Chapter 66: Cellar
While the Entropy Team was struggling to solve the problem of the "hugging monster" in the wooden house near the Warrior Guild, in the Walker Guild Square, the three elders of the closed beta test were discussing how to solve the incident their people had discovered.
"We can't just force it. We'll have to kill as many people as we can. This mission is clearly not meant for just brute force. We have to think of another way. Do you two have any ideas?"
Qin Guan, whose ID is Vanilla Pudding and who has changed his job to a warrior, has a very different temperament from the cowering look when he was mocked by the whole network. His words and actions no longer have the cautiousness of being afraid of making mistakes. He is indescribably confident and relaxed. Obviously, this guy has really had a good time during this period of time.
In addition to his developing boss temperament, Qin Guan's equipment is also top-notch among players:
He had a standard steel blade knife on his waist, a half-body armor with an iron blade neck guard that he had snatched from an NPC, a binding-style tough special-effect arm guard on his left arm, and a pair of excellent-grade shoes with movement special-effect enchantments on his feet.
"I have no idea. I'll listen to you."
Next to Qin Guan, the man with the Orb of Deception hanging around his neck and a critical strike dagger on his waist gave me medicine and responded without much enthusiasm.
Compared to Qin Guan's high spirits, who had a casual attitude and played casually when he first entered the game, he became much more depressed...
The "black equipment incident" that occurred during the world view breakthrough mission of "The Birth of the Undead Race" was a big blow to me in taking medicine.
Although he was the one who triggered the epic quest, and he did not get the dagger in vain, he spent half a month's salary to pay off the several hundred copper coins Qin Guan collected for him; but the Blood Alliance that La Hong and his gang had set up wanted to snatch people from them, and his case happened to be stuck at the critical time when the two sides were at loggerheads, so this matter was infinitely magnified to attack him, and also to attack the team that the three elders had formed as "not upright", which made him particularly embarrassed...
It would be fine if "Another World" was just an ordinary game commonly seen on the market. People who don't play games don't care about things in the gaming circle, and people who play games have many other things to play every day and have no interest in eating this kind of not-so-delicious "melon". At most, the two sides would engage in a war of words for a few days, and then something more explosive would come out to overshadow this wave of attention, and then nothing would happen.
But... "Another World" is not an ordinary game. The number of cloud players clamoring for accounts is countless times greater than the number of real players who can enter the game. A bunch of people have nothing better to do than to watch funerals every day. A player from Lahong's side "exposed" this matter to the player forum, and the "black history" of giving me medicine just lives on the Internet... The voices of cloud players scolding him are even louder than those of real players.
"Lao Yao, why are you so half dead? Didn't I tell you long ago that you don't care what those people say about you. It's enough for us to know who you are." Qin Guan advised, "Who in this world doesn't get talked about? If you take a few words from others to heart, you will not be able to survive if others don't talk about you. Which celebrity won't have a bunch of black history made up by others after becoming famous?"
"That's right. Even if I wrote a good book, I would still be criticized." Miaobishenghua also advised, "The three of us were there at the time. Vanilla and I had discussed the ownership of the critical strike dagger. If you want to say that there are problems with our character, none of us three can escape. They knew that you were bothered and attacked you precisely."
Give me medicine and quickly raise your hands in surrender: "Okay, okay, I didn't say anything. You two are talking about a lot of reasons. I am an adult, how can I not understand? Let's talk about activities, ah, let's talk about activities."
Qin Guan shook his head and stopped talking about the sad thing about me taking medicine. He turned to look at Miaobishenghua and said, "Huahua, what do you think?"
Miaobishenghua thought for a moment before saying, "The event announcement mentioned that the shadow that shrouds Exile Town is 'attracted by the flesh and blood of the living, and comes uninvited when darkness falls'. I feel like... this event seems to be a more alternative 'monster siege'."
