Chapter 18: The Mind-Eating Beast and the Heart-Stealing Demon

“Brain Eaters!”

The moment Li Rui uttered those words, he immediately turned and started walking briskly, urging, “Hurry, those creatures are dangerous, and if you fight the smaller ones, the bigger ones will come after!”

Paul quickly lifted his legs to keep pace. “You know those monsters?”

“That’s right,” Li Rui nodded.

Of course, he knew those monsters—they were key characters in a game he had played before crossing over! In fact, the very reason he ended up in the Endi world was because he had argued with an online player about the game’s lore—and he had won. The other party, clearly humiliated and angry, had thrown him into this world.

At that thought, Li Rui suddenly paused—what exactly had they been arguing about? The details were completely erased from his mind, leaving only a baffling blank.

“Damn! I can’t afford to lose!” Li Rui shook his head. Now was not the time to dwell on this.

Since his adversary had the power to send him to another world, grant him a special advantage, and even erase memories, none of this was impossible.

He added, “Those Brain Eaters are monsters created—or born—from a creature called the ‘Heart-Stealer.’ The Brain Eaters can sense all intelligent beings within about a hundred meters, devour their brains and memories, then burrow into their skulls to completely replace the original creature.”

“Shh—!”

Paul’s team of four gasped sharply.

They had never heard of such a bizarre monster before, and their pace quickened involuntarily.

“The Heart-Stealers themselves possess psychic abilities somewhat like warlocks, but unlike warlocks’ random powers, these are more like those of mages with a complete, inherited system!”

“Shh—!”

Now Paul’s team grew even more fearful.

They all deeply understood spellcasters, especially Paul, who was a spellcaster himself. They clearly knew how terrifying a mage with a fully developed, systematic inheritance could be!

In the game, druids—spellcasters with fewer spells—and melee fighters, without extraordinary weapons, charms, or scrolls, would feel utterly overwhelmed when facing a mage of the same level.

In reality, this sense of frustration turns into pure fear and reverence!

“More importantly,” Li Rui’s expression darkened, revealing the most critical piece of information, “once a Heart-Stealer captures a humanoid, it can transform them into a new Heart-Stealer, and this process takes only a few days.”

The burliest member of the team—the barbarian wielding a large axe—suddenly reached out, grabbed Li Rui as if he were a sack of grain, and hoisted him onto his shoulder, striding forward.

“Run!” Paul commanded sharply, and the entire team’s pace surged by half again.

For the rest of that day, they kept running, stopping only every hour to drink water and rest briefly, finally halting to camp when the moon was at its zenith.

But their rest was short-lived. Only four hours later, they extinguished their fire and resumed a brisk pace beneath the moon’s western slant.

For the next several days, they maintained this relentless rhythm—not just traveling, but running a super marathon!

Li Rui lay entirely on the barbarian’s shoulder the whole time; otherwise, he couldn’t keep up. As for Paul’s four teammates...

Li Rui could only think of one word: beasts among beasts, workhorses among workhorses.

They ran continuously for days at a dizzying speed. Li Rui’s head was foggy; he couldn’t even recall how many days had passed. Yet none of the four showed any sign of fatigue.

Most astonishingly, they encountered a pack of goblins—more than twenty—and Paul’s team seamlessly shifted from running to fighting, dispatching the goblins as if it were a casual matter.

From Li Rui’s perspective, he suddenly found himself thrown to the ground by the barbarian. Before he could rise, Paul’s team had already charged into the goblins like unleashed tigers.

What followed was almost surreal.

Paul’s team was like a combine harvester in a wheat field. Each swing of their longsword, great axe, dagger, or the faintly glowing stick-like weapon made goblins fall pierced, halved, or sent flying with both feet off the ground.

Only when the fleeing goblins scattered right in front of him did Li Rui snap back to reality and hurriedly join the hunt.

In the entire battle, Li Rui only managed to kill two goblins himself; the rest were wiped out by Paul’s team as easily as autumn leaves swept away by the wind—complete annihilation, with no goblin escaping.

Fortunately, after the fight, Li Rui noticed some goblins were not yet dead, so he rushed over to finish them off, securing three final kills and a total of five loot draws.

As mentioned before, the goblins’ loot wheel consisted of about 90% red, 9% gray, and 1% blue segments.

After Li Rui had drawn three red tokens earlier, only two red tokens remained, and now he took them both at once.

[Low-Level Darkvision: You gain a new type of vision that allows you to see as if in bright light within a 20-meter radius in dim light. In darkness, you see as if in dim light within a 20-meter radius.]

[Monthly Mutation: After one month, you will undergo a mutation that randomly increases one attribute by 1 to 2 points, with a 10% chance of growing in size. (This trait can only activate once and cannot be removed once activated.)]

Seeing these two tokens drawn from the red segment, Li Rui was somewhat puzzled.

He had expected these to be junk tokens, or at least one of them.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a token that allowed reproduction with any race, and accelerated maternal birthing rates?

Unexpectedly, he had drawn two quite useful tokens.

[Strong Devouring Stomach], [Spore Propagation], [Chlorophyll Skin], [Darkvision], [Monthly Mutation].

Li Rui counted all five tokens he had obtained from the goblins’ bodies. Then, he couldn’t help but lift the grass skirt covering one goblin and looked underneath.

He stared wide-eyed in surprise.

This goblin had no reproductive organs—no protrusions, no indentations—just smooth skin, with only an excretory opening at the rear.

It seemed this was not any goblin he knew, though it bore some resemblance to those in the Warhammer world.

But if it were a Warhammer goblin, the [Monthly Mutation] token would likely be replaced by one that allowed spores to grow into orcs or beastmen.