The few seconds of sudden change could be considered a hello before the new player tutorial.
If he were a normal person, when darkness fell without a sign followed by the terrifying voice, he should be startled and scared. The feeling of free falling only existed for a short while, but it was enough to scare the players, making their hearts beat at a frantic pace.
However, Feng Bujue was calm; in fact, he didn’t even flinch.
After the short trembling, the elevator started to descend at a regular speed. Then, a window popped up in front of Feng Bujue’s eyes.
The game’s menu only appeared in the player’s vision, as such, it couldn’t light up the surroundings. Reading the menu was individually private. When a player is reading their menu, even if there are other players standing next to him, they wouldn’t know whether he was considering the options or just mooning over there.
The system didn’t use voice notifications, but instead Feng Bujue saw a reminder in his menu.
[You can open this menu any time. You can find your attributes, status, equipment and items from here.]
At this moment, Feng Bujue saw that his entire menu was almost covered with a gray shadow indicating that they were locked. When the notification disappeared, the top-right corner glowed, and there appeared three same-sized bars, similar to the energy bar.
After which, an arrow appeared, pointing to the first bar, which was a green energy full-bar. Another description appeared.
[This is your Survival Value displayed in percentage. Specific value is not visible. When the Survival Value becomes 0%, your character is considered dead.
Current Survival Value: 100%.
Abnormal status: None.]
The arrow moved to the second bar. This one was also green, but the indicator there was in digits.
[This is your Stamina Value. The specific value could be seen here. Actions like running, hiking, carrying heavy objects, fighting and using skills will consume this value. You can take rest or use other items to recover it.
Current Stamina Value: 100/100].
The third bar, the one which caught Feng Bujue’s attention the most, was empty. [This is your Fear Value, displayed in percentage. When your Fear Value gets over 100% for more than three seconds, you will be forced to quit the game as your character dies.
Current Fear Value: 0%]
Since he had read the basic information on the website before, Feng Bujue just took a glance to finish the description. He then waited for the other sections of the menu to open, but the menu automatically closed after ten seconds, so he had to open it again. Unfortunately, those gray sections didn’t change.
Obviously, the tutorial for new players wasn’t just reading the description and getting used to the user interface in this dark elevator. If not, the system wouldn’t say that ‘the tutorial will be interrupted when the Fear Value is high’.
The elevator soon stopped, but the darkness still remained. Feng Bujue could suddenly hear himself breathing.
The light inside the elevator flickered on for a second then off again.
However, within just one second, the footage that could make people jump and cry in fear appeared on Feng Bujue’s retinae.
‘I bet you still remember that one of the elevator’s walls is a full-length mirror.’ At the moment the light flashed, Feng Bujue saw two people in the mirror.
One was him, definitely. The other was… with a glance, Feng Bujue could confirm that this was a creature standing upright with blood all over its body.
‘Geez, just let it be dark, why show people slyly like that. Just pretend I didn’t see it then.’
If it were someone else, they would scream, collapse on the ground, crouch to the corner, or they would go crazy and start to attack that bloody figure.
However, Feng Bujue still stood there with his unchanged complexion. He mumbled, “Oh… if it is the tutorial, it will not put the player in a deadly situation right at the beginning. At most, players have to spend some health or get scared. Then, something would happen to let the game continue.”
After he had come up with this thought, there was a light that beamed into the elevator booth, which rapidly expanded. When the doors slid open, the smell of something rotten and moldy stormed his nostrils.
Outside of the elevator was a straight corridor decorated with a wooden ceiling and a wallpaper. The patterns on the wallpaper were really bizarre as they looked like realistic human eyes. The floor was covered with green mats, and there were no doors or windows on both sides of the wall. There were some dim wall lamps at a distance from one another.
The corridor seemed to be way long ahead, so those wall lamps far away looked as small as grains of rice. Nevertheless, his vision couldn’t reach over twenty meters; the further places were still hidden in the dark. He needed to get there to have a better view.