"Hey, that's a little bit true." Qin Guan clapped his hands and said, "Once it gets dark, the NPCs in the town are gone except for the zombies. They hide away. Obviously, these monsters are likely to kill the human NPCs in our town. We have to get rid of them quickly."
"Since it's monsters attacking the city, let's just fight them. Why are we making so much trouble?" He said with a pained look on his face as he gave me medicine.
There were many people on their side, and not long after the activity started, someone discovered something in the cellar behind an empty house, so they called their friends and formed a team to go down and kill monsters, but they were wiped out as soon as they went down.
When Qin Guan got the news and brought the monster-killing team back, another team went down to check the situation and was also brutally killed and offline...
"Other games hold activities to offer benefits to attract players to log in, but the game "Alien World" has to search QQ for account information. We definitely can't put the activities of this game together with other games." Qin Guan said.
"That's right. This isn't a game that doesn't worry about players not logging in, and the planners don't have the confidence to be so stupid." Miaobishenghua nodded and said, "The activity requires us to resist erosion. Since the thing in the cellar can't be defeated, why don't we try to seal the cellar. Now that the NPCs are hiding, let's go to various construction sites and steal some cement and wooden boards... Steal a little from one place, so it's not too obvious, it should be fine."
Qin Guan & Give Me Medicine both gave a thumbs up to Miao Bi Sheng Hua... Good idea, they didn't expect it could be played this way!
As expected of a cultured person, his mind is so flexible!
As soon as he said it, Qin Guan, the boss, immediately led his men to fleece the construction sites...
In less than half an hour, the players, led by the three veterans of the closed beta test, brought several hundred kilograms of cement, sand and gravel, and more than twenty wooden boards of different lengths, and gathered in front of the empty wooden house on Third Street.
"Let's get started!" Qin Guan took the lead, picked up a few wooden boards, lifted the bucket of mixed cement and walked to the back of the wooden house.
Except for the cellars connected to the tunnels, the cellars in Exile Town are basically small, with a maximum area of four or five square meters. It would be difficult to pour cement all over them, but just sealing the roof would not be a big problem.
The players, who had done hundreds of hours of brick-moving tasks, skillfully laid wooden boards on the cellar opening, which was about one meter in diameter, stacked them up in several layers, poured cement on top, and sealed it...
"Will this work?" a player asked uncertainly.
"It should be okay, right? Even if we can't suffocate the creature inside, preventing human NPCs from accidentally entering should solve the problem, right?" said another player.
"Hey, why is there someone missing in my team?" A player who was helping to carry the bucket suddenly asked in confusion.
"Huh?" Qin Guan, who was applying cement with a cement knife, looked up in surprise.
Qin Guan: “Fuck!”
As soon as he raised his head, Qin Guan saw a player in the outer circle disappear silently.
There wasn't even any white light of death, it just disappeared out of thin air like a clip from a movie.
What made Qin Guan even more horrified was... he found that the person who had spoken to him a minute ago and was giving me medicine was gone without knowing when.
"Disperse! Disperse quickly!" Qin Guan suddenly stood up, threw away the cement knife with sweat on his forehead, grabbed Miaobishenghua who was squatting next to him, and ran away.
"Hey? Vanilla, what are you doing?" Miaobishenghua didn't react.
"Almost half of the people are gone! Get out of here quickly!" Qin Guan shouted as he ran.
After he roared, everyone realized that the "density" around them had become much thinner...
“Oh my god!”
“Ahhhh!”
"What the hell!"
The "surviving" players ran away in panic...
After leaving the strange cellar and running to the Third Street to meet up, the captains of each team counted the people and found that in just a short while, the number of people in the team had decreased by nearly one third...
"I'm playing an online game, right? I'm playing an online game, right? How come this, this is like a horror game?" Some players were almost scared to tears.
"The town is full of skeleton zombies. To some extent, it's true that we are playing a horror game..." Not everyone was scared, and some people were in the mood to complain.
