This Can Be S-Ranked Too?

Bzzzz—

The hum of the car engine echoed in his ears. The vehicle was traveling down a desolate country road, dense woods stretching outside the windows as the setting sun filtered through the leaves and cast mottled patches of light across the windshield.

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Zhao Heng suddenly snapped back to his senses, his blurry vision rapidly coming into focus.

Very quickly.

He figured out his situation. He was sitting in the driver's seat of a moving car, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

Although his body still felt like his own, the hands on the steering wheel were not his.

The moment he noticed that.

Zhao Heng's expression instantly turned extremely ugly.

"...A role-playing dungeon that completely strips players of their abilities?"

There were many types of dungeons.

But if one had to name the type most hated by top players—role-playing dungeons that completely stripped away player abilities would undoubtedly rank near the top.

Because in this kind of dungeon, they could not use their original skills, items, equipment, or even their attributes, which would be weakened to the level of ordinary people... Put simply, they could only clear the dungeon using whatever the character they played possessed.

This was the type of dungeon Zhao Heng found most disgusting and least wanted to play. No contest.

With that thought.

Zhao Heng tried to summon his weapon, but there was no response.

Then he tried to feel for his strength, which far surpassed that of ordinary people. It too was completely gone.

Right now, apart from his combat experience, his physical capabilities had been thoroughly reduced to those of an ordinary person.

"...It really is a role-playing dungeon!"

"No! How the hell did this dungeon's architect get an S rating for their dungeon? A role-playing dungeon! And you're playing an ordinary person! That means the strength of every enemy in the entire dungeon can only be kept within the range ordinary people can handle."

"Within the range ordinary people can handle!?"

"This can be S-ranked too?!"

The car continued down the country road, surrounded by barren and isolated wilderness.

Zhao Heng sat in the car with an ugly expression, genuinely beginning to suspect that this dungeon's architect had found some kind of bug.

Because the vast majority of high-rated dungeons produced by the system, even puzzle-type ones, were usually accompanied by intense combat. Zhao Heng truly found it hard to imagine what could possibly earn an S rating in a dungeon where even ordinary people could deal with the monsters.

Why did top players hate role-playing dungeons that completely stripped away their abilities?

On one hand, top players were unwilling to lose the abilities they had painstakingly accumulated and struggle through a dungeon like ordinary people.

On the other hand, most such role-playing dungeons came from low-difficulty dungeons... It was not as if top players had never tried them, but that had mostly happened when the world had first become gamified. No one wanted to revisit those humiliating experiences.

Zhao Heng didn't either.

Although he acted arrogantly on the forums and was equally high-profile whenever he rotated through the front lines, he had not always been like this. Four years ago, when the world had first become gamified, he had been nothing more than a shut-in. How could he have been mentally prepared? He had entered a dungeon with his coworkers in a daze and had even been scared into wetting his pants by the bloody scenes.

And it had happened right in front of the female clerk he had secretly had a crush on... That was the first time he understood what it meant to want to die from shame and indignation.

Over the past four years, he had fought his way up from the lowest-level dungeons, saved up sixty thousand Survival Points, become a core member of the Longsword Guild, and gained over a hundred thousand followers on the forums who chased after him calling him badass.

But every night before going to sleep, whenever he closed his eyes, he could still recall that clerk's strange gaze... a look of shock, disgust, and even a faint trace of pity.

He hated that look. He hated it deeply.

Whenever he remembered it, he felt as though he were standing naked.

Perhaps to prove that he was no longer the same as before.

Perhaps to tell himself that he was no longer the same as before.

He began desperately taking high-difficulty dungeons, desperately showing off on the forums, constantly flaunting his accomplishments there, and putting on an arrogant attitude.

Even when he lacked confidence inside, his words remained arrogant.

As if that could make him completely forget the cowardly person he had once been.

At the same time, he began deliberately avoiding low-level dungeons that could stir up those memories... Even when the guild assigned them to him, he would rather enter higher-level dungeons. He simply did not want to remember that incident or return to that starting point.

