After Lu Yuan entered this Instance, this was the fourth time he had heard that "beep~~" sound.
He did not know where this sound came from; it simply appeared suddenly beside his ear without any warning. After flashing by, it would not trigger anything. As a result, Lu Yuan had already chosen to selectively ignore this sound.
And just at this moment of impending death, the sound appeared again.
So, what exactly is this "beep~~" sound? What does it represent?
Lu Yuan leaned against the wall, thinking. In front of him, that terrifying female corpse was floating toward him bit by bit. Behind her, another monster was crawling toward him in a "spider crawling" posture. At this moment, its body was covered in bloody gashes, and every movement caused thick, black blood to ooze out, emitting an unbearable, pungent odor.
As the two of them approached bit by bit, Lu Yuan's Life was also constantly draining away.
7%;
5%;
The crawling fellow villager had already reached Lu Yuan's face, its nose almost touching his. Lu Yuan's expression did not change much; he just quietly continued to ponder that inexplicable sound.
3%;
The female corpse also arrived slowly, her ten fingers reaching toward Lu Yuan's head. She was only a few inches away from piercing straight through his skull.
Just at this moment!
A sudden "click" sound!
Lu Yuan's expression suddenly froze—in an instant, everything in this Instance, including that strange "beep" sound, seemed to be quickly connected together because of this eerie, light sound.
This light sound was hard to describe; it was a complex, short sound that fused together elements like the impact of plastic, the stretching of a spring, and the operation of electronic parts.
However, although it was complex, anyone who had heard it would instantly know what this sound represented.
Because this "click~" sound only appears when answering a phone; it represents that on the other side of the call, someone has picked up the receiver.
And with this light sound, a male Voice also came out of thin air beside Lu Yuan's ear.
"Hello, this is the police station."
This was a very eerie feeling. The terrifying monster in front of him looked like it was about to devour him alive, yet right beside his ear, a phone call completely out of place with the current scene sounded. Judging by the tone, the person speaking on the other end was actually a dispatcher taking a report.
This absurd scene would likely have left most Players confused, yet the corners of Lu Yuan's mouth curled up slightly.
At this very moment, his Life had reached 1%, right at the critical point of death. At the same time, the female corpse's ten spasming fingers were already pressed against Lu Yuan's Forehead. The cold chill pierced straight through his bone, almost freezing Lu Yuan's Mind into a block of ice.
Just at this Crucial Moment, Lu Yuan was not flustered at all. He directly interrupted the voice beside his ear and shouted—"I! Surrender!"
Uh, well, no one knew why he would shout these inexplicable words at this time, but he just shouted them at the top of his lungs. Even more magically, the moment these words left his mouth, a violent wave of dizziness rushed into Lu Yuan's Mind.
Everything around him became like ink stirred together, spinning wildly. The scene before his eyes disappeared, and instead, the sound of roaring traffic and noisy clamor rushed into his ears.
"Wah————"
Before Lu Yuan could even recover, he felt his stomach churn, and then, a mouthful of vomit sprayed out from his mouth.
After this, it took a full 10 seconds for Lu Yuan to finally see the situation around him clearly.
At this time, the chill remained, but the fellow villagers in front of him had disappeared, and he was no longer in that old apartment, but leaning inside a phone booth at a street corner. As for the dizziness in his Mind, it was clearly a reaction after drinking; this feeling of dizziness was exactly the same as the one at the very beginning of the Instance.
Looking down, the ground by his feet was covered in vomit from after drinking, emitting a strong, pungent odor. That smell also smelled the same as the one in the bedroom.
At the edge of his Line of Sight, a spider was quietly crawling in the corner of the phone booth, slowly tidying up its web. Beneath it was a small advertisement commonly seen on the street. On the cover, a long-haired woman in white was casting flirtatious glances at the noisy street. The traffic flow behind her drove past, whipping up the night wind and bringing waves of bone-chilling cold, just like the corpse-chill emitted by that female corpse.
Lu Yuan smiled. Everything was indeed just as he had thought.
The introduction at the very beginning of the Instance had already stated that he was playing the role of a drunkard who had just walked out of a Bar.
