The Baby Boss of Death Game

I was exactly nine months old when I dropped into the horror game.

While the other players sprinted and shrieked for their lives, I crawled across the dusty floorboards hunting for my pacifier.

The monster mother ripped the door open. I latched onto her calf. Mama

She pinched the back of my onesie with two fingers, lifting me while wrinkling her pale nose. "The food in this batch is this tiny?"

But she didn't toss me aside. Instead, she shoved me into the cold arms of her son, Silas.

Later, while the monster father slaughtered the rest of the group, I scrambled up his leg and used my tiny palms to wipe the fresh splatter from his face.

The day the last player's body dropped, my twisted new family tossed me high into the air in celebration.

When the round ended and the teleportation sequence triggered, Silas bit down hard on my finger. He fused a single drop of freezing, pitch-black blood straight into my open wound.

[ System Judgment: Player's blood has been polluted. Return sequence aborted. ]

From that moment on, a new little monster lived inside the horror game, spoiled rotten by her bloodthirsty family.

The fresh meat always scrambled to figure out the survival rules, trying to survive the forty-eight hours. I just scramble to find my baby bottle.

Chapter 1

I was exactly nine months old and couldn't even speak when I was dumped into the game. I lay flat against the freezing floorboards and blinked.

A massive, black iron door loomed ahead. Twisted iron vines snaked across its surface, and a sliver of warm yellow light bled through the crack at the bottom.

Eight adults stood in front of the doorfive men and three women, ranging from their early twenties to their late forties. Right now, all of them stared dead at me.

"What the hell is this?" a young woman with a high ponytail broke the silence. "Does this game actually bring in babies?"

The guy next to her shoved his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. He wore a faded plaid shirt. "Impossible. I dug through all the public forums."

"The minimum age requirement for horror instances is eighteen. There's zero record of a minor ever getting pulled in."

"Then where did this kid come from?"

"Could it be an NPC?" A short, heavy-set man rubbed his arms. "Spawning a baby NPC right at the start? That's messed up"

Before he could finish, translucent blue screens materialized in thin air directly in front of their faces.

[ Welcome to the Horror Game ]

[ Current Instance: Sweet Family ]

[ Difficulty Level: Hell ]

[ Players Alive: 9 ]

[ Clear Condition: Survive in Sweet Family for 48 hours ]

"Nine?" The ponytail girl swept her gaze over the group. "The eight of us plus the baby."

"Makes nine. She's a player."

Dead silence hit the group.

I lay on my stomach, clueless about the tension in the air. I stared at my own fingers for a few seconds before shoving my thumb into my mouth, smacking my lips as I sucked on it.

"She really is just a baby." A man in a scuffed leather jacket crouched down, leaning in to examine my face.

"What, a few months old? How is she supposed to play? She can't even crawl properly."

"Game glitch?" The plaid shirt guy scowled. "Or a new trap? Like, they intentionally drop a baby in here to distract us into taking care of her, and then"

"And then what?" The ponytail girl cut him off. "We all turn into saints and get slaughtered by the monsters?"

"You're overthinking it, man. In a Hell-tier instance, it's every man for himself."

She wasn't wrong. The eight adults exchanged glances. The same cold, guarded look flashed in all their eyes.

There were no rules in the horror game. Just survival.

Protect a baby? What a joke. They didn't even know if they would make it out in one piece.

"She won't last ten minutes." The leather jacket man stood up and brushed the dust off his knees. "Look at the prompt. Sweet Family."

"In these domestic-themed horror instances, the monsters are always the family membersmom, dad, kids. A baby in a place like this yeah, right."

No one argued with him.

I just kept sucking on my thumb, drool coating my small hand.

Creak.

The heavy iron door swung open. A woman stood in the doorway. She wore a floral dress and a white apron. Her hair was swept up into a loose bun, and a gentle smile rested on her face.

She looked exactly like an ordinary, suburban housewife in her early thirtiessoft features, even pretty.

But all eight players instinctively took a step back.

Because the white apron tied around her waist was stained dark red. It wasn't just a splash of blood. It was saturated. Like she had used the fabric to scrub something, rubbing it over and over until the cotton fibers drank up so much blood that they could never be washed clean.

"Oh my, we have guests." The woman clapped her hands together, her smile widening. "Come in, come in. It's chilly out there."

Chapter 2

Her tone was warm and hospitable, like she was greeting distant relatives dropping by for a visit. But no one moved a muscle.

The woman didn't rush them. She just stood in the doorway, smiling down at them. That smile was plastered to her face like a porcelain mask, perfectly still.

