Falsely Accused, I Started Plundering Monster Traits

The platform was almost dark.

Only the emergency power remained, feeding a row of weak white lamps along the ceiling. Half of them had failed, leaving long stretches of the station in shadow. The advertisements on the opposite wall were black, the ticket machines beyond the glass barriers had gone dead, and the red light spilling from the train windows faded within a few steps.

No one stopped after leaving the carriage. The passengers ran beneath the green exit signs, dragging children and pulling relatives through the passage while voices rose over one another.

"Where’s the exit?"

"Keep moving!"

"Someone call the police!"

Lin Yan went with them, carrying the goblin’s iron club in one hand. He checked his phone as he entered the station hall, but there was no signal, and even the emergency call failed.

The hall was running on the same weak backup power as the platform. Most of the lights were dead, and the few that remained only illuminated the floor directly beneath them. Passengers were already splitting between the two stairways beyond the ticket gates, pushing upward as though reaching the street would end everything.

Lin Yan followed them to the exits.

"Can we leave this place?" he asked silently.

The system answered at once.

[No.]

[The convergence will remain sealed until one side has been eliminated.]

[All humans within the convergence must die, or all invading goblins must be killed.]

Lin Yan stopped near the ticket gates.

So there was no exit. The stairs, the tracks, the tunnels—it made no difference. As long as even one goblin remained alive, the station would not release them.

The passengers continued upward around him. A man cursed as someone stepped on his shoe, a child cried for her mother, and several people kept holding their phones above their heads in search of a signal that was not there.

Footsteps soon came rushing back from the passage behind them.

The first group reappeared from the direction of the platform, nearly colliding with the people who had not yet reached the stairs. The man at the front stopped dead when he saw the ticket gates.

"Why are you back?"

"We’re not," he said, looking over his shoulder. "We kept going up."

"You came from the platform."

"We never came down!"

The crowd broke into fresh shouting. Some refused to believe him and pushed toward the other exit, while others backed away from both stairways. Questions flew through the hall without waiting for answers, and within seconds no one knew which direction they were supposed to run.

Lin Yan remained beside the ticket gates, watching the crowd argue around him.

One side had to be completely eliminated before the convergence would open.

"System, when you say the human side, am I included?"

The system did not answer immediately.

Before it could, Lin Yan continued.

"One more question. Can Trait Plunder be used on humans?"

The silence lasted even longer this time.

Lin Yan narrowed his eyes.

"Those are two very suspicious pauses."

[You are included among the humans within the convergence.]

[Traits may be plundered from any target personally killed by you.]

Lin Yan let his gaze travel across the crowd.

So that was possible.

Before he could take the thought any further, a familiar voice rose above the shouting.

The woman’s phone had never stopped recording. There was no signal, but the timer continued to move as she swept the camera across the panicked crowd and the two stairways that somehow led back to the platform.

"Guys, we’re trapped underground," she said, breathless but still speaking with the practiced clarity of someone addressing an audience. "People went up the stairs and came back from the direction they started. Emergency calls aren’t going through either, so people outside might not even be able to find us."

She slowly turned the phone, capturing the darkened station hall.

"This isn’t a normal power failure," she said. "I think we’re trapped inside some kind of anomalous space."

Lin Yan looked at her.

Her mind had shifted faster than he expected. Even with everyone around her panicking, she was still calmly piecing together what was happening.

Annoying as she was, that was pretty impressive.

Then she noticed the bloodstained club in Lin Yan’s hand and turned the camera toward him. If the accusation was no longer a story, the monster-slaying hero certainly was.

"And this man was the first person to step forward and fight back when everything went wrong."

Lin Yan and the bloodstained iron club filled the screen.

"While everyone else was running, he stood his ground and killed the monster."

She paused, apparently remembering something important.

"Of course, he may look like a man, but inside, she’s one of us."

Her expression became unexpectedly solemn.

"As a woman, seeing another woman stand up and protect everyone like that honestly makes me proud."

Lin Yan stared at her.

Oh, fuck.

