EM CH43

Chapter 43: Point-Deducting Moves

Yu An gazed off in a daze at the sun banner swaying atop the lighthouse. Inside the Illusion Chamber, the textures and scenery of the game had turned unmistakably real, soft particles of dusk light drifting through his fingers and vanishing in an instant.

The fabric of his sleeves had transformed into coarse linen, shifting from the Pure Black Hood into the attire of an old-century traveler, though the Pure Black Hood’s special effect remained intact—the traveler’s cloak kept his face shrouded in shadow.

Among the supplementary stages released in the Grey Crow: Dollhouse demo, there were three scenarios in total, and the one Yu An had played the least was this very stage: Lost Town. Not only was the recommended party size four players, but as the final stage of the currently released build, it carried the highest difficulty and posed a huge risk of wiping during a livestream.

The final boss of Lost Town was notoriously brutal to fight, boasting massive attack hitboxes, relentless combos, and blistering movement speed. Yu An had spent an entire afternoon grinding against this boss, only managing to chip it down into its berserk low-HP phase where it slaughtered indiscriminately—pure torture for both viewers and streamers alike.

This was a calculated design choice by the developers. The final boss of Lost Town, named the Lake of the Dead Parasite, had been deliberately overtuned in both health pool and combat AI to provoke the competitive pride of hardcore players, ensuring nobody could mock Grey Crow: Dollhouse as “too easy” before the official release even launched.

Ordinary players didn’t actually have to challenge the final boss at all; simply climbing a treacherous, rugged trail allowed them to clear the stage.

To satisfy his audience, that streamer Huang Qi had once filmed a dedicated video using a cheat engine to max out his character’s combat stats and curb-stomp the Lake of the Dead Parasite—critting for 999 damage per swing, thoroughly satisfying—and had even modded a custom texture skin onto his traveler avatar, replacing the cloak with a giant pink bow perched atop his head.

Later, the company caught wind of it and issued him an internal warning, leaving Huang Qi to sheepishly set the video to private.

Yu An tested clenching and opening his hands; the tactile sensation differed not a hair from reality. Weeds grew thick through the cracks of the cobblestone road underfoot. Perched atop a massive boulder outside the desolate town meant for weary travelers to rest sat Zhao Ran, likewise gazing up at the sun banner fluttering on the distant lighthouse.

Although everyone’s role in this scenario was a traveler, their outfits varied. Zhao Ran wore a short-brimmed painter’s beret on his head, with a wooden art box slung cross-body over his shoulder.

Walking over to him, Yu An picked a spot on the boulder, hopped up to sit down, and swung his calves back and forth.

“You’re looking pretty lively. Does it still hurt?” Tilting his head, Zhao Ran asked.

Swinging his legs nonchalantly, Yu An replied, “What? Did you even use any strength? Why didn’t I feel anything?”

Reaching a hand to the inside of Yu An’s upper thigh, Zhao Ran gave it a firm pinch. A jagged set of teeth marks had been left right there; Yu An promptly clamped his legs shut and sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“Stubborn mouth.” Zhao Ran curved his eyes in a teasing tone as if bantering with a child, clearly harboring not a shred of remorse.

A faint buzz hummed near their ears, as though a voice were circling inside their minds. Concentrating closely, Yu An picked out the voice of the Security Technology intern, Yong Zheng, amidst the static:

“Attention. Your physical bodies are inside the empty Illusion Chamber at the circus, while your consciousnesses have been linked into the Grey Crow: Dollhouse game Illusion Chamber. You must proceed with extreme caution inside this dual Illusion Chamber.”

“The scenario has been completely sealed—entry only, no exit. The sole exit lies within the Plague Village stage. Signal me once you’ve taken care of the Aberrant, and only then will I open the exit.”

“Once I confirm the link is stable, I’ll link the reserve interns into the scenario as well. Pay attention to identification.”

“The interior of the Illusion Chamber is complex. Backgrounds, textures, and NPCs that couldn’t be interacted with in the original game will all materialize physically, which is very likely to bring unexpected dangers. Stick to safe routes you’re familiar with as much as possible.”

“You need to sweep through all three scenarios in sequence, flush out the target Aberrant, and then disconnect via the exit.”

“Remember: sustaining injuries here is even more severe than real-world wounds—it directly damages cranial nerves, so exercise utmost caution with every step. I cannot see your actual situation from my end, and our comms will sever automatically after ten minutes, leaving me unable to provide real-time assistance. Everything will depend on your ability to improvise.”

As the timer ran out, the electric static vanished along with Yong Zheng’s voice. Dead silence fell all around them, leaving only the dry rustle of withering leaves under the dusk sky.

Hopping down from the boulder, Yu An scooped up a handful of gravel, discerning the path leading into town across the ground blanketed in short, withered grass. Baked by the lingering light, the dry weeds gave off an earthy, warm scent.

Habitually reaching toward his waist, he realized the Core Storage Analyzer wasn’t on him. Equipment outside the body couldn’t be brought inside. Fortunately, he had prepared ahead of time, slotting a core directly into his eye socket beforehand.

It was the Illusion Chamber Core: Drawing Into Reality, obtained from clearing the beauty salon Illusion Chamber—the sole silver-tier core in Yu An’s possession with unlimited uses. Since the Arrogant Bat couldn’t be brought in and none of the other cores in his Core Storage Analyzer were unlimited, securing another combat-enhancing core would be ideal.

