When Lu Xiu decided to become a Dungeon Architect and create a dungeon in order to survive, she had worried about many things.
She worried that constructing a dungeon would be more troublesome than she imagined, that she wouldn't be able to afford the rule stabilization fee after completing it, and that the dungeon itself wouldn't be attractive enough to players.
But during the actual construction process, most of those problems had more or less been solved.
Creating the dungeon turned out to be easier than she had expected.
And once the dungeon began taking shape, the process was far more interesting than she had imagined.
Even the most troublesome issue, the rule stabilization fee, had found a solution on the very night she decided to become a Dungeon Architect.
A loan.
Of course, she wasn't going to ask the players for one... that would be courting death.
Instead, she planned to borrow from the authorities.
From the very beginning, Lu Xiu had believed that the reason the System encouraged players to become Dungeon Architects was to create a virtuous cycle.
A truly excellent civilian dungeon could provide players with powerful items or skills they desperately needed.
Naturally, the authorities had noticed this as well.
Even though the civilian dungeons that had appeared so far were all garbage.
And civilian Dungeon Architects were useless.
Still, the path to improving humanity's overall strength was right there. There was no way the authorities could simply ignore it.
If the current Dungeon Architects were useless, then they would simply have to discover new ones.
The civilian Dungeon Architect community was practically synonymous with scammers. However, because they had been among the first people in the world to seize the opportunity, back when players still knew very little about dungeons, they had managed to accumulate enormous amounts of Survival Points.
Then they banded together to suppress other ambitious Dungeon Architects, preventing newcomers from rising.
As a result, many players with genuine ambition had no choice but to rely on GG simply to survive. Even if they wanted to become Dungeon Architects, they didn't have enough Survival Points to pay the rule stabilization fees required to create a dungeon.
And so, the authorities established the 【Architect Special Fund】.
Its purpose was to provide loans and support to those people.
Lu Xiu had looked into it and discovered that the requirements for applying were extremely lenient.
All one needed to do was upload the rating issued by the System after completing a dungeon.
If a civilian dungeon received a System rating of C-rank or higher, the Dungeon Architect would be eligible for a Survival Point loan with extremely low interest.
And surprisingly enough.
Using this method, the authorities had actually managed to support a number of barely acceptable civilian dungeons.
What Lu Xiu had set her sights on was precisely this 【Architect Special Fund】.
She felt that the 【Resident Evil】 dungeon she had created should at least be able to receive a C-rank rating.
In short.
Lu Xiu had considered almost every possible issue.
But there was one thing she had never considered...
The Dungeon Architect actually had to clear the dungeon personally!
And their relevant memories would be stripped away before they entered!
Worse still.
The dungeon's construction rewards and System rating would only be issued after she successfully cleared it.
That almost completely cut off all of Lu Xiu's possible escape routes.
She had originally planned to get a System rating, borrow a large sum of Survival Points from the Architect Special Fund, and then take things easy for a while.
But now that was impossible.
The Construction Space was silent.
Lu Xiu squatted on the ground, leaning slightly forward with her arms loosely wrapped around her well-proportioned thighs, her chin resting on her knees.
She felt miserable.
She had dug a pit for herself...
And then, while she was at it, kicked away the ladder.
Originally.
Her plan had been perfectly clear.
First, create a reasonably complete dungeon and obtain a System rating.
Then apply for the 【Architect Special Fund】 and borrow some Survival Points.
After that, launch the dungeon, stay alive, and slowly figure out what to do next.
But now...
The dungeon was finished.
And the loan was indeed within reach.
But there was one prerequisite—
She had to clear the dungeon herself first.
And she had to do it without knowing the walkthrough.
Lu Xiu raised her head and looked toward the game stage in the distance.
A stage so familiar to her that it couldn't possibly be any more familiar.
She had personally constructed this place with Visual Mental Image.
No one understood its ability to terrify people better than she did.
So.
What was she supposed to do now?
Lu Xiu hugged her thighs a little tighter and sank into deep thought.
