Actually, Lu Xiu had originally wanted to enter "Resident Evil 7" directly, but after thinking it over carefully, she deleted the "7" at the end.
After all, there were no previous installments here, so adding the number would be meaningless.
As for the rating, she hesitated for a moment before choosing C-rank, something standard and conventional.
The ticket price was 200 Survival Points.
The style types were horror, stealth, and survival.
【Dungeon Name: Resident Evil】
【Self-Rating: C-rank】
【Ticket Price: 200 Survival Points】
【Style Type: Horror / Stealth / Survival】
【Dungeon Theme: Courage of an Ordinary Person — Players will play as an ordinary person. Faced with the extreme horror, physical torture, and inhuman monsters of the Baker Family, they must display psychological resilience and a will to survive beyond that of an ordinary person. The reason the player enters the den of monsters alone is simply to find his wife, who has been missing for three years. This conviction is the foundation of the player's resistance to fear. It is also the courage of an ordinary person to face fear for the sake of love.】
Not long ago, while sitting beside the river and thinking about how she was supposed to survive, Lu Xiu had noticed the profession known as Dungeon Architect.
At that moment, she had already decided what kind of dungeon she wanted to create.
Although the original owner had been extremely shy and something of a homebody, she still possessed a certain understanding of the digitized world.
After all, she wasn't someone who had literally never left the house.
The young girl clearly remembered what society had been like when this catastrophe began four years ago.
If she had to describe it in one word—it was extreme.
After all, the Survival Points everyone received when they were first digitized had been converted from their remaining lifespan.
A forty-year-old middle-aged person, even with only twenty years left to live, would still receive more than 7,000 Survival Points.
And that was nothing compared to young people.
Everyone had tens of thousands of Survival Points. It was as though the entire world had undergone an unprecedented bout of currency hyperinflation. More importantly, the System store could provide almost anything.
That made many people feel that Survival Points... were simply lifespan... and lifespan was renewable. As long as they kept farming dungeons, they could keep enjoying themselves.
Consequently, large numbers of high-risk challenges became popular, and the overall atmosphere of society grew increasingly extreme.
Ordinary people began recklessly entering dungeons, trying unofficial dungeons in huge numbers, spending their lifespans on items from the System store, or gambling on probability...
'Anyway, I have more than twenty thousand Survival Points. What is there to be afraid of?'
That was what everyone thought.
Many people even believed this was their chance to completely change their lives. After all, everything could be purchased from the System store, and everyone seemed to have started with roughly the same amount of capital.
But if resources were unlimited, did that mean there would be no wealth gap?
Did everyone really have roughly the same amount of capital?
...Far from it.
Dungeon clear rates, decision-making ability, tolerance for risk, intelligence and courage, information asymmetry... all of these factors still created disparities. The strong became stronger, while the losers sank deeper and deeper until they died.
Before long, society had transformed into an intensified form of Darwinism.
No one could remain an ordinary person anymore.
All of humanity was forced to become professional players.
Either grow or be eliminated.
And the proportion of those who were eliminated was obviously much higher.
Perhaps that had been God's intention.
But it was truly horrifying... because the System store could provide an unlimited supply of goods, the only things that remained genuinely scarce were Survival Points themselves and individual ability.
The overall strength of humanity rose rapidly.
But that also forced dungeon difficulty to increase exponentially. Otherwise, the dungeons would simply be farmed into oblivion.
And during that period, how many 'weaklings' quietly died after exhausting all their Survival Points?
No one had ever counted.
This extreme atmosphere continued for some time—not particularly long, but not particularly short either—until the number of deaths reached an unimaginable level and the authorities finally regained their footing. Only then did the situation gradually begin to reverse.
Fortunately, even during the most chaotic stages of the early period, the real-world production system within the country had never been completely abandoned.
There had always been clear-headed people.
As state authority was rebuilt, real-world production gradually began operating again: factories, logistics, agriculture...
The weak finally had a way to survive, which allowed society to barely return to something resembling the right track.
