Vampire Hunter Officially Open for Business

The original Castlevania let players choose between two difficulty settings: "NORMAL" and "EASY."

Yet, counterintuitively enough, the default setting on the difficulty selection screen was Normal rather than Easy!

For kids back then who did not even know all twenty-six letters, they naturally mashed the "START" button when entering the game. Ninety-nine percent of them ended up on Normal difficulty, where the Simon Belmont controlled by the player gained a mechanic called "Hit Evasion."

Once hit, the character would uncontrollably leap backward. During that time, even if the player rubbed the controller to pieces, they could not interfere.

But if Easy difficulty was selected, getting hit would not cause a backward leap. The character would remain standing in place, while the Phase Shift effect still triggered, letting players freestyle through hordes of monsters.

On flat ground, being knocked backward was not much of a problem. The issue was that Castlevania was packed with terrain hazards such as staircases, pits, and jumping platforms. Once Hit Evasion triggered, there was a high chance of falling straight into the abyss.

And if, on top of those already deadly terrains, you encountered Skeletons throwing arcing bone clubs, S-shaped Medusa Heads, or Flea Men scurrying everywhere... that feeling was simply exquisite!

Angry Video Game Nerd's reactions while playing the first game had not been exaggerated at all. This was what players looked like after hearing the death sound effect.

It had to be said that Cheng Tian was quite the gambler. No wonder he liked stuffing Ace Chalice and Time Magician into his deck. This time, he had gambled that the Phase Shift effect triggered upon being hit would let him evade Vampire Magician's attack.

And the truth was, he had won the bet.

The transformation spell failed to hit him while he was in Phase Shift, while his forcibly backward-leaping body instead produced an effect commonly known as "nitro acceleration."

This was also documented in the original game.

Many speedrunners used the forced backward leap after taking damage to forcibly clear obstacles that could not normally be jumped over, skipping entire sections of the map to save time.

Going all in felt great! Going all in all the time felt great all the time!

At that moment, Cheng's expression of euphoric triumph after successfully going all in probably could only be described as "hideous" in Vampire Magician's eyes.

The magician wanted to Blink away from Cheng Tian's flying pounce, but the stalled flow of magic had already provided the answer.

The skill was on cooldown. He could not use it.

Yet just as the magician prepared to use his powerful vampire body to face the physical impact of a frail human, the bare-chested Cheng Tian passed straight through his body, as smoothly as if they were not even on the same layer!

Clearly, the Phase Shift effect brought by Hit Evasion had not yet ended. Cheng Tian and the magician currently had no collision volume between them.

The magician had never expected Cheng Tian's Phase Shift to last so long. It could pass through not just spells, but people as well. Every single judgment had been wrong—one wrong step led to another. Just as the magician, who had been passed through by Phase Shift, wanted to physically counterattack the human behind him with his cane, an intense suffocating sensation and terrifying burning pain engulfed him.

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

Here, Cheng Tian exploited a bug that was not quite a bug: even while in Phase Shift, his attacks could still hit enemies, and strangling with the whip likewise counted as a valid attack.

Although only the first instant of the strangulation met the weapon effect's trigger condition, it was still a full twenty points of unmitigated holy damage. Using a holy relic specialized against vampires to strangle someone with a rope—one could only say this vampire had truly had it coming.

"Hand Axe! Help me block the zombies!"

Afraid he would fail to strangle the vampire to death, Cheng Tian pulled with enough force to nearly snap the whip, while shouting for One-Ear to help.

"Coming!!!"

Knowing that Cheng Tian was calling for him, One-Ear was not overwhelmed by the complicated situation.

In terms of friendship, One-Ear was naturally closer to his roommate. But reason told him that his idiot roommate, currently bent on getting himself killed, was completely unreliable.

So he decisively chose to support Cheng Tian and let his idiot roommate fend for himself.

After battling fiercely against the zombie horde for a while, although Cheng Tian had done most of the precise kills with minimal stamina expenditure and One-Ear had only occasionally stepped in to block, that did not stop him from observing and summarizing a few patterns.

He first crouched and swept low, smashing the hammerhead side of his one-handed axe directly into a zombie's knee and shattering it in one blow. As the zombie lost its balance, he rose and drove his shoulder sideways into it, knocking it away.

Rather than finishing it off, he immediately turned around, rushed forward, and jumped, delivering a crooked Rider Kick straight into the back of the zombie... Zombie Duck that had slapped Cheng Tian and wanted to continue pursuing him—

You could call it a flying dropkick if you wanted.

And surprisingly, though the flying dropkick looked rather ugly, it truly landed squarely on the shriveled Zombie Duck's torso. The dried-up, shriveled Zombie Duck rolled straight down the dirt slope.

Among the many template instances in Chosen Evolution Space, there were surely versatile, all-around monsters with no weaknesses. But the zombies from Demon Village definitely did not count.

In terms of straight-line movement speed, the zombies here were already among the best of their kind. That naturally meant they each had weaknesses in other areas, though in this case, one phrase summed it all up—

Paper-thin defense.

This paper-thin defense did not merely mean they generally had only 10 HP. Their strength was also far below that of an average adult human male.

In Chosen Evolution Space, both players and monsters had their physical attributes fully quantified through four dimensions: Strength, Agility, Spirit, and Charisma. Among them, Strength directly corresponded to physical attack, maximum HP, self-healing ability, carrying capacity, resistance to blows, and related stats.

Similar settings could be found in Warcraft and Dota, where HP increased alongside Strength.

Strength and constitution should have been complementary physical attributes. Whether it was high Strength with low constitution or low Strength with high constitution, neither really made much sense.

Because Demon Village's zombies were powered by magic, and their materials were corpses that had already decayed in graves to a certain extent—not lively parkour zombies infected with biochemical or rabies viruses that had broken their muscular restraints and grown stronger instead—their Strength was actually their weak point.

The reason they could break the alcoholic guy's arm in one strike was entirely because his alcoholism, reversed day-night schedule, and lack of sunlight had caused osteoporosis, along with the dark magic inside the zombies at work.

Every seemingly dangerous scenario mission actually had a correct solution. It simply demanded more courage, knowledge, teamwork, and other such qualities.

Worth mentioning was that different units also had different HP conversion ratios.

As ordinary Earth humans, Cheng Tian and the others had a Strength-to-HP conversion ratio of 1:10. Ten points of Strength naturally converted into 100 HP.

Demon Village zombies, meanwhile, had an average Strength of around 5, but their rotten bodies gave them a pitiful HP conversion ratio of only 1:2. At most, they had 10 HP. No wonder Cheng Tian could blow one apart with a single lash.

As a "treasure chest monster," Vampire Magician could teleport, turn into a duck, and possessed the racial talents of a vampire. His Strength, Agility, and Spirit were all decent. Judging only by his four-dimensional attributes, he was already approaching the threshold of a "boss" unit. Unfortunately, he was facing someone like Cheng Tian, who treated precious holy relics like a bicycle and pedaled them for all they were worth.

Like a heated dinner knife slowly cutting through butter, Vampire Slayer slowly but smoothly strangled through the magician's neck. As the top hat and head rolled to the ground, the magician's headless corpse finally ceased struggling.

At the same time, the gentleman's cane still tightly clutched in the headless corpse's hand became covered in a radiant glow signifying "collectible."