep looking to see if there's anyone else."
He hadn't come here to clear the instance or get items.
"Still looking?" Dark Circles found it utterly baffling. If they hadn't known before, fine—but after that encounter, wasn't he afraid of jumping through a portal and running straight into the instance boss?