In the middle of the suffocating standoff, I moved.

Somewhere along the line, I had flipped over. My small butt wriggled in the air as I hauled myself forward. I wasn't fast, wobbling back and forth. My knees couldn't quite hold me up yet, so I relied entirely on my arms to drag myself across the floor.

"Hey!" The ponytail girl instinctively reached out to stop me. "Don't"

I had already reached the woman's feet. I craned my neck, tilting my chubby face up to look at the woman towering over me.

The woman looked down. The smile didn't waver, but her eyes narrowed into dark slits.

A second later, I reached out with my tiny hands and grabbed a fistful of the fabric around her calf.

"Mama"

My pronunciation was messy, my tongue still clumsy, but everyone present understood the word Mama loud and clear.

The air froze solid.

The plaid shirt guy's face drained of color. "Holy shit"

The ponytail girl slapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes practically screamed, We are dead. We are so dead.

The leather jacket man tensed his legs, ready to bolt.

The woman looked down at the little lump of flesh clinging to her leg. She stood in silence for three agonizing seconds.

Then, she spoke. Her voice was still sickeningly sweet, but the words sent ice water down everyone's spines. "The food in this batch is this tiny?"

Food.

She called me food.

I couldn't understand a word she said. I just rubbed my cheek against her leg and let out a soft, satisfied yawn.

The woman bent over. She pinched the back of my onesie with two fingers, hoisting me up into the air like a stray kitten.

I dangled there, my arms and legs limp, my eyes heavy with sleep. I had zero concept that I was currently being looked at as a snack.

She held me up to eye level, inspecting me from head to toe. We were close. Close enough to see exactly what was inside her eyes.

Those weren't human pupils. They were vertical slits, like a cat's, or a snake's, shrinking back into pitch-black depths.

"Too small," the woman muttered, her pale nose wrinkling. "Not even enough for a meat pie."

The leather jacket man took another step back on pure instinct. He caught the others out of the corner of his eyethe plaid shirt guy shaking, the short man sweating bullets, the ponytail girl biting her lip so hard it was turning white.

No one dared to move.

The woman lowered me a fraction. I immediately reached for her face, slapping a chubby hand against her cheek with a loud giggle.

She frowned in disgust but didn't throw me against the wall.

"Whatever," she muttered under her breath. "Inside first."

She turned around, dragging me by the scruff of my neck with one hand while holding the iron door open with the other. She disappeared inside.

The remaining eight players stood frozen, trapped between two impossible choices.

"Do do we go in?" The short man's voice trembled.

"You wanna wait out here and die?" The leather jacket man ground his teeth. "The instance boundary has to be inside the house. Out here could be way worse."

The plaid shirt guy pushed up his glasses, desperately trying to force logic through his panic. "Let's observe first. That baby either got lucky or triggered some hidden mechanic, but she isn't dead yet. We follow her and see what she does."

"See what she does?" The ponytail girl snapped back. "She's a few months old. What is she gonna do? Drink milk or poop?"

The plaid shirt guy choked on his words.

Chapter 3

He couldn't argue with that. It was the brutal truth.

With no other options, the eight players gritted their teeth and followed her inside. The door shut behind them without a sound.

The house was far warmer than they expected. Soft yellow lighting, beige wallpaper, a floral tablecloth draped over the dining table, and framed photos lining the TV stand. A fat orange tabby cat was even dozing on the armrest of the sofa.

But everyone's eyes were glued to the center of the sofa itself.

There was something spread across the cushions. It wasn't a blanket. It was

Guts.

A mangled pile of internal organs lay tangled in the center. Some of the tissue still steamed in the cool air. The fabric beneath was saturated, already drying into a sickly, blackish-red crust.

Half a severed finger was wedged deep into the crack between the cushions. The fingernail was painted a delicate pale pink.

The orange tabby yawned, licking its paws. It stood up, lazily stepped directly over the steaming guts, and jumped down to the floor before trotting away.

The ponytail girl clamped both hands over her mouth, strangling the scream building in her throat.

The woman carried me over to the sofa, fully intending to toss me down.

Halfway there, her hand stopped. She stared at the pile of guts, then glanced down at the clean, pale baby in her grip. Her brow furrowed.

"Dirty," she murmured.

She turned on her heel and headed toward the kitchen. As she passed a closed bedroom door in the hallway, she called out, "Silas, come take this."

A muffled thud came from inside the roomsomething heavy hitting the floorfollowed by dragging footsteps.

