So now, there was only one problem left. As long as he could deal with whatever was inside the faculty building, Juzi University would become the most suitable place to establish a long-term base.
Putting everything else aside, that Gigantamax Alcremie alone was the biggest thigh he had encountered so far, bar none.
If he could establish a good relationship with Gigantamax Alcremie, the possibilities would be so wonderful that he hardly dared to imagine them.
However, the strange situation inside the faculty building made Lu Li somewhat apprehensive.
“Indeedee, take me to the boys’ dormitory. It’s pretty close to the faculty building, so we should be able to gather some information about what’s going on inside.”
Lu Li wasn’t reckless enough to take his Pokémon directly inside to investigate. What if there was a Ghost-type or Dark-type Pokémon in there? Wouldn’t he be walking straight into danger?
Indeedee secretly teleported Lu Li into the boys’ dormitory, with their arrival point being the bathroom of a dorm room.
Lu Li: “…”
Since nobody had flushed the toilet in ages, the stench here was absolutely overwhelming.
Just as Lu Li was about to open the door and leave, he heard a conversation outside.
“Boss, do you think we’ll get picked in tomorrow’s lottery?”
“Don’t be so pessimistic. Besides, tomorrow’s lottery is for the girls’ dormitory, not ours.”
“Instead of worrying about that, you might as well think about where we should search for supplies tomorrow. We’ve pretty much scavenged everything nearby. If there’s really no other choice, we’ll have to head over to the cafeteria.”
“Are you crazy? Do you want to melt like cream too?”
“Then what else can we do? If we don’t take some risks, I’ll starve to death before the day my name gets drawn even comes!”
As one person’s emotions spiraled out of control, the atmosphere inside the dormitory became like a powder keg about to explode. Just as the conflict was about to escalate further, Lu Li finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
This damned place was way too smelly!
Click~
Lu Li pushed open the bathroom door.
“Holy shit! Who opened the bathroom door?”
“Close it! Somebody go close it!”
“Aren’t all four of us sitting on our beds?” a timid voice reminded everyone.
The dormitory instantly fell silent.
If everyone was on their beds, then who had opened the door?
The four people who had been shouting and cursing suddenly found their voices stuck in their throats, their faces turning deathly pale.
“Hello, everyone. Sorry to disturb you.”
Lu Li knew it was time for him to speak. Otherwise, these guys might actually scare themselves to death.
“F*ck!”
“Holy shit!”
Screams filled with shock and terror echoed throughout the dormitory as the four university students stared at Lu Li, who had suddenly appeared, their faces full of fear.
In an apocalypse like this, anyone would be terrified if a person suddenly appeared out of nowhere in their bathroom. They would probably also suspect that there was something abnormal about that person.
A dark-skinned university student with a fairly muscular build, who looked like an athlete at first glance, asked, “Are you human or a ghost?”
“Lu Li, a graduate student of Juzi University. You guys should have heard of me, right?” Lu Li introduced himself with a smile.
He was fairly famous at Juzi University. After all, he was the only student in his entire major, and he had already secured a recommendation for postgraduate admission before even graduating. Almost everyone who wasn’t particularly antisocial had heard of such a legendary figure.
A bespectacled young man asked, “Teacher Lu from the Classical Forging major?”
Lu Li nodded and said with satisfaction, “As long as you’ve heard of me, that’s good enough. Could you gentlemen introduce yourselves?”
“Lin Ming,” the dark-skinned university student said.
The bespectacled young man said, “Weng Bingde.”
“Gu Zhou.”
“Wu Hao.”
“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, where exactly did you come from? Why did you come out of our bathroom?” Lin Ming asked tentatively.
Lu Li asked, “Have you heard of Teleport?”
“Superpower!”
All four of their eyes instantly widened, staring at Lu Li in astonishment as they exclaimed in unison.
If this had happened before the apocalypse, and someone claimed to possess the ability to teleport, they would certainly have scoffed at the idea and might even have posted it online as a joke.
But now?
They genuinely believed it!
“I knew it! With demon beasts invading the world, how could there possibly be no awakened individuals? So you’ve awakened a superpower?” Weng Bingde asked excitedly.
Wu Hao himself was a veteran reader who had devoured countless apocalypse novels. The moment Weng Bingde mentioned superpowers, his mind immediately began making even more connections.
Without the slightest hesitation, he immediately made up his mind to cling to this powerful figure—spatial ability! In apocalypse-genre novels, which character possessing such abilities wasn’t the protagonist?
If “NPCs” like them didn’t hurry up and latch onto the protagonist now, were they supposed to wait until they became cannon fodder later?
Wu Hao praised him from the bottom of his heart. “Teleport! That’s a spatial ability! Boss, you’re awesome!”
Lu Li: “…”
I said Teleport, and you guys actually believed me?
Lu Li was speechless.
However, there was one thing he had to admit: this generation of university students really was something else. Leaving aside their ridiculous ability to accept things, their innocent stupidity alone was rather amusing.
