You Are Dead

Yan Qing had forgotten when he downloaded this game. It was probably to deal with inspections, after all, he worked at a game company, and it wouldn't do if his console didn't have his own company's games. He probably only opened it once, registered a character, and never played it again.

So what's going on? Not only have I transmigrated to a game world, but I can even play the MMORPG I dislike the most in this game world?

Even if I could open this game, there aren't any other players in this world. Is this the legendary single-player private server?

Although it felt a bit inexplicable, Yan Qing clicked to open the game The Herald since he had nothing else to do.

"Resist bad games, reject pirated games.

Pay attention to self-protection, and beware of being deceived.

Moderate gaming is good for the brain, while excessive gaming hurts the body.

Arrange your time reasonably and enjoy a healthy life."

Yan Qing was a little disappointed. He thought the game would have mutated when it came to this world, with features like 'Deep Blue Points' or 'Simulation Deduction'. But seeing these eight sentences, he felt that this game was probably just a game.

Then the opening CG flashed by quickly. Strangely, even the account login was skipped, and he went straight to the character selection interface.

When Yan Qing looked at his character library, he was stunned.

He remembered that the character he registered was called "Laplace's Demon," which was his universal character name in all games, and it should be a female character whose appearance was somewhere between Mai Shiranui and Tifa—he spent the most time in this game in the character customization stage.

However, the only character in the game library at this time was named "Yan Qing," and from the appearance, it was a male character who looked extremely similar to him, and the location displayed was "Secret Realm: Thief's Home."

Could it be…

Yan Qing's eyes flickered, and a strange excitement arose in his heart. He resolutely chose to log in to the game character "Yan Qing"!

However, a login failure message popped up on the screen.

"This character is already in the game."

Huh?

Yan Qing tried several times, but still couldn't log in.

If he guessed correctly, this game character "Yan Qing" should represent himself, which also meant that as long as Yan Qing logged in to this character, he could strengthen himself in the game.

Attribute points, pet recruitment, weapon inlaying, skill enhancement… even the most common and clichéd experience system was a godsend to Yan Qing!

Because The Herald had quite a variety of gameplay options, in addition to fighting monsters, players had many ways to increase experience and train skills. Yan Qing might be able to increase his level in a short period of time.

However, without logging in, everything was empty.

Yan Qing looked at the screen unwillingly. He had to log out himself to log in to the "Yan Qing" account, but besides death, what other way was there to log out? He couldn't summon the game panel in reality to exit the game—he had recited all kinds of system spells from 'linkstart' to 'Deep Blue'.

He knew that this game console was the life-saving straw he could grab to transmigrate to this world, but unfortunately, this life-saving straw was a flower in the mirror and the moon in the water, visible but untouchable.

In the next half hour, Yan Qing kept trying various ways to 'log out', such as pretending to sleep to deceive the game console, but still to no avail. He lay on the bed looking at the game console screen, his expression as distressed as a billionaire who had forgotten his bank card password.

"Sigh."

Yan Qing put the game console on the bedside table, covered himself with the blanket, and didn't want to love anyone, and went to sleep.

But in less than two minutes, he picked up the game console again—I don't believe this game console is really useless!

However, at this moment, the game console screen interface was not "character selection," but "create new character." Probably when Yan Qing put down the game console, he accidentally pressed another character slot, so the system directly entered the new character creation process.

Yan Qing subconsciously wanted to exit, but he suddenly realized a problem: if the game character "Yan Qing" really represented himself, what would happen if he created another character?

Anyway, he was just idle.

The first step was character customization and naming. Yan Qing instinctively wanted to create a female character somewhere between Tifa and Mai Shiranui, but this game console was obviously mutated. What if he created a curvy female character, and then the game console identified the female character as his body... Yan Qing decided not to take the risk, but he was too lazy to customize the face to look like his own, so he directly chose the default male character face number 01.

The next step, allocating attributes, was the main event. Yan Qing hadn't seriously studied this game, but he was a player after all, and he roughly understood after looking at the introduction.

The initial character had four main attributes: "Vitality," "Soul," "Dexterity," and "Comprehension."

"Vitality" affected the character's health, stamina, physical attack power, physical defense, movement speed, vision, resistance to diseases and toxins, and a series of other minor attributes related to the body.

"Soul" affected the character's spiritual power, skill strength, mental resistance, intuitive perception, and a series of other minor attributes related to the soul.

"Dexterity" affected the character's attack speed, evasion rate, hit rate, and other minor attributes related to skill.

Among them, "Dexterity" would be negatively weakened by one-third of the difference between "Vitality" and "Soul." For example, if a character had 20 points of Vitality and 10 points of Soul, then their "Dexterity" would receive a -3 reduction, meaning the character's Dexterity value would be -3 when calculated.

Because whether it was a 'braindead big rig' with high Vitality and low Soul, or a 'genius in a wheelchair' with low Vitality and high Soul, it meant that the character could not fully exert their strength, which was reflected in the data as a decrease in Dexterity.

But no matter "Vitality," "Soul," or "Dexterity," none were as important as the fourth attribute, "Comprehension"!

"Comprehension" affected the increase speed of all the character's skill experience, with each point of Comprehension increasing experience by 1%.

