At the sound of coins hitting his account, Ma Lou excitedly dropped into a knee slide through the mud, threw back his head, and howled, "I can finally go wild again!"
"Woohoo! We've got money for Resurrection Coins! Boys, we've bought our lives back!" Pure-Love Warrior pumped his fists in excitement too.
At that moment, they suddenly grasped the essence of this game.
How the hell was this just about killing monsters and leveling up?
It was clearly a glorious mashup of extraction gameplay and hardcore survival mode!
Every time they went out, if they failed to earn enough Ash Coins to revive, they would go straight bankrupt!
But if they actually found something good out there and came back with a haul of Ash Coins, they would be sitting pretty!
Wasn't that exactly how extraction games worked?
Not only that, but while building their house, they had also put together a little "surprise."
"Old Ji, take a look. Think this thing I made will work?"
Bossy Guy walked over with an earnest expression, carrying an incredibly crude weapon.
He had used vines to lash a sharp, elongated brick tightly to a thick table leg, creating a homemade stone hammer.
Ji Luo took a closer look. A system stat panel had actually appeared above the crude stone hammer:
[Item: simple stone hammer (crude homemade weapon)] [Damage: low] [Durability: 15/15 (breaks very easily)] [Evaluation: a triumph of primitive ingenuity. Getting hit in the head with it will still hurt badly, but it will probably fall apart after a few blows.]
Ji Luo also pulled a wooden spear with a sharpened tip from behind his back.
A stat notification for [Sharpened wooden spear (crude)] popped up as well!
"Holy shit! We really can craft items by hand!"
Ma Lou's jaw nearly hit the ground in shock. "This game's design is insane! As long as it follows the laws of physics and real-world logic, the system actually recognizes stuff we put together ourselves!"
"That's so freaking cool!"
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior]'s eyes lit up. "Then once we find iron ore, won't we be able to make muskets and cannons ourselves?"
"Exorcism through firepower! Now that's a man's dream!"
Just as everyone grew so excited that they wanted to grab their freshly made "Stone Age arsenal" and head into the village to take revenge on that giant bug...
Night fell completely.
The sky, previously a murky gray, now looked as though someone had poured a basin of thick ink over it.
The crimson crescent moon vanished entirely behind the clouds, leaving the faint blue glow of the church's barrier as the world's only source of light.
Deep in the Black Forest beyond that glow, and in the distant abandoned village, bloodcurdling shrieks and roars rose one after another.
They were more than ten times as frequent as during the day!
A huge shadow even swooped over the Black Forest under cover of darkness, stirring up a foul-smelling gust that nearly knocked them off their feet.
The five who had just been hollering about going out to slaughter everything suddenly fell silent, like ducks grabbed by the neck.
The temperature around them was plummeting. Even with reduced pain sensitivity, they could still feel the bone-piercing chill.
"Well, uh..."
[Ji Luo] swallowed, glanced at the wooden spear in his hand, then looked at the Ash Coins he had just earned on his panel.
"Boys, by survival-game rules, not only will monster numbers skyrocket at night, their stats will probably double too."
"Old Ji's right."
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior] very sensibly shrank farther inside the church's dome of light.
"We spent the whole afternoon hauling bricks and finally earned ten coins. If we go out now and some overpowered bastard one-shots us again..."
"We'll be broke all over again."
Ma Lou shook his head frantically. "Nope, nope. Half a day of work, bankrupt in one second. That's a terrible deal!"
They had finally scraped together a little nest egg. Who would want to go out into this pitch-black night with limited visibility just to throw their life away?
"We've spent the whole afternoon hauling bricks in here. It's probably getting dark in real life too, right?"
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior] suggested, "We're not going out to hunt monsters as a party tonight anyway. Why don't we log off and get something to eat?"
Everyone nodded in agreement at the suggestion!
[Ji Luo] took the opportunity to offer another suggestion:
"Oh, and don't just sit around once you're back. Look up some wilderness survival videos online and cram."
"We'll use our real-world knowledge advantage to crush these native monsters from another world!"
"Old Ji's absolutely right!"
Bossy Guy nodded earnestly. "I'll look up how to sharpen stone tools when I get back. Tomorrow, I'm cracking that giant bug's skull open, no matter what!"
They all readily agreed and brought up their logout panels.
Just before they turned to ash and logged off, Ma Lou suddenly shouted, "Wait! Old Ji, Jiahao, you two haven't joined the group yet! Quick, give me your WeChat IDs. I'll add you. Meet up in the group after dinner so we can talk tactics for tomorrow!"
Ji Luo and Jiahao promptly rattled off their IDs. Then, accompanied by white light, all five vanished from the dilapidated church in unison.
Blue Star.
Lu Ziye abruptly sat up in bed and pulled off the secondhand VR headset, which had grown slightly damp with sweat.
It was already completely dark outside the window, and the smell of stir-fried rice noodles drifted up from the street stalls below his dorm.
"Phew!"
Lu Ziye let out a long breath, feeling a dull ache throughout his muscles.
Although pain sensitivity was reduced in the game, the intense concentration and realistic movement feedback still tricked his brain into thinking, "I really did physical labor all afternoon."
But despite his exhaustion, he was practically buzzing with excitement.
After ordering some takeout on his phone, Lu Ziye didn't even bother showering. He turned on his computer and logged into the gaming forum with practiced ease.
Sure enough, the thread he had posted last night hadn't sunk into obscurity. Instead, the forum regulars had piled up thousands of replies, all mocking them and asking which mental hospital these paid shills had escaped from.
Lu Ziye sneered, placed both hands on his keyboard, and transformed into a virtuoso of profanity as he launched into a furious flame war:
"Keep barking, armchair gamers!"
"Not only did an elite monster one-shot me this afternoon, the five of us even tore down trees by hand and built a little wooden cabin without any tools!"
"This game's physics engine is god-tier!"
"Vines to tie wood together, pebbles to smash bark-the force feedback is on par with reality! Stay out there and seethe with envy. You have no idea how much that 1 KB is worth!"
The moment he updated the thread, the onlookers swarmed in like sharks scenting blood.
User A: "Wake up, OP! Tearing down trees and building a house barehanded? You think you're punching blocks in Minecraft? At least put some thought into your bullshit!"
User B: "This is so sad. Is anyone going to do something about this cyberpsychosis? Have they been brainwashed by some new kind of cult?"
User C: "LMAO, five grown men playing in the mud and building houses in a game. I wouldn't touch that crappy game even if you gave it to me for free. And you call this a groundbreaking masterpiece?"
Just as Lu Ziye was struggling to keep up with the insults all alone, familiar reinforcements finally arrived on the battlefield.
[Kindergarten Boss]: "Guys, OP really isn't lying. I spent the whole afternoon smashing trees with a busted brick. The vibrations through my hand were incredible. Now that I've logged off, my hand shakes even when I hold a cup of water in real life. This immersion blows every VR game currently on the market out of the water!"
[Even Monkeys Have Dignity]: "You don't know shit! Bunch of bots, whining because you can't play!"
Their tone was genuine and aggressive, nothing like professional shills being paid to post. For a while, they actually sparked a modest wave of discussion across the forum.
Some of the forum regulars finally began to sense that something was off.
Could... these lunatics actually be telling the truth?
Was there really a mysterious closed-beta game out there that was only 1 KB, yet blew everything else away in graphics and interactivity?
While the forum descended into heated arguments and hordes of lurkers clicked that 1 KB link to try it, only to be mercilessly rejected...
The five-man squad's WeChat group welcomed its new members too.
Before you continue