Vampire Hunter Officially Opens for Business

Castlevania Gen 1 allowed players to choose the difficulty, with options for "NORMAL" and "EASY."

However, counter-intuitively, the default difficulty on the game's selection screen was Normal, not Easy!

For children who couldn't even recognize all 26 letters back then, they would naturally mash the "START" button upon entering the game. Nine times out of ten, they'd end up on Normal difficulty. Under this setting, the player-controlled Simon Belmont gained a "Damage Dodge" ability.

Once hit, the character would uncontrollably leap backward, and the player couldn't do anything about it, no matter how hard they worked the controller.

If they chose Easy difficulty, getting hit wouldn't cause a backward leap but would keep the character standing in place, while the Phase Shift effect would still trigger, allowing players to swim freely through hordes of monsters.

On flat ground, the backward leap after getting hit wouldn't be much of an issue. But the problem was that Castlevania featured a lot of stairs, pits, and jumping platforms. Once the Damage Dodge effect was triggered, it would most likely result in falling into an abyss on the spot.

And if they encountered skeletons throwing parabolic bone clubs, Medusa heads flying in S-shapes, or scurrying flea men on these already deadly terrains, the experience would be... something else!

Some of James's reactions while playing the original game weren't exaggerated at all. Players hearing the death sound effect would react like this.

It must be said that Cheng Tian (he) has a bit of a gambling streak. It's no wonder he likes to stuff his deck with Ace Chalice and Time Magician. This time, he was betting that the Phase Shift effect triggered when he got hit could dodge the attack from the Vampire Magician.

But the fact was, his gamble paid off.

Polymorph failed to hit him while he was in the Phase Shift state. Instead, his body's forced backward leap acted like what's commonly known as "Nitro Boost."

This event is also recorded in the original game.

Many speedrunners utilize this forced backward leap mechanism when hit to forcibly skip obstacles that normally couldn't be jumped over in the standard progression, thereby skipping entire maps and saving time.

Going all-in feels great! Always going all-in feels great!

At this moment, Cheng Tian's expression of elation from successfully going all-in must have looked "ferocious" to the Vampire Magician.

The Magician wanted to blink and evade Cheng Tian's pounce, but the stagnant magical energy flow already provided the answer.

The skill was in its CD State and couldn't be used.

However, just as the Magician braced himself to face the physical impact of the frail human with his powerful vampire body, Cheng Tian, bare-chested, actually passed straight through the Magician's body, as if they weren't even on the same plane – so smooth!

Clearly, the Phase Shift effect from Damage Dodge hadn't ended yet. Cheng Tian and the Magician had no collision volume between them.

The Magician never expected Cheng Tian's Phase Shift to last so long, allowing him to pass through not only spells but also people. It could be said that every judgment was wrong, and one mistake led to a cascade of errors. Just as the Magician, having been phased through, was about to physically counter the human behind him with his staff, an intense sense of suffocation and a terrifying burning sensation enveloped him.

Cheng Tian's Demon-Breaking Whip Vampire Killer had successfully wrapped around the Vampire Magician's neck!

Here, Cheng Tian exploited a loophole that wasn't quite a bug: even while in the Phase Shift state, his attacks could hit enemies, and the act of strangulation also counted as a valid attack.

Although only the initial strangulation satisfied the weapon's special effect judgment, it still dealt a full 20 points of Holy Damage without any decay. Using such a holy artifact specialized against vampires for a strangulation... well, this vampire's life was pretty much over.

"Axe! Block the zombie for me!"

Fearing he wouldn't be able to strangle the vampire to death, Cheng Tian pulled with all his might, nearly tearing the whip apart, and shouted to One-Ear for help.

"Here it comes!!!"

Aware that Cheng Tian was calling him, One-Ear wasn't fazed by the complex situation.

In terms of friendship, One-Ear was naturally closer to his roommate, but reason told him that his roommate, who was courting death, was completely unreliable.

So he decisively chose to support Cheng Tian, leaving his foolish roommate to fend for himself.

After a period of intense fighting with the zombie tide, although most of the time Cheng Tian was picking them off with minimal stamina expenditure, and One-Ear only occasionally swapped in to block, this didn't prevent him from observing and summarizing certain patterns.

He first performed a low sweep, smashing the zombie's knee directly with the hammer face of his Hand Axe, shattering it in one blow. As the zombie lost its balance, he rose and shoulder-checked it aside.

Without choosing to finish it off, he turned and charged forward, leaping up. Towards the Zombie Duck that had slapped Cheng Tian and was trying to pursue further... he delivered a wobbly Knight's Kick to its back--

You could call it a Flying Kick too.

And it wasn't just for show; this Flying Kick, though somewhat awkward-looking, successfully landed on the shriveled Zombie Duck's torso. The desiccated, air-dried Zombie Duck actually rolled down the dirt slope.

Among the many template dungeons in the Chosen Space, there were bound to be hexagonal, all-around monsters, but the zombies from Demon World Village definitely weren't among them.

In terms of straight-line movement speed, the zombies here were already top-tier among their kind. This meant they had weaknesses in other areas, but it could all be summarized in one word--

Paper Defense.

The Paper Defense here wasn't just about their generally low HP of only 10 points; their Strength was also far below the normal level of an adult human male.

In the Chosen Space, both players and monsters had their physical attributes comprehensively quantified using a four-dimensional graph of "Strength, Agility, Spirit, and Charm." Among these, the Strength attribute directly corresponded to related data such as Physical Attack, Max HP, self-healing ability, carrying capacity, and damage resistance.

Similar settings can be seen in Warcraft and Dota, where increased Strength also leads to increased HP.

Strength and Physique should be complementary physical attributes. Whether it's high Strength and low Physique, or low Strength and high Physique, both seem somewhat illogical.

Because the zombies in Demon World Village were driven by magic, and their bodies were composed of corpses that had rotted to a certain extent in graves, they weren't like the fresh, parkour-running zombies infected by biochemical or rabies viruses that unleashed their muscles, causing their Strength attribute to increase instead of decrease. Therefore, Strength was actually their weak point.

The reason they could break Drunk Brother's arm in one blow was entirely due to Brother's osteoporosis caused by excessive drinking, lack of sleep, and not getting enough sun, as well as the dark magic within the zombie.

Any seemingly dangerous scenario or quest actually had a correct solution, but it required a high degree of courage, knowledge, and teamwork.

It's worth mentioning that different units have different HP conversion ratios.

As ordinary Earth Humans, Cheng Tian and his companions had a Strength-to-HP conversion ratio of 1:10, so 10 points of Strength naturally converted to 100 HP.

For the Demon World Village zombies, although their average Strength was around 5 points, their decaying bodies resulted in a pitiful HP conversion ratio of only 1:2, with a maximum of 10 HP. It's no wonder Cheng Tian could explode one with a single whip.

As a "Treasure Chest Monster," the Vampire Magician could teleport, transform into a duck, and possessed racial talents related to vampires. Its Strength, Agility, and Spirit were not weak. Judging solely by its four-dimensional stats, it was on the verge of being a "Boss" unit. However, it faced someone like Cheng Tian, who treated precious holy relics like bicycles and rode them to death.

The Vampire Killer severed the Magician's neck slowly but smoothly, like cutting through butter with a hot knife. As the top hat and head rolled to the ground, the Magician's headless corpse completely lost the ability to struggle.

At the same time, the Gentleman's Cane still held tightly in the headless corpse's hand began to glow with a light indicating it was "lootable."