Lu Li suddenly found these guys much more likable.
“Let’s put that aside for now. I just teleported here. Can you tell me about the current situation at Juzi University?” Lu Li asked.
Weng Bingde hurriedly stepped forward and brought Lu Li a chair. Bending slightly at the waist, he asked with a flattering smile, “No problem, Boss! What would you like to know?”
“First, tell me about the lottery. I overheard your conversation when I arrived. It sounds like you’re drawing lots to decide who gets sent to their deaths?” Lu Li asked.
Weng Bingde sighed softly upon hearing this.
The room, which had still contained a trace of liveliness, instantly became gloomy. Even the air seemed to grow heavier.
“The lottery…” Weng Bingde began in a hoarse voice before slowly explaining.
“There’s a ghost demon beast over in the faculty building. It comes out to eat people almost every day. Later, a teacher who escaped from the teaching building came up with an idea.”
“The idea was to select three unlucky people every day from us survivors and feed them to that ghost demon beast in exchange for temporary peace.”
“And you actually agreed to that?” Lu Li asked in confusion.
After all, these university students hadn’t experienced the harsh realities of society yet. Could they really accept a compromise that was like slowly cutting away their own flesh every day?
Weng Bingde explained, “We didn’t have a choice. That ghost demon beast appears and disappears unpredictably. If we don’t offer sacrifices to it every day, it’ll come out hunting on its own, and even more people will die.”
Seeing that Lu Li still found it difficult to accept, Weng Bingde explained further, “If we don’t sacrifice anyone to the ghost demon beast, at least a dozen survivors will die every day. But ever since we started making sacrifices, only three people need to die each day.”
“Have you never thought about escaping?” Lu Li asked.
“Of course we have. There were nearly ten thousand people in the boys’ dormitories, so naturally, some people thought about escaping. But it’s even more dangerous outside the university. Leaving the campus would only mean dying sooner.”
Hearing this, Lu Li couldn’t help falling silent.
Juzi University’s old campus was located in the suburbs, where vegetation was dense and greenery covered an extremely large area. If a group of ordinary people tried to escape, they really would have almost no chance of survival.
Lu Li asked again, “How many survivors are left in the boys’ dormitories?”
Weng Bingde replied, “Across the three dormitory buildings, I think there are around two or three thousand.”
Lu Li was somewhat surprised to hear that there were still as many as three thousand survivors in the boys’ dormitories. After all, the number of male students living in the university’s old campus dormitories had always hovered around five thousand.
In other words, even though nearly a month had passed since the apocalypse began, the survival rate here was still above fifty percent?
Frankly speaking, achieving such a survival rate in an apocalyptic environment was already ridiculously impressive.
‘So… these days, squishy college students are this hard to kill?’ Lu Li looked at the four innocent-looking male university students in front of him, who were currently trying to figure out how to curry favor with him, with a peculiar expression.
Unable to suppress his curiosity, Lu Li asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you manage to achieve such a high survival rate?”
“Everyone was pretty panicked at first, but later, the professors organized the students in the dormitories. After that, we somehow muddled through until now.”
“Actually, apart from the fixed number of casualties from sacrificing people to the ghost demon beast, our other losses have been relatively small.”
Lu Li asked again, “Then what do you eat every day?”
“Lately, we’ve been eating sweet potatoes. The university’s experimental fields had quite a lot of sweet potatoes planted in them. We managed to harvest a batch before those insect demon beasts discovered them, and then we dug some cellars.”
“However, food really has been getting scarcer recently. The teachers have already started discussing replanting crops with the people from the College of Agriculture,” Wu Hao explained.
Thinking about it, that made sense. Juzi University was best known for its agriculture and mechanical engineering majors. On top of that, there were quite a few graduate students on the old campus.
With so many people like that gathered together, if they still ended up starving to death, they would truly be disgracing the reputation that the Federation had bestowed upon Juzi University.
“So how many survivors are still left on the old campus?” Lu Li continued asking.
Wu Hao immediately replied, “Around five thousand.”
“Alright. Do you know what the ghost demon beast in the faculty building looks like?” Lu Li asked again.
Lin Ming hesitated slightly before saying, “It’s a demon beast that looks like a goblin, but its eyes resemble sapphires.”
Noticing everyone looking at him, Lin Ming added, “That’s how the teacher who escaped from the faculty building described it. That teacher is an engineering professor, so he probably wouldn’t have mistaken what he saw.”
Lu Li’s heart sank.
The situation he least wanted to encounter had happened after all.
A purple appearance, a goblin-like body, and sapphire-like eyes. There could only be one answer.
Sableye, the Darkness Pokémon.
The most troublesome part was that it naturally fed on souls. Of course, if resources were scarce, it wouldn’t hesitate to consume life force either.
From humanity’s perspective, Sableye was a villain through and through, without question.
Moreover, it understood the benefits of sustainable exploitation and was willing to accept regular human sacrifices. This was enough to prove that this particular Sableye possessed considerable intelligence.
