Autophagy

After placing the glass on the table, he sighed. A weird feeling started welling up inside his body. It was like a cold fire was burning his insides. He got up from the chair and walked towards his bed, throwing himself onto it.

The fire burning his insides wasn't a normal one. It was able to give the feeling of being burned and getting frozen at the same time. This cacophony of sensations overrode his senses, making him hug his pillow and bite the bedsheets.

He had to roll on his bed for some time to calm the fire that was burning him inside out. Fortunately, it didn't take long. After not more than ten minutes, the fire inside him calmed down, leaving its place to a serene freshness. Like the one that a person would feel in their mouth after eating mint chocolate.

Sighing a breath of relief, Song Lei stretched and yawned. Although the process of digesting the alcohol was really short, it felt like he had spent hours rolling on his bed. 

He opened his eyes and looked at the notification in front of his face.

[You've consumed some Alcohol of the Divine Heart. You've gained a soul stat!]

'So half a bottle amounts to a single soul stat point...'

Song Lei took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off of his forehead. He then got up from his bed. All of his sheets were covered in a cold sweat.

'Oh come on...'

Song Lei facepalmed. It was kind of hard to make anything dry in the New World as there was no sun.

Obviously, that changed after he found the 16th floor. The floor covered with lava could probably dry these sheets in less than a minute. Hopefully, they wouldn't catch on fire.

However, before taking these sheets to dry, Song Lei decided to consume the remaining alcohol in the bottle. This time, he drank it a little faster. After going through the exact same pain, Song Lei got another notification saying that his soul stat had risen. Boosting it up to 13.

Confirming it from his system, Song Lei got up and dried his sheets on the 16th floor. He then went to the rooms that he had just left with some bacteria. Seeing that they were cleaned, he tidied all the rooms.

As he finished cleaning up the last one, a system notification appeared.

[You have gained three new rentable rooms! Current rentable rooms: 1/5]

Dismissing the notification, Song Lei decided to take a nap. After sleeping for a few hours, he went back up to the 16th floor.

'I guess it's time...' Song Lei thought. He looked up at the 17th-floor stairs. He was already out of new rooms to acquire. The nature of floor 16 made it so that he wouldn't have too many rooms to clean up. He didn't want to run out of rooms in case he got new tenants.

To achieve his dream of becoming the new landlord of this apartment, he needed to conquer more floors.

He had already packed up his items and was ready to go. If all the dream spaces worked in similar ways, he wouldn't have his body and items when he entered the dream space. He would need to resolve some kind of problem of that world if he wanted to get them back.

Taking a deep breath, Song Lei checked everything one last time and climbed up the stairs. As soon as he took a step onto the 17th floor, his vision blurred and he lost control over his body.

[You're resisting.]

[Failure.]

[You've been pulled into a dream space.]

...

The heavy rain hitting the ground without ceasing, the smell of coal mixed with the smell of machine oil, every one of them hit him like a truck. He could feel that his body was crumbling into pieces, either literally, or just figuratively. After all, he couldn't see anything.

With cars whizzing and humans passing by him, his senses were overloaded. He knew that he was running, the sensation of doing so was right there, he could feel it in his legs, however, he didn't know where his destination was.

Little by little, his senses were coming back. He could feel a hand, holding his, guiding him towards, somewhere...

The noises that were filling his ears, the cars, the people and their shouting that were being muffled by the rain drowning them out of his ears kept fading away. The noise of rapid breathing and running was all that he could hear clearly. They were so crisp, so noticeable that it almost caused him to lose track of who he was. Fortunately, he felt something holding him back, something protecting him from slipping away.

The darkness, the curtain that was covering his eyes was lifted, leaving its place to a dim blur that didn't give him much information about his place. As he kept running, a loud noise resonated inside his head.

"Keep running! They will catch us!"

He could identify neither the gender nor the age of the person that was talking. He only knew that he could trust this person, and that was all that he needed to know.

One by one, his senses were coming back. The blur in his eyes was leaving their place into a clear size like a camera that was trying to focus. The muffled noises were turning into normal ones as if he had been submerged in water and had suddenly gotten out.

The cold, the wind, and the burning sensation in his lungs were the last things to wake him up from his distracted state.

"Run! They will catch us!" The young girl that was holding his hand shouted at Song Lei.

His body was soaked and cold, either because of the rain or the sweat that was pouring out of him. It didn't matter, as they seemingly didn't have the luxury of stopping. Song Lei nodded at the young girl and started looking around to see where he was as he kept running.

The rain was one that Song Lei had never seen before. It was so harsh, so fast that it would be hard to see farther than five or six meters. They were currently in an alley, covered with apartments that were seemingly made with victorian era architecture.

The street was illuminated with gas street lights, although they weren't as good as the electrical ones, they still did their job to a certain degree. Song Lei looked at his hand. It was covered with soot. Song Lei could understand that he was young, however, he couldn't tell if he was a girl or a boy. He also couldn't figure out exactly how old he was.

There were people passing by. For some reason, they would avoid Song Lei and the girl when they got near them. Another weird thing was the fact that these people didn't have faces. It was just empty, soulless flesh in the shape of a head with hair on top. Although this was creeping him out, it wasn't the worst thing Song Lei had seen.

'What are we running from?' Song Lei thought. He slightly turned his head back to see what was chasing them. 'Oh god...'

There were two blobs of flesh chasing them. These blobs of flesh were huge in size, nearly two meters wide and one and a half meters long.

They had faces engraved with knives right in the middle of their bodies. Their mouths were sealed by x-shaped threads, however, they were still able to make gurgling noises and shout at them. There were bones and teeth coming out of random places on their bodies. With the hair that was growing here and there, these two blobs were truly nightmare materials.

Moreover, they were leaving a slimy substance behind them. It looked similar to the one made by the fleshly abominations, however, Song Lei couldn't confirm how it actually looked because the heavy rain would clean the traces shortly after they were created.

The people around them didn't seem like they were afraid of these monsters. Rather, they were cheering these two monsters on, as if they wanted these two blobs of flesh to catch Song Lei and the girl.

Song Lei turned his head back towards the girl that was holding his hand. She seemed like she was 16 years old or so, with an innocent face that was half-covered with soot and dirt. Her hands were full of calluses as if she was a miner or something.

Her eyes were and her hair was that of a light brown color. Her hair was in a mess and it wouldn't pass her shoulder lengthwise. It looked like she had cut off her hair on her own, in a very clumsy way. She, too, was soaked. Just like Song Lei, she looked tired. However, there seemed to be a flame, a speck of courage and defiance in her eyes.

Her face was pretty cute, one that would still be pretty after she became a proper adult. If they weren't running away from two monstrous beings at the moment, Song Lei might've stopped and squeezed her cheeks.

'Her and this body must've been running for a long time...' Song Lei deduced. 'Well... It's time I take things over....'