A normal player would worm his way out of the elevator even before the doors opened completely. Feng Bujue, however, didn’t hurry. To him, that dreary corridor wasn’t a better choice for a safer place than this elevator. If the surrounding weren’t that dark, he would turn around to see what was standing next to him.
When Feng Bujue just turned his head to watch, he immediately saw ten bloody fingers clawing at his face. He then retracted his neck to duck, squatted before rolling out of the elevator. When he turned around again, he finally saw the shape of that figure.
That was a corpse without skin. The muscles on its body looked like the human anatomy model in a health clinic, however, it was still alive and bleeding.
The elevator’s doors slowly slid shut. The bloody corpse cocked its head and beamed something that looked like a smile while its eyes were staring at Feng Bujue. When the doors were about to close, it stretched one arm out then swayed out of the elevator.
“Logically, I should run now…” Feng Bujue mused, “But this dude doesn’t seem to be strong. Perhaps I should try to hit it?”
The moment the bloody corpse stepped out of the elevator, however, it roared with an immense vigor as it hit the wall of the corridor. The thick wooden wall under the wallpaper was broken, and an intrusion of cockroaches then flooded out from the break.
“Maybe not!” When Feng Bujue caught a glimpse of this, he turned around and immediately ran away.
It was the tutorial, so of course, the main idea was to lead the players to continue the game, not to kill them instantly! In fact, the bloody corpse did that to give the player a short period of time to run away.
The system also predicted some possibilities such as the player would stand transfixed in fear, or he would try to kill that bloody corpse when he saw it under the light. In those cases, the corpse’s move could push the player who was standing still to crawl away from the scene; also, it could eliminate the intention to fight against the bloody corpse from some pugnacious badass.
Of course, if he got scared the sh!t out of himself that he couldn’t get up or just wanted to risk his life, the game would be over. Then, the system would generate a new tutorial.
“First, there’s an eighty percent chance that I couldn’t break that wall. Second, even if I could break that wall, there would be no way out. Third, if I fight this monster, I would die young. Good.” Feng Bujue calculated his chances to get the situation clearer.
It seemed in this new player tutorial, he didn’t have many options.
After he had run for a long distance, Feng Bujue saw the other end of the corridor. A wooden-thick door stood there.
He tried to turn the knob, and it did open. There was no time for him to weigh the dangers behind that door, so he just entered and then thought about it later. The corpse was right behind him; he couldn’t waste time.
At this moment, Feng Bujue abruptly understood that the exact thing to do was to run away right when the elevator’s doors slid open. Staying there for a while just shortened his time, causing him to rush his next move.
He slithered in and closed the door. Inside, he found a steel latch; he immediately grabbed it and locked the door. Almost at the same time, that thing outside started banging the door.
Feng Bujue didn’t bother about it anymore as he turned around to observe the new place.
This was a square room, around sixteen square meters. The interior didn’t have any furniture, and the only notable things in this room were a lamp hanging on the wall and two doors—the bloody corpse was banging on one, and the other door was on the opposite wall.
Feng Bujue came to the only escape door in the room. He pulled the knob and found it was locked. He tried to kick the lock open, but it seemed to be useless. Obviously, he didn’t use enough force. He then guessed that he had to try several times more.
In the next second, the menu suddenly popped up in his vision, and a gray section was unlocked. It displayed a digit, which was, at the moment, zero.
[This is your Skill Value displayed in number. Skill Value can be used as currency and accumulated along with the player’s actions. If your deeds can enhance the process of the game, you will be awarded with Skill Value.
Current Skill Value: 0]
“Giving the reminder on the Skill Value now could be an implication for a shortcut somewhere…” Now, Feng Bujue was looking at his Fear Value on the menu.
0%, nothing had been changed.