A teenage boy appeared in the doorway. He looked around fifteen or sixteen, tall and lean, dressed in an oversized white hoodie and black sweatpants. His hair was slightly overgrown, the messy fringe falling over one brow.

His features were sharp and clean. If he were out on the street instead of trapped in this nightmare, people would probably turn their heads to look at him.

But his eyes were a dead, cloudy gray. Not just gray irises. The entire eyeball was filmed over with a sickly gray film, like the eyes of a dead fish. Not a single trace of light reflected off them.

"Mom," he muttered. His voice was flat and hollow.

The woman shoved me directly into his chest. "Hold her."

Silas looked down at the little lump of flesh now invading his arms.

I looked up at him. We stared at each other. There wasn't a single flicker of emotion in those dead gray eyes.

I stared back at him for two seconds, let out a tiny hiccup, and then happily snuggled deeper into his chest. I wiggled around until I found a comfortable spot and closed my eyes.

The woman had already turned back toward the kitchen, her voice trailing behind her: "Just hold her. Don't kill her yet. I still have a pot of soup on the stove."

Silas looked down at me again.

I was actually asleep. My breathing was soft, the rise and fall of my chest barely visible. My small mouth was parted slightly, a tiny string of drool forming at the corner of my lips.

He stood perfectly still in the hallway holding me. Those cloudy gray eyes shifted, sweeping over the pile of guts on the sofa, before landing in the corner of the room. Eight adults were huddled against the wall, staring at himand the baby in his armstheir faces pale and their jaws tight.

Silas lowered his eyelids. He turned around with me still in his arms and walked back into his bedroom. The door shut with a click.

In the living room, the eight players stared at each other.

"She she fell asleep?" The short man's voice trembled. "In the arms of that thing? She fell asleep?"

"What the hell was that?" The ponytail girl kept her voice barely above a whisper. "The son?"

"He's a monster too, right? His eyes were totally gray"

"Definitely an NPC," the plaid shirt guy whispered, adjusting his glasses. "The whole family are monsters. That baby she must have accidentally triggered some kind of hidden mechanic."

Chapter 4

"What kind of mechanic lets a baby sleep in a monster's arms?" The leather jacket man scoffed, crossing his arms. "Didn't you hear what that woman said?"

"'Don't kill her yet, I still have a pot of soup on the stove.' The meaning is obvious."

"She's fattening the kid up. Once she's big enough, she gets tossed into the stew."

The ponytail girl gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white. "You're saying that baby is just livestock? They're keeping her alive because she's too small right now?"

"What else?" The leather jacket man shot her a sideways glance. "You think these monsters actually adopted her?"

Dead silence.

But they all knew he was right. I was just on borrowed time. Once the monsters decided I was 'big enough for a pot,' I'd end up looking exactly like the steaming guts on the sofa.

The short man swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "So we just leave her?"

The leather jacket man didn't answer. He turned his back and started scanning the layout of the room. The ponytail girl hesitated for a split second before trailing after the others.

Leave her. In a hellhole like this, the only person you could save was yourself.

I had a dream. In it, I was wrapped up in a warm embrace. Someone was gently patting my back, humming an off-key lullaby.

The voice was low and muffled, like the wind rushing in from somewhere far away. I rolled over, burying my face into that ball of warmth, soaking their sleeve in drool.

Then, I woke up.

I blinked my eyes open to a massive face looming right over mine. Dead gray eyes stared straight down at me.

I blinked. The teenage boy blinked back.

I broke into a massive, gummy grin, flashing my two freshly sprouted baby teeth.

Silas just stared at me, his face a blank slate.

I reached out for him, my tiny hands grabbing blindly at the air. He tried to pull back, but he wasn't fast enough.

My hands were too small, my movements unpredictable. Smack. My chubby little palm slapped him right on the nose.

I let out a loud, bubbly giggle.

The bedroom door cracked open, and the woman in the floral dress poked her head inside. "Silas, dinner's ready. Come out."

She paused, taking in the scene on the bed: Silas lying on his side, while I sprawled across his chest, aggressively washing his hoodie with my drool.

The woman froze. "How did she wake up?"

Silas didn't answer.

The woman walked over and bent down to inspect me. I recognized her immediately. I threw my arms up, demanding to be picked up. "Mama"

The corner of the woman's mouth twitched. "Who is your mother?"

Despite the words, she reached out and hauled me up off Silas's chest. I dangled in mid-air, my arms and legs kicking wildly as I babbled nonsense at her.

She brought me right up to her face. "You sure love to make noise. What are you yelling about? Let me hear it again."

