Demon Village: Rustic Folkways, Warm Hospitality

Blood streamed from between his fingers, but the young man who had fallen to the ground, clutching his ear with terror written across his face, clenched his lips shut and did not dare make another sound.

The others who had been about to say something also shut their mouths in fear.

Only Cheng narrowed his eyes as he stared at Greenie's gun barrel, but his mind was focused on something else—

Was this gun exempt from the Medieval Fantasy tag's restrictions on the power of technological weapons, or was it actually a magical weapon disguised as a firearm?

"Buddy? You don't deserve it. Make noise again, and I'll shoot you in the head."

Greenie looked seriously at One-Ear, then rose from the tombstone. After a suffocating stretch of silence, he spoke again.

"This is a Chosen Evolution Space instance. You are all players selected by the Space. Complete the main quest alive, and you can return to reality. Then you'll qualify to meet veteran players like me in the plaza.

"As for dying... that means you're dead. You'll also die in reality, through all sorts of perfectly reasonable means.

"But honestly, you rookies really have terrible luck. Demon Village-related instances are extremely likely to go south even for players with two or three instances under their belts. Our player community unanimously believes that even the lowest difficulty based on Demon Village should be at least D-rank.

"As a rookie guide, I'm only responsible for making you accept reality and understand your situation as quickly as possible. Once I'm done guiding you, I'm out.

"I originally planned to offer you some paid assistance that you could settle afterward, but considering the huge chance of all of you getting wiped out... How about this? If you're willing to fully show me the effects of your talent skills, I can lend you something for self-defense. But I'll only help the five people with the most valuable talent skills."

Greenie paused after speaking and glanced at his watch.

"Three minutes left. No exceptions after that."

Greenie raised his head, only to find a group of rookies staring at him without even daring to breathe.

"Oh, you can talk now."

The moment he finished speaking, Greenie was surrounded. No one dared question their situation any further; they all asked how to display their talent skills and similar questions.

Clearly, Greenie had scared them badly. Even though they still had no idea what was going on, that did not stop them from trying to secure help.

Only Cheng Tian, who was holding his lower abdomen in an attempt to keep from getting cold, had somewhat different thoughts.

He personally felt that Greenie was probably far kinder than he looked or acted, because although his words were harsh, they were genuinely fair.

As one of the most notoriously difficult side-scrolling action platformers in history, if Demon Village truly recreated its original setting with high fidelity, then a total party wipe was guaranteed.

Thinking of that, Cheng Tian unconsciously edged back to the side of the hill and looked toward where Arthur's corpse lay. To his surprise, Arthur, who should have been lying dead, had actually struggled to prop up half his body and met Cheng Tian's gaze.

A strange final glimmer lingered in Arthur's eyes, but Cheng Tian obviously failed to read anything from it. Then Arthur collapsed completely, while the flesh and skin across his body rapidly dissolved, exposing an entire intact skeleton.

It was exactly like Arthur's death effect in the game!

Having witnessed Arthur's flesh and bones separate in a scene worthy of a B-grade horror movie, Cheng Tian was not frightened in the slightest. Instead, he inhaled deeply through his nose, filling his lungs with the graveyard air tinged with the faint stench of rotting corpses—

At that moment, Cheng Tian felt the excitement of personally discovering a rare game easter egg!

That intense thrill was enough to completely drown out the terror of watching a living person's skin, muscles, and organs dissolve on the spot until nothing remained but a skeleton.

Cheng Tian liked video games—he loved them, in fact—and his tastes were extremely retro. He especially enjoyed old games from decades ago, the kind found on long-obsolete console platforms.

How should he put it? Sometimes, Unreal Engine 5's intricate materials simply lacked the flavor of pixel blocks piled together on an 8-bit console.

And now, what should have been pixelated images on a screen had appeared before Cheng in their real form. That alone was enough to make him throw everything else aside and spend the rest of his life exploring this Chosen Evolution Space based on video games.

Having quickly calmed himself down, Cheng Tian turned back toward the crowd. Under Greenie's guidance, a group of people were opening their personal status panels, but Cheng Tian soon noticed something: everyone was using their phones to do it.

As much as he hated to admit it, in the modern society and country Cheng Tian lived in, phones had become indispensable. They were cameras, communication devices, wallets, entertainment, and had even become so essential that they were practically external human organs.

Cheng Tian was no exception. He copied the others and lit up the phone he had been clutching all this time, only to discover a completely unfamiliar new app icon on the screen.

It was a circle containing an extremely bold character for "Chosen," looking as though it had been peeled straight off Akuma's back after a thousand-hit instant combo.

For some reason, although the app icon was clearly black, Cheng Tian saw an inexplicable riot of colors in it.

This was the Chosen Mark shared by all Chosen Players—or perhaps the Chosen Mark had automatically selected the form most suited to displaying itself for them. Of course, not everyone had it this way.

The guy who felt his alcohol tolerance had dropped used AR glasses; the woman wearing a ring of lifelong celibacy used a ring projection; and the foul-mouthed college student bandaging One-Ear's wound had a phone too, yet his mark unfolded as a tattoo display.

It was worth mentioning that the Chosen Mark app launched as smoothly as a Famicom cartridge: zero-frame startup, ready the instant it was tapped, with no loading or waiting whatsoever.

Then, a character panel with a heavy ARPG style, visible only to Cheng Tian, was projected before his eyes through his phone screen.

Name: Cheng Tian / Player ID DX233180 (1 customization available)

Race: Earth Human Race

Attributes: Strength 10, Agility 10, Spirit 12, Charm 9 (the average for adult human males is 10; the average for females is 8)

Status: HP=100, MP=120, no BUFFs

Talent: Game Expert

Skills: None

Equipment: None

Items: None

Wealth: None

So I'm the Game Expert?

However, before Cheng Tian could tap into the talent's detailed information, he heard clapping from the crowd.

It was Greenie, trying to draw everyone's attention.

At the same time, Cheng Tian noticed that five people had already received paid sponsorship from Greenie—knives, axes, swords, hammers, and clubs, all cold weapons.

Cheng Tian's eyes shifted, and several thoughts immediately sprang to mind.

First, Greenie possessed a portable storage space large enough to hold at least five sizable cold weapons. Cheng Tian could not tell whether it was an innate space or some kind of spatial backpack.

Second, combined with what Greenie had said earlier, although he had not known before entering the instance that this was a Demon Village instance, he had most likely known it had the Medieval Fantasy instance tag. That was why the things he had prepared in advance for predatory lending were all cold weapons.

Lastly, players' talent skill information had some value, but not much. Or rather, low-level talents were not worth much, and most players' talents were probably not especially high-level. Greenie was likely just casting a wide net with these paid loans, and there was an extremely high chance they were all predatory loans.

Of course, it was also possible that Greenie was cold on the outside but warm-hearted underneath, and was merely using the talents as an excuse to provide a little extra help to this group of people about to die.

"Time's up. I hope some of you lucky ones make it back alive. That's all."

Greenie gave the crowd one last sweep of his gaze. Then, amid everyone's exclamations, he vanished into thin air beneath a beam of light that suddenly descended from the sky, just like a stage transition in the Mega Man series.

At the same time, something strange happened at the tombstone where he had given them their introduction earlier. The decayed dirt trembled slightly, and then—

A human hand, rotted down to only three relatively intact fingers, violently burst out of the ground!

The bulging grave mound, the rotting hand, and the night sky flashing with lightning and rumbling with thunder formed a horrifyingly terrifying scene.

Just as several rookies screamed at the sight, Cheng Tian seized the precious opportunity—

He snapped a perfect shot, one worthy of the cover of Left 4 Dead!