Reborn

In the dilapidated, chaotic guild hall, solitary figures sat upon their thrones. Avilan looked coldly and resolutely at everything before him that had once been so familiar.

Before entering the game, Avilan had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills in one go, hoping to spend his final moments within the game. The real world had driven him into utter despair.

Once he died and his brainwaves vanished, he would no longer be able to log in. It would be the same as deleting his account, and with no successor, the guild would automatically disband three days later.

"Maybe dying is easier than living."

As Avilan felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier, he murmured to himself.

"Is this what death feels like?"

Avilan groggily opened his eyes and looked at the familiar surroundings. He had thought it was merely an illusion left behind by his lingering attachment after death, and he smiled happily at everything before him.

Could one still dream after dying?

A startling thought suddenly struck Avilan. He instinctively looked at his hands. They were so real that he subconsciously slammed his fist against the throne's armrest.

Boom!

A deafening sound echoed through the vast palace, followed by a pained roar.

"Why does it hurt so much?" Avilan said through clenched teeth, clutching his hand. He failed to notice that the throne, forged from rare materials, had actually been dented by his blow.

"Lord Avilan, is something wrong?" A deep, magnetic male voice sounded beside his ear.

Though startled, Avilan still searched for the source of the voice. When he discovered who had spoken, he was so shocked that he could not utter a word.

The one responding was the NPC who had raised his head—Arthur.

In Myth, if a guild possessed a territorial city, it could receive several special benefits.

One of them was having NPCs to protect its base.

The NPCs Despair Fortress could obtain were demons from the Abyssal Demon Realm. These automatically spawned NPCs could reach a maximum level of thirty. Even if they were destroyed, they would automatically revive after some time. The guild did not need to pay anything for them; they were the lowest-tier creatures in the city.

However, players could not alter the appearance or AI programs of these automatically spawned NPCs according to their own preferences.

Therefore, by the later stages, they were basically useless for resisting invaders.

After all, by then, Myth players were generally around level eighty or ninety, and top players at level one hundred were everywhere.

There was also the option of creating completely original NPCs from scratch. Naturally, the higher an NPC's level, the higher the cost of creating it.

When creating NPCs themselves, players could work on their equipment in addition to their clothing and AI. Back then, these NPCs were like bosses stationed within the territory. Though they were level one hundred like players, they were not opponents a player could handle in a one-on-one fight.

Arthur was a guardian NPC created in Myth, the guild steward, and the only NPC to survive when Avilan's guild had been destroyed.

Although the guild had already fallen completely, Gu Tianzhen had not intended to destroy the guild territory of Despair Fortress. He had planned to sell the guild for a good price, so he had spared Arthur, who guarded the guild cornerstone.

"Is there a problem, Lord Avilan?"

Arthur continued questioning him. Avilan did not know how to answer, because one incomprehensible thing after another had appeared, leaving his thoughts in a short circuit.

"Are you really Arthur?"

Avilan could only stare blankly at Arthur, who had come to stand beside him.

"Yes. Your most loyal servant, Arthur."

Arthur raised his resolute face, as if making it easier for Avilan to examine him.

This Arthur was based on a character from the game Honor of Kings, released in 2015 in Avilan's previous life. It was a mobile game similar to Dota, focused mainly on competitive battles.

Players could engage in various forms of PVP combat, take part in the game's adventure mode and its PVE stages, and enter ranked matches after meeting the requirements.

Honor of Kings had remained wildly popular for more than thirty years, only gradually fading from the stage after Myth appeared.

Arthur was a hero in Honor of Kings who required no mana, and he was also one of its beginner heroes. Arthur could both attack and defend, making him a hero with a high appearance rate.

Avilan remembered clearly that Zhu Shunquan, his best friend back then, had loved Arthur most. Zhu Shunquan himself had been a guardian knight and often kept Arthur's classic line on his lips.

"For the image of a king, I even sleep in armor."

Avilan's train of thought gradually returned to normal after he recalled Zhu Shunquan.

Avilan tried contacting the GM and even opened his friends list, but everything seemed to have vanished. He could not contact anyone at all.

In the end, he raised his head and looked at Arthur, who was still kneeling on the ground. Avilan could not help asking the NPC.

"Please forgive me for being unable to answer the question you just asked about calling the GM, Lord Avilan. I apologize for failing to meet your expectations. If I may be given a chance to make up for this mistake, I would be immensely pleased. Please issue another command."

The two of them were having a conversation. There was absolutely no mistake about it.

Having realized this, Avilan was too astonished to speak. This was not an NPC's fixed response pattern; Arthur was consciously answering based on the question.

"Arthur, do you know where this place is?" Avilan asked tentatively.

Arthur glanced around before replying, "Despair Fortress, my master."

"I mean the location of Despair Fortress. Do you understand?"

Blue light glowed in Arthur's eyes. He abruptly rose to his feet, placed his right hand over his left shoulder, and respectfully said, "I understand, my master. I will immediately go out and scout the surrounding terrain."

Watching Arthur's retreating figure, Avilan subconsciously muttered—

"He really acts like thunder and wind!"

An NPC could actually speak. That was utterly unscientific. Although games could use automated processing methods—editing macro commands—to make NPCs speak, since they provided roar and cheer sound data for players to download.

But having a logical, well-grounded conversation with an NPC like this was still impossible.

Especially since the questions Arthur had casually asked just now had never been set up back then, nor had anyone ever imagined such things would happen. Yet Arthur had made perfect judgments and responses.

Then why had something so impossible happened? Could Arthur alone be different from the others?

Avilan quickly opened the guild city control panel. The interface appeared before him, and as he looked at the data on it, he sighed.

By now, all of Despair Fortress had become ruins. Many buildings had been completely destroyed and could not be used until they were repaired. As for the other servants, they were all displayed in gray, clearly indicating that they were dead.

Avilan casually tapped one of them, and an interface immediately popped up.

"Revive Mitqi, level 50 guild city eastern district steward?"

He selected Yes! But the result informed him that the revival funds were insufficient and that he lacked the required revival item.

This discovery made Avilan's eyes light up at once.

Just then, Arthur's voice suddenly sounded beside Avilan's ear.

"Honored master, Despair Fortress is under invasion, and our current location is also different from before."

"Intruders?" A grave expression immediately appeared on Avilan's face.