A Refreshed Gaming Experience and a Hidden Quest

Murphy slept for a full seven hours. By the time he woke, it was already the next morning. There was no sun in the woods, or the scorching rays alone would have reduced him to a pile of ash.

The more accustomed he became to life as a vampire, the more keenly he felt its limitations. The lethal weakness to sunlight was enough to wipe out every advantage the race possessed.

This was a terrible gaming experience!

One-star review!

If changing races were an option, Murphy would switch to an ordinary human right now—or some other race, like an elf.

"Let's go."

Murphy freshened up a little, then downed the virgin blood the young lady had brought him to "build up his strength." He didn't want to know where she'd gotten the "supplies."

Maybe the young vampire lady, whose personality was a little off, didn't know either.

He gestured to Maxim and Mirian. The two carriages then set off one after the other from Smuggler's Woods, heading toward Cadman City.

The carriage in front was loaded with sundries.

Among them were the three thousand computational orbs, the guns, weapons, and armor the players had collected, and some bloodstained money. They were all seed money for Murphy's venture, and the loyal Maxim was personally guarding them.

Mirian drove the carriage behind it.

Two coffins were inside: one for the young lady, and the other for Lady Adele, who was still unconscious and asleep.

Murphy figured that, with the young lady's habits as a proper vampire, she'd already be sleeping in her coffin now that the sun was up. But when he entered the carriage, he found her awake, arranging Lady Adele's coffin.

Yikes. It was a pretty creepy sight.

Lady Adele, now dressed in a blood-red robe, lay in a black coffin with her hands folded over her flat stomach. She looked as if she'd stopped breathing. Beside her, the young lady placed a few dried white roses and sprinkled them with delicately scented perfume.

The whole scene looked like a farewell to the dead.

But this was just everyday life for vampires.

As a proper vampire, she had to be meticulous about these details. They had to display the elegance and nobility befitting "the nobles of the night," after all.

"Thanks to the blood essence you gave her, she'll wake in just two days. She also won't have to endure the long, tedious adjustment to her new life that takes other vampires several months."

The young lady wore a black veil and cloak that covered her face. Even in the dim carriage, she wrapped herself up to keep the heat radiating from the bothersome sunlight at bay.

As she fussed over the coffin's contents and sat on its lid, she said to Murphy:

"I haven't thanked you yet, Murphy. Not only for the victory in intercepting the transport convoy, but also for what you did for Adele. You didn't have to go that far. I owe you one."

"You don't have to thank me, young lady. I did it for myself, too."

Murphy sat at the back of the carriage, watching Smuggler's Woods recede beyond the curtain. Leaning against the carriage wall, he propped his chin on his left hand and said softly:

"At my current rank, I can only take one offspring. I may come from Triss's line, but that doesn't mean I could accept my first offspring being useless, just like I was.

I just wanted to give her the best.

Still, given Lady Adele's loyalty to you, she and I will need time to get used to one another."

"You're her elder."

The young lady lowered her voice.

"Whether she likes it or not, she has to obey you! The blood bond will change her mind. One day, she'll forget all her feelings for me.

Yes.

One day.

She'll fight only for you.

To be honest, I regret it a little, Murphy."

Murphy wondered if the young lady had changed her mind and was about to renegotiate.

He didn't answer, waiting for her to continue. But she fell silent for half a minute, leaving him at a loss. As he marveled at how she never played by the rules, he changed the subject.

"What's the story with Adele's bloodline? Why does she have a quarter elf blood? Where did you find this oddity? There haven't been any elves in Transia for centuries, have there?"

"Huh? She's a half-elf?"

The young lady had just put a hand on Lady Adele's coffin lid. Murphy's words made her start in surprise.

Murphy's eye twitched.

Good grief!

She didn't even know that her most loyal—and only—blood thrall had a hidden race? She knew nothing about it, yet had casually brought her along everywhere?

Was she really that carefree?

"I've never tasted Adele's blood, and I never allowed other vampires to do so either. She also has no elven traits at all and is usually so quiet, so..."

Perhaps she noticed the surprise Murphy couldn't hide. The young lady explained:

"But I don't think it matters. She's loyal and capable. Her background is insignificant compared to her excellent work. Besides, Adele has been with me for twenty years. I watched her grow up, day by day.

