Today's First Kill!

"Hiss..."

After a long moment, [Passing Pure-Love Warrior] sucked in a sharp breath, breaking the silence.

"Credit where it's due, guys!"

"Even if we only played this thing as a walking-tour simulator, it'd still fucking sweep this year's Game of the Year awards! The art team must've worked themselves to death!"

Ma Lou stood with his mouth hanging open too, even forgetting to maintain his shifty-eyed expression.

"Guys, I'll be honest. When we walked out just now, I was secretly wondering whether the outside world would just be a bunch of pixelated textures slapped over invisible walls."

"But now, I'm completely sold!"

Ma Lou slapped his thigh. "How the fuck did they make a seamless open world this huge?"

"When we pushed the door open, there wasn't even a black loading screen! The underlying spatial rendering tech has to be at least fifty years ahead of the industry!"

Even Jiahao, who had been keeping up his brooding persona the whole time, opened his right eye a little wider.

He brushed aside the bangs covering his left eye, his voice carrying a rare note of admiration. "This intensely oppressive wasteland aesthetic does suit the tastes of a high-end player like me."

"This game company... actually knows its stuff."

"All right, quit sightseeing. We're here to work and make money!"

[Ji Luo] snapped out of it first. As he watched the dark shapes faintly moving through the village, his tactical mind kicked into gear.

"Listen up. That abandoned village ahead should be our starter-area resource site."

"Didn't those two daily quests ask for wood, thatch, and food? There's definitely some in there!"

"And look, those shadows inside are probably roaming low-level mobs. The kind that drop money when you kill them!"

At the word "money," the other four's eyes instantly lit up with greed.

Epic grandeur? Unspeakable horrors?

In the eyes of the Fourth Catastrophe, as long as something had a health bar, even God would have to take a couple of bricks to the face so they could test how much HP he had!

"Here comes the truck! That first kill is mine!"

[Passing Pure-Love Warrior] took the lead, hoisting the solid wooden table leg he had swiped from the church onto his shoulder. With his white hair flying, he charged toward the village entrance, howling.

Ma Lou hunched over and crept along the wall like a stray dog hunting for food.

Bossy Guy casually picked up two hefty cobblestones from the roadside, gripping them as he followed the others.

The five of them slipped silently into the deathly still, abandoned village like five hungry wolves freshly released from their cages.

The village was even more dilapidated than it had looked from outside.

Most of the roofs had collapsed, and the houses were filled with those thorny black vines.

"Shh-stop!"

Lu Ziye, who was walking at the front, suddenly raised his hand in a tactical halt signal.

Everyone immediately pressed close to a half-collapsed stone wall.

Following the direction Lu Ziye pointed, they saw three extremely unsettling figures crouched beside the dried-up well in the middle of the village.

[Target locked: Corrupted Villager (roaming)]

[Level assessment: Zero Tier (cannon fodder)]

[Traits: corpses of locals mildly infected by the Black Forest's miasma. Slow movement, no sense of pain, keen sense of smell.]

Compared with yesterday's three-meter-tall First Tier Mutated Corpse, which could easily smash through the doors, these three things were child's play.

They were about the size of ordinary people, except their bodies were covered in dark brown patches of decay. Their clothes were ragged, and their hands were twisted into unnatural shapes.

At the moment, they were crouched on the ground, apparently gnawing on some animal's remains.

"Well, damn. A mob pack right off the bat."

[Ji Luo] lowered his voice and quickly laid out a plan.

"Three of them, five of us. We've got the advantage!"

"Jiahao, your bangs block your vision, so stay back and throw stones to draw aggro."

"Pure-Love Warrior and I will handle the main assault. Ma Lou, flank them and cut off their retreat. Bossy Guy, look for an opening to hit them in the backs of their heads with your stones!"

"Make sure we coordinate. These are walking Ash Coins!"

"Got it!"

Everyone nodded eagerly.

However, just as Ji Luo finished laying out his "perfect strategy" and prepared to count down from three to start the fight...

Something unexpected happened!

[Even Monkeys Have Dignity], who had been crouching by the wall to scout a flanking route, suddenly stared fixedly at the second-floor windowsill of a nearby abandoned house.

A large cluster of mushroom-like fungi was growing there.

The fungi glowed an extremely eerie fluorescent purple, and their caps were covered in tiny, eye-like fleshy growths.

They looked utterly disgusting, but in this game with its 100% full-immersion simulation, Ma Lou's damned urge to explore as a "pro lifestyle player" instantly went through the roof!

He shoved aside Ji Luo, who was still laying out tactics, and even threw away the stone in his hand before running toward the ruined house, practically drooling.

"Holy shit! Guys, forget those three trash mobs! Look over there!"

"Purple fungi! One look at that color tells you they're high-grade alchemy materials or rare ingredients!"

"I'm gonna taste them and find out what stats they've got!"

[Ji Luo]: "???"

[Passing Pure-Love Warrior]: "???"

"Goddammit, Ma Lou! You were foaming at the mouth after drinking venom last night, and now you want to kick today off with another death?"

[Ji Luo] snarled urgently under his breath. "Don't mess with random environmental objects! You might trigger some hidden mechanic!"

But before he finished speaking, Ma Lou's scrawny body had already scrambled nimbly up the holes in the wall and reached the second-floor windowsill.

He eagerly reached out with both hands and grabbed the cluster of fluorescent purple "disgusting mushrooms," intending to yank them out first and worry about the rest later.

But the instant Ma Lou's hands touched the "mushrooms"...

The tiny fleshy growths on the "mushrooms" suddenly opened in unison!

Immediately afterward, the entire wall began to shake violently.

With a deafening crash, half the wall exploded.

A terrifying monster over two meters tall, covered in a hard shell and sporting six sharp, jointed limbs, burst out from beneath the rubble!

The cluster of purple mushrooms Ma Lou had grabbed was no rare ingredient at all. It was a "mimetic lure organ" on top of the monster's head, used to bait its prey!

Its enormous compound eyes fixed on Ma Lou as he hung from the windowsill.

The monster let out an earsplitting screech.

[Warning! Hidden elite monster triggered!]

[Target: Cave Stalker]

[Level assessment: peak First Tier (danger level)]

[Traits: extremely territorial, extremely thick armor, extremely fast.]

"Oh, fuck..."

As Ma Lou stared at the terrifying monster mere inches away, acid dripping from its mouthparts, the sleazy grin on his face instantly froze.

The next second, the monster lashed out with a sharp forelimb.

Squelch!

Ma Lou didn't even have time to scream. His body was sliced clean in half in midair, crumbling into weathered ash that scattered on the wind.

One minute into the run, [Even Monkeys Have Dignity] claimed the server's first kill of the day-except he was the one killed.

At the foot of the wall, [Ji Luo] and the other three, who hadn't even had time to act, all stood openmouthed, staring blankly at the terrifying monster that had burst through the wall.

The monster's compound eyes slowly turned, finally locking onto the four little nobodies in their underwear below.

"Gulp."

[Passing Pure-Love Warrior] swallowed hard. Even the table leg in his hand was shaking.

"Ji..." He mechanically turned his head toward Ji Luo, who had already begun backing away.

"You said... who had the advantage again?"