Chapter 54: Omen of the Apocalypse

The dungeon settlement was complete, and just as Wu Chang was preparing to leave, a prompt popped up before his eyes.

"Player cleared the C-rank dungeon in 45 minutes, setting a new fastest record for clearing C-rank dungeons in the Wilderness. This record will be entered into the leaderboard. Does the player wish to make their game nickname public?"

"Refuse."

He checked the previous fastest clear record for a C-rank dungeon, which stood at 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 45 seconds.

That was less than three hours slower than him.

Looking back, he had indeed taken quite a few shortcuts when clearing it.

By using the resentment in the mountains as signposts, he had completed Main Quest 1: Head to Huaigu Village at least a day and a half faster than others.

The subsequent trip to Chen Family Village and back had saved him nearly another four days.

That wasn't even counting how he had pushed the Year-End Festival to start a month early.

Unsurprisingly, after taking the record for the fastest C-rank dungeon clear, he had also taken the record for the lowest-level clear of a C-rank dungeon.

He had pushed the previous record of level 10 down to level 8.

After similarly refusing to display his identity information, he left the Crimson Courtyard and returned to the real world.

Player Nickname: Don't Eat Beef.

Player Level: 10 (0/2600)

(4100/1900) — (2200/2200) — (0/2600)

Titles: Perfectionist, Master of Breaking the Game.

Health: 21, Strength: 20, Agility: 15, Stamina: 16, Energy: 14, Inspiration: 90, Willpower: 64, Free Attribute Points: 0, Rotten Silver Coins: 5000.

Skills: Mamba Iron Elbow, Firearms Proficiency (Skilled).

Cultivation Method: Fragment of Thunder Method (E).

Items: Silver Dawn, Favor of the Goddess of Luck, Echo of the Whisperer x1, Poison of the Mortal, New Recruit Manual of the Arcane Knights, Soul-Cleansing Command Flag, Four-Directional Year-Fire Lamp, Shadow-Reflecting Human Face.

Talents: Deliverance, Calamity.

Wu Chang glanced at his attribute panel and gave a vigorous stretch.

The first thing to do after leaving a dungeon was to get a good day's rest.

It was still early before his esports hotel room expired, so he tore open a bag of potato chips, twisted open a bottle of "fatty happy water," and lit up his computer screen.

Happy hour was about to begin.

In the evening, near checkout time, Wu Chang's phone rang. He glanced at the contact, answered the call, and asked:

"Hui-zi, what's up?"

"Boss, I haven't seen a shadow of you all day. What are you so busy with?"

Wu Chang: "Job interviews. I'm not like you; if I can't find a job, I can only go home and inherit the family business."

"What kind of work?"

"Funeral industry." Wu Chang wasn't lying; he had just sent off a whole village and dug a pit to bury Chi Yuan, so calling it the funeral industry shouldn't be a problem.

Fang Hui felt like he was being played and retorted irritably: "Sales, where the second box is half price, right? Alright, stop bullshitting. You free tonight?"

"That depends on what it's for."

"Seven o'clock tonight at Golden Fishery Village. Seafood, king crab, all you can eat."

"Then I must be free."

After hanging up and checking out of the esports hotel, Wu Chang strolled toward Golden Fishery Village.

Golden Fishery Village was an iconic restaurant near Wanghai University, and its defining characteristic was one word: expensive.

The upside was that it didn't scam the poor.

With an average cost of several hundred to a thousand per person, if Wu Chang didn't exchange his Rotten Silver Coins for cash, he would have to rely on micro-loans to afford a meal there.

Only by sponging off a big spender like Fang Hui could he ever get through the door.

He looked at the opulent sign of Golden Fishery Village and unconsciously clenched his fists.

If his life had followed a normal trajectory—mundane interviews, working, being a corporate slave—he probably would never have come here to spend money in his entire life.

But now, the Deliverance talent and the Abyss Game had given him this opportunity, allowing him to reach places even higher than this in the future.

If heaven gives and you do not take, you will suffer the consequences.

If he couldn't gain a firm foothold in the Abyss Game, he might as well die in a dungeon.

Just as he was looking solemn, brows furrowed, as if making some kind of resolution, an annoying voice sounded from behind him.

"Boss, is that look on your face because you're constipated or have a stomachache?"

Wu Chang rolled his eyes and looked at the "Sleeping Dragon and Fledgling Phoenix" of 426 behind him.

The perfectly good atmosphere had been ruined by these guys.

Forget it; he wasn't a battle-crazed player anyway. Being cautious and playing the "old six" was his style.

Detaching himself from that inexplicable battle-crazed state, he sensed something was wrong.

The Abyss Game seemed to be subtly influencing his thoughts, making him more submissive to his own desires, more aggressive, and tempting him to commit more thoroughly to the Abyss Game.

