[Red Maple Leaf Boarding School Instance True End—"Language, Witchcraft, and Sin" has been recorded] [MVP player: **(This player has not set a display name)]
In the Ruins of Sunset, the players had grown accustomed to the anonymous asterisks filling the newly refreshed completion records on the public notice stele.
Recently, huge numbers of asterisks had flooded the records and rankings—hundreds upon thousands of them. No one knew who had started the trend.
Some players mischievously treated all these "asterisks" as a single person. They spontaneously formed a group called "Star-Lovers," gathering countless fun-seekers and nonconformists to create a form of performance art that combined meme culture, absurdism, and scene-kid culture.
"Our Brother Asterisk is the best! Two and a half months of training, then he debuted and swept the rankings!"
"Not one to seek fame, he acts with effortless grace. Brother Asterisk has the bearing of a true hero. We of Blood Kill Pavilion are willing to bow before him."
"Has something gone wrong with the Eerie Game's selection threshold lately? Why does it feel like there are more and more brain-dead idiots on the game forums and in Player Plaza?"
"Place your bets, place your bets! Will the clear video and strategy guide be released this time or not?"
"So who started this in the first place? Anonymous clears, no guides released... It always feels so furtive and hesitant..."
Humans had always been skilled at finding joy amid suffering. In a pathological carnival of entertainment above all else, the players briefly forgot their fear, forgot the threat of death, and forgot the tiny Carnivore Instance that had once been no bigger than the flutter of a butterfly's wings.
In Su Village, everything was melting.
Flesh-colored slime had accumulated into a vast ocean, surging and writhing across