The inn was just as quiet as the other places, but its doors stood wide open like the maw of a beast waiting to feed. The pitch-black entrance filled the Moshi Water Shop Player with instinctive dread. He could no longer bring himself to care about anything else and simply wanted to flee into the Station. But when he reached for his Ticket, he found that his Personal Panel wouldn't open!
"What's going on? How can this be?" His greatest reliance had suddenly failed him, and the man was thrown into a panic. After turning anxiously in place twice, he suddenly realized, "This isn't real! It can't possibly be real! Even inside a Dungeon, there's no way the Personal Panel wouldn't open!"
But then he understood another problem: even though he knew everything he was seeing was fake, he still couldn't escape his predicament. As time passed, even the items he wore stopped working!
Having been a Player for so long, he had forgotten how difficult it was to live in the game world as an ordinary person. Now that he had lost the game and his items, the terror of suddenly losing his strength surged up from the depths of his heart, reaching its peak!
"Clack!" A faint sound came from nearby, as if something had been kicked over. The man immediately turned around. "Who's there?"
A gaunt, stooped figure emerged from the darkness—a commoner from the slums. Their skeletal bodies, sunken eye sockets, darkened faces, and yellowing Teeth were their most distinctive features. Since most were so emaciated they were almost unrecognizable, Players had gradually stopped seeing them as people, let alone bothering to remember their faces.
"You don't belong here!" the man ordered him to leave. But the gaunt figure didn't go. Instead, he came closer, his