She's like a daughter to me.

So I hope you'll teach and protect her as I have."

"?"

Murphy almost lost his composure at that.

He looked at Femis, with the height of a sixteen-year-old rich girl and a youthful, baby-faced appearance, then at Lady Adele in the coffin, who was at least thirty-five and "mature" in every way.

Anyone seeing them together would think the daughter was bidding farewell to her mother. But the truth was the opposite.

And the young lady's expression was completely serious. She clearly had no idea at all of the impression her unusual appearance made on people.

Murphy had to bite the tip of his tongue hard to keep from blurting out a comment.

By now, he was certain that this Blood Vulture young lady, who maintained a stern and cold demeanor in public, was actually a natural airhead who lacked any grasp of many ordinary things. It was hard to imagine how she'd ended up that way.

Then again, wasn't that just what made the long and "colorful" lives of long-lived races like?

Living too long twisted the way you saw the world.

For that matter, wasn't there a useless vampire girl at home who claimed to be five hundred years old, yet was still hopelessly devoted to booze?

Compared to Triss, the young lady before him merely had a touch of airheadedness.

Overall, she seemed quite reliable.

Still, in that moment, Murphy really wanted to ask how old the young lady was.

But after hesitating for a long while, he decided against it.

Asking a woman he barely knew such an insulting question could easily get him killed on the spot.

"If you're curious about Adele's background, ask her yourself later. You're her elder; she shouldn't hide anything from you.

All I remember is that I found her twenty years ago, when I was traveling in the Dark Mountains. She was in a village in southern Transia.

She was all alone and lived by stealing, but she wasn't very good at it and almost got beaten to death.

I felt sorry for her, so I gave the scrawny little monkey some food. She's been with me ever since."

Femis shook her head, yawned, and opened her coffin. Then she asked Murphy:

"Is there anything else important?"

Murphy immediately rose with a knowing air, said goodbye to the young lady, and wished her good night.

Even though the sun had only just come up.

For a vampire, this was the time to say good night!

It was only polite.

Besides, he'd come to sound her out and see how she felt about the vampires being wiped out. He hadn't expected her not to mention it at all, as if the deaths of sixty Midnight Hunters meant nothing to her.

But it might have been an act.

The worst-case scenario was that, the moment Murphy returned to Cadman City, he'd be arrested for betraying his kind and dragged into the Blood Vulture Corridor to face the punishment of sunlight.

Perhaps he should prepare for that?

After making sure Femis had lain down in her coffin, he pulled up his hood, wrapped himself up from head to toe, and jumped out of the carriage. Then he hurried to the carriage in front and fiddled with the computational orbs.

Four hours later, at the hottest time of day, Maxim and Mirian took a break for lunch in a small copse by the roadside. Murphy clutched his broken pocket watch and, timing it to the second, manually confirmed the players' login prompt just as the forum announcement said the new version update would be complete.

At almost the same moment, the impatient players in another world saw the previously locked manual login function light up on the VR interface inside their game helmets.

For the first time, they tried logging in manually.

Gentle light filled their vision inside the helmets. In a daze, they saw the dark nebulae swaying overhead once more. Then the physical projections woven from psionic energy appeared before Murphy's eyes. He didn't even need to activate his summoning talent; the adorable little players appeared beside him once again.

They seemed to open their eyes after waking from a dream.

Just like when they'd logged into the game before, sunlight filtered through the tree shade and fell on their faces and bodies, warming them just as it would in the real world.

"Holy crap! This is so cool! So freaking cool!"

A-Cha, outgoing and good at making friends, was the first to jump up. He struck a "classic otherworldly pose" with his back turned and shoulders hunched, as if he were only missing a basketball.

The other players also looked delighted once they confirmed they could log in on their own. It meant they finally had control over their playtime.

No more waiting around!

From now on, they could log in whenever they wanted.

"My warriors, I've finally perfected my summoning spell. You're free now!"

Still recovering from his weakness, Murphy beamed and spread his arms toward the players.

Their equipment lay at his feet. The fellows, all wearing the "newbie boxer shorts" uniform, came forward, put on their retainer armor, and then donned the cloaks they'd received as "closed beta rewards." In an instant, they looked like a Blood Thrall guard unit that was at least imposing on the surface.

