NOVEL NEXT Peaceful and quiet Exile Town.
Undead, who had just come online and had yet to receive the battlefield missions, grumbled about the mentor NPCs having all disappeared as they frolicked around the town.
The women from Camore had already grown accustomed to the noise created by the undead and went about their tasks; occasionally, when an undead approached them gesturing, the women would take out their needles and threads with seasoned ease, trading their skills for some sugar cubes.
In front of the vacant land behind the Undead Merchant Association headquarters and canteen, two undead wearing beginner cotton T-shirts and shorts were squatting in an experimental field, meticulously checking the germination status of the sown seeds with a small hoe.
"Case solved. It's not the soil or water; it's the seeds." Master Liu grimaced as he swept away the moist soil, revealing a rotten seed. "Seeds from Earth just won't sprout here, none of them do."
"Yeah, only native crops can be grown here. Look how well these wild garlic and onions are doing," Old Geng said dejectedly, glancing at the lush new shoots in the other half of the experimental field. "Native crops can grow, but foreign species can't. This world that has mages isn't that simple…"
"Let's suggest the task force to bring in a few technical specialists to study the agricultural situation here," Master Liu said, dusting off the dirt on his fingers. "I heard from Xiao Ji that in Weisshem, farmers work hard all year round and barely harvest 100 to 150 kilograms per acre. They don't even make 500 kilograms of corn and rely on potatoes to fill their stomachs for at least half the year. Life there is tough!"
"Helmets are an issue." Old Geng shook his head. "The young patient Gong that's under Xiao Lu's care regained consciousness and now everyone with patients in vegetative states wants to send them to the research institute. Setting eyes on those targets now is sure to cause outrage."
By now, the national team had long discovered the secret of the helmets—the more days people like Ji Tang, Master Liu, and Old Geng, who needed to spend days in bed in reality, "log in," the better their mental state became.
It was near impossible not to understand that "logging in" to this game had a rehabilitation and enhancement function for people's mental conditions.
Master Liu merely scoffed. "That's why I previously said not to suffer just for the sake of pride. It would also be good if we could get a hundred out of those three thousand helmets, but that bunch just insisted on thinking long term…"
Old Geng wanted to say something, but he suddenly froze.
He was clearly standing in the backyard of the Undead Merchant Association canteen. There was nothing else in his view but Master Liu and the experimental field, which was half bare and half full of new sprouts.
However, all of a sudden, it seemed like a layer had been overlaid over his field of view. It was as if he was seeing the world through someone else's eyes, and he could hear that person's words and the surrounding sounds clearly.
"Eh, what's going on?" Master Liu's voice sounded. "Old Geng, I'm seeing weird stuff. You?"
"I see it, too," Old Geng replied right away. "Wait, let's listen to the voice first."
In the overlaid vision, both Master Liu and Old Geng saw the same person say, "What kind of crappy quest is this, asking us to uncover the truth but not providing a translation feature?"
The speaker was also an undead, with a noticeable green ID above his head—Vanilla Pudding.
Vanilla Pudding was a well-known veteran of the game, so naturally, Master Liu and Old Geng knew who he was. On further surveying the IDs above the heads of the few undead around him, the two old timers could guess that they had "intruded" into another player's perspective.
"Don't be hasty," said the female player with the ID Blossoming Strokes. "Since it's a hidden quest, there must be a key point to trigger the next clue. Let's see what clues these 'quest items' have to offer."
The overlaid vision shifted as if the player with the "main perspective" was moving together with Blossoming Strokes.
A group of disheveled and miserable-looking natives appeared in the image.
The "main perspective" player, along with Blossoming Strokes and others who were noisy, surrounded this group of natives, who were bound and unable to move. They examined the captives' faces, searched their pockets and everywhere possible.
"Hmm… these NPCs are all quite delicate, completely different from the villagers over there. Perhaps this is a clue?" a player scratching his skull mused.
"Is something so obvious even a clue? Don't embarrass yourself! These NPCs are 'Indahl Citizens,' while those are 'Kain Town villagers.' Even a blind person can tell them apart!" another player mocked.
"Since these NPCs are quest items, there would surely be clues on them… Hold on." As if she suddenly thought of something, Blossoming Strokes started running into the distance.
"The main perspective" followed as well, letting Master Liu and Old Geng, who had unexpectedly intruded on the scene, get to appreciate the rural scenery of this world…
Yellow dirt roads, the gray-yellow mud walls, scorched yellow thatched roofs… The world looked like the scene from an old movie from the last century, covered in an earthy yellow hue. Apart from the equipment on the running undead, there wasn't any single bright color.
When the villagers appeared in the frame, Old Geng, a veteran who had once helped develop Northwestern China, felt a pang in his heart.
While the northwest was poor back then, the local people had vigor. When the country said it wanted to change their fate and make the northwest prosperous, the local people firmly followed the country. That daring spirit to challenge fate was well visible to all.
However, the native villagers appearing in the "main perspective" were lifeless and dull, blending into the earthy yellow world they inhabited.
It was as if… they were the suffering people from old photos of the republic. Just a bunch of spineless and numbed just existing.
Old Geng sighed, unable to bear the sight. Those young players might think that these were just NPCs, mere data, but he knew that these were real people, ones that were suffering.
The approach of the undead caused a commotion among the villagers of Redwood Village. The timid ones shirked behind the crowd and houses, leaving only the few braver ones in place.
Blossoming Strokes had a good memory. After scanning the crowd twice, she found her "clue-carrying" target—a trembling teenager leaning against a mud wall.
A clear female voice came from the "main perspective." "Blossom, what have you discovered?"
