Tragic History

"Little Black, c-can you help me find these medicinal herbs in the forest? They're really important to me!"

"My little brother is sick. He desperately needs these herbs to save his life!" the girl said anxiously while also gesturing in sign language, afraid that Liao Zixuan wouldn't understand.

Vivian had nearly given up on gathering medicinal herbs.

Claw Forest was fraught with danger. She had to stay alert for monsters that might appear at any moment while simultaneously searching for herbs.

She had spent the entire day yesterday and only managed to gather this pitifully small amount of herbs. It was nowhere near enough to treat her brother.

In her despair, Vivian had already prepared herself to return empty-handed and agree to let her father sell her to a big city for money to pay for her brother's medical treatment. But Liao Zixuan's appearance had given the girl new hope!

After all, the little girl would never forget what had happened last night.

The rain of fire caused by the Little Wolf monster before her had instantly burned all the surrounding forest monsters to ash, dyeing the pitch-black night crimson.

Vivian truly had little experience and understood nothing, but she wasn't stupid. At the very least, she clearly understood one fact, which was...

Her Little Wolf was very strong.

Much stronger than the many monsters in the forest that frightened her! Much! Much stronger!

Meanwhile, Liao Zixuan initially just lazily yawned and didn't pay much attention.

Wasn't it just protecting a little girl while she gathered some herbs in the forest? It was a piece of cake. He was even more concerned about what Vivian had called him at the beginning. What the heck was Little Black supposed to mean?

But...

Suddenly, a scene flashed through Liao Zixuan's mind. The indifference on his face gradually turned solemn because the girl's reminder brought back a strange detail he had noticed when he looked at her status panel.

Vivian

Status: Poisoned (???)

Poisoned.

There had been three unknown question marks after it.

Normally, information displayed as "?" on the game panel indicated something extremely special, requiring players to find clues through quests or ancient texts. It was exceedingly rare.

So how could such a thing appear on a girl from a remote countryside village?

Unless...

Wait. Poisoned. Poison... sick...

Holy crap, sick!

A string of memories awakened in an instant. As if he had thought of something terrible, all the fur on Liao Zixuan's body suddenly stood on end, and the entire wolf became exceptionally serious.

This was bad!

How could he have forgotten something so important?

He had clearly traveled back to the opening period of Fall of the Gods. At this time, the Flame Domain still existed, and Fire God Alice was still resisting the corruption of the Abyssal Fall.

But the game's name, Fall of the Gods, said it all. The entire main storyline revolved around the "Fall of the Gods," and Fire God Alice of the Flame Domain was the first god to be corrupted and fall to the game's greatest villainous faction, the Abyssal Fall.

The reason the Abyssal Fall, which had been preparing for countless years, chose to target the Fire God first could be summed up in one simple sentence:

A spark can start a prairie fire.

The Fire God might not have been the strongest among the Nine Gods, but she was certainly the one whose influence reached the greatest number of subjects across the domains. Once something happened to the Fire God, everyone who worshiped her would be implicated.

Asymptomatic poisoning was the early manifestation of Abyssal Fire Poison! By the second stage, the victim would suddenly fall gravely ill and become bedridden for no apparent reason.

And once things progressed further, Fire God Alice would fail to resist and fall to the Abyssal Fall.

At that point, all the people in the Flame Domain who worshiped the Fire God would also be instantly corrupted and fall, transforming into abyssal monsters. The evil force would spread like a prairie fire and shock the world, laying the foundation for the Abyssal Fall's later invasion and ushering in the opening of the game's 2.0 version, Under the Black Tide.

Liao Zixuan completely recalled this long stretch of the game's early storyline, as though it had happened only yesterday.

However, after the initial tension, an uncontrollable fighting spirit quickly began to spread through his entire body.

The vast Flame Domain would be utterly destroyed, countless people would become monsters, and it would be practically a fantastical version of a zombie apocalypse. Fire God Alice, one of the few among the Nine Gods who cared about ordinary people—a benevolent goddess who treated her subjects like her own children, with an exceptionally fiery personality and figure—would ultimately fall and become an abyssal monster.

That plotline had left countless players sighing with emotion and fuming with anger. But one had to admit that tragedy was always the best way to stir people's emotions.

It was precisely the tragic main storyline at the game's launch that drove players to spontaneously and frenziedly pull their friends into the world of Fall of the Gods, all so they could expand their player army, swear to fight the Abyssal Fall to the bitter end, and get their goddess back!

As for Liao Zixuan, he happened to be one of them. It was also the reason he was so excited now.

After all, this was like Kerrigan transforming into the Queen of Blades in StarCraft. If he could return to the past and participate in the story, he absolutely had to try to rewrite history and change the ending.

"Little Black... Little Black!" Vivian saw Liao Zixuan standing there in a daze and immediately grew frantic. She repeatedly waved her hand in front of the little wolf's eyes.

The girl's voice pulled him back to reality, and Liao Zixuan began analyzing and considering the situation.

First, Vivian's current first-stage asymptomatic poisoning had most likely been transmitted from her younger brother. Since her brother had already developed the second-stage symptom of being seriously ill and bedridden, that proved...

Fire God Alice's condition was already extremely grim, and the situation was critical.

Of course, setting aside matters that far in the future, he first had to consider how to solve the girl's immediate problem.

There were only two ways to completely cure Abyssal Fire Poison. The first was to escape the Flame Domain before the Fire God fell and leave the range of her influence. The second was to stop her before she succumbed.

Clearly, Liao Zixuan couldn't accomplish either of those things right now. So he had no way to remove the girl's poison for the time being and could only suppress it.

A complete cure was difficult, but suppression was much simpler. Liao Zixuan knew more than a dozen methods, and the simplest one—the one he could act on immediately—was...

Magic Crystal Grass.

The essence of Abyssal Fire Poison was that it corroded the mana within the body. Therefore, as long as there was sufficient mana, it could be suppressed and delayed. Magic Crystal Grass was a plant that contained abundant mana.

However...

Magic Crystal Grass was different from the ordinary herbs the girl had gathered earlier. The reason it could contain so much mana was precisely because it grew in an environment already saturated with tremendous amounts of mana.

And according to the players, this kind of environment was usually called...

Boss Lair.