And as she thought, for some reason, she suddenly remembered something from her previous life.
Once.
While drying her clothes, she forgot to check her pockets first.
Her ID card had been left inside and ended up tumbling around in the dryer for an entire hour.
She didn't notice until she went to collect the clothes.
At the time, she had been terrified that the card might have been damaged, because she had to leave on a business trip the very next day.
That night, she kept searching online to see whether anyone else had experienced the same thing, whether their ID cards had stopped working afterward, while repeatedly checking her own card over and over again.
Just like that.
She tossed and turned in anxiety for the entire night.
In the end, the ID card hadn't been damaged at all.
But she hadn't slept a wink.
Even now, she didn't know what exactly she had been doing that night...
Ever since then.
She had learned one simple principle.
Something that had already happened couldn't be changed.
Worrying was useless.
Feeling miserable was useless.
The only thing you could do was accept it and solve the problem.
Worried that the ID card was broken?
Then go to an internet cafe and test it instead of sitting there panicking.
If it really was broken, then go get a temporary ID card that same day.
The business trip wasn't going to disappear just because she was anxious.
So the only thing she could do was accept reality and find a solution.
And right now...
Did she have any other choice?
That thought surfaced in Lu Xiu's mind.
She glanced at her remaining Survival Points.
Seventeen.
If she gave up now...
Then she would have no choice but to rely on the System's GG to survive.
Day after day.
Waiting for the day when she no longer had enough GG attempts, and her Survival Points finally dropped to zero.
The end.
Did she really want to end up like that?
There was no need to think about it.
The answer was obvious.
No!
So...
Lu Xiu slowly released her grip on her thighs and stood up.
Giving up on herself and wallowing in despair wouldn't change anything.
What she needed to do now was accept reality and solve the problem.
She looked once more toward the game stage.
Toward the Baker Farm.
Then she suddenly let out a bitter laugh.
She remembered what she had been thinking while testing the flow.
Any players who entered would definitely suffer horribly.
At the time, she'd even been looking forward to it a little.
And now...
The first victim had turned out to be herself.
Thinking of that.
She couldn't help letting out a sigh.
"Retribution..."
The prompt was still floating in front of her.
【Do you want to enter the dungeon for verification?】
Lu Xiu gently rolled her shoulders.
"Forget it. Retribution is retribution."
"It's a dungeon I made myself. Even if I have to cry my way through it, I'll still have to play it."
"I just hope I won't be too much of a coward when the time comes."
After saying that.
She raised her hand and tapped confirm on the System interface.
【Entering dungeon...】
【Dungeon Mode: Roleplay Mode】
【Role to play—Ethan Winters】
【Dungeon Architect verification mode initiated】
【Starting memory stripping】
【Dungeon loading...】
The Construction Space around Lu Xiu began to change.
The entire world seemed to dissolve into something like water, and everything started flowing.
The sky rotated.
Space folded.
Then came a faint sensation of weightlessness, like an elevator suddenly dropping by one floor.
Lu Xiu instinctively closed her eyes.
And when she opened them again—
The world had completely changed.
A car was traveling along the road.
Dense stretches of forest passed outside the windows, while the setting sun filtered through the leaves and cast mottled patterns of light across the windshield.
The engine hummed softly.
Lu Xiu froze.
She looked down and found herself sitting in the driver's seat, both hands resting on the steering wheel.
The car was moving steadily forward.
And the navigation screen displayed a rural road.
"..."
So this was inside the dungeon?
It really was no different from reality.
And the Resident Evil 7 environment she had recreated was incredibly accurate.
It looked exactly like the original.
Next, she would head toward the main stage...
Wait!
Lu Xiu's thoughts abruptly stopped.
After two seconds of silence, she blinked.
She looked down at her hands.
Then she looked toward the road ahead, the one leading to the Baker Farm.
After that, she tried to recall the dungeon walkthrough.
***
I remember all of it!
Every single detail is perfectly clear!
Lu Xiu fell silent again.
A long time passed.
"Then doesn't that mean I remember everything... What exactly did you strip away!?"