[Three-City World] Arrival and the Mutant Beast

Before officially "descending," Ren Yi and Lu Zihan went to say goodbye to Lu Qing.

"Xiao Yi, are you planning to keep using Mo Ming's skin to enter the Three-City World?" Lu Qing asked with a smile.

Ren Yi nodded. "Yes. After all, I need to go somewhere crowded to collect energy and try to make Energy Crystallizations."

"This skin has already built up some support in the livestream. Compared to the potential gains, I think the risk is acceptable."

Ren Yi recalled how, in the [Escape Room] Instance, he had had to count on his fingers one by one, working out how to make every participant feel positive emotions.

Since he had only one magazine, if their emotions failed to keep up after he used an ability, his "combo" would be broken.

By comparison, the Three-City World was downright generous.

But judging by every message from the Alliance, as well as what his older brother and Aunt Lu Qing had said, this was an exceptional case among exceptional cases.

It was like having a newbie protection period coincide with an anniversary event.

In the future, whether he entered a world directly or livestreamed an Instance, opportunities like this would be hard to come by.

By comparison, the worst price he could pay was merely "death."

On the Ghost Net, the strangenesses were deeply reticent about "death."

The general consensus was that "death"... would be pretty miserable.

Well... either way, he would try to avoid experiencing it if he could.

Hearing this, Lu Qing nodded and carefully reminded him, "You can keep using this skin as long as you make sure the amulet stays on you."

"But keep in mind that if you descend as a participant, you should appear where that participant was when they entered the Instance."

"The three cities are far apart. If you're unlucky, you and Zihan will probably have a hard time meeting up, so be careful."

"Thank you for looking after me, Aunt Lu." Ren Yi nodded solemnly as he thanked her.

"Mom, we're off!" Lu Zihan waved from beside him.

Ren Yi reached out and touched "yes" under the [Leave?] option on the participant panel.

The next second, a gentle beam of light enveloped him.

After a brief spell of dizziness, he felt a rough surface beneath his feet. He was standing on a vast expanse of yellow-earth wasteland.

There was no one around. A fierce wind carrying sand and dust howled past, stinging his cheeks.

Heavy, dark gray clouds hung low overhead, and the light was dim. The entire world exuded a desolate stillness.

Just then, a notification window from the Ghost Net popped up:

[You have successfully entered the Three-City World]

[Calamity countdown: 7 days]

[Once the countdown ends, you will be automatically transported back to the Alliance]

[Please note that the Calamity Rule has begun to spread]

[Calamity Rule: Do not feel the same pain together]

Most of the notification was information he already knew, except that the "auxiliary rule" from the previous Instance had been replaced with the "Calamity Rule."

The only hint was that the Calamity Rule did not seem to descend all at once, but needed time to spread before it could cover the entire world.

Ren Yi had previously made a point of asking Lu Qing whether strangenesses like them could be harmed by the Calamity Rule.

Lu Qing had answered that their identities had been authenticated by the Alliance for this descent, so they would not be affected by the Calamity Rule.

However, the Alliance had given them only seven days of "free hunting." If they wanted to gather enough resources to make Energy Crystallizations, they had to hurry.

Ren Yi looked down at himself.

He was still wearing Mo Ming's skin, and Mo Ming's belongings had come with him:

A set of camouflage fatigues washed nearly white, a huge military backpack on his back, and a machete and dagger tucked at his waist.

He unzipped the backpack. Inside were a canteen, several packs of tough, dry jerky, and a simple map with badly worn edges.

The only relatively unusual item was a small silver pendant shaped like a sword.

The pendant looked rather old, its surface rubbed to a soft sheen. Clearly, its previous owner had worn it for years.

Lastly, there were no firearms.

Judging by this equipment, Mo Ming was most likely a lone hunter.

That identity happened to make it convenient for him to operate in disguise.

Ren Yi stopped and quickly recalled some of the information he had learned about the Three-City World:

This was a post-apocalyptic world on the brink of destruction. Only three major human settlements remained in the entire world: Holy City, Xin City, and King City.

Apart from those three cities, the rest of the land was either barren wasteland where nothing grew or territory occupied by Mutant Beasts that had no fear of conventional firearms.

Before the apocalypse, this world had possessed the technology to manufacture firearms and electronics. Much of that technology had been lost afterward, and its level of civilization had regressed even further.

After the apocalypse, however, some humans had awakened special abilities to fight the Mutant Beasts, becoming ability users.

The three cities were distant from one another in their relations and fraught with tensions, but because they were geographically so far apart, large-scale conflicts were difficult to start.

As a result, most of those tensions were concentrated on the participants who could encounter one another in Instances.

Ironically, human civilization in this world had already been on the brink of collapse, but the descent of the strangenesses had unexpectedly slowed that process.

Instances had become "dangerous grounds" where humans could obtain scarce resources. Only by relying on water, food, and other supplies obtained from Instances had they barely managed to keep the spark of civilization alive.

Perhaps sensing the "enthusiasm" with which the humans of this world participated in Instances, the Alliance had not wiped them out. Instead, it had turned the world into a Pasture World, allowing for sustainable "harvesting."

Unfortunately, that fragile understanding had come to a complete end the moment they descended.

Mo Ming was a participant from Holy City, so Ren Yi had descended relatively close to it.

He compared the simple map with the terrain before him and quickly determined his location. Then he headed toward Holy City, as marked on the map.

But he had taken only two steps when his keen senses suddenly stirred.

Something was approaching.

Ren Yi stopped at once and spun around to look at the sand dune behind him.

"Roar—!"

With an ear-piercing shriek, the sand dune beneath his feet exploded, and a centipede-like creature as thick as a bucket burst out.

The "centipede" was a sickly flesh color all over. Its outer skin was as smooth as a human's, and a closer look revealed that it was covered in fine black hairs.

Its mouth was a grotesque circle lined with sharp, backward-pointing teeth, enough to make his scalp tingle.

Most revolting of all were its feet. They were not an insect's jointed limbs at all, but thick columns of flesh.

At the end of each column was a flat foot, like a human foot with all five toes forcibly chopped off.

The creature as a whole looked as though it had been pieced together from several human torsos with their upper halves chopped off.

Every inch of it radiated a twisted strangeness. The mere sight of it made his stomach churn.

Ren Yi frowned slightly. What the hell is that?

Ren Yi finally understood why the people of the Three-City World seemed so brave, daring to venture into strangeness Instances as though they were resource sites.

With sanity-draining things like this all over the world, how could they not be brave?

He even felt that the grotesque, twisted Mutant Beast before him was more mentally shocking than some strangenesses.