A Splendid Story

The north wind howled, and heavy snow fell. Suddenly, a sound rang out...

When did you come here?

He frowned slightly, and then asked Victoria had walked closer.

However, this question, which was clearly meant to be meaningful, was automatically interpreted by Claude as concern, since the relationship between Abel and Victoria was just one step away from becoming romantic.

Out of concern for Abel, love triumphed over fear and the Monster, and it's perfectly logical for Victoria to follow the trail he left behind.

"Of course it's out of concern... What, don't you want to see me?"

With her hands behind her back and her body leaning slightly forward, Victoria blinked.

"Where did you get the rope in your hand?"

He glanced back at the still taut Nylon Rope behind him, then at the rope in front of him that had slumped over and whose other end was being held by the other person. After a moment of silence, he suddenly asked a question that seemed to have no connection to the main point.

"A rope? When I came here, I found this rope tightly tied to a tree, with a knot that couldn't be tightened."

Xiao Yue shook the knot in her hand, looking slightly curious.

"So, what exactly happened on your end?"

"Tie to a tree...?"

Before he could reply, Claude, who was standing to the side, was slightly taken aback, and then looked at the still taut rope in front of him.

"If that's the case, then this rope is like that too?"

Suddenly energized, Claude climbed up from under the tree and spoke loudly to Abel and Victoria in front of him.

"The rope was actually cut at the very beginning, and then someone secretly tied it to the tree!!"

"..."

He glanced back at Claude, his face instantly expressionless.

However, Claude was already used to Abel's personality, so he didn't care at all. Instead, he walked over quickly and eagerly reached for the rope that Victoria was holding.

"If the problem is with the rope..."

Looking at the Nylon Rope he was holding in his hand, his words suddenly caught in his throat, and fear began to show on his face.

The rope he took from Victoria wasn't a rope at all; it was clearly a bloody intestine!

But after he frantically dropped the rope, he discovered that the intestine that had sunk into the snow had turned back into a normal Nylon Rope.

However, the bloodstains on his hands still reminded him that what he had seen was not an illusion.

"What's wrong?"

Because everyone's attention had been focused on Abel, Victoria hadn't seen what Claude had just witnessed. So when she saw him throw the rope back into the snow as if it were a snake, she couldn't help but ask him something, quite puzzled.

"I..."

"Hurry up."

Before Claude could even utter a single sentence, Setsuna interrupted him.

He had already bent down and picked up the rope from the ground, and also untied the section that was tied to the tree, then rolled it up again and put it back into his Inventory.

Meeting the gazes of the two people in front of him, his expression instantly became blank.

"Let's talk about it back at the villa first."

A fierce snowstorm raged.

Perhaps it was because there was an extra person among them, or perhaps some unseen rule had been broken, but this time when they set off again, they did not encounter the bizarre "Ghost Wall" incident they had encountered before, and their journey was quite smooth.

However, compared to his mental state when he first left the villa, Claude was now extremely wary, ignoring the pain in his feet and relentlessly following the two people in front of him.

When you encounter danger, you don't need to run faster than the danger itself; you just need to run faster than the people around you.

That was his initial thought; after all, with so many people around, what if he was lucky and the Monster didn't come looking for him but instead went after someone else?

As long as he could be saved, what did he care about the lives of others? At first, he even secretly hoped that others would become the Monster's prey...

However, now that he has become the prey being targeted, Claude's thoughts have taken a 180-degree turn. He is afraid of being abandoned by the others, so he sticks close to Abel and Victoria, whom he used to look down on... His behavior can be described as quite genuine.

However, because he was focused all his attention on the two people in front of him, he did not notice what was happening behind him.

--In the snow where there should have been only their three footprints, a pair of brand new handprints appeared.

To be precise, right next to Claude's footprints, new handprints appeared on the ground. These handprints appeared as Claude's feet landed and disappeared as he lifted them, Perfect synchronized with his steps.

It seemed as if an unseen entity was standing upside down beside Claude, moving forward with him step by step in the snowstorm...

However, Claude remained completely unaware of this bizarre and terrifying scene, continuing his journey alongside the unseen Monster beside him...

Meanwhile, at the villa...

Rohard and Smith, who had been holding their Hunting Rifle and waiting at the window for the car to return, simultaneously noticed some changes taking place in the yard on the first floor of the villa.

Bob's twisted corpse, which had been thrown down earlier, vanished suddenly and unexpectedly right before their eyes.

--In the blink of an eye.

The disappearance of the corpse meant the return of the unknown Monster. While cursing viciously, Rohard and Smith opened their eyes wide and began searching the courtyard below for any movement.

To their disappointment, aside from the unusual and sudden disappearance of Bob's body, nothing unusual happened at the villa in the next half hour.

As night deepened, the wind and snow outside intensified.

"Don't we need to do any other preparations?"

Staying by Bai Zhi's side the whole time, watching the snowflakes outside grow larger and larger, seemingly threatening to engulf the entire world, Xia Wen asked with some concern.

