Chapter 177 : Chapter 177
Chapter : 177
Yan Yunqing also received the notification that Beta 1.0 had ended and all players were being forcibly logged out. Facing the suddenly eager gazes of the players before him, he felt bewildered.
What was going on? He had just finished spouting the standard cryptic remarks of a Riddler, and the game instantly iterated to a new version?
Beta 1.0 is over, so what comes next? 2.0 or the Open Beta?
Yan Yunqing frowned, feeling the displeasure of having all his plans disrupted.
At the same time, he got the sensation that he was being watched by some existence, causing goosebumps to rise all over his body.
Really...
If you're going to hide, hide a bit better. A version update right after he finished speaking? Was it afraid he wouldn't notice he was being watched?
Relying on the cover of his hood, Yan Yunqing rolled his eyes.
Ying.
Yan Yunqing: ......
Yan Yunqing: ?
Did something just make an aggrieved whimper?
Yan Yunqing hesitantly looked around but didn't find anything amiss.
An illusion?
Yan Yunqing tried cursing the game in his heart a couple more times. This time, that strange feeling disappeared, as if what happened just now really was just his hallucination.
Yan Yunqing: ......
Tsk, now he was even more suspicious.
Regardless, the players were about to be forcibly logged out. Yan Yunqing nodded to the players in front of him. "It seems you have matters to attend to next. Well then, until we meet again."
In the players' view, the mysterious person bowed slightly and vanished from the spot, just as mysteriously as he had arrived.
**
Yan Yunqing checked a few forum posts. There weren't many discussions about the plot, which was normal because this broken game didn't have a so-called main storyline at all.
The only thing suspected to be the main storyline was something he came up with on a whim.
Damn Return game studio. He helped build the novice village and created the main storyline for the game. He practically covered all the work of the game project team alone, yet not only did he not receive a penny of salary, but he was also being inexplicably surveilled.
Yan Yunqing felt he was losing out big time.
What was this? Working for free without wages? Was he some sort of unparalleled unpaid worker saint?
However, he couldn't just not do the work. Thinking about the players, whose numbers would more than triple when they logged into the game three days later, Yan Yunqing felt a twitching pain in his brain.
A three-second moment of silence for those role-playing as NPCs in the novice village.
Ahead lies hell!
Yan Yunqing felt mentally exhausted. He opened [Carrier Pigeon] and found that Merlin had sent him a coordinate. His eyes instantly sharpened.
Merlin had left suddenly before, looking like something had happened to Isabel. But when he asked later, Merlin said it was fine. Now he inexplicably sent a coordinate—could it be that something happened to him too?
Yan Yunqing frowned. After waiting a while, he found that Merlin didn't continue sending him messages. Yan Yunqing wanted to use the chat panel to contact Merlin, but he was worried that Merlin might be fighting someone at this moment.
His chat system's private messages would ring directly in the other person's mind. The higher the level of combat, the more details mattered. Even a split-second distraction could be keenly caught by the enemy, allowing them to seize the opening.
Yan Yunqing didn't want to affect Merlin with his sudden private message.
He looked at the [Carrier Pigeon] for a while, pursed his lips, and decided to go to this coordinate to check the situation.
Yan Yunqing knew that if it was an enemy even Merlin couldn't deal with, he would just be serving himself up on a platter with his level. However, he had many life-saving items on him. If worse came to worst, he could find an opportunity to teleport directly to Sylval.
Currently, [Sylval's Longing] was the last resort among his many life-saving trump cards, meaning as long as Sylval wasn't breached, Yan Yunqing would be safe.
This was the last resort Silf prepared for him before returning to the Mother Tree.
He wondered if Silf had foreseen that the future Demon King would become a pitiful level 1, so she prepared such escape equipment for him.
...Could it be because of that reunion?
Yan Yunqing's thoughts were a bit chaotic. He shook his head; the most important thing now was to go to the coordinate Merlin sent.
In any case, Merlin and Isabel were his friends. He couldn't watch his friends fall into danger and remain indifferent.
...
Merlin shook the [Carrier Pigeon] in his hand. The message following the coordinate couldn't be sent out. He used magic to probe inside and check; the magic circuit was chaotic, likely broken from the fall just now.
Merlin looked up with a complex expression, watching the two people... or rather, two guys temporarily appearing in human form, wrestling in the clearing ahead. Merlin felt a headache coming on.
How did these two belligerent elements get together?
But... so this guy didn't die either.
Merlin muttered. The screen of the [Carrier Pigeon] displayed the sentence he hadn't sent out—
‘The wolf pup you raised isn't dead either. Do you want to come and see? He's fighting with Isabel.’
***
It took Yan Yunqing some time to travel. As he was about to approach the address given by Merlin, he sensed something was wrong.
This place... could be considered the border of Romunik. Further northwest was the deserted ruins of a city, which used to be the territory of the Eternal Empire.
Although this was also considered Romunik's territory, the natural conditions were extremely harsh, the soil was barren, and demonic beasts were rampant. It was even worse than the area around Freedom City, so very few people lived here. In a sense, it was a lawless zone.
But Yan Yunqing found traces of many people's activities here, at least as many as a village living here.
The coordinate Merlin sent him was nearby.
Yan Yunqing frowned. He stood in place and thought for a while, then activated his role-playing skill. The little black cat skin made a comeback. It wasn't strange for a common breed of black cat to appear in a place where humans lived.
He quietly approached these people. Through the gaps in the leaves of the bushes, Yan Yunqing saw clearly what these people looked like.
