At that moment, Ma Lou was hunched over, cautiously stepping out of the faint blue glow surrounding the church's protective barrier.
The instant he set foot in the true Dark Wasteland, Ma Lou felt as though he had been tossed into an enormous ice pit.
A bone-chilling wind slipped straight through the gaps in his starter shorts, making him shudder several times.
The blood-red crescent moon overhead was half hidden behind the clouds, offering precious little visibility.
In the distance, the Black Forest resembled a giant beast crouching in the darkness, while horrifying chewing noises and the scrape of nails against walls occasionally drifted out of the abandoned village.
"Holy shit, this nighttime atmosphere... they absolutely nailed it!"
"Anyone with a heart condition who plays this game is probably going straight to the grave, though..."
Ma Lou swallowed and gripped his wooden spear tightly.
His experience bar currently read 40/100. He still needed a full sixty experience points to reach level 1.
In other words, he had to pick off at least six Zero Tier mobs in this hellhole tonight.
For the honor of being the server's number-one elite player, I'm going all in!
Ma Lou took a deep breath, hugged the half-collapsed stone wall beside the church, and prepared to creep toward the bushes at the edge of the village.
But just as he reached a point roughly fifty meters beyond the church's barrier, something changed!
A thin layer of black mist had somehow spread through the already thin air around him.
As though alive, the mist began slowly crawling upward from his ankles.
Ding!
A blood-red notification box suddenly appeared in the upper-right corner of Ma Lou's vision, making his heart skip a beat:
[System warning: You have left the Deity's Sanctuary Barrier!]
[You are currently in a nighttime zone and have encountered a unique environmental mechanic: Darkmoon Mist Corruption!]
[Performing Sanity check...]
[Check failed! Your Sanity is slowly decreasing!]
"What the hell? A Sanity mechanic? Why wasn't this here during the day?" Ma Lou froze. A second later, he experienced firsthand what a "revolutionary" horror MMO really meant. As the black mist enveloped him, the image before Ma Lou's eyes began to warp slightly. Dark-red wisps resembling blood vessels crept across the edges of his vision. Waves of whispering began to reach his ears. The voices sounded close one moment and distant the next, like someone breathing against the back of his neck, or a group of women wailing mournfully inside an abandoned well. Worse still, whenever he turned his head, he caught distorted black shadows darting behind trees out of the corner of his eye. But when he looked directly at them, there was nothing there! Psychological pressure pushed to the limit! "Fuck, whoever designed this game has to be a master of twisted psychology!" Ma Lou's scalp prickled with fear, and his calves cramped. He nearly dropped straight onto his ass. Watching the livestream from behind the scenes, Lin En felt his own heart pounding. He finally understood why the locals couldn't spend the night in the wilderness. Not only did monsters spawn at night, but the environment itself inflicted mental corruption! Leaving the Deity's protection was the same as roasting your sanity over a fire! "Is this damn monkey going to get scared and quit the game?" Lin En asked worriedly. But he soon realized he had vastly underestimated this relentless grinder's hunger for experience. On the screen, Ma Lou suddenly gave himself two hard slaps. **"Smack! Smack!"** The crisp sounds echoed through the night. "Hallucinations! They're all fucking hallucinations!" Ma Lou's eyes were bloodshot. Rather than backing down, he gritted his teeth and stared into the darkness, that utterly sleazy, crazed expression returning to his face. "You think a mental attack like this can scare me off? Dream on!" Ma Lou steadied himself and, despite his steadily dropping Sanity and the ghostly howling filling his ears, forced his way to the very edge of the abandoned village. His persistence paid off. Behind a collapsed mill, he finally found his prey. Two isolated [Zero Tier Corrupted Villagers]. They seemed to have been strengthened by the nighttime mist as well. Their eyes glowed faintly red, and they wandered aimlessly at a noticeably faster pace than during the day. "Two? Perfect!" Ma Lou didn't rush in. Instead, he replayed the "wildlife hunting techniques" he had crammed after logging off. He quietly picked up a fist-sized stone and hurled it toward a broken water jar on his right. **"Clang!"** The sharp impact instantly drew both monsters' attention. Growling, they headed toward the jar. "Now!" Ma Lou burst out from behind the ruins, showing none of his usual frailty. Gripping the sharpened, fire-hardened wooden spear in both hands, he used the momentum of his sprint to slide around behind one of the monsters. As an elite player, he knew just how important weak-point attacks were. And his angle of attack was viciously cunning, ruthless, and utterly dirty! **"One Thousand Years of Death! Die, you bastard!"** The wooden spear in Ma Lou's hands plunged unerringly into the Corrupted Villager's asshole! He even gave it two forceful twists! **"Awooo!"** The monster let out an inhuman shriek of agony, and a huge red [Weak-point critical hit -100] appeared above its head. Its already decaying body couldn't withstand such a humiliating, lethal blow. It collapsed on the spot and dissolved into a puddle of black water.
[Zero Tier Corrupted Villager killed. Experience +10, Ash Coins +2.]
[System-extracted faith points +10.]
Watching from the altar, Lin En silently pressed his legs together.
"That's fucking filthy! But I like it. Now that's efficient monster hunting."
Seeing its companion instantly killed, the remaining monster roared and lunged at Ma Lou.
But Ma Lou had found his rhythm. Under cover of darkness, he circled one of the mill's stone pillars, keeping it between himself and the monster.
"Come on, dumbass! Can't touch me, can you?"
The monster slammed a claw into the pillar, sending stone chips flying.
Taking advantage of its recovery after the attack, Ma Lou circled to its side and drove his wooden spear clean through the back of its knee.
The monster lost its balance and dropped to its knees. Ma Lou reversed his grip and swung the rough butt of the Wooden Spear into the back of its head with a heavy blow.
"Thud!"
The second monster dissolved into black water.
More experience and currency rolled in!
[Current experience: 60/100]
"Hell yeah!! That's what you call skill!"
Ma Lou leaned against the stone pillar, panting heavily as he excitedly watched his experience bar rise.
At this rate, he only needed to kite two more pairs, and reaching level 1 would be a sure thing!
But just as Ma Lou prepared to throw another stone deeper into the village to lure more monsters, the [Sanity] icon in the upper-right corner of his vision suddenly changed from yellow to a glaring blood red.
The eerie whispers in his ears instantly grew ten times louder, as though countless insects were gnawing at his brain.
At the same time, a lantern casting an eerie green glow suddenly lit up on a ruined street deep within the abandoned village.
With it came the spine-chilling rattle of chains dragging across stone paving.
A terrifying figure fully two and a half meters tall, clad in a tattered black robe and carrying a ghostly green lantern, drifted through the thick black mist straight toward Ma Lou's mill, its face impossible to make out.
The instant Lin En, who had been enjoying the show, spotted the lantern-bearing figure through his god's-eye view, the original owner's lingering memories activated. A terrible chill shot straight to the top of his skull!
[First-Tier Aberrant: Lantern Night Terror!]
This monster was one of the roamers unique to this world's nights!
It had no physical weak points and preyed specifically on the souls of living beings whose sanity had collapsed in the black mist!
"Holy shit, how did he lure that thing out?!"
Inside the statue, Lin En was so anxious he wanted to slap his thigh.
Meanwhile, Ma Lou was still foolishly crouching behind the mill. He poked half his head out, stared at the terrifying figure carrying the green lantern, and couldn't help swallowing:
"That design... no matter how I look at it, that's no Zero Tier grunt."
"Could it be... I hit the jackpot tonight and stumbled onto a hidden Wild Boss?"
Before you continue