There were still several hours until dawn, but she doubted how many of the people here would be able to hold out until daybreak.

Bob died tragically in the bathroom, Eric was taken away in that car, and Joshua, Claude, and Abel chose to leave the villa to make a living on their own. It is estimated that the fate of these three is grim.

Rohard, Smith, Annie, Shawn chose to stay at the villa and fight the Monster, while Victoria and two other people, who were completely terrified, hid in the villa's Basement and locked the door.

There are twelve people in total, including everyone.

"If we do nothing, the story won't get a very high rating when it ends, right?"

"Let me ask you a question: what kind of story do you consider to have a high rating?"

Instead of answering Xia Wen's question, Bai Zhi turned to him and asked him the same question in return.

"... No one survived?"

After thinking for a moment, Xia Wen spoke with some uncertainty.

"From the perspective of a ghost story, the content should be scary enough, suspenseful and thrilling, and then bring a deep sense of despair to the characters in the end, like the Protagonist in the movie [The Mist] who shot his entire family just before being rescued... something like that?"

"If something were to grade this ongoing story of ours, what do you think it would be? And what standards would it use to grade it?"

Seeing Xia Wen's noncommittal answer to the previous question, Bai Zhi followed up with the next question.

"The scoring criteria... aren't they supposed to be a creepy story?"

Xia Wen was slightly taken aback.

"The story is called [The Monster], so it's a ghost story created with Monster as its core concept. What we need to do is..."

"That book didn't say it was a ghost story; it never mentioned it from beginning to end. It only said that there would be Monster."

Bai Zhi shook his head, interrupting Xia Wen.

"Don't use the Dungeon name as a reference. That was before the Dungeon underwent the change. After the Dungeon, nobody knows what's really going on inside the Dungeon."

"Uh... does that mean we're supposed to step in and unleash our full power to defeat that Monster, instantly turning this horror story into a Hero tale? But that would clearly be heading down the absurd path..."

Sitting with his legs drawn up beside Bai Zhi and the book, Xia Wen looked quite troubled.

"Without any clear scoring rules provided, we're severely limited. If we were to score according to standard ghost stories, I could just grab Gasoline can and die with that Monster right now; maybe that would be more heroic... Anyway, there's plenty of alcohol here."

"You got one thing wrong from the very beginning; you confused systems with Anomaly."

Bai Zhi shook his head slightly, his expression noncommittal.

"Although each Anomaly has its own set of rules, the Anomaly themselves don't provide these detailed rules. Players need to observe and discover them carefully... The scoring rules are hidden, understand?"

"Well..."

"This Anomaly story doesn't mention any rating rules or any mysterious punishment for ratings below six. This information is provided by the system, not by the Anomaly itself. The system is not the same as the Anomaly."

Bai Zhi held up a finger and shook it, speaking calmly.

"If we remove the extra information and assistance the system provides, it becomes quite obvious that this is just a very common horror story about Monster, and our goal is to survive as common within this horror story."

"So what are the scoring criteria...?"

"To put it another way, do you think this is a story that has already been written, or a story that we are currently writing?"

Bai Zhi shook his head.

"My personal preference is the first one: in a story whose ending is already predetermined and written, we play roles within the story and make a series of minor adjustments to the story itself."

"... Like the infinite flow genre in online novels?"

After thinking for a moment, Xia Wen looked thoughtful.

"You could say that, but it's a little different. For example, we can't reveal ourselves... You can think of this as a movie currently playing in theaters."

Bai Zhi snapped his fingers.

"We're like the actors in a movie, and the raters are like the audience. If the audience feels disconnected from the story, the rating will drop, but if the plot is engaging, the rating will rise. Similarly, in this story where we've intruded, if the story becomes more exciting than the original, our rating will increase, but if the story falls apart, the rating will decrease... That's the so-called rating system."

"Hmm... I think I understand."

After frowning and going through a long mental process, Xia Wen finally nodded.

"Whether it's scary or not is irrelevant, as long as the plot is exciting, right?"

"Even so, within this pre-established story framework, no matter how exciting the plot is, how exciting can it really be?"

Bai Zhi yawned again and pursed his lips.

"The terrifying, mysterious, and suspenseful background has already been set. If we were to add any other extra elements within this framework, the whole story would become a hodgepodge. So, we don't really have anything to do... When we encounter danger later, you just need to play dead."

Suddenly glancing out the window, Bai Zhi narrowed his eyes slightly, stopped speaking, and began to talk to Xia Wen beside him.

"There's plenty of alcohol here, so remember to pack plenty in your Inventory, but make sure you consume it all before you leave the Inventory, understand?"

"Uh... the Heroine shouldn't die that easily, right?"

After hearing Bai Zhi's words, Xia Wen's lips twitched slightly.

"And there are so many more here..."

We need a compelling story.

Turning back, Bai Zhi gave Xia Wen a meaningful look, then patted her on the shoulder, encouraging her.

"Keep it up, you're the best!"

"???"