"Ma"

The woman fell silent. Those reptilian slits flickered, processing something I couldn't understand.

After a long beat, she lowered me, tucking me into her arms. Her movements were just a fraction gentler than before.

"Alright, time to eat." She jerked her chin at Silas. "Get up. Stop laying around."

Silas pushed himself up from the bed and trailed after her.

By the time we reached the dining room, the seven players were already gathered tightly around the table.

The spread on the dining table was a massive feast: thick-cut steaks dripping with blood, charred bone-in ribs, a massive platter of mashed potatoes, and a giant basin of steaming, thick soup. A rich, savory aroma filled the entire room.

But no one picked up their silverware.

The eight players sat paralyzed in their chairs, staring dead ahead at their bowls, not daring to move a muscle.

Because the soup inside the basin was red. Not a tomato-soup kind of red. It was the stark, iron-rich crimson of fresh blood. A few unrecognizable chunks floated on the surfacesomething that looked like meat, but not quite.

Chapter 5

The woman walked over, still holding me, and settled gracefully into the seat at the head of the table. She smiled warmly. "Eat up!"

"What are you all waiting for? Don't be shy, make yourselves at home."

The players frantically exchanged glances.

The plaid shirt guy steeled himself, picked up a pair of chopsticks, and pinched a small piece of steamed greens. He chewed slowly. It tasted finejust normal vegetables. He let out a long breath and swallowed.

Only then did the others tentatively pick up their silverware. But no one touched the soup.

The woman didn't seem to care. She ladled a bowl of the red liquid for herself and took slow, elegant sips.

I sat on her lap, looking around the room for a while before deciding I wanted something from the table. I reached out, pawing at the air, but couldn't reach a thing.

The woman glanced down at me. She dipped the tip of her chopstick into the soup and offered it to my mouth.

I stuck out my tiny tongue and took a lick. It didn't taste like anything.

I licked it again. Still nothing.

The woman pulled the chopstick back and took a sip from her own bowl.

I stared at her bowl for a long time, then lowered my head and started chewing on my own hand.

Silas sat across from the woman. He kept his head down, eating his meal in complete silence. But from start to finish, his gaze never left the eight players.

After dinner, the woman carried me over to the living room and sat down.

The eight players had scattered throughout the house. Some pretended to admire the decor, while others huddled in corners, whispering fiercely among themselves.

They shrank back whenever the woman glanced their way, yet their feet remained rooted to the spot, afraid a single wrong step might trigger an instant-death mechanic.

I couldn't care less about any of it.

I snuggled deep into the woman's arms, let out a massive, comfortable yawn, and my eyelids started drooping.

The woman looked down at me and suddenly asked, "What is your name?"

Through the haze of sleep, I heard her voice. I blinked my eyes open and stared straight into those reptilian slits.

"Eee" I answered.

"Eeeyah"

"Alright, alright, just go to sleep." She pulled me tighter against her chest, gently patting my back.

Her embrace was incredibly warm. Much warmer than the crib at the orphanage.

The beds at the orphanage were always hard, the blankets paper-thin. In the winter, I used to wake up freezing. The aunties were always too busy to care. Crying didn't bring anyone to help.

So, eventually, I stopped crying. Because crying was useless.

But this embrace was so warm. I wriggled around, burying my face into the soft fabric of the woman's dress, and quickly drifted off.

In the corner of the living room, the ponytail girl kept her voice barely above a whisper. "Did you see that? That woman when she patted the baby just now, she was being really gentle."

"I saw it." The plaid shirt guy frowned. "It's probably a trap. A calculated show of affection to make us let our guard down."

"But" The ponytail girl hesitated. "She really is just a baby. She's only a few months old. Even for a horror game, this is too"

"Too what?" The leather jacket man stepped up, his voice low and sharp. "Bleeding heart acting up again?"

"Let me tell you right now, there are no innocents in this game. That baby is a player, just like the rest of us."

"She got lucky and isn't dead yet. Doesn't mean she's surviving till the end."

"If you want to play babysitter, do it yourself. Don't drag us down with you."

The ponytail girl fell silent.

But her eyes kept drifting back to the little lump sleeping in the woman's arms. Sleeping so soundly.

She had no idea where she was, no idea what kind of monsters surrounded her.

I was jolted awake by a loud crash.

I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the sofa, a warm fleece blanket tucked around me.

Chapter 6

The guts on the sofa had been scrubbed away, replaced by a fresh, clean set of cushions. The living room was pitch black, illuminated only by a single dim nightlight.

