NOVEL NEXT Ch. 1
Chapter 1
“%￥……&*#@%￥……”
A mumbling sound rang in my ears, its intonation peculiar, making it completely impossible to understand what was being said.
Yan Yunqing frowned, groggily wanting to turn over, planning to bury his head in a soft pillow to block out the buzzing noise, but his face touched something cold.
It was so cold it sent a shiver through him.
Yan Yunqing opened his eyes in a daze, only to be met with complete darkness.
Yan Yunqing: ...Hmm?
Yan Yunqing wanted to reach out and rub his eyes, his mind still a little dull.
Was I just muddled from sleep, or what was going on? he muttered to himself.
Could it be that I woke up blind?
The moment he moved, the clanking sound of chains came from beside his hand.
Yan Yunqing froze, tried to lift his hand, and the sound of chains clanking rang out again.
His sleep-muddled mind instantly cleared, and the surrounding environment he had been ignoring was completely revealed.
Yan Yunqing reached out to touch the dark shadow in front of him.
It was cold to the touch.
This feeling, it couldn't be...
Yan Yunqing knocked on it, and after hearing a slightly muffled echo, he was floored.
It wasn't an illusion.
He was currently inside... an iron cage.
The iron cage was exceptionally small, so small that Yan Yunqing could only curl up his body, unable to even make any large movements, not to mention that his wrists and ankles were shackled with iron chains, heavy and ponderous, making one's heart sink a few notches.
A chill shot up from the skin touching the chains all the way to the crown of his head.
I was sleeping soundly at home, how did I end up locked in a cage in the blink of an eye?
Are human traffickers these days so rampant that they break into people's homes to kidnap them?!
Yan Yunqing thought about the fates of those abducted by traffickers that he had seen on the internet, and his heart sank even further.
Just then, the buzzing noise that had been bothering Yan Yunqing's ears drew closer again, mumbling something unintelligible.
Then, Yan Yunqing felt the iron cage holding him being moved, bumping along to some unknown destination.
Yan Yunqing tried to carefully discern the sounds, but after a long while, he still couldn't figure out what language it was.
Damn it, where have they taken me? Are we still in the country?
Yan Yunqing hugged his pitiful self tightly, leaned against the cold iron bars of the cage, and shivered.
Only then did he realize that the clothes on his body consisted of only a single, pathetic piece!
Draped solitarily around his hips, Yan Yunqing could clearly feel the emptiness beneath the tattered cloth.
...They couldn't even leave me my pajamas?
Kidnapping someone for no reason, stripping them naked and leaving them commando...
Anything but this!
Yan Yunqing's face twisted in agony.
After the iron cage jolted for a while, Yan Yunqing heard a dull thud.
The cage had landed.
His heart, on the contrary, leaped up high, almost jumping into his throat.
Where is this place? How on earth was I captured?
Countless questions surfaced in his mind.
More than panic, what Yan Yunqing felt at this moment was closer to absurdity.
Could it be revenge?
Just as the thought emerged, a sharp pain shot through his brain.
Yan Yunqing let out a muffled groan, subconsciously clutching his head and curling into a ball.
The movement caused the chains on his wrists to clatter.
Pain…
My head felt as if a hole had been drilled into it with an electric drill, stuffing my brain with countless things that didn't belong to it.
Yan Yunqing couldn't help but press his forehead against the cold iron cage, drawing a trace of coolness to cool his somewhat overloaded brain.
It felt as if a long time had passed, yet also as if it was just the blink of an eye.
His brain was buzzing, rows of text flashed before his eyes, finally converging into a translucent panel.
【Identity Authentication Successful】
【Game Panel Loading】
【N... zzt... pan... bzzzt...】
【Bzz... zzt...】
【Player Panel Loaded Successfully】
【Quest Panel Loaded Successfully】
【Ding—Main Quest has been issued. Please check your main quest in a timely manner.】
The splitting headache receded like a tide, leaving only this inexplicable panel floating in front of Yan Yunqing, persistently following the movement of his gaze.
Yan Yunqing pressed his throbbing temples, panting heavily to calm his slightly accelerated heartbeat.
What's the situation?
Yan Yunqing hesitated, a little uncertain:
This thing... it can't be some kind of system, can it?
