Vroom—
The sound of a car engine echoed in his ears. The vehicle was traveling along a desolate country road, with vast stretches of woodland outside the window. The setting sun filtered through the leaves, casting dappled shadows across the windshield.
Zhao Heng suddenly snapped back to his senses, his blurred vision rapidly coming into focus.
Fast.
He quickly grasped his situation; he was sitting in the driver's seat of a moving car, both hands gripping the steering wheel.
Although his body felt like his own, the hands on the steering wheel were not.
Upon realizing this,
Zhao Heng's expression instantly darkened.
"...A role-playing dungeon that completely strips the player of their abilities?"
There were many types of dungeons.
But if one had to name the type least popular among top-tier players, role-playing dungeons that completely stripped players of their abilities would undoubtedly be at the top of the list.
Because in these dungeons, they couldn't use their original skills, items, or equipment, and even their attributes would be weakened to the level of an average person... Simply put, they were forced to clear the dungeon using only what the role itself possessed.
This was the type of dungeon Zhao Heng found the most disgusting and wanted to play the least, bar none.
Thinking of this,
Zhao Heng tried to summon his weapon, but there was no response.
Next, he tried to feel the strength that normally far surpassed that of an ordinary person, but there was nothing there either.
At present, aside from his brain retaining his combat experience, his physical fitness had been completely reduced to that of an ordinary person.
"...It really is a role-playing dungeon!"
"Wait! The Dungeon Architect of this dungeon! How the hell did they get an S Level for this dungeon!? A role-playing dungeon! And I'm playing as an ordinary person! That means the strength of the enemies appearing throughout the entire dungeon can only be kept at a level an ordinary person can handle."
"A level an ordinary person can handle!?"
"This can get an S too?!"
The car continued along the country road, the surroundings desolate and remote.
Zhao Heng sat in the car with a grim expression, truly beginning to suspect that the Dungeon Architect of this dungeon had discovered some kind of bug.
Because the vast majority of high-rated dungeons produced by the System, even puzzle-solving types, were often accompanied by high-intensity combat. Zhao Heng genuinely found it difficult to imagine what aspects of a dungeon where the monsters could be handled by an ordinary person were worthy of an S rating.
Why did top players hate role-playing dungeons that completely stripped them of their abilities?
On one hand, it was because top players were unwilling to lose the abilities they had painstakingly accumulated and struggle through a dungeon like an ordinary person.
On the other hand, it was because the vast majority of these role-playing dungeons came from low-difficulty instances... It wasn't that top players had never tried them, but most of those experiences dated back to when the world had first been gamified, and no one wanted to remember how pathetic they had been back then.
Zhao Heng didn't want to remember either.
Although he was extremely high-profile on the forums and whenever he rotated onto the front lines, he hadn't actually been like this in the past. Four years ago, when the world was first gamified, he had been nothing more than an otaku. Completely unprepared psychologically, he had entered a dungeon with his coworkers in a daze and had even been so frightened by the bloody scenes that he wet his pants.
And it had happened right in front of the female clerk he had a crush on... That was the first time he had experienced what it meant to be so ashamed and furious that he wanted to die.
Over the past four years, he had fought his way up from bottom-tier dungeons, accumulated sixty thousand Survival Points, and become a core member of the Longsword Guild. On the forums, he had more than a hundred thousand fans calling him a badass.
But every night before going to sleep, whenever he closed his eyes, he could still remember that clerk's strange gaze... a gaze filled with shock, disgust, and even a trace of pity.
He hated that gaze.
He hated it intensely.
Every time he remembered it, he felt as though he were standing there naked.
Perhaps it was to prove that he was different from before.
Perhaps it was to convince himself that he was different from before.
He began desperately taking on high-difficulty dungeons, desperately acting cool on the forums, constantly showing off his battle records, and always maintaining an arrogant attitude.
Even when he lacked confidence inside, his words remained arrogant.
It was as though, by doing so, he could completely forget the coward he had once been.
At the same time, he began deliberately avoiding those low-level dungeons that could trigger his memories... even if the guild assigned one to him, he would rather choose a higher-Level dungeon simply because he didn't want to remember that incident or return to that starting point.