And in fact, he was indeed that drunkard vomiting at the corner of the wall. He had been wandering the streets, drunk the whole time, and had never left.
There was no haunted house, and there were no monsters. All that terror was merely a drunkard's delusion after drinking, combining the things in his Mind with what he saw and heard before him.
Just like a dream.
Of course, if you look at this setting from the perspective of the "Game" itself, it is not as simple as a "dream." Because when this Instance was designed, there should have been two ways to clear the level.
The first way is the route most Players would choose—using their own combat Strength and Weapon to take down those two hostile NPCs. After that, the Player would find the Key to open the apartment on one of the NPCs, and the Instance would naturally be cleared.
The second way is the exact opposite path: not focusing on combat, but clearing the level entirely through decryption. The key point is to hold out under the attacks of the two fellow villagers until the phone is picked up, and then say the keyword that you want to "surrender."
Only in this way can one escape the delusion after drinking and reach a deeper level of the Plot.
As for why he had to shout "surrender," that was naturally deduced from the various clues in the Instance.
Under Lu Yuan's analysis, this Instance should be telling a story like this:
First, the Player plays an office worker. A few years ago, his wife gave birth to a daughter for him, the one in the photo. At first, life was quite happy. However, the wife's sudden serious illness exhausted all the family's savings in a very short time.
After that, the character played by the Player fell into the most terrifying quagmire of this society: loans, work, a daughter waiting to be fed, and a wife suffering from a serious illness. These Things quickly dragged down the protagonist's body and spirit.
Finally, under various pressure, the protagonist collapsed. That day, he left the home silently and locked the main door of the apartment from the inside.
That apartment was too old, and there were basically no neighbors around, so his wife and daughter could only be imprisoned inside. After that, it was just as depicted in the graffiti.
The wife committed suicide in the apartment.
Perhaps before dying, the wife did not want her daughter to witness her death appearance, or perhaps she was afraid herself, thinking that seeing her daughter right in front of her would make her unable to bring herself to seek death. In short, before this Mother desperately rushed toward death, she locked her daughter, who was only a few years old, in the bedroom.
I do not know how much time passed after that, but out of conscience, or for whatever reason, the protagonist of the story returned to the apartment. And after he opened the apartment door, what he saw was the hanging corpse, the locked room door, the bloody scratch marks inside the door, and the scene of maggots and rot inside the bedroom.
All of this was deeply engraved in his Mind.
In the long years that followed, although the protagonist escaped punishment by some method, this scene could never be forgotten. It would appear in his delusions in various ways, such as in dreams or after drinking.
Finally, after another bout of drinking, the protagonist could no longer stand the condemnation in his heart, so he dragged his drunken body to a phone booth and dialed the police station.
Amidst the "beep~ beep~" of the waiting busy signal, the protagonist saw a spider, saw the white-clad model in the advertisement, heard the noisy screams on the street, and felt the biting cold wind on the road.
All of this, borrowing the drunken state, was uncontrollably woven into that scene that had tormented him in agony.
Lu Yuan leaned against the glass of the phone booth, the drunken state still in his Mind. He knew he had not actually drunk any alcohol; this feeling of dizziness was merely an illusion implanted in his Mind by the game system.
However, this feeling was so real. Now that he thought back, everything he had just experienced in the "drunken state" world was also so real.
So, did those two fellow villagers actually exist?
At the thought of this question, Lu Yuan could not help but smile, because they only existed in a drunkard's ramblings after drinking, and the drunkard himself was not even real.
"Hahaha————"
The curl of his mouth turned into unbridled laughter. Borrowing the drunken state, Lu Yuan vomited in the phone booth, the strong liquor mixed with undigested food spraying onto the glass in front of him, then slowly sliding down in a sticky, disgusting posture. A few Passerby passed by, looking at this drunkard with a look of disgust.
"Hey! Are you guys real?" Lu Yuan shouted through the glass, scaring the Passerby into fleeing quickly.
And just at this moment, a menu appeared out of thin air before Lu Yuan's eyes.
【Main Quest: Leave】
He looked at the two words "Leave." Now, he finally knew why the task of this Instance was so ambiguous, because what you are leaving is not just that haunted house.