Did I get dropped into one of those overpowered protagonist plots?
Frowning at the panel in front of him, he wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but he felt that this panel looked a bit familiar.
Like the UI of a game he used to play?
...No, now is not the time to get hung up on this.
"Are you okay?"
A concerned greeting reached his ears, soft and timid, the kind one might miss if not paying attention.
Yan Yunqing froze and turned his head to look.
Only then did he discover that the cloth that had been blocking his view, covering the outside of the cage, had slipped halfway down at some point.
It hung precariously on the cage, allowing Yan Yunqing to faintly see what was outside.
But he couldn't immediately find the person who had made the sound.
"I'm over here!" the voice said again.
Yan Yunqing followed the direction of the voice and looked diagonally upwards, only to discover with astonishment that the one who had just spoken to him was a tiny person trapped in a glass bottle.
She looked no bigger than his palm, ten centimeters at most.
The little person had a head of light gold curly hair, a dusty gray cloak draped over her shoulders, and looked just like a small figurine.
What made Yan Yunqing's pupils quake was that behind the little figurine was a pair of translucent, light gold wings.
This... this is...?
"You, what are you?"
Yan Yunqing was shocked.
An elf? A fairy? Or some other fantasy species?
Don't tell me Hogwarts actually exists?
Then where's my admission letter?
No owl came either!
Or is it a different system, and I should be cultivating immortality?
Damn it, when did the world become like this without giving me a heads-up!
Don't let it be that when the time comes, everyone is flying on swords while I'm the only one running miserably on the ground!
"Me?" The little figurine tilted her head.
"Are you talking about me? Hello, I'm Lilian, an elf."
"Isn't it a bit impolite to describe me as a 'thing'?"
Yan Yunqing swallowed, still apologizing subconsciously first:
"Sorry, I was just too shocked for a moment."
Lilian stared at Yan Yunqing strangely:
"Shocked? Alright, it seems you're a little kitten that was trafficked here, still unaware of our current situation.
How pitiful."
She uttered the cruel words in a soft, quiet voice: "We're about to be sold, you know."
S-Sold?
Yan Yunqing's pupils quaked.
His guess came true? In this day and age, do traffickers really break into people's homes to kidnap and sell them?!
"You seem to be fine now."
Lilian, who wanted to chat a bit more, noticed Yan Yunqing was just standing there in a daze, completely unresponsive. She pouted and lost interest.
Lilian placed her palm against the glass bottle she was trapped in.
The warm breath she exhaled while speaking fogged up a patch of glass in front of her.
She reached out and drew a smiley face for her own amusement, then flapped her wings and moved back a little, admiring the smiley face from top to bottom, very satisfied.
Why doesn't she look scared at all?
She's clearly trapped in a glass bottle.
Yan Yunqing's head started to hurt again, because of his current predicament.
I was inexplicably locked in an iron cage, a suspected fantasy species appeared beside me, and there was a strange panel with text that made my scalp tingle.
What game panel, what NPC, and even a main quest—it really doesn't look like a scientific world.
And the most crucial thing is—
Yan Yunqing reached out, hesitantly touching the top of his own head…
The furry texture felt unreal.
Yan Yunqing gave them a stiff squeeze. A strange sensation shot up from his tailbone.
He shuddered all over, grimaced, and swallowed the grunt that was about to escape.
Oh my god, they're ears!
Fluffy ears... growing on my own head!!!
Yan Yunqing grabbed the tail swinging back and forth beside him, his pupils quaking.
Just a moment ago, he was talking about a fantasy species next to him, but it turned out he himself was not a scientific existence either.
Yan Yunqing wiped his face, gave himself a mental pep talk, and tried to touch the translucent panel in front of him.
Although there was no sensation when he touched it, the panel did react to his touch.
Swish, lines of characters popped up.
Character: Yan Yunqing
Race: Beastman (Pseudo), Demon King
Level: 0
EXP: 0
Attributes: Strength 1, Constitution 1, Intelligence 1, Agility 1, Stamina 1, Willpower 1
Luck: 1 (10)
Charisma: 1
Free Attribute Points: 0
Skill Points: 0
Skills: None
Divine Talent: Advent of the Demon King
...
Health: 12/100 (Don't panic, you can still be saved)
Mana: 0/100
Vigor: 22/40
A long string of data popped out, dazzling to the eyes.