For a moment just now, he had even had the thought that to explore the Abyss Game, he could stop at nothing, and whoever dared to block his path, he would eliminate. With his 64 points of Willpower, he was still being influenced by the Abyss Game; he dared not imagine what would happen to ordinary players after staying in the Abyss Game for a long time.

He shivered, and the words "Little Red" had said in the public plaza suddenly echoed in his ears.

"Living in a collapsing world, humanity will sooner or later be consumed by power. The bosses in the dungeons have already demonstrated this more than once."

Combined with his experience just now, this sentence felt like the trumpet of an apocalypse.

An indescribable sense of suffocation surged up, just like at the Moonlight Sanatorium when he stared directly at Lyman's true form and his gaze could see through it to realize Lyman's true essence was actually countless intertwined emotions.

At this moment, the opposite of that time with Lyman occurred; through the inexplicable emotions rising in his heart, he caught glimpses of certain scenes in a trance.

He couldn't understand what he was seeing, but he was certain it was a corner of the future.

He could only see a corner; he couldn't glimpse the full picture.

A sky full of red—he couldn't distinguish if it was the red of resentment, the red of the Crimson Courtyard, or some other, deeper red.

Everything he saw was being eroded by that smear of red.

He didn't know what that red represented, only that the things he saw absolutely must not happen.

For that, he had to do something.

Before he could sink further into the vision, he used his Willpower to forcibly shake off the hallucination.

Damn, my Inspiration is a bit too high; I saw some weird stuff.

He took a deep breath, turned his head, and said: "Hui-zi, I want to eat fish."

Fang Hui waved a hand, "Consider it done!"

The group arrived at the reserved private room, and soon they learned the purpose of Fang Hui's dinner party today.

He had brought the policewoman who had saved him during the emergency evacuation.

Fang Hui's girlfriend was named Meng Yawen; she had a neat short haircut, carried herself with competence, and looked heroic and spirited.

If you asked an AI to generate a "policewoman" look and it didn't use Meng Yawen as a template, it meant the AI still needed more training.

As per usual, those who could catch Fang Hui's eye were never ordinary people.

Meng Yawen worked at the Wanghai City General Bureau. She had been a soldier, a special forces soldier at that, and after retiring, she returned to Wanghai City and joined the Wanghai General Bureau.

Fang Hui introduced her nonchalantly, but with a little thought, one could tell this girl's background was quite deep.

While eating, Fang Hui talked about what he wanted to do after graduation.

Under his uncle's guidance, he wanted to be an adventure vlogger, specializing in filming special natural landscapes that had only recently been discovered.

In the last half-year, many strange natural landscapes had begun to appear all over the world. These landscapes were bizarre, with an aesthetic different from other beautiful scenery on Blue Star, as if they came from another world.

Abyss Game players like Wu Chang knew these landscapes were the products of dungeons losing control and eroding reality, left behind after the erosion crisis was resolved.

But the official explanation called them special areas that had not been explored by humans before.

As these special areas continued to increase, whether on Douyin, Kuaishou, or Bilibili, there were groups of video creators using them as material for their videos.

Wu Chang felt a bit worried after hearing this. Those places had been dungeons, after all; even if the overt erosion crisis was resolved, who knew what hidden dangers might be lurking.

"Hui-zi, I always feel those places are strange. What if there's radiation or toxins? Your Yawen is an official, she definitely knows more than I do. You should listen to her opinion."

He tried to get Meng Yawen to join him in dissuading Fang Hui, but who knew Meng Yawen wouldn't care at all, saying instead:

"It's fine. Whatever Fang Hui likes to do, let him do it. It just so happens I like exploring too. I'll accompany him when he goes, so there's no need to worry about accidents."

Fang Hui was very moved after hearing this and held Meng Yawen's hand.

"Yawen, no matter where we go, I'll be with you."

Watching the two being all lovey-dovey, the private room was instantly filled with a sour smell.

The sour smell of jealousy.

Seeing that he couldn't persuade them, Wu Chang had no choice but to give up.

After dinner, Fang Hui and Meng Yawen disappeared, leaving only the three single dogs to return to the dormitory together.

He Wei muttered: "A love saint is a love saint. In just half a month, he can hook up with his target of choice."

Wu Chang patted He Wei on the shoulder and comforted him:

"Look on the bright side, Fang Hui only has one Meng Yawen, while your computer and external hard drive have thousands of teachers waiting for you. You've already won too much."

He Wei: "Damn it!"

In the days that followed, it took Wu Chang two days to recover from the scenes he had seen during that burst of Inspiration.

Anything he saw that day—if an ordinary person took even a glance, their sanity would instantly hit zero.

It was only because it was him that he didn't collapse after seeing it, and his Willpower attribute even increased by 30 points.

Wu Chang, having regained his spirits and turned back into a sunny, cheerful boy, glanced at his attribute panel, and his mood became unpleasant.

A very urgent and very realistic problem was laid out before him.

He had no money left.

(End of chapter)