But he had never imagined that this S-rank civilian dungeon would also be a role-playing dungeon!

It was rated S, yet it was still a role-playing type!

And he was playing an ordinary person, at that.

At that moment, a system window popped up and began automatically playing a CG—a video of the dungeon NPC, Mia.

At the same time.

The system began introducing the purpose of this journey to the player.

[Your name is Ethan Winters.]

[You once had a happy family and a wife you loved deeply, named Mia.]

[But three years ago, Mia suddenly vanished under mysterious circumstances, and everyone believed she was dead.]

[Until a few days ago, you unexpectedly received an email. The sender was none other than your wife, Mia, who had been missing for three years, her fate unknown.]

[The message led you to a remote farm in Dulvey, Louisiana—Baker Estate.]

[Though your heart was filled with doubt, your concern for your wife was impossible to suppress. You decided to head to the destination alone, to uncover the truth and find your wife...]

The system prompt slowly faded away.

After reading the recap.

"..."

Zhao Heng immediately suppressed the complicated emotions deep within him, because he had discovered a more serious problem... he had never heard of this scenario before.

He had some impression of every high-difficulty system instance currently in existence, and the guild he belonged to regularly gathered relevant information as well. But after racking his brain, he simply could not think of any high-difficulty system instance with this kind of backstory. There was nothing even similar.

Could this be... an original instance?!

Could someone really make an S-rank original instance?!

If it truly was original, then this builder was a genius among geniuses!

Or was it merely that the plot was different, while the gameplay still followed the same formula as some existing system instance?

As Zhao Heng pondered this, the car slowly came to a stop.

They had arrived. A narrow path winding into the depths of the forest appeared ahead.

Dense trees lined both sides of the path, and withered yellow vines hung down to the ground like rotten tentacles.

At the end of the path, a shadowy building could vaguely be seen.

"..."

Zhao Heng looked at the path in the distance, considered it for a moment, then opened the car door.

No matter what.

He should clear the instance first.

Whether it was an original instance or an imitation instance with a different plot... for a top player like himself, the difficulty should not be too great.

After all, even the builder could clear it. With his wealth of experience, there was no way he would fail to clear it.

When all was said and done.

He was no longer the coward who would wet his pants at the sight of blood. It was time to face that unbearable past.

...He would use this instance to face it.

Lost in thought, Zhao Heng stepped out of the car.

The instant he got out, an indescribable smell entered his nostrils. It was somewhat like rotting leaves, and somewhat like damp, moldy wood.

Zhao Heng wrinkled his nose and casually shut the car door.

Bang.

The sound of the door closing echoed through the forest before swiftly being swallowed up.

Zhao Heng paid it no mind. He merely opened the game system, confirmed that this instance had an independent inventory system, and checked the items in his inventory before slowly heading toward the path.

The farther he went.

The worse the path became.

The trees were thick, and mosquitoes buzzed wildly through the air.

The damp smell in the air also grew heavier and heavier.

This seemed to be a swamp.

Soon.

Zhao Heng arrived before the old iron gate of the main house.

He reached out and pushed it. The chains wrapped around the gate let out a piercing metallic screech, but it did not budge. Looking through the gate, he saw an overgrown courtyard, while the main house resembled a gigantic beast crouching in the shadows.

"An exploration-type setup?"

Zhao Heng scanned the area around him and quickly noticed a fork in the path to his left, winding deeper into the forest.

He turned and stepped onto that branch, already gaining a rough idea of what this instance entailed.

This really did seem to be an original instance.

But if it was an exploration-style instance, it should not be much of a challenge. For a top player like him, who had fought all kinds of grotesque monsters head-on in every other type of instance.

Even without items, even if his attributes were stripped away, as long as the enemies were reasonable, he could still show off his skills.

As Zhao Heng thought, he followed the path onward. Before long, he spotted an abandoned van.

He walked over, pulled open the door, and found a proposal document.

It seemed to have been left behind by some production crew. They had wanted to sneak into a haunted house.