And as society returned to normal, so did the rationality of the players—or rather, of the general public.
Most ordinary people finally stopped recklessly attempting high-risk challenges.
The main reason was simple. Several years had passed, and most people's Survival Points were nearly exhausted...
Now, entry fees for high-difficulty dungeons could reach thousands of Survival Points, while their clear rates remained extremely low. For most ordinary people, entering such dungeons was practically the same as throwing their Survival Points away.
So nowadays, very few reckless people dared to charge directly into high-difficulty dungeons.
At present, the most popular dungeon type among ordinary people was the stealth-survival dungeon: one that could be attempted alone, relied on patience or evasion to clear, and had the highest success rate.
The 【Loner】 dungeon was a typical example.
And while sitting beside the river, when Lu Xiu thought of the two keywords "stealth" and "survival," the first thing that came to mind was "Resident Evil 7".
A game praised for bringing the "Resident Evil" series back to its survival-horror roots.
Why had she chosen this game?
The main reason was—Lu Xiu had no confidence.
She had no idea what the dungeons in this incomprehensible world were actually like.
She didn't want to survive by watching ads. She wanted to earn Survival Points quickly. She wanted to attract attention.
So she had to choose a theme capable of provoking the strongest possible emotional response from people.
***
Horror.
At the very least, she personally believed it would generate some discussion.
And although "Resident Evil 7" had its share of flaws, the sense of horror it created was genuinely enough to rival the peak of "Resident Evil". The game's horror atmosphere had been constructed exceptionally well. While playing hide-and-seek with powerful enemies, the player's body and mind remained tense almost the entire time.
Every jump scare could make one's heart stop.
And most importantly, it was a game born during the VR boom.
Lu Xiu happened to...
Have played the VR version.
Lu Xiu believed that the experience of playing the game in VR—the feeling of being genuinely immersed in its horror—would help her construct a dungeon immersive enough to feel real.
And that would increase her chances of obtaining exclusive Dungeon Architect rewards.
The secondary reason was the protagonist of the game—Ethan Winters.
Lu Xiu liked this character very much.
This 'ordinary person', unlike the other superhumans in "Resident Evil", had left a deep emotional impression on Lu Xiu through everything he experienced in the seventh game and the ending of the eighth.
He moved forward with the determination to save his wife and his daughter.
Although he was afraid, uneasy, and terrified, he still pressed onward. In the end, his love for his Family continued to shine brightly even through the haze of death.
The worlds were different, but Lu Xiu believed emotional impact was universal.
And emotional impact was also one of the key elements of a dungeon.
Reality had been gamified for four years, and people had already accumulated a great deal of experience.
One of those conclusions concerned emotion.
Rumor had it that most players who obtained skills or items from dungeons... had experienced intense emotional fluctuations while inside the dungeon, or had been deeply affected by the dungeon's plot.
In short, they had become immersed in it.
Because of this, high-ranking players generally believed that as long as the dungeon itself was sufficiently well-made and the player's sense of immersion was strong enough, they could usually obtain certain skills or items upon clearing it—or at the very least, attribute-point rewards.
The fact that the instructions for the theme field were written so seriously also supported that conclusion.
And "Resident Evil 7"...
Its sense of immersion should be more than sufficient.
At least Lu Xiu believed it was.
If, by some chance, the dungeon could even grant certain skills to players who cleared it, then even if those skills weren't particularly powerful, they would still help promote her dungeon.
After all, the term "unofficial dungeon" came with an inherent DEBUFF.
She desperately needed some selling points.
Of course, she wouldn't know exactly how things would turn out until she actually began constructing the dungeon.
"Hopefully it won't be too troublesome. I don't have much time left."
Lu Xiu looked at her remaining Survival Points and slightly furrowed her beautiful brows. Then she pressed submit and sent the dungeon's basic information to the System.
Immediately afterward, a new window appeared.
【Do you want to enter the Construction Space?】
【Yes】
Lu Xiu's figure vanished instantly.