“You have died!”
This was the final notification issued by the girl with the high ponytail's game system.
The rest of the players weren't faring any better. It felt as if their brains had been plunged into a vat of boiling oil, with countless chaotic thoughts roiling within.
Some crouched down, clutching their heads, while others let out piercing shrieks.
【Peony】 noticed a new buff appearing in her status bar: 「Madness」.
“Detection: Player's consciousness has sustained severe trauma. Safety mechanism activated. Countdown: 3, 2, 1—”
As the countdown ended, the avatars of all the players darkened simultaneously, and their bodies flickered and vanished.
Outside the haunted house, Yue Shi gently stroked the leopard cub's head. “A forced logout?”
He had guessed correctly. The players' game system came with a built-in protection mechanism that automatically forced them to disconnect if their consciousness was subjected to a shock beyond its endurance.
This was a hard rule of the game system. It also meant that Yue Shi could not truly kill the players in this manner—at least, not their consciousness.
But it was enough. Their consciousness had already been eroded by him, and he looked forward to them carrying his power back into their own world.
...
【Tom】 crouched by the base of a wall, a chipped, broken bowl set before him.
There was a bit more money in the bowl than before.
【Jerry】 was no longer there. After eating the poisoned eight-treasure porridge, his health had continuously drained until he died from the poison and logged out.
【Tom】 looked at the eight-treasure porridge spilled on the ground, feeling deeply annoyed.
Why the hell did they make this shitty game so difficult?
The newbie village seemed peaceful on the surface, but he hadn't expected there to be so many bad people.
He couldn't understand why anyone would want to poison a beggar to death. Was it just for fun?
With 【Jerry】 gone, 【Tom】 didn't want to continue begging. He intended to pack up, so he leaned over to pick up the bowl and put the money into his pocket.
Thud!
A heavy blow struck the back of 【Tom】's head, and his health bar dropped visibly.
Before he could react, a burlap sack was pulled over his head.
“What are you doing?! What do you want?!” 【Tom】 struggled inside, his hands flailing wildly.
The people outside didn't answer. Fists and feet rained down on him through the sack—thud, thud, thud, thud.
The blows weren't lethal, but his health bar dropped another chunk.
“Listen up, punk. Who gave you permission to beg here? You really don't know the rules, do you?!” A gravelly voice reached him from outside the sack, followed by a vicious kick to 【Tom】's shin.
“Consider this a lesson. Don't you dare come back here to beg again!”
The group left as soon as they were done with the beating.
Once the sound of footsteps faded, 【Tom】 struggled out of the sack and sat on the ground, gasping for air.
His health was down to half, and the money in his begging bowl had been taken.
“Fuck, is every single NPC in this newbie village a villain?”
After mentally cursing the game developer's entire lineage, 【Tom】 used his wealth of life experience to figure it out. Begging probably required acknowledging the local territory.
He and 【Jerry】 had taken someone else's spot. This was someone else's turf, and they had been stealing their business.
【Tom】 used the wall to pull himself up, grumbling as he left the second-hand market.
His shadow stretched across the ground like that of a stray dog.
...
Yue Shi walked through the streets of Liming City.
The game at the haunted house had concluded, and he no longer needed to remain there.
The streetlights flickered on one by one, their orange glow bathing the entire street in warm tones.
People leaving work surged past him, chatting, laughing, and hurrying along.
Some were on the phone, some were looking down at their mobiles, some were buying roasted sweet potatoes from a street stall, and others were walking slowly, holding a child's hand.
Everyone had their own destination, their own unique face and expression.
These faces were too vivid; they didn't seem at all like NPCs constructed from code and algorithms.
Yue Shi recalled the books he had seen in that school library regarding virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
The books said that simulating a highly realistic world would require near-infinite computational power.
Every NPC would need their own memories, personalities, and social relationships, making countless tiny, random, and unpredictable decisions every single day.
Calculation on such a scale would likely be impossible even if the entire Deep Red Continent were hollowed out to serve as a server.
Therefore, the Deep Red Continent was almost certainly a real world.
The players came from the outside, descending into this real world and treating it like a game.
But why were they coming? Who was sending them? What did that mastermind hope to gain from them by dropping them into the Deep Red Continent?
Yue Shi couldn't figure it out.
If the Deep Red Continent were just a game, the survival environment for the players was far too hostile.
There was no newbie protection or free equipment, and they were constantly being screwed over by NPCs. How could such a high-difficulty game possibly retain players?
He had seen many games with crude graphics and clichéd plots, yet as long as they were easy to pick up and allowed ordinary people to find a bit of relaxation and pleasure in their busy lives, they could make money.
Games that constantly made players die and were filled with frustration usually didn't last long.
Who would be willing to seek out abuse in a game?
The players in Liming City were still persisting, likely because of the novelty.
Novelty was a potent anesthetic that could make people temporarily ignore all pain and inconvenience.
Yue Shi had already heard from the players that in their 'real world,' this game was the first and only virtual reality game.
As a monopoly, no matter how many setbacks the players suffered, this was their only option if they wanted to experience virtual reality.
A young man in a plaid shirt was crouching by the roadside, tinkering with a second-hand laptop. Above his head was the name 【Engineer Lion】.
Yue Shi glanced at him and walked past.
Further ahead was another player wearing a delivery rider's uniform. His electric scooter was parked by the curb while he looked down at his phone. Above his head was the name 【Scan Furry】.
Player nicknames were scattered through the crowd like fireflies on a summer night—not many, but easily spotted at a glance.
The players had already begun to investigate the truth of this world; they knew that supernatural power existed in the Deep Red Continent.
The killing-type players, who were obsessed with combat and destruction, were searching everywhere for ways to obtain supernatural power to make themselves stronger.
Social-type players and achievement-type players were also secretly preparing, knowing that in this dangerous world, they couldn't even protect themselves without supernatural power.
Techniques were a rigid necessity. There were already threads on the forum teaching people how to coax clues about cultivation manuals from NPCs, and some even suggested forming a team to kidnap investigators from the Bureau to pry secrets out of official personnel.
The players had entered this world with an entertainment mindset. To explore this world, there was truly nothing they wouldn't dare to do.
Rate on N.U.