Once they'd finished changing, Murphy took out a box and handed the players the computational orbs inside, one by one. As he passed them out, he explained:

"These are your well-earned rewards! They came from the cargo on the transport convoy we stopped last night. I never expected them to risk angering the halflings by smuggling these computational orbs.

But perhaps it was fate.

These items were meant to be used in murderous wars. There's no doubt they can serve a far more valuable purpose in our grand plan!"

The players had no idea what the computational orbs were, but that didn't stop them from picking up a few clues from the NPC's words.

Combining that with the update notes on the official forum, it wasn't hard to guess that the item in their hands was the "player interface" the developers had added to the game at the last minute.

"So we even have to steal our player interface back ourselves?"

Meow King toyed with the jewel-like computational orb in his hand and complained to Happy Stick beside him:

"Damn! This is way too hardcore!"

"I think it's pretty good."

Happy Stick rolled his eyes.

"It feels more realistic than having an interface just pop up out of nowhere for no reason, right? This game really has taken immersion to the extreme. But seriously, how do we use this thing? Is it voice-controlled? Or controlled by thought?"

"Computational orbs are a marvelous creation of steam engineering. They have to be activated. Just a moment, my warriors."

Murphy took out the fourth-generation experimental computational orb hanging around his neck and infused it with psionic energy. Red specks of light danced across the smooth gem's surface as the gears inside its psionic differential engine began to turn.

A special, intangible frequency of psionic energy flowed from the core computational orb in Murphy's hand. The moment it resonated with the other, lower-level orbs, the "player interfaces" in the players' hands finally activated.

Leading Pigeon stared blankly at the computational orb in his hand.

He could feel the little device humming softly, like a precision instrument. Then a translucent psionic screen projected in front of him, floating above his palm, and text began to appear:

Computational orb activated!

Initializing. Please wait.

Scanning user information. Consciousness binding complete!

Player attributes loaded!

In-game communication channels grouped!

Friend list loaded!

Translation module loaded!

Information log and map functions loaded! More features are still in development. Please stay tuned, and enjoy your game.

"This little thing is so smart!"

Invincible Tyrannosaurus Car stared at the translucent screen in his hand.

He tentatively tapped one of the modules listed on it. The screen refreshed like a Windows XP interface, displaying his personal information.

"Strength 5, Agility 5, Stamina 5, Intellect 5, Perception 5, Charisma 5. Why are they all fives? Is something wrong?"

Car gave an unhappy snort.

He felt like the developers were mocking him as a weakling with a combat strength of only five. He turned to look at Niu Niu beside him, and the moment he saw Niu Niu's player interface, he couldn't hold back a snort of laughter.

"Holy crap! Your Intellect's only 2! Niu Niu, are you serious? The developers have officially declared you an idiot! Pfft, hahahaha!"

Watching Car clutch his stomach and laugh until his back hurt, Chen Dian Niu Niu scowled and clenched his fists, thoroughly annoyed. He pinned Car down and flipped him onto the ground, shouting:

"So what if my Intellect's only 2? Didn't you see my Strength is 8? You're a combat-five weakling, and you've got the nerve to laugh at me! I won't be able to live with my name unless I give you a good bending today!

A few of you, get over here!

I'll pull Car's pants down. You find a tree!

That one over there looks good—thick and sturdy. We'll use it!

Come on, let's give him the old 'Aluba'!"

The other shameless players burst out laughing as the six student players stripped the shrieking Car and carried him over to perform the "traditional ritual." They all marveled that the physics engine in this lousy game was so damn realistic.

Even Murphy, standing nearby, wore a fond smile. The little players really were full of energy. If he weren't playing an NPC and obliged to act dignified, he'd have loved to join in and relive his long-lost youth.

But the next second, he saw Meow Brother sneak over to him. Fidgeting awkwardly, he said:

"Um... my forum reward..."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Murphy put on a stern face and replied.

Meow Brother's eyes widened. He cried out that the NPC had swiped his reward, but then he saw Murphy rub his forehead in confusion and say:

"I don't know why I'm supposed to reward you, but somehow a voice tells me you've already contributed to the grand plan in ways I don't know about.

Well, come here, my warrior Meow King. I happen to have something that's just right for you."