The sound drifted over from the dining area. I rolled over, struggling to lift my heavy head, and peered in that direction.

A figure stood by the dining table. It was the woman in the floral dress.

With her back turned to me, she was chopping something. Her movements were painfully slow and dead steady.

The heavy blade hit the cutting board with a rhythmic thwack, thwack.

Someone else stood beside her. Silas. He stood half-swallowed by the shadows, perfectly still, his dead gray eyes locked onto a specific spot.

I followed his gaze. It pointed toward the far corner of the living room.

The seven players were crammed tightly against the wall. Someone clamped both hands over their mouth. Someone else's face was completely drained of color. Every single one of them was staring fixedly at the dining table.

I had no idea what they were looking at. All I knew was that the rhythmic thwack, thwack sounded nice. It reminded me of the aunties chopping vegetables back at the orphanage.

Listening to that steady rhythm, my eyelids grew heavy again.

But before I could close my eyes, the scene shifted.

The front door swung open. A man stepped inside.

He was massive, built like a brick wall, wearing dark, heavy-duty coveralls. His thick fist gripped the slack of a black trash bag.

Whatever was inside that bag was incredibly heavy, dragging a long, dark streak across the pristine floorboards.

The woman didn't even turn her head. "You're back?"

"Yeah," the man grunted. He casually tossed the bag onto the floor.

The top of the bag fell open, spilling its contents onto the floor

A hand.

Attached to an entire arm, cleanly severed right at the shoulder. The skin was a dead, sickly pale, and a dull silver ring still sat on one of the fingers.

A muffled, strangled scream tore out from the corner of the room, instantly cut short as someone slapped their own hands over their mouth.

The man walked over to the dining table, took the heavy cleaver from the woman's hand, and began to process the contents of the bag.

The heavy bone cleaver slammed down viciously.

The muffled, sickening crunch of shattering bone echoed through the room, accompanied by an explosion of dark red spray that turned the floral tablecloth into a muddy, blood-soaked mess.

I blinked my big eyes, staring at that severed hand for a long time. That hand looked a little familiar. It looked exactly like the hand the uncle with the wire-rimmed glasses had used to pick up his food at dinner.

But why was his hand inside a trash bag? I couldn't figure it out. All I knew was that the uncle was nowhere to be seen.

But I quickly lost interest in the puzzle, because I noticed something on the man's face.

Something red. It trickled all the way from his forehead down to his chin, plastering half his face. I didn't know it was blood. I just knew his face was dirty.

I had seen this kind of "dirty" before. Back at the orphanage, there was an auntie who usually fed me. Every time she finished, she would have grains of rice stuck to her cheek.

I would reach up and wipe them off for her, and she would smile and call me a good girl.

Now, this man's face was dirty.

I wriggled my small body, twisting over the edge of the sofa, and dropped to the floor. I landed right on my butt with a soft thud.

It didn't hurt. I was used to it. Then, I started crawling toward him.

I was incredibly slow. The distance from the sofa to the dining table was impossibly far for my tiny legs.

But I didn't care. I just wanted to help wipe his face.

The seven adults spotted me.

"What is she doing?" the ponytail girl whispered, her voice tight.

"I don't know crawling over there to die?"

"Should we stop her?"

"Are you insane? You go stop her!"

I didn't notice their hushed voices at all. I was singularly focused on crawling forward. Just as I reached the edge of the dining table, the man slammed the cleaver down and turned around.

He looked down, spotting the little lump of flesh gathered at his boots.

I craned my neck up and flashed him a massive, gummy smile.

The man froze. His eyes were gray tooeven grayer than Silas's. They looked like smooth stones sitting at the absolute bottom of a stagnant, dead pool. Not a single trace of light penetrated them.

Chapter 7

But right now, a flicker of genuine confusion rippled through those dead eyes.

A second later, I reached out my tiny hands, latched onto the heavy fabric of his coveralls, and started to climb.

It was a brutal struggle. The man's legs were like tree trunks, and my tiny hands and feet couldn't get any leverage. I'd shimmy up an inch, only to slide right back down. Up an inch, down an inch.

But I refused to quit, grunting and babbling as I pushed with all my might.

The woman just watched from the sidelines, not moving a muscle. Silas stepped out from the shadows, silently observing the spectacle.

The man stared down at the tiny lump desperately trying to scale him. He stood in silence for a few seconds, then bent down and scooped me up.

I was finally in his arms. I reached out andsmackplanted my chubby palm directly on his face.

The man's gray eyes shifted, locking onto me