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On the distant horizon, only a sliver of the setting sun remained, its last rays of light fading away. In just five minutes, even that final glimmer would disappear from the world, and the day-night cycle would begin.
After that, the moon would appear beneath the second floor. A full moon would cast a bright blue glow, while a waning moon would cast a dim blue one.
As Wang Yang's keenly gleaming eyes turned toward Argo, the day-night cycle began at that very instant. In the darkness, Argo saw his eyes clearly: they were filled with hostility toward her.
A second later, a waning moon appeared in the sky, casting a little light over the land that had fallen into darkness. The night made the gleam in Wang Yang's eyes stand out all the more.
Argo couldn't help taking a few steps back. Beneath her hat brim, her delicate face had gone pale. She didn't understand why he was hostile toward her.
"Did the Wild Boar Leader spawn because of your quest?" The owner of those keenly gleaming eyes questioned her in a hoarse voice.
Argo didn't know why the man before her, who had killed the Wild Boar Leader alone, was acting this way. Still, she nodded and admitted, "Yes. The Wild Boar Leader spawned because of a quest I triggered. It's connected to a quest that's very important to me."
"Is that so..." Wang Yang was stunned for a moment, then gave a self-mocking laugh. After hearing why the Wild Boar Leader had appeared, his anger quickly faded. A trace of sadness showed in his eyes as he said solemnly, "You've got one thing wrong. I didn't kill the Wild Boar Leader alone. There were two of us..."
When he first heard Argo's answer, Wang Yang's immediate reaction had been to blame her. But then he remembered that he and He Gu had decided to start the fight. How could he blame anyone else for the consequences?
"Two people?" Argo froze. But she was clever enough to guess at once that the other person had probably died at the Wild Boar Leader's hands. Inevitably, that made her indirectly responsible for what had happened.
"I'm sorry."
"It wasn't your fault. We were too arrogant."
Wang Yang shook his head and walked by the dim moonlight to the place where He Gu had died. But there was no trace left to show that He Gu had ever been there.
When a player died, the equipment and weapons he carried would drop, and items in his inventory could also drop by chance. Quest items, however, always dropped.
Dropped equipment and weapons deteriorated more quickly when they had no owner. He Gu's equipment and weapons had already been close to breaking, so they shattered not long after hitting the ground.
Wang Yang stared silently at the flawless grass, already restored by the system, unable to suppress the sadness rising in his heart. A person who had helped him immensely had died right before his eyes, and even in his final moments, he had tried to give Wang Yang a chance to survive.
It made Wang Yang realize that the place he stood wasn't merely a fictional world. It was a world just like Earth, with living people in it—not just row upon row of words created by Earth's original author.
His outlook had quietly changed, and he began to cherish his life all the more. He was alive in this world now, and he could die here, too.
"I'm sorry." Looking at Wang Yang's back, Argo's face filled with guilt. "If I'd had the patience to wait until nightfall, this wouldn't have happened."
There was no point dwelling on it, and Wang Yang didn't want to argue about it any longer. He turned around and opened his item window. "What's your quest item?"
Argo pressed her lips together and sighed to herself before answering, "It's a book."
"A book..." Wang Yang repeated under his breath. He searched his item window for anything related to books, flipping through the list for quite a while before finding one.
Printing Technique, Volume Two (Quest Item)
Effect: Cannot be viewed
He selected the item from the list to materialize it, and an old book appeared out of thin air in Wang Yang's hand.
Argo's eyes lit up, a faint joy showing in their clear depths. "That's the one."
"The Printing Technique..." Wang Yang gave Argo a long look, then casually tossed her the book and transferred ownership of the item to her.
With a slap, the book traced a graceful arc through the air and landed on the grass in front of Argo. Both of them froze.
"Why didn't you catch it?" Wang Yang raised an eyebrow.
Argo hurriedly bent down and picked up the book. After checking that it was still intact, she let out a relieved breath, then glared at Wang Yang through clenched teeth. "It's so dark! How was I supposed to catch it? Do you know how important this book is? What if it had been damaged?"
Wang Yang thought that the book really was important. Knowing he was in the wrong, he didn't argue. He simply turned and headed toward the brightly lit Town of Beginnings in the distance.
"Wait!" Argo had carefully stored the book in her item window. Seeing Wang Yang turn and leave, she hurriedly called after him.
"Is there something else?" Wang Yang stopped and looked back at the famous information broker from the anime. If he'd met Argo a day ago, he would've been thrilled; he could have bought information on how to survive. But now that he'd learned Combat Skills, he no longer needed it.
"As an exchange, I'll give you this thing that's useless to me, in addition to providing you with one piece of information for free." As soon as Argo finished speaking, she forcefully threw a Beast Trap about the size of a human head toward the figure in the darkness, seemingly out of spite.
Wang Yang simply reached out and caught the Beast Trap with ease. Argo stamped her foot in frustration. Even in such darkness, he'd caught it. He really was the genuine article, with the skills to back it up.
He stored the item, too indistinct to make out, in his item window, then continued striding toward the distance in silence.
"Hey, you still haven't told me your name!" Argo suddenly seemed to remember something and called after Wang Yang.
"Xiang Kong." After leaving his name behind, Wang Yang's figure vanished into the night.
"Xiang Kong... So he's a hunter?" Argo watched Wang Yang disappear into the night, her face full of surprise. Then a puzzled look came over her. "But he doesn't look like one."
After a pause, she sent Wang Yang a Friend Request. A few seconds later, the system notified her that he had been added as a friend.
She opened her Friend List. There were only two names in it.
The first was Kirito, and the second was Xiang Kong.
Looking at Xiang Kong's name on the list, Argo murmured to herself, "The Sword and Fire Squad aren't the sort of people who'd slander anyone. So why would they spread word telling players to beware of a hunter named Xiang Kong?"
"Interesting. Once I finish what I'm working on, I'll investigate you and find out who you were in the Beta Test. How'd you manage to change your name?"
Argo lifted the brim of her hat. In the glow of the moonlight, her adorable face was full of curiosity. At this point, she didn't yet have the six whisker marks on her cheeks that would later become her trademark, so she wore a cloak to hide her face.
Her encounter with Wang Yang had piqued her curiosity, but she didn't know that he'd never participated in the Closed Beta. Because she'd jumped to conclusions, her subsequent investigations repeatedly hit dead ends.
PS: "Hunter" here means someone who hunts other players. It's another term for a predator, and most players preferred to call criminals who treated players as prey by this more literal name.
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