A new character only had 10 free attribute points. Even if all of them were added to "Comprehension," it would only increase experience by 10%. It didn't seem like much. On the other hand, adding them to the other three attributes could give the initial character a good gaming experience. But Yan Qing knew from chatting with colleagues that in the The Herald game, there were very few ways to increase Comprehension, while there were various ways to increase Vitality, Soul, and Dexterity.

Many players felt it was difficult to level up after reaching the fourth class advancement because they didn't add Comprehension at the beginning or added too little, while characters with full Comprehension would only encounter bottlenecks after reaching the sixth class advancement. Moreover, The Herald was a monthly card MMORPG that maliciously didn't provide stat reset items, so players who added the wrong points could only create new accounts and start over.

1 point of Vitality, 1 point of Soul, 1 point of Dexterity, 10 points of Comprehension!

Next was choosing the game mode. However, Yan Qing found that the first two options, "Adventure Mode" and "Asura Mode," were grayed out and unselectable. He could only choose Reality Mode.

"Adventure Mode" was the most popular PVE mode, with normal experience gains.

"Asura Mode" was a PVP special, which could obtain 200% experience gains, making it convenient for players to level up quickly on the PVP battlefield, while greatly reducing the rewards from dungeons and monsters, basically only playable on the battlefield.

In "Reality Mode," players would receive an extra 5% experience, but the price was only one life. Death would result in the character's account being deleted.

Obviously, only masochists and hardcore players would choose "Reality Mode." Yan Qing had never tried Reality Mode, but now he could only give it a try.

As for the character name, let's call it... 'Yan Yi'!

He could choose a subordinate newbie village from three main cities, namely "Jiangnan Subordinate Newbie Village," "Chang'an Subordinate Newbie Village," and "Nevernight Subordinate Newbie Village." Yan Qing randomly chose "Nevernight Subordinate Newbie Village" and then chose to start the game.

As the screen lit up, Yan Qing saw the newly created character 'Yan Yi' appear in a village, wearing cloth clothes and holding a wooden stick, without even shoes.

Ah, it really is just playing a game?

I thought I would transmigrate or something...

Yan Qing familiarized himself with the controls a little and then planned to take on quests and level up, but after controlling the character and wandering around twice, he immediately realized something was wrong—why was there no one in this newbie village?

Not only was there no one, but it was even dilapidated, with scorched houses, collapsed sheds, and knee-high weeds. It looked like a desolate village. He entered a scorched house and saw a water tank inside. He clicked to see if there was anything, and then a scene appeared on the screen that made Yan Qing's eyelids twitch wildly: there were two highly decomposed skeletons in the water tank, one large and one small. Judging from their clothes, they seemed to be a woman and a child.

Standing in the center of the village, Yan Qing was very confused. No quests, no monsters, and no newbie village. What should he do next?

There was a road extending from the village entrance. Yan Qing could only try to explore along the road. This time he was lucky and soon reached the main road, and even saw passersby. When he went to ask for directions, the passersby either avoided him or raised their weapons and looked at him warily. Only one kind old farmer told him: "If you go further, you'll reach Ping City. You should go back to the village quickly."

Ping City, although not a main city in the game, should have quests, right? If not quests, then at least NPCs. Even if Yan Qing doesn't rely on killing monsters to level up, he still needs to learn skills from other NPCs to improve his level.

Ping City was indeed very close, or rather, 'Yan Yi's' walking speed was very fast, taking only ten minutes or so to arrive. Although 'Yan Yi' only had 1 Vitality, which is the average Vitality of an adult, he was still a game character. 'Yan Yi' could expend stamina to run faster, and when his stamina was about to run out, he would return to normal speed to walk and wait for his stamina to recover. Just this cycle of 'accelerated running - walking' was enough for 'Yan Yi' to surpass many merchants and commoners along the way.

At the city gate, there were hunchbacked woodcutters carrying firewood, rural landlords with entourages riding donkeys, and traveling merchants carrying luggage. They formed a long line on the left side of the city gate waiting to enter the city. There were clearly guards on the right side as well, but no one entered the city from the right.

Yan Qing was naturally too lazy to queue and went directly from the right, only to be stopped by the guard.

Guard: "Who are you?"

Yan Qing's heart stirred, and a dialogue option popped up for Yan Yi in the game.

Yan Yi: "A traveler, wanting to enter the city."

Guard: "Do you have a pass?"

Yan Yi: "A pass? No."

Guard: "Do you know anyone?"

Yan Yi: "I don't know anyone."

From the screen, Yan Qing could clearly see the guard touching his chin, then exchanging glances with the others, revealing a strange smile. Immediately afterward, two guards came over and flanked 'Yan Yi' on either side, pushing him into the barracks next to the city gate.

Yan Qing tried to leave, but the game prompted that 'Yan Yi's' Vitality was too low and his strength was not enough to break free from the control of the two guards.

After entering the barracks, a muffled sound suddenly came, and 'Yan Yi' fell to the ground, the screen turning pitch black, and his health bar dropped by a third.

Immediately afterward, the health bar was exhausted, and the game popped up a prompt:

"You are dead."