Monster Designs Revealed

Fourth Calamity Club was Huaxia's largest gaming portal.

Here, people could see the latest gaming news and industry updates every day.

There were countless high-quality guides, review articles, and game feature pages.

There were also the site's editors' carefully selected silly GIFs and mildly erotic GIFs to spice things up.

With so much content, along with its built-in comment function and discussion areas, Fourth Calamity Club had become the go-to entertainment site for many players to catch up on gaming news and unwind, with astonishing daily traffic.

Today, a post marked with a flame icon had been pinned high in the trending topics section, drawing the attention of countless netizens.

Repost: Domestic horror game "Dark Forest" reveals monster designs. Warning! Those prone to psychological discomfort should proceed with caution!

The moment netizens saw the title, their curiosity was immediately piqued.

What was Dark Forest?

A horror game!

In this day and age, when horror games were poison to whoever touched them, anyone daring to make this genre had to be called insanely bold.

And the latter half of the title even said that those prone to psychological discomfort should proceed with caution?

Heh.

Who were they looking down on?

Did they think the vast masses of netizens had seen nothing?

Who didn't have years of gaming experience?

Players had fought on battlefields and in space. Where hadn't they gone? What opponents hadn't they faced?

And they were supposed to fear some horror game that didn't know its own limits?

Could its enemy designs really be that creative?

Thus, a curiosity-inducing horror game bold enough to challenge the genre, paired with such a provocative title, made many netizens who had never played the Demo click in without hesitation, eager to see what kind of monster designs it had.

Yet the very first image left them at a loss for words.

It was a tree—more precisely, the trunk of a towering giant tree. The poster had even specially labeled its name.

It was called the "Human Skin Great Tree."

From the close-up of one section, it was not difficult to imagine just how enormous the tree was.

The image was dull and desaturated.

There were no lush green leaves, nor any blue skies or clouds.

The entire image seemed devoid of color, filled with hopeless grayness.

What truly made the netizens uncomfortable was that the bark of this Giant Tree, just as its name suggested, consisted of hundreds upon thousands of human bodies!

There were men and women, young and old, all naked and seemingly enduring tremendous pain.

Their skin had become bark, and their bodies had completely fused into the tree. Their exposed heads wore hollow expressions, their slightly open mouths seemingly wailing endlessly.

Rather than human bodies making up the tree, it looked more like the tree had grown human-shaped tumors.

Anyone with eyes could tell at a glance that this tree was eating people! Digesting flesh and blood!

Further up the trunk, the bodies could no longer be seen. All that remained were gaunt, skin-covered skulls clinging to the surface of the bark like tumors.

Though the netizens all had years of gaming experience, the opponents they had faced so far were mostly humanoid AI. Even when there were monsters, they were usually familiar creatures like dogs or lions, monsters that did not inspire revulsion.

Where had they ever seen such bizarre designs?

Just looking at it made their scalps tingle, and they hurriedly flooded the comments beneath the image.

"Damn it, the Demo alone scared me into hyperthyroidism, and now you're telling me the Official Version has horrifying stuff like this too? Screw this game!"

"The instant I saw this thing, I knew this game was here to train my mental endurance."

"Visuals: ten out of ten! Is this a boss? It looks exactly like a boss. My God, what weapon are we supposed to use against this monster? A table leg?"

"Seeing this image, as someone who played the Demo, I can no longer imagine just how terrifying the Official Version will be."

"The developer has no conscience! What was he thinking when he came up with monster designs like this??? Why make a game just to scare players??? Wouldn't picking up trash and shooting things be better???"

However, the netizens knew this was only one of the monster designs. There were more below.

Then they saw the second image and instantly broke down.

Name: Snail Person.

The second image showed a flesh-colored soft-bodied creature covered in viscous fluid.

It was clearly a close-up of its head.

Yet within that head, they could clearly see teeth and nasal bones that had long since lost all flesh, wrapped within soft chunks of meat. Layer after layer of folds resembled sagging elderly skin, making it unbearable to look at.

A wave of nausea immediately rose in the netizens' hearts.

The viscous fluid in the image stretched into sticky threads between its skin and skull.

Its distinctive translucent feelers drooped slightly, but at their tips were human pupils, staring fixedly at the netizens behind their screens and sending a chill down their backs.

"Is this a boss too? So disgusting! Looking at those two eye stalks makes me want to reach out and crush them!"

"Did a snail swallow a person, or did a person turn into a snail?"

"Above, it looks like human skin transformed into the snail's flesh, so it looks like the snail swallowed a person."

"This is too unbearable. I only looked once and didn't dare keep watching, but that won't stop me from blowing it up in the game!"

"This forest is fucking terrifying. The crawling monster in the Demo was enough to scare me, and the Official Version actually has so many weird-looking things."

After being tempered by the first two monster designs, the netizens' psychological endurance had probably improved a little. But when they saw the third image, they could not take it once again.

Name: Pretty Madam.

This was a gigantic, obese woman lying naked on a bed.

Her limbs were terrifyingly long, and her fingers were as sharp as claws—utterly unnatural.

Her body and head were grotesquely swollen, like balloons filled with water, bloated and bulging.

She was filthy from head to toe, her breasts hanging down without the slightest hint of allure.

She stared blankly upward, her eyes dull and colorless, devoid of hope.

Her loose long hair had long become like withered grass, matted into clumps and stripped of all luster.

Because her expression was so lifelike and visually overwhelming, the netizens quickly began complaining.

"A whole new definition of the word 'pretty.'"

"Fine, aside from the protagonist controlled by the player, does this game not have a single normal person?"

"Don't call it Dark Forest. Rename it Monster Forest."

"These monster designs go great with food! I can eat two bowls of rice now!"

"I can't take this anymore. Seeing this monster feels like seeing my girlfriend."

"After seeing these images, I'm suddenly really looking forward to this game! I hope the Official Version maintains the same quality as the Demo! Don't screw it up!"

Besides those three, there were several more bizarre and strange design concepts below.

There was a Wild Man with tree buds growing from his head.

There was a Head-splitting Monster whose head and torso had split in two, held together only by its lower abdomen and lower body.

There was also a Mushroom Man made entirely of clusters of mushrooms.

As well as translucent Vengeful Spirits and Banshees with disheveled hair fused together with crows.

These monster designs were extraordinarily strange and novel, giving netizens a different kind of visual horror and sparking another intense wave of discussion about Dark Forest. Those who had not played the Demo rushed to download it, wanting to personally experience this so-called horror.

Danmu Network was equally lively.

That was because these monster designs had debuted on Danmu Network. Fourth Calamity Club had merely reposted them.

Under the updates on Meng Shu's own account, more and more people were eagerly awaiting the game's release.

The actual gameplay demonstration had shown them what the game generally looked like. The playable Demo had let them experience its terror and oppression. Now, the release of monster designs unlike anything the gaming industry had ever seen had directly ignited the player community, and they all urged the developer Shuo Guang to speed up development! They could not wait any longer!

Seeing this trend, some unscrupulous web-game and mobile-game companies wasted no time stealing Dark Forest's video footage and using it in advertisements for their own games.

Meanwhile, Meng Shu had already submitted the game for review. Barring any surprises, there would probably be a result in about a week. This world differed from his original one and would not deliberately suppress works like these.

So, he was currently developing the content for Chapter Two in his room.

Completely unaware of the second wave of buzz online sparked by the revealed monster designs.