Lu Yuan wiped the vomit from the corner of his mouth, turned around, leaned on the glass, and walked out of the phone booth.
The moment his foot stepped out of the phone booth, a checkmark immediately appeared behind the 【Main Quest】, and at the same time, a voice sounded instantly.
"Congratulations, you have left the phone booth and successfully cleared the Instance."
"You will be teleported in 10 seconds."
"10"
"9"
Lu Yuan watched the traffic flow in front of him quietly, waiting for the countdown to end.
As the numbers kept decreasing, the scene in front of him became more and more blurred. Gradually, everything disappeared, including the drunken state in Lu Yuan's Mind.
He discovered that he had returned to his 【Personal Space】, and his appearance and clothing had all returned to their original state.
"So, this is what it feels like." Lu Yuan looked at his hands and mumbled.
Immediately after, he saw a string of Text appear on the screen in front of him.
【Congratulations, you have cleared the level】
【Clearing rewards are being calculated】
【】
【Your overall rating: S】
【Experience Points rewarded: 500】
【Money rewarded: 60】
"Whoa~" Lu Yuan sighed lightly. Although this was his first Instance, because he had spent a day and a night reading Posts online beforehand, he knew very clearly that the clearing reward for a basic Normal Instance was usually around 200 Experience Points, plus 20 to 30 Money. So the reward he had received now was almost double the normal clearing reward.
This reward was very generous, but it was also deserved. After all, getting an S-level rating is not a simple matter. Take this Instance, for example: when a Player sees a Minion rushing toward them, their first reaction is definitely to fight back. Who would be silly enough to let the other party beat them up, and while being beaten, still have to search the whole room for clues?
Of course, you cannot say that no one has ever done that, but those people are basically specifically trying to grind for an S-level rating. But Lu Yuan was different; he really could not win.
Enough talk. After calculating these 500 Experience Points, an Experience Bar appeared on the large screen. He saw the blue trajectory of the Experience displayed on it rise rapidly, rushing straight from 10% at Level 1 to the Apex, reaching Level 2, and then fiercely breaking through the entire Level 2, reaching 20% of Level 3.
Lu Yuan watched his level soar like a rocket and could not help but scratch his head, pondering that this feeling was much better than the F-level rating from before.
And as his level climbed, the various physical stats marked on the screen for Lu Yuan also rose slightly.
However, in "Ark," there is no such thing as adding Stat Points to Strength, Speed, etc. Although these attributes have corresponding values, they cannot be customized at will.
This setting is easy to Explain, because a Player's attributes are a whole. For example, if a person's Strength is very high, then their muscle must be very developed. Driven by such developed muscle, their ability to withstand hits will definitely not be weak.
And like in other games, Agility-based Players are usually thin and light in appearance—and this image is basically nonsense, because without high-intensity muscle training, a person cannot explode with very fast Speed just by being "thin."
Therefore, the attributes of Players in Ark are all growth paths specifically tailored for Players after long-term calculation and deduction. If a person wants to follow the "tank route," they have to hold a heavy shield and resist on the front line of the attack. Unless you are a person who plays with guns in reality, even if your level is high, you cannot directly become a Sniper.
Lu Yuan looked at his level and the 【61】 Money in his funds, nodded very satisfied, and was wondering if he should go to the Shop to see if there were any Weapons. He did not want to be chased and beaten by fellow villagers empty-handed like in the last Instance.
But just as he thought of this, the screen in front of him flashed again, and a gift package image tied with a bow suddenly appeared.
【Because you obtained an S-level rating in the previous Instance, you can receive a random reward gifted by the system】
【Rewards include but are not limited to: Gold Coin, Equipment, Experience, Skill, etc.】
【Number of draws: 1】
Lu Yuan looked at the glowing gift on the screen. Besides being pleasantly surprised, he did not hesitate much and immediately reached out to click on this pattern.
There is no Reason to refuse a free prize.
However, the moment his finger touched the gift.
With a "whoosh" of dizziness, Lu Yuan only felt his vision go black and instantly lost consciousness.
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