But he never expected that this S-Level folk dungeon would also be a role-playing dungeon!
Even with an S rating, it was still a role-playing type!
And on top of that, he was playing as an ordinary person.
At that moment, a System window popped up and automatically began playing a CG, a video featuring the dungeon NPC Mia.
At the same time,
The System began introducing the player's reason for making this journey.
【Your name is Ethan Winters.】
【You once had a happy family and a wife you deeply loved named Mia.】
【But three years ago, Mia suddenly disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and everyone believed she was dead.】
【Until a few days ago, when you unexpectedly received an email. The sender was none other than your wife, Mia, who had been missing for three years, her fate unknown.】
【The information leads you to a remote farm in Dulvey, Louisiana—Baker Farm.】
【Although your heart is filled with doubt, your concern for your wife cannot be suppressed. You decide to travel to the destination alone to investigate and find your wife...】
The System notification slowly faded.
After reading the background summary,
"..."
Zhao Heng immediately suppressed the complicated emotions rising deep within him because he had discovered a much more serious problem... he had never heard of this plot before.
He had an impression of every existing high-difficulty System dungeon; his guild also regularly collected relevant information. But after going through everything he knew, he truly couldn't think of any high-difficulty System dungeon with this kind of background story—not even one remotely similar.
Could this be... an original dungeon?!
Could someone really create an S-Level original dungeon?!
If it really was original, then this Dungeon Architect was truly a Genius among Geniuses!
Or was only the plot different, while the gameplay still followed the framework of some existing System dungeon?
While Zhao Heng was thinking, the car slowly came to a stop.
He had reached his destination; at the end of the road was a narrow path winding deep into the forest.
The trees on both sides of the path were dense, and withered yellow vines hung down to the ground like rotting tentacles.
At the end of the path, the shadowy outline of a building could vaguely be seen.
"..."
Zhao Heng looked toward the path at the edge of his vision, thought for a moment, and opened the car door.
No matter what.
He should clear the dungeon first.
Whether it was an original dungeon or an imitation dungeon with a different plot... for a top player like him, the difficulty shouldn't be too great.
After all, since the Dungeon Architect had managed to clear it, there was no reason someone as experienced as him couldn't.
Ultimately,
He was no longer that coward who would wet his pants at the sight of blood; it was time to face that shameful past.
...He would use this dungeon to face it.
With that thought, Zhao Heng stepped out of the car.
The moment he got out, an indescribable odor in the air immediately entered his nostrils. It smelled somewhat like rotting leaves and somewhat like the musty scent of damp wood.
Zhao Heng wrinkled his nose and closed the car door.
Thud.
The sound of the car door closing echoed through the woods before quickly being swallowed by the silence.
Zhao Heng paid it no mind. He simply opened the game System, confirmed that this dungeon had an independent inventory System, checked what items were inside it, and then slowly walked toward the path.
The farther he went,
The worse the road became.
The trees grew dense, and mosquitoes buzzed around him.
The damp smell in the air also grew stronger.
This seemed to be a swamp.
Soon.
Zhao Heng arrived in front of the dilapidated iron gate of the main house.
He reached out and pushed. The chains wrapped around the iron gate produced a piercing metallic scrape, but the gate didn't budge an inch. Looking through the bars, he saw a courtyard overgrown with weeds, while the main house resembled a giant beast crouching in the shadows.
"Is this an exploration-type setup?"
Zhao Heng looked around and soon noticed a fork in the road to his left, winding deeper into the woods.
He turned and stepped onto the side path, already having a rough idea of what kind of dungeon this was.
It really did seem to be an original dungeon.
However, if it was an exploration-style dungeon, it shouldn't pose much of a problem for a top player like him, someone who had fought various grotesque monsters with real blades and weapons in other types of dungeons.
Even without his items and with his attributes stripped away, as long as the enemies were within reason, he could still put his skills to use.
With that thought in mind, Zhao Heng continued along the path and soon spotted a dilapidated van.
He walked over, pulled open the door, and found a project proposal inside.
It seemed to have been left behind by a production crew that had intended to sneak into a haunted house.
But judging by the fact that the vehicle parked here had been completely abandoned, this production crew had obviously never made it back.