Their clothes were tattered, their skin was dark, but their mental state was quite good. It could be seen that they were ordinary people living hard lives here.
There were no prefixes above the NPCs' heads, but Yan Yunqing felt that a few adjectives seemed familiar.
...Savages?
The little black cat flicked its tail. If players saw these people, they might indeed be mistaken for savages... this area was just too desolate.
Yan Yunqing decided to go deeper.
Keeping an eye on the minimap at all times, Yan Yunqing avoided all humans. In the process, he also spotted some shadows of beastmen. However, in barren lands, it wasn't a rare thing for humans and beastmen to coexist peacefully.
It wasn't until Yan Yunqing saw an NPC with 『Blood Mist Member』 above their head pass by and converse with those 'savages' living here that he suddenly realized.
This was the base camp of 『Blood Mist』!
Lilian had told him before that people from 『Blood Mist』 often robbed the rich to help the poor and assisted poor people in lawless zones. Looking at it now, this wasn't just simple help; they were stationed in the desolate lawless zone themselves.
Merlin and Isabel infiltrated 『Blood Mist』's territory? That shouldn't be. Apart from Yuchir, whose true level he could never detect, the levels of other 『Blood Mist』 members weren't high. With Merlin and Isabel's combat power, how could they be trapped in 『Blood Mist』?
Could there be something wrong with that mysterious Yuchir?
Following the 『Blood Mist Member』 he met on the road, Yan Yunqing successfully found their base camp. The road here was too winding; if not for his minimap and a live guide, he really couldn't have found his way here.
Yan Yunqing crouched on a tree nearly three meters tall for a while, caught a gap during the shift change, drilled through a blind spot, and successfully broke through.
Yan Yunqing hid behind a huge tree root and flicked his tail again.
Entering the base camp, Yan Yunqing completely restrained his aura. He heard someone hurriedly walking past, inadvertently revealing a bit of nervousness in their speech.
"Those few in the dungeon have all fainted."
"All of them? Not a single one is awake? Should we go check what happened?"
"Let's report this to the Boss first!"
Yan Yunqing walked out of the shadows at the corner, poked out half of his small cat head, and blinked his ruby-like eyes.
In the dungeon... did they mean those players caught by the savages, or Merlin and the others?
Although he knew those who suddenly fainted were likely players—after all, players had just been forcibly logged out and indeed couldn't be awake—even if there was only a 1% chance it was Merlin, Yan Yunqing had to go see.
Sighing, Yan Yunqing continued with the map open, carefully dodging patrolling NPCs, and found the entrance to the dungeon all the way.
The dungeon was guarded by a few people. Yan Yunqing calculated whether it was feasible to rush into the dungeon using the blind spots of their vision. After hesitating, he decided to try.
Anyway, he was now just an innocent, pitiful, and cute little cat. Who would think a small cat was dangerous?
Taking advantage of the moment a guard turned around, a black shadow shot out like an arrow from a string. The guard only felt a blur before his eyes.
"Hmm? What happened?" The guard looked left and right, finding nothing had happened, and couldn't help poking his companion beside him. "Did you see a small black shadow just now?"
"Huh? No, what did you see?"
"Didn't see clearly, just a small black shadow." The guard gestured. "About this big."
"Then you probably saw something wrong," the other guard said. "I didn't see anything."
"Is that so?" The guard was half-doubting.
Yan Yunqing had successfully infiltrated the dungeon. Honestly, this 『Blood Mist』 dungeon was much easier to infiltrate than the Bartovita Royal City.
Entering the dungeon, Yan Yunqing walked forward a few steps and saw the imprisoned players.
These players were just too obvious. Anyone seeing the messy names above their heads would immediately realize who they were.
These players were lying like corpses one by one in the dungeon. If Yan Yunqing didn't know they were players and not real people, he would have suspected this was a morgue.
Yan Yunqing walked further in. The minimap had already displayed the specific layout of the dungeon completely. Yan Yunqing found that there were no blue dots belonging to teammates on the minimap.
It seemed Merlin and Isabel were indeed not in here.
Yan Yunqing breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was preparing to return the way he came, he saw two red names on the minimap.
Red names...?
In a sense, 『Blood Mist』 was not a hostile faction to Yan Yunqing, so 『Blood Mist Members』 had always been displayed as yellow representing neutrality on his minimap, and there were even a few green ones representing friendliness outside.
These abruptly appearing red dots were particularly eye-catching.
Yan Yunqing thought about it and walked towards the direction of the red names. Since he was already here...
Might as well take a look.
Following the markers on the minimap, Yan Yunqing found his way there. After a few turns, he saw Fitch Bartovita and the son of City Lord Robert in two separate cells.
Yan Yunqing was stunned. It was them?
Right, back in Slanlipa City, 『Blood Mist』's target was Fitch, so it seemed normal for Fitch to appear here now.
However, he was a bit surprised that City Lord Robert's son, the son of Slanlipa City's lord, was also abducted here by 『Blood Mist』.
But, previously, these two were yellow representing neutrality on his system map. Why did they suddenly become red names?
What did they do?
Yan Yunqing was curious. His ears twitched; he seemed to hear the two whispering something. Yan Yunqing lightened his steps.
The cat's paw pads made no sound as he walked, quietly sneaking up to a small, unnoticed corner beside the cells where the two were imprisoned.
"Your Highness, when will our people arrive?"
"Very soon. Once my people blood sacrifice the commoners of Slanlipa City, they can come directly to take us away."