The two were already very close to the Witch, separated by barely ten meters. She maintained her fixed pattern of movement, wandering in circles within a confined space while weeping incessantly.
According to their agreed-upon plan, Yan Yu came to a halt. As soon as the Witch stepped into the sunlight on her next rotation, she would seize the opportunity to throw her dagger. Bai Mu's butter would follow closely behind to stun the Witch for a single second. If all went smoothly, Yan Yu's second dagger would finish the enemy off.
That was how it was supposed to go, but the situation suddenly changed.
From within the darkness, Bai Mu heard the gradual approach of footsteps. The Witch had broken from her original trajectory. Instead of continuing her endless circles around the generator, it was as if something had caught her attention, drawing her directly toward Bai Mu and Yan Yu.
Both Yan Yu and Bai Mu noticed her footsteps. The sound was impossible to miss as the foam mats covering the floor squelched under her weight.
It was an incredibly eerie sensation. Even without seeing where the creature was, they knew she was coming for them. She approached at an agonizingly sluggish pace, moving far too slowly to be enraged.
A sharp prickle of dread washed over Yan Yu, as if the tip of a blade were resting right between her eyebrows. Every hair on her body stood on end. This was entirely different from their plan. It was so pitch-black that she could not even see where the Witch was, making it impossible to aim her dagger. If she failed to land a headshot, the Bloody Dagger's damage would be extremely limited.
Hitting the Witch anywhere else without killing her would only send the creature into a blind rage.
Yan Yu felt a surge of regret. To her ears, those approaching footsteps were the sound of impending doom—a cold, damp harbinger of death. The image of the headless corpse flashed violently in her mind. Her subconscious screamed at her to surrender to the fear and sprint away as fast as she could.
But her rationality told her that doing so would only guarantee a much more gruesome death.
The Witch's profile had clearly stated her absolute hatred for flashing lights and loud noises. A flashlight beam or the sound of running footsteps would instantly trigger her aggression. If Yan Yu ran, she would become the prime target and be torn to absolute shreds.
Yan Yu had no idea what factor had caused the Witch's behavioral pattern to change. Her body began to tremble, seized by the illusion that she had been plunged into a freezing ice cellar, shivering uncontrollably.
However, Bai Mu remained standing steadily in place. Unlike the completely bewildered Yan Yu, he had just heard a system prompt from Paradise.
[Your scent has allowed the Witch to detect the aura of her own kind. She is currently observing you.]
[Side Quest "Lost Path" has been triggered.]
A new Side Quest had been triggered. The only possible cause he could think of was the hat resting on his head.
"Conehead Zombie's Cone"—this headgear was steeped in the scent of Zombies, and by a stroke of pure coincidence, that very aura had allowed Bai Mu to trigger this quest.
The reason the Witch was walking toward him was that she had been drawn in by the "aura of her own kind." This was a completely unexpected deviation from their plan.
Originally, he had only intended to team up with Yan Yu to kill this Mutant. He never expected there to be a hidden Side Quest attached to her.
If scent was the prerequisite for triggering the quest, then the cone hat likely wasn't the only way to activate it. Slaying Zombies with melee weapons and getting splattered with enough infected blood to reach a certain threshold of stench would probably trigger it as well.
The rewards for Side Quests were always quite generous. Dave's Side Quest had rewarded Bai Mu with the "Anti-Zombie Marine Corps Medal of Honor." Compared to the roulette wheel—a method of acquiring bonus items that relied entirely on sheer luck—Side Quests were far more manageable. After all, the rewards were fixed. There was no risk of completing a grueling, life-threatening mission only to be rewarded with a mundane flower pot.
If an opportunity to unearth a Side Quest presented itself, Bai Mu naturally refused to let it slip through his fingers.
However, Paradise had not provided him with any quest conditions or descriptions. He only knew the quest was active, leaving him entirely in the dark about how to proceed with the next step.
Even so, while he didn't know exactly what he was supposed to do, he knew exactly what he shouldn't do:
—He could not make any loud noises, he could not turn on his flashlight, and he absolutely could not startle the Witch.
Since the Witch was no longer following her original route toward the patch of sunlight, their carefully laid plans had to be entirely scrapped.
He could pinpoint the Witch's position purely by listening to her footsteps. Having already memorized her size and height through visual estimation, he was fully confident in his ability to land a clean headshot even in the pitch-black darkness. Yan Yu, however, lacked this capability.
With things having escalated to this point, he could no longer afford to hang back and let others do the heavy lifting. As expected, when the crucial moment arrived, he could only rely on himself.
To prevent Yan Yu from losing control in her panicked state, Bai Mu reached out and pressed down on her trembling hand. Gently, he guided her hand into her coat pocket, silently signaling her to release her grip on the dagger's hilt.
The usually aloof and cold-hearted girl now resembled a frightened kitten with its tail tucked between its legs. Her body was rigid with terror, the oppressive darkness amplifying her dread. In past Scripts, she might have triumphed over Rare-grade monsters, but she had never faced a situation where she couldn't even locate the enemy lurking in the shadows.
Bai Mu took a small step forward, shielding Yan Yu behind his back. The Witch had already arrived right in front of them, her glowing, amber eyes faintly visible through the messy tangle of her hair.
Her eyes shone in the gloom. Much like a feline's, they were likely reflecting the sparse traces of sunlight filtering into the children's playground, which meant she had perfect night vision. Using that faint glow, Bai Mu calmly observed her in return.
Pale skin and withered hair. The Witch's frame was frail and grotesquely deformed, resembling a shriveled mummy. Her tattered clothes were slathered in dried blood and chunks of rotting flesh. With razor-sharp claws extending from her fingers, she looked as hideous as she did lethal.
Bai Mu wasn't the least bit intimidated by her horrific appearance. Since the Witch held the key to a quest, it meant she was capable of interacting with Players. Bai Mu stood perfectly still, maintaining his cardinal rule: absolutely do not startle this Mutant, who had been weeping for god knows how long.
Both sides remained locked in a tense standoff for quite some time. The Witch's sobbing finally ceased. Yan Yu had been counting the seconds in her head, with each passing moment stretching out like an eternity. Having no idea what else to do, she simply stood there in dead silence.
Right as Yan Yu counted to the tenth minute, the Witch suddenly moved. She stepped closer to the pair—or more accurately, she stepped closer to Bai Mu. The emaciated shadow, standing barely over a meter tall, halted directly in front of him.
Bai Mu had to cast his gaze downward to properly look at her. She was wearing a filthy little western-style dress. Strangely enough, pinned into her disheveled hair was a cartoon rabbit hairpin. It was the exact same design as the stuffed rabbit dolls in the reception area, likely manufactured by the very same toy company.
The Witch slowly reached out her hand toward Bai Mu—a mummified hand tipped with razor-sharp claws.
[The Witch has extended an invitation to you.]
'Does she want to hold hands?'
'Is she trying to lead me somewhere?'
Bai Mu pondered her intentions. In her eyes, he was probably considered one of her own kind—just a much taller and larger variant.
'Did she actually retain a fraction of her human mind and self-awareness?'
'Does she still think of herself as a little girl, seeking out an adult for help?'
Suddenly, it all made perfect sense. He finally understood why she had slaughtered those Zombies. The rotting corpses lacked the intellect to understand her gestures; they merely reacted to her crying by blindly attacking her. As a result, in her eyes, every single Zombie she ripped apart was simply an "unreliable adult."
In contrast, he—an "adult" who neither screamed nor attacked, patiently waiting for her to extend her invitation—was a reliable one.