Chapter 53: The Story Has Not Ended.

Although Xiao Fen’s body was slowly healing now, the treatment of the body required consuming a large amount of Energy, so hunger and exhaustion began to surge up again. This made him feel the superposition of multiple pains on top of the body healing.

He turned his head to glance at Li Ruran, who was still in a coma. Just as Sylvia had said, a light was also appearing on Li Ruran’s body. It seemed the World Tree would ignore the state of the Trialist and proceed with the settlement directly.

Xiao Fen tried hard to take two steps back and lean against the wall so that he would not fall immediately.

Soon, the light on Sylvia and Li Ruran faded away. The figures of the two began to blur and finally disappeared from sight.

Before leaving this Trial World, Sylvia blew a kiss to Xiao Fen and seemed to say something, but Xiao Fen’s ears were already starting to hear slight hallucinations, so he could not hear what Sylvia said at all.

“Alright, it’s my turn,” he said. “It’s finally over.”

He looked at the floating screen in front of him, waiting for the World Tree to settle the score with him.

Two minutes later, that screen still displayed the last reward content, without any new changes.

“Damn it.”

Xiao Fen frowned, and he suddenly realized that he might not be able to leave this world for the time being.

From the very beginning when the World Tree announced the end of the Main Quest, everything seemed strange.

Because Xiao Fen had never experienced such a thing before, he did not detect these abnormalities, and instead thought they were a necessary procedure.

Now that he thought about it, he was very different from those two people.

The World Tree always gave rewards based on the Main Quest, and the two people who left this world were also the ones who had accepted the Main Quest; the person who accepted the Main Quest left because they completed the Main Quest.

Only Xiao Fen had accepted a side quest from beginning to end; he had never touched this Main Quest.

Xiao Fen tried hard to concentrate his spirit, which was starting to scatter, and forced himself to think, only then realizing that he had forgotten something just now.

His side quest was not completed!

Remember what Lux’s Salvation said when the quest was issued? At the abandoned church, he had seen the release of that quest: “Find the hub controlling Lux, keep the Web moving, and persist until the Main Quest progress is completed.”

In other words, only after the Main Quest progress was completed would Xiao Fen’s side quest be considered a stage finished, and the prerequisite for him leaving this Trial World came from him completing his own side quest.

It seemed that this was the final trap of the SS-level quest.

One must complete the Main Quest to complete the side quest.

In other words, if Sylvia had not advanced the Main Quest progress just now, even if Jack was defeated here, Xiao Fen’s quest would still be incomplete, and he would still be unable to leave this world.

He slowly exhaled; the act of breathing became difficult for him again.

Before, it was because of lung failure, but now, it was because of hunger and exhaustion.

However, no matter what, the major quest framework was completed, Jack was dead, and now he just needed to return to the second floor, put the World Tree fragment back in its place, stop Lux’s Web, and the side quest could be considered finished, and he could finally return to his Real World.

“After I go back, I want to eat five jin of pig head meat, four jin of beef, and as much of other things as possible, and then have a good sleep for a few hours.”

He slowly sat on the ground, rummaging through his small bag while muttering like this.

Fortunately, when he left home for the library in the morning, he habitually brought a candy; when he returned to that living small building, the clothes he had brought from the Real World and changed out of remained untouched, and he subconsciously put these clothes into his leather bag.

In the end, these good habits allowed him to find that candy.

For the first time, Xiao Fen felt that a fruit candy could be so delicious; even just the sweetness slowly seeping out was slowly flowing through his body, allowing his cells, which were exhausted from lack of Energy, to slowly regain a bit of vitality.

After sitting on the ground for a while, the Energy from the candy made Xiao Fen less dizzy, and he slowly stood up, stumbling towards the small building.

The time was estimated to be around four o’clock; the distant horizon was already slightly bright, and seeing the fog in the sky completely dissipate, he believed that today would definitely be good weather.

Of course, this was the weather of the Trial World, and it had nothing to do with Xiao Fen anymore.

Just as he was thinking this, a new sound made Xiao Fen suddenly turn cold.

It was the sound of something crawling on the ground, but it didn’t sound like a substantial creature; the sound was lighter, and above this sound, there was also some squelching noise of pus secreting.

Xiao Fen turned his head abruptly.

Behind him, Jack’s body was already stiff, but the other half of the Ripper’s body, the part that had been completely ignored by Xiao Fen and Sylvia before, was now undergoing a deformation that was nauseating and terrifying at the same time.

A large amount of fresh flesh grew from that body and turned into a long thing resembling a human intestine.

The surface of this intestine constantly seeped out a large amount of yellow-green pus; it was precisely this pus that made the sound of this intestine crawling on the ground very low.

With no eyes and no facial features, this intestine-like thing continued to extend and gradually crawled towards Xiao Fen’s feet.

Xiao Fen subconsciously looked at the sky, only then remembering that Lux’s Web only attacked humanoid lives; previously, when Jack’s main body turned into a Bone Whip, it was not attacked by those ropes.

A slight daze allowed that intestine, which looked slow but was actually astonishingly fast, to approach Xiao Fen unnoticed.

Without Xiao Fen knowing, this intestine suddenly cracked open a large opening at its front end and bit down towards Xiao Fen’s heel.

His high spirit improved Xiao Fen’s intuition; he subconsciously lifted his leg, causing that large mouth, filled with gloomy tiny teeth, to bite into empty air.

This action seemed to dissatisfy this intestine greatly; it slowly raised its front end, and then, two cracks split open on the upper layer of this front end; when the cracks fully opened, slightly reddish eyeballs reappeared before Xiao Fen.

He had seen these eyes on the Bone Whip that Jack’s main body had transformed into; he thought he would never have to see such terrible eyes again, but this thought was shattered once more.

The intestine’s mouth kept swaying, and the teeth made clicking collision sounds; apart from this, there was no sound from Jack.

However, his two eyes floating on the intestine were staring dead at Xiao Fen, filled with mockery.