Conservatively speaking, Sableye’s strength was at least at the Ordinary level, but it probably hadn’t surpassed the Gym level.
If it were a Gym level Sableye, there was no way it would accept a sacrifice of just three humans per day.
Gym level Sableye wouldn’t care about sustainable exploitation because they were extremely confident in their own strength. They could simply devour everything in one location before moving on to another.
Only relatively weak Pokémon would consider staying in one place and feeding gradually over time.
After reaching this conclusion, Lu Li began having doubts.
With something like that hiding inside Juzi University, it seemed this place was no longer suitable for establishing a long-term base.
Indeedee’s Normal-type and Psychic-type moves were completely ineffective against Sableye, while Sableye’s attacks dealt double damage to Indeedee.
At present, he only had two powerful thighs: Indeedee and Mimikyu. Indeedee was essentially useless in this matchup, and although Mimikyu had a slight advantage, it wasn’t particularly significant.
But thinking about it carefully, perhaps it wasn’t entirely impossible to take a gamble.
If he could persuade Mimikyu and Indeedee to join forces, defeating Sableye might actually be possible.
As for buying time through sacrifices?
That option had never been under Lu Li’s consideration from the very beginning. Sableye wasn’t Mimikyu. What it wanted was the souls of living humans, and agreeing to sacrifices meant genuinely sending people to their deaths.
After figuring out what Pokémon was inside the faculty building, Lu Li asked another question.
“Have you guys ever been to the cafeteria?”
Weng Bingde hurriedly replied, “You can’t go near the cafeteria! It’s a forbidden zone, just like the faculty building.”
Seeing the confusion on Lu Li’s face, Weng Bingde continued explaining, “Some students previously tried going there to search for supplies, but after entering the cafeteria area, they inexplicably melted, just like cream.”
Lu Li: “???”
So when you guys said people melted like cream earlier, you weren’t speaking metaphorically?
“Is Gigantamax Alcremie really that vicious in the real world?” Lu Li was somewhat skeptical of Weng Bingde’s account.
After all, Alcremie’s reputation in the games was even better than Indeedee’s. In particular, Alcremie could produce whipped cream, making it an exceptionally valuable production-type Pokémon.
The existence of Pokémon like these was a major reason why the Pokémon world could be considered a utopia.
“Alright, I think I understand the situation now.” Lu Li nodded.
Seeing that Lu Li had finished asking questions without saying anything further, Weng Bingde, who was desperate to latch onto this powerful thigh, finally approached him and asked timidly, “Boss, what are your plans next?”
Lu Li didn’t bother hiding anything from them and simply said, “Next, I’m going to see if I can deal with the ghost demon beast in the faculty building. If I can, I’ll relocate my faction to Juzi University.”
The fact that Lu Li had his own faction didn’t strike them as particularly strange.
After all, he was a Psychic. In an apocalypse like this, possessing superpowers naturally placed someone above ordinary people. Someone with such extraordinary abilities would undoubtedly establish a force of their own.
Weng Bingde also understood the deeper implication behind Lu Li’s words. If he could eliminate that ghost demon beast, Lu Li would attempt to take control of Juzi University.
If he couldn’t, he would choose somewhere else to establish his base.
Realizing this, Weng Bingde hurriedly asked, “Boss, can I join your faction? I can leave with you right now!”
The other three young men, who were equally tempted, also turned their expectant gazes toward Lu Li. Judging by their expressions, as long as Lu Li gave a single nod, they would willingly pledge their lives to following him on the spot.
“My teleport can’t transport people over long distances. Let’s talk about that after I see whether I can deal with that ghost demon beast,” Lu Li said, tactfully declining Weng Bingde and the others’ offers of allegiance.
Having gathered all the information he wanted, Lu Li had no intention of lingering any longer. After all, the air in this place was far too stale, stuffy, and foul-smelling.
Using his mind to activate the mark Indeedee had left behind, Lu Li said, “Indeedee, I’ve finished gathering information. Come get me out of here.”
As soon as Lu Li finished speaking in his mind, he vanished from the spot.
Watching Lu Li suddenly disappear before his eyes, Weng Bingde was so shocked that his eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Holy shit! He really disappeared! That’s a genuine superpower!”
“Teleport! Doesn’t that mean he can come and go as he pleases in this apocalypse?”
“I hope Boss can deal with that ghost demon beast. Then we’ll finally have someone powerful to rely on.”
Listening to his companions’ envious remarks, Weng Bingde hesitantly asked, “Should we tell the teachers about this?”
Lin Ming, who was comparatively more rational, shook his head.
“Let’s keep it a secret for now. It wouldn’t be good if we ended up upsetting Boss because of this.”
“Exactly! Even if Boss can’t defeat that ghost demon beast, we might still be able to convince him to take us along. But if everyone else finds out about this, we might not even get a place in line when the time comes,” Wu Hao chimed in.
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