"A haunted house?"
Zhao Heng glanced toward the main house he couldn't enter, then continued onward.
But he hadn't gone far before he sensed that something was slightly wrong.
Too quiet.
Far too quiet.
Aside from his own footsteps and the irritating mosquitoes, he couldn't hear anything else.
Even though the surrounding trees were so lush, it was as if there were no living creatures anywhere nearby.
Most importantly, there were no enemies.
In an exploration-type dungeon, according to the conventions of System dungeons, shouldn't enemies have appeared by now to give the player at least a little challenge? Why hadn't anything shown up yet?
Zhao Heng frowned. Just as he was beginning to find it strange, he rounded a corner... and suddenly saw an old man in yellow overalls silently walking past in front of him.
...His breath caught!
Zhao Heng instinctively tried to activate a skill, only to realize that his legs felt as heavy as lead.
He froze for a moment, but the decisiveness of a top player still made him step forward and give chase... only for the old man to vanish without a trace.
"Not exploration? Ghosts?"
Zhao Heng stared at the slope where the old man had disappeared, his brow tightly furrowed with doubt, but he could only continue forward.
He took a few more steps.
At that moment, he finally heard the sound of an animal—the cawing of a crow.
Following the cawing to the side of the road, he saw two animal limbs lying on a rock among the weeds beside the path. They appeared to be cow legs, and several crows were perched on them, pecking at the rotting flesh.
As soon as someone approached,
The crows were startled and immediately took flight.
Zhao Heng abruptly retreated, twisting sideways to avoid the flock rushing toward him.
And then,
He saw something that made his pupils contract. Directly to his left, on the road ahead, stood an archway made from severed animal limbs. Several rusted, blackened circular saw blades hung around it, along with coils of barbed wire. Flies swarmed frantically over everything, producing an irritating buzzing sound.
A grotesque spectacle made entirely from animal limbs.
The visual impact was overwhelming.
Zhao Heng finally understood where the animal limbs on the rock had come from.
"Who the hell is this twisted!?"
Zhao Heng walked forward a few steps, stared at the disgusting spectacle made from severed animal limbs, and cursed, unsure whether he was cursing a character inside the dungeon or the Dungeon Architect.
What made him even more uncomfortable was that this was the only path forward, and he would have to crawl underneath the thing.
Absolutely disgusting.
But if he had to crawl, then crawl he would.
Zhao Heng bent down and slowly approached as a powerful stench of rot drifted toward him.
"Gag—"
Zhao Heng unexpectedly retched, covered his nose and mouth, and hurriedly crawled through.
Fortunately, he didn't encounter anything else after that.
After winding his way through the path for quite some time,
He finally saw a house.
Zhao Heng had finally reached the stage that marked the first chapter of the game. He stopped, looked up at the wooden house ahead, and muttered to himself, "There should be enemies now, even if it's just a farmer with a pitchfork."
For some reason,
He suddenly found himself wanting an enemy to appear...
Because this dungeon felt far too strange; there was something deeply eerie about it.
He wandered around the perimeter for a while before finally stepping onto the creaking wooden stairs and walking along the porch toward the entrance of the wooden house on the left.
The door leading inside stood wide open, and a lamp hung beside the entrance, but its light illuminated only a small area near the doorway. It couldn't dispel the darkness deeper inside at all; beyond that point, everything was pitch-black and impossible to make out.
Inside and outside the doorway seemed like two completely different worlds.
Outside, there was still sunlight.
But inside, it was gloomy and cold.
Zhao Heng looked at the lamp shining beside the doorway and, after hesitating for a moment, walked inside.
The instant he entered,
His eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness.
Thud.
The door behind him closed on its own.
The light that had been shining through the entrance vanished, and the entire house fell into complete darkness.
That dull thud caused Zhao Heng's heart to contract sharply. He immediately spun around and retreated several steps, staring warily toward where he remembered the door to be.
But it was too dark.
He couldn't see anything.
Without attribute bonuses or night vision,
This made Zhao Heng feel a little panicked.
He didn't know whether the scenes he had encountered along the way had affected him somehow...
Even his breathing had become slightly rapid.