Feng Bujue sighed then turned around to look at the door which the bloody corpse was banging. The latch had started to deform, and it seemed like it couldn’t hold any longer. Such pressure from a monster, which could storm in any minute and kill you, could make someone who was watching this game become anxious. However, our man was still calm as an ice cube.
Feng Bujue scrutinized the room one more time.
This almost-empty room indeed had some hints. There was a spot up there in the corner, where the wallpaper was rubbed off. It wasn’t easy to see with a glance, but looking closely, this detail was obvious.
Feng Bujue tip-toed to reaching that spot then ripped off the wallpaper there. He then saw a symbol drawn with blood. That symbol included a loop connected to a branch of a tree, which had the shape of a key.
At this time, a roar came along with the sound of wooden material breaking from behind him. Feng Bue Jue turned around to see one claw of the bloody corpse waving at him after it had broken a bowl-sized hole on the door.
He didn’t know whether it could remove the latch with its intelligence.
This meant that the corpse was about to get into the room. No matter whether he wanted to kick the door or to solve the puzzle, time was running out!
Feng Bujue hurried to nudge the wooden sheet that had the blood symbol, and a real pain suddenly came to him. However, that wooden sheet was brittle; it was broken in just one hit. He had expected to see a flow of insects streaming out from there, but he got nothing except a mist of dust. A small space hid behind that wooden sheet, with a key laid inside.
When Feng Bujue picked up the key, the menu popped up again, and another section was unlocked.
[You’ve found an item. Because your bag and the items bar hasn’t been unlocked, you can only choose between holding it in your hand or throwing it away.]
Then he saw the item’s properties on the section that was just unlocked.
[Name: Rusted Key]
[Type: Consumable item]
[Quality: Normal]
[Function: to open the door]
[Being able to bring out of the scenario: No]
[Remark: I think you know how to use it.]
Feng Bujue thought that the remark was malicious, but he didn’t have time to think more. After he had skimmed over the item’s properties, he closed the menu then ran to the door. When he unlocked the door, the key disappeared.
At the same time, the voice of the system that long hadn’t echoed suddenly arose. “You received 30 points of Skill Value. Notification will only appear one time. Later, you can check your Skill Value on the main menu.”
Feng Bue Jue had no time to check things that he couldn’t use for now. He continued moving forward. Behind the door were some stone steps leading upstairs. The walls were made of stone, and there was no ceiling. He could see the sky at night now. The moonlight was shining on these steps, making them as luminous as snow.
Too bad he couldn’t escape using the walls. The walls were high with a glossy surface, and a distance of over two meters separated the two walls. Apparently, those were to prevent him from climbing up there.
While stepping on the stair, Feng Bujue spent some time to check his Stamina Value. It was reduced to 24/100 now.
He started to calculate in his mind. “After leaving the elevator, I’ve run hundreds of meters, then I kicked the door, broke the wall, and I’m climbing stairs now. Those actions must have consumed three-fourths of my Physical Value.” This consumption speed was much faster than what he had calculated. Also, his Survival Value had been reduced to 98%. It seemed that the system had considered the fact that he was injured from his nudging action.
Just five seconds after Feng BuJue had opened the door, the bloody corpse had broken the door and chased after him, and now, it was laughing sinisterly. The laughter that echoed in his ears was so thrilling, however, Feng Bujue was totally emotionless even with a derangement of this degree.
What stood at the end of the stairs was a cliff, where a giant sword was pierced into the wall. Under the moonlight, the blade was reflecting a gloomy, cold light. When Feng Bujue gazed at the sword, the bloody corpse somehow figured out something as it wildly sped up to him. The distance of dozens of meters was shortened in an instant.
Feng Bujue was running like a hare because he didn’t want to be screwed when he was just about to finish the round.
When he stumbled to the sword, he immediately used both of his hands to grab it before pulling it out. Unexpectedly, the weapon was pretty light, not as heavy as it looked.
He turned around and saw the bloody corpse was approaching. The mournful wail pierced directly into his eardrums as a pair of bloody claws snatched towards him.