Scuttle Crab

"Ah... this guy really was rotten to the core..."

After taking out his wallet and counting the cash left inside, then pulling out his phone to check the balance on his Bank Card through online banking, Bai Zhi covered his forehead and let out a troubled sigh.

His entire fortune, including the balance on his Bank Card, came to a total of 328 yuan and 50 cents. The rent for the place he rented off campus was a full 1,000 yuan per month, and there were only three days left until next month's rent was due.

In other words, he was broke.

And this guy's original plan had been to borrow money from his Ex-girlfriends...

Back when this guy had relied on scholarships and part-time work, and hadn't been particularly extravagant with money, he had never lacked cash. But ever since he became obsessed with Games, his grades had steadily declined, while he had poured money into Games by the fistful.

In the end, because the counselor kept coming to his Dormitory to earnestly lecture him, the guy had simply moved out and rented a place off campus. Skipping class, arriving late, and leaving early had become Small Talk.

Bai Zhi simply couldn't understand it. How had such a useless bum, who had completely fallen into Games, managed to get seven Girlfriends one after another...? Had it really just been his face and sheer shamelessness?

—Were there really that many people obsessed with looks in this world?

Bai Zhi felt that question deserved some serious thought.

After picking up his phone to check the time, Bai Zhi estimated that the first class was already more than halfway over and decisively chose to skip it.

After all, he had only just arrived in this world. Although he had inherited the memories of the useless fellow who had died suddenly from staying up all night too often, he still knew very little about this world.

Still, judging from "Bai Zhi's" utterly ordinary seventeen years of life, this world should not have differed much from his original one apart from slight differences in certain historical backgrounds. Its technological development was about the same, and it had only just announced its entry into the 5G Era...

"Being alive again doesn't feel too bad..."

He walked over to the window facing Snack Street and stretched, his face full of emotion.

It was 9:20 in the morning, and it was Monday. At this hour, both first- and second-year students had classes. Aside from a few internet-addicted youths like him, dragging exhausted feet and clearly having just emerged from an all-nighter at an Internet Cafe, the usually lively Snack Street was unusually quiet.

"Hmm... Making money to pay the rent isn't urgent right now, but at the moment... huh!?"

When the corner of his eye happened to catch sight of an intersection on Snack Street, Bai Zhi froze.

In his line of sight, a Scuttle Crab that looked exactly like it had crawled out of a river in League of Legends was squatting there.

"A Figurine? Or something... holy shit, that thing moved!?"

Rubbing his eyes in disbelief, Bai Zhi continued staring in that direction. If what he was seeing was not some illusion, then the Unknown Creature wandering back and forth at the intersection really was a Scuttle Crab.

But the problem was that nobody around it paid any attention to a species that clearly should not have appeared in the Real World.

"Fine, I take back what I said about this being a common world... Wait."

As if something had occurred to him, Bai Zhi temporarily gave up on heading downstairs for a closer look. Instead, he took out his phone and secretly snapped a photo of the Scuttle Crab wandering around over there.

Just as he had expected, the Scuttle Crab in the photo he had just taken, now lying in his Photos, appeared to be a Calico Cat lazily pacing down the street.

"So, in everyone else's eyes, that Scuttle Crab was just a Cat? Then here came the question..."

Bai Zhi lowered his head to look at the photo on his phone, then looked up at the Scuttle Crab still pacing around in the distance, his expression thoughtful.

"...Was there something wrong with my eyes, or was there something wrong with this world?"

Scuttle Crab, full name Rift Scuttler, was a Wild Monster in the MOBA Game League of Legends. It was not an Epic Grade Wild Monster.

A hard-to-pin-down patrolling Wild Monster with no offensive abilities. Killing it provided a Speed Shrine in the river, granting movement speed to allied units that passed through it and passively providing vision.

—That was the information Bai Zhi remembered about the Scuttle Crab.

After watching the Scuttle Crab disappear beyond the intersection, Bai Zhi returned to the Desk beside his Bed, turned on his computer, and began searching the internet for related information.

Half an hour later, he put down the mouse, leaned back against his chair, folded his arms, narrowed his eyes, and muttered to himself.

"This world really has no shortage of strange incidents..."

His searches focused mainly on Urban Legends. Based on what he found online and a table he hastily put together, he could clearly see that over the past three months, all kinds of Urban Legends had emerged online one after another.

For example, seven days after an old man's burial, his family went to pay respects and heard noises coming from inside the Coffin. They nervously opened it, only to discover the old man playing Mahjong inside.

A Young Man jumped from the eighteenth floor of a high-rise building and miraculously survived. After examining him, the Doctor confirmed that he had become a Rubber Person.

A Vagrant's body was found skewered like Candied Hawthorn at the base of a Utility Pole. Experts believed it was a new form of suicide that warranted caution.

Once these absurd Anomalies, some of which even carried a prank-like flavor, spread widely, they would be deleted and censored on a massive scale. Every one of the prank-like Anomalies Bai Zhi found online that had somehow survived was steeped in an unusually ridiculous air. Netizens only treated them as entertainment and rarely investigated further.

If he had not been certain that there was nothing wrong with his eyesight, Bai Zhi would naturally have dismissed these things as pranks and laughed them off. But the Scuttle Crab he had seen half an hour ago had been undeniably real, making him question whether those Anomalies might be true.

In fact, there were also many Anomalies online about sightings of Unknown Creatures. For example, one netizen claimed that at night, he had seen a tall, thin figure resembling a Utility Pole in the distance, with two strange objects like loudspeakers growing from its head. Another claimed to have seen, in broad daylight, an enormous fish-like creature swimming through the clouds...

Bai Zhi felt there was something wrong with this world.