But judging from the fact that the van had been left here and had completely fallen into ruin, that production crew had clearly failed to return.

"A haunted house?"

Zhao Heng glanced at the main house, which he couldn't enter, and continued forward.

But before he had gone far, he sensed that something was off.

It was so quiet.

Far too quiet.

Other than his own footsteps and the annoying mosquitoes and insects, he couldn't hear a single other sound.

The surrounding trees were clearly lush and dense, yet it felt as though there wasn't a living thing anywhere.

Most importantly, there were no enemies.

In an exploration-type scenario, following the usual rules of system instances, shouldn't enemies have appeared by now to give the players a little challenge? Why hadn't anything come out yet?

Zhao Heng frowned. Just as he began to find it strange, he rounded a corner... and suddenly saw an old man in a yellow work uniform silently walking past ahead.

...His breath caught!

Zhao Heng instinctively wanted to activate a skill, only to find his feet as heavy as lead.

He paused. Yet the decisiveness of a top player still drove him to chase after the man... But where had that old man come from?

"Not exploration? Ghosts?"

Zhao Heng stared at the dirt slope where the old man had vanished, frowning as doubts piled up in his mind. Still, he could only keep moving forward.

After taking a few more steps.

At last, he heard an animal sound—the cawing of crows.

Following the cries, he came to the roadside. On a stone amid the weeds lay two animal limbs, seemingly cow legs, while crows stood on them, pecking at the rotting flesh.

The moment he approached.

The startled crows immediately all took flight.

Zhao Heng abruptly retreated, turning sideways to dodge the flock rushing at him.

Then.

He saw a sight that made his pupils contract. To his left, on the road ahead, stood an archway made from severed animal limbs. Several rusted, blackened circular saw blades hung around it, along with coils of barbed wire. Flies swarmed wildly over it all, buzzing in an endlessly irritating hum.

A disgusting spectacle made entirely of animal limbs.

The visual impact was overwhelming.

Zhao Heng finally understood where the animal limbs on the stone had come from.

"Who the hell is this twisted?!"

Zhao Heng walked a few steps forward, looked at the revolting display made of animal limbs, and cursed. He didn't know whether he was cursing the characters in the instance or the designer.

What made him even more uncomfortable was that the only road ahead was blocked. He had to crawl beneath that thing.

Disgusting.

But crawl through it he must.

Zhao Heng bent down and slowly approached. A powerful stench of decay hit him full in the face.

"Urgh—"

Caught off guard, Zhao Heng dry-heaved, covered his mouth and nose, and hurriedly crawled through.

Fortunately, nothing else happened after that.

After winding this way and that.

He finally saw a house.

Zhao Heng had finally arrived at the setting of the game's first chapter. He stopped, looked up at the wooden house ahead, and muttered, "There should be enemies here, right? Even a farmer with a pitchfork would do."

For some reason.

He suddenly wanted an enemy to appear...

Because this instance was too strange. It was giving him the creeps.

He circled around the outside before stepping onto the creaking wooden stairs and following the veranda to the entrance of the wooden house on the left.

The door leading inside stood open, with a lamp hanging beside it. Yet it only illuminated a small patch near the doorway, utterly unable to dispel the darkness deeper within. Inside was pitch-black, impossible to see clearly.

Inside and outside the door seemed like two different worlds.

There was still sunlight outside.

But inside was gloomy and sinister.

Zhao Heng looked at the glowing lamp by the door. After hesitating for a moment, he stepped inside.

The moment he entered.

Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness.

Bang.

The door behind him automatically shut.

The light streaming in from the doorway vanished as well, and the room was plunged into complete darkness.

That dull bang made Zhao Heng's heart clench. He spun around and retreated quickly, staring warily toward where he remembered the door to be.

But it was too dark.

He couldn't see anything.

Without any stat boosts, without night vision.

Zhao Heng began to panic a little.

Perhaps the sights he had witnessed along the way had affected him...

Even his breathing grew somewhat rapid.