Please stop talking.

He had said that nonsense because half the carriage had been filming him punch a woman. How was he supposed to know she would remember it—and repeat it with such sincerity?

The student with the backpack nodded.

"She’s right. She saved everyone in the carriage."

Lin Yan slowly turned toward him.

You too?

Correcting them now would mean admitting that he had lied directly into several cameras. Staying silent apparently meant accepting his new identity.

The woman moved closer, holding the phone toward him like a reporter conducting an interview.

"What was going through your mind when you decided to stand against that monster?"

Lin Yan looked at the camera.

"System," he asked silently, "what am I supposed to say here?"

[I do not know.]

"What use are you?"

[I am not designed to manage social interactions on your behalf.]

The woman continued waiting, while the passengers around them turned to hear his answer.

Lin Yan’s mind raced.

A few minutes earlier, half the carriage had watched him punch two people. Now the same woman was recording him as the person who had stepped forward and saved everyone.

Wasn’t this the perfect chance to repair his image?

His expression gradually became solemn.

"As a woman, I couldn’t just stand there waiting for a man to save us."

The system went silent.

Lin Yan placed one hand over his chest and looked directly into the camera.

"Women can stand up and protect people too. When I saw the elderly and children behind me, I knew I had to do something."

The student with the backpack stared at him.

Lin Yan continued without changing expression.

"I only did what any woman in my position would have done."

The woman lowered the phone slightly, visibly moved.

The system finally spoke.

[That is not what you were thinking.]

"Shut up."

The maintenance passage beside the closed service counter stood open. Beyond the doorway, the tiled corridor was completely dark.

Something scraped against the floor inside.

Metal dragged slowly across stone.

The woman heard it too. Instead of backing away, she turned her phone toward the open passage.

"There’s something inside that corridor," she said, immediately lowering her voice into the tense whisper of someone narrating a dangerous scene. "It may be another one of those creatures."

Lin Yan kept his eyes on the darkness.

The scraping came again.

Closer this time.

"Step back," he said.

The woman shifted half a step sideways, apparently more concerned with keeping both Lin Yan and the passage in frame than with actually retreating.

"Can you hear that?" she whispered to the camera. "Something is coming toward us."

The sound stopped.

Lin Yan tightened his grip on the iron club.

"Get down!"

A sharp whistle cut through the hall.

The woman turned too late. A spear burst from the dark passage and tore through her body, cutting off whatever she had been about to say.

She remained upright for a fraction of a second before the phone slipped from her fingers and struck the tiles.

Then she collapsed beside it.

Blood spread beneath her motionless body while the phone continued recording from the floor.

Lin Yan stared at her for half a second. Then the practical part of his brain caught up.

There went his chance to clear his name and come out of this looking like a hero.

The crowd recoiled.

Across the hall, a small figure stepped out of the maintenance passage.

Green skin. Filthy leather. Empty hands.

The goblin stared at the fallen woman, then threw both arms into the air and released a shrill, triumphant howl.

Two more goblins appeared behind it.

One carried a chipped axe. The other dragged an iron club along the stone wall, grinning at the noise.

The spear thrower pointed at the figure on the floor and shouted something at its companions. The other two answered with excited cries, stamping their feet and striking their weapons against the doorway.

The spear thrower hurried over, planted one foot against the woman and wrenched the spear free. Blood ran down the stone point as it turned toward the crowd with the other two.

All three chattered excitedly, clearly pleased with themselves.

The student forced down his fear and raised his voice. "There are only three of them! If we split up, they’ll chase us down one by one. Grab whatever you can find and stay together. We can—"

He turned toward Lin Yan, intending to ask the only person who had killed one of these creatures how they should fight.

Lin Yan was no longer there.

He was already more than thirty meters away, sprinting toward the far side of the station with the iron club over one shoulder.

"Fuck! At least say something before you run!"

The student abandoned the speech and sprinted after Lin Yan. A knot of passengers followed the student when he broke into a run, while the rest remained scattered across the station, fleeing wherever panic took them.

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