Yan Yunqing fell silent looking at that string of 1s.
Am I the legendary one-point god of war?
Forget the others, Yan Yunqing knew he was squishy, but was a Willpower of 1 really okay?
Why did it feel like he could be turned into an idiot by a mental attack at any moment?
Wouldn't I get a critical failure every time I rolled the dice?
And this Health, Yan Yunqing knew he was squishy, but wasn't this HP a little too fragile?
Wouldn't he shatter with a single poke!
Yan Yunqing felt like a crying cat emoji.
It feels like I'm being subtly called useless!
After staring at his personal profile for a while, he finally turned to the quest panel.
The entire panel was empty, with only a single main quest sitting there forlornly.
【Escape the Auction House】
Description: Look, what have I found? Turns out there's a lost little kitten here.
Oh, the poor little kitten is about to be sent to the auction block.
Little kitten, little kitten, do you want to leave this place?
Do your best to save yourself, maybe you'll succeed?
Yan Yunqing: …
Yan Yunqing subconsciously touched the ears standing on his head again, and couldn't help but flick his tail following his instincts, making a thwack thwack sound as it hit the ground.
It seemed Lilian's "little kitten" was really directed at him.
Escape the Auction House?
Although the quest description was very punchable, Yan Yunqing still managed to read between the lines and figure out where he was.
An auction house?
Then the place he was in now should be the auction house's storage area for goods.
But what was he considered? Also a piece of merchandise to be auctioned?
Are there really beastmen in the world?
So this world definitely turned magical without telling me, right?!
In his agitation, Yan Yunqing pulled his own tail, hissing in pain and rubbing the base of his tail.
He sized up the iron cage he was in.
The space was very small; Yan Yunqing could only curl up inside, with no room to move at all.
A palm-sized lock adorned the cage door.
Yan Yunqing's fingertips poked through the gaps between the bars and fiddled with it a couple of times.
The lock was made of solid material; it wasn't something he could break open with his bare hands.
Yan Yunqing fumbled around and opened the game panel again, trying to find something that could help him escape, and accidentally opened the game inventory.
Hiss—
Yan Yunqing looked at the game inventory with some surprise.
A dazzling array of items occupied all the slots in his inventory.
Some of the items felt very familiar to Yan Yunqing.
Yan Yunqing belatedly realized: he had probably, maybe, seemingly—transmigrated.
He had transmigrated to another world with his game panel, or perhaps he had transmigrated directly into the game.
Because that very familiar, sparkling, jewel-encrusted, and obviously expensive sword in his inventory was the very same divine-grade weapon he had spent several months grinding dungeons for, gathering big and small iron to forge!
It lay there quietly, mixed in with the messy pile of cosmetic outfits he had paid real money for.
However, this was not good news.
Yan Yunqing sniffled. He had already quit the game for some time now.
This was a single-player, city-building game called 'Becoming the Demon King from Today'.
The protagonist's backstory was very cliché: a young man born into an ordinary family who lost his home, friends, and relatives in a war of the gods. Burdened by a deep-seated grudge, the protagonist rises up, subjugates other races, unifies the entire continent, and establishes his own empire.
Yan Yunqing had started playing this game in high school.
Because of its exquisite art style and hardcore strategy core, he was obsessed with it for a long time.
Later, because the college entrance exams were approaching and his protagonist in this city-building game had already completed the [Unify the World] achievement, Yan Yunqing quit the game.
After all, the empire was already established, and he had experienced most of the building content.
The subsequent gameplay was more or less the same, so Yan Yunqing had no lingering attachments.
He had even changed his phone number cleanly a couple of days ago because the game company kept sending him spam messages.
Yan Yunqing pressed the spot between his eyebrows.
The reason he said transmigrating into the game was not good news was precisely because of those spam messages from the game company.
—【Your subjects are panicking because they cannot find any trace of you】
—【Your subjects have rioted due to the king's disappearance】
—【Your subjects want to commit regicide!!!】
Remembering the Demon King's retainers from the other races in the game, each one more yandere than the last, Yan Yunqing's vision went dark.
When playing a game, yandere is a trendy trope, but to have him experience it in person?
Huh? Really? Do they really want me to go through with it?