Blossoming Strokes approached the teenager and, without turning back, said, "When we passed by earlier, I saw someone with whip marks on their body that weren't new. There, this one."
The "main perspective" also approached the youth.
The teenager's elbows and knees still had fresh wounds from when the horses had run through the crowd earlier. The bloodied bits were distressing to look at, but as Blossoming Strokes mentioned, it wasn't just fresh wounds on his body… There were whip marks on his left cheek and left arm where the blood had scabbed over and dried, indicating that these marks were made at least an hour or two ago.
The "main perspective" carefully examined the whip marks on the teenager's body, then turned and shouted back, "Xiao Tang, bring over all the quest monsters' whips!"
"Oh, okay!" a player with the ID "Stuffed Gummy" responded.
The skeleton with ID "Brother Lahong" helped "Stuffed Gummy" gather the whips and carried them over, then gazed at the "main perspective" intently. "Sis Entropy, found something?"
"We'll know once we compare."
The "main perspective" took the whips, then compared them with the wounds on the teenager.
The young villager was anxious about being so close to the undead, but he was relatively braver and more receptive than others, and had been somewhat reassured to see the undead attacking those horseback hunters rather than them. Thus, he allowed the undead to proceed.
Soon, "main perspective" Unceasing Entropy and Blossoming Strokes matched a whip wrapped with gold thread to the dried wounds on the young villager due to the patterns and width.
"Before encountering us on their way back to the city, this bunch of quest monsters came to this village and had harmed this young man," Blossoming Strokes said.
"Their tactic of leading us here was so practiced, clearly indicating their familiarity with the terrain here. In other words, these quest monsters have been here before," Unceasing Entropy continued.
Simultaneously, the two brainy player leaders turned their gaze to the side of the village path, where the villagers had carefully placed a plank covered by a straw mat.
Anticipating a certain possibility, Unceasing Entropy and Blossoming Strokes both took a deep breath…
Players did treat everything they saw as just game data, but it didn't mean that they were heartless.
Injustices suffered by characters behind a screen could already incite players to angrily criticize a game's developers, what more in a full-immersion game like this?
With heavy hearts, the two female players approached the mat, crouched down, and lifted the straw mat.
Beneath the straw mat was the body of an elderly man wrapped in white cotton cloth.
This white cotton cloth of this world was different from the cotton that Earth people were familiar with. The notion people on Earth had of white cotton was that it was soft, sweat-absorbent, and skin-friendly; selling points that merchants delighted in touting.
However, the cotton cloth that Earth people come across wasn't genuinely pure cotton but a synthetic fabric blended with various chemical fibers.
If real cotton produced in 19th-century English factories and modern industrially produced cotton cloth were placed side by side, choosing the former would be foolish. In that period in Europe, cotton cloth was exclusively for the working class, while those of a decent standing mostly wore cotton-linen products.
In this world, with an industrial level close to 19th-century Earth, white cotton and pure linen were the main fabrics used by the lower class, with white cotton used by those close to the cities and linen by those further away.
The wrinkled body wrapped in the 100% pure cotton cloth was covered in horrifying wounds, with crisscrossing whip marks and abrasions covering every inch of skin. His face swollen to the point where his features from before his death could not be discerned.
Blossoming Strokes, a cultured person, couldn't help cursing, "F*ck! Is this what 'hunters' mean?! F*cking hell!"
Once the two ladies uncovered the truth, players in the advanced vanguard, along with Master Liu and Old Geng, who were "channeling" Unceasing Entropy's perspective, simultaneously saw yellow text popping up on their panels:
———
[Suspicious Hunters]
Suspicious Hunters: 13/13 (completed)
Dirty Truth: 1/1 (completed)
You have uncovered the secret of these hunters that were behaving strangely; what they hunted aren't beasts but their own kind!
Unable to forgive these despicable sinners, you decide to take these hunters back to the gates of Indahl City and hand them over to Charlie Rex.
Bring Back Prisoners: 0/13
Bring Back Lizard Horses: 0/13
———
Old Geng took a deep breath, turning and meeting Master Liu's gaze with a complicated expression.
The overlaying images they were seeing were transparent, allowing them to still see their surroundings despite their field of view being dominated by another's perspective.
If Old Geng was like a wily old fox that had seen many things in his years, then Master Liu, with his years in road and bridge engineering, was like a savvy monkey.
Old Geng could vaguely guess the "truth," while Master Liu instantly figured it out, his expression even more vivid than the former.
In the overlaying image, the players, angered by this dark and brutal quest, were furiously stripping the thirteen criminals of all items that seemed valuable: clothes, pants, belts, shoes, rings, necklaces, brooches, scarves, wallets, and so on; everything they hadn't taken before was now being taken off and silently handed to the villagers as compensation. Then, they stripped the criminals down to their underwear, tied them to the earth lizards, and led the horses away from the village.
As the players left the village, the forced overlaying image the old men were experiencing faded.
Without saying anything, the two old men crouched on the spot, motionless.
Not long after, several rows of yellow text popped up on their panels:
———
You have gained the authority to issue hidden missions.
You have gained the authority to distribute reputation rewards for the Indahl territory.
You have gained the GM panel, authority level: D.
You have gained the authority to view the activity range of online players and access their perspectives.
An exclusive personal quest has been added to your quest panel: [Invisible Guardians].
Regulating online players' gaming behavior, guiding online players toward a positive gaming atmosphere, is an inescapable responsibility for every GM authority holder.
Service hours spent on [Invisible Guardian] quest can be exchanged for login helmets, with every 200 hours (game time) of service time exchangeable for 1 login helmet.
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