"They are totally different!" The frightened player was angry and said, "How can an American blood-thriller be compared with a Japanese ghost movie?!"
"Okay, calm down." Qin Guan raised his hand and pressed it down, signaling everyone to be quiet first, then turned to look at Miao Bi Sheng Hua, "Hua Hua, look--"
Qin Guan's voice was stuck.
Players who have completed the first job transfer can receive a primary weapon from the professional mentor. Miaobishenghua, who had just completed the job transfer, received a rough wooden staff that looked like a crutch, just like Entropy But Emergence. She wore a primary robe that her friends helped her to collect materials for - a straight-tube, round-necked, narrow-sleeved, knee-length robe - although the texture was far inferior to the flashy robe that Lao Yang wore, but at least she looked like a wizard.
At this moment, the only wizard among them was at a loss, panicking, and his entire body was shaking so much that his robes looked like they were dancing a seaweed dance...
Qin Guan: “…”
In the beginning, there were actually many players who were not used to the skeleton characters, and even more players who were not used to the zombie NPCs. The "style" of this game is too realistic, and the player characters and NPC modeling are too sophisticated. When copper coins were most scarce, some players did not go to complete the zombie NPC tasks, and were even unwilling to play in a group with other players. The reason was that they really couldn't get used to it.
Playing to this point... even the most delicate player can jump into the river to wash his or her skeleton without a care in the world after finishing the brick-moving task and getting covered in mud.
If the bones of teammates' hands and feet are accidentally broken, players can help pick them up without any hesitation.
Even zombie NPCs that are so ugly that they look like waxed corpses just dug out of a swamp are no longer surprising to players.
In a nutshell, just get used to it...
However, being able to get used to the realism of character modeling and NPC modeling that is difficult to distinguish between true and false does not mean that all players can adapt to the plot of horror-type games. There are also staff members of funeral homes who cannot watch ghost movies...
Miaobishenghua is one of this type. If she only treated this activity as an ordinary task, she would be fearless. But when she found out that there were horror elements in this activity, she was really disappointed...
"Okay." Qin Guan had to temporarily give up counting on the most reliable think tank in their team, and looked at everyone sadly, "This is the situation. The thing in the cellar can't be defeated, and it can't be sealed. Everyone, do you think we should give up this monster and look for other clues, or brainstorm and come up with a solution?"
A group of players looked at each other, and then... they all looked at Qin Guan.
There's really nothing we can do. Up to now, the players have no other thoughts in their minds except "fuck it" and "say goodbye to the whole family of the bastard planner".
"Wait, wait, Vanilla." Miaobishenghua, who was frightened, recovered and spoke reluctantly, "I remembered something that might be related to this event."
"You say." Qin Guan said hurriedly.
"When we were doing the mission 'The Birth of the Undead Race', Morris's letter mentioned the concept of 'madness and infection'. In the last round, the Zombie General took us to the tunnel to see the remaining cult altar. The destruction of Exile Town was because there were cultists among the foreigners who were enslaved and abused by the townspeople. The cultists performed bloody sacrifices to summon unspeakable things and destroyed the town. Do you remember this?"
"Of course I remember. I will never forget the plot of this mission even after ten years." Qin Guan said with a pained look on his face, "Huh? Are you saying that this activity is related to the epic mission of the undead race?"
"I dare not say that it is definitely related." Miaobishenghua tried to stay calm, "The human residents of Exile Town were not killed directly by the things summoned by the cultists. Instead, they were infected by the summoned things, went crazy, and killed each other."
"If the event 'Resurrection of Terror' is 'in the same vein' as the history of Exile Town, then this so-called 'erosion' is likely to be similar to what Exile Town encountered before its destruction." Miaobishenghua paused and let out a long breath, "Of course, this is just my personal guess, it may not be correct... I think that the monsters that the event forcibly restricts and that we are not allowed to kill or seal up are likely to be infected and corroded human NPCs."