The agony brought on by linking with a silver-tier core for the first time had lingered for a long while. In truth, when Zhao Ran had asked earlier if it still hurt, he had been referring to this—it was the little pervert himself whose mind had wandered into the gutter. Linking the silver core to his socket had sent him pitching straight forward, blood seeping from his left eye, mouth, and nose to smear across Zhao Ran’s chest. Yet when trapped in truly unbearable pain, no tears fell at all; he merely buried his face against Zhao Ran’s chest, panting weakly and raggedly.

Stroking him gently stroke by stroke, Zhao Ran had weighed whether the benefits he could offer the boy matched the pain he was enduring—was all this suffering he could have been spared truly worth it to him?

Only after finally weathering the brutal refractory period had Yu An lifted his face, the silver iris of his left eye gleaming with a pale luster and sweat drenching his forehead, wrapping his arms around Zhao Ran’s waist and laughing aloud: “Ran-ge, feeling that guilty? I’m working under you—you owe me this, and you’ll have to pay me back with your body later. Starting today, when I hold your hand, you aren’t allowed to shake me off.”

Refusing would have been a waste of breath; the kid had a hundred ways to wear him down until he agreed, and Zhao Ran knew his temperament best.

Following the desolate cobblestone road deeper into the town, the eerie, suffocating quiet felt deeply unsettling. At dusk, the setting sun had lingered along the horizon for far too long without ever sinking, yet the dim amber light grew steadily darker.

The town was completely drained of vitality. Ancient, spire-roofed Western-style houses stood staggered along the streets, their plaster peeling from dampness, rust streaks from rain erosion staining the walls beneath second-story windows like trickles of dried blood in the dim light.

Suddenly, a face appeared behind the exact windowpane Yu An was staring at.

It was the face of an elderly man, eye sockets deeply sunken, skin parched and wrinkled. It appeared some residents who hadn’t moved away still remained in the town. Seemingly disturbed by the arrival of foreign travelers shattering the town’s quiet, the old man glared down at them with icy, venomous eyes. Twisting his torso, he seemed to intend to open the window and curse them out.

Yet he didn’t use his hands to unfasten the iron window latch—instead, he used his mouth, clamping his toothless, shriveled gums desperately around the latch in an attempt to pry the window open.

The bizarre gesture defied all comprehension. Lingering no longer beneath the window, Yu An grabbed Zhao Ran’s hand and bolted.

“Mm…” Caught off guard as Yu An seized his hand tightly and sprinted forward, Zhao Ran had no choice but to run along beside him, mystified as to why.

“I never saw that old man NPC in the game. Better keep our distance.”

Reaching a crossroads, they brushed past several children riding unicycles cheerfully past them. Yet while their expressions looked joyful, they uttered not a single sound—because some held a bag of candies clamped in their mouths, while others gripped a pinwheel between their teeth; had they opened their mouths, whatever they carried would have dropped to the ground.

“None of these NPCs ever appeared in the game either.” Reaching out, Yu An brushed his fingers over a rusted old street sign by the roadside. In the game, such props were rendered merely as red-and-white blocks, yet after physically linking in, the lettering painted across them was clearly legible.

The names of every district and street in the small town were painted distinctly onto the signposts—Grey Crow Company’s attention to environmental detail was almost absurdly thorough.

“During an interview, the Grey Crow dev team mentioned this scenario was modeled after a real-world location,” Yu An speculated casually. “They only said they referenced an ancient, secluded haunted town, and several crew members got injured while scouting and photographing on site. Could the Illusion Chamber have reconstructed the true appearance of the actual town along with its original inhabitants?”

Standing before the signpost, Zhao Ran propped his chin in his hand, scrutinizing the place names one by one: “If that’s all it is, there’s nothing to fear. What worries me are the parts that differ.”

Canals crisscrossed the town, dividing the buildings into distinct sectors separated by waterways of varying widths. To reach the lighthouse at the town’s perimeter, they had to cross a filthy canal.

Waves of putrid stench hung heavy in the air. Floating across the water’s surface were countless platter-sized black spheres, their surfaces smooth and elastic.

“Those are man-eating tadpoles.” Leaning down to inspect them, Yu An explained, “Standard mobs in this stage—they lurk in the canals. Anywhere there’s water, you’ll find these things. Anyone who falls in gets torn apart and devoured in a feeding frenzy, so wading across is impossible.”

“Actually, their proper name is He’aopisi. They really are vicious, though calling them man-eating tadpoles is pretty fitting.” Squatting by the canal edge, Zhao Ran picked up a wooden stick and poked the surface of a black sphere. The round black mass rolled once, abruptly splitting open a massive maw lined with razor-sharp fangs across its surface and snapping the tip of the stick clean off.

“That wasn’t written in the lorebook…”

“They’re creatures from my hometown,” Zhao Ran smiled.

Hearing this, Yu An crouched down again in curiosity. Through the narrow gaps between the tadpoles densely carpeting the water’s surface, something was glowing faintly on the riverbed below. He wanted to find something to fish it out, yet whether wooden stick or iron rod, the moment anything dipped into the man-eating tadpoles’ territory, it was bitten cleanly in two.

Left with no choice, he abandoned the idea temporarily to look for a way across the river.

Not far away, standing atop a stepping platform in the middle of the canal, was a tall, obese man cradling a swaddled infant in his arms. Waving at the two of them, he boomed loudly: “Want to cross the river? Have a heart—spare me five hundred yuan to buy milk powder for my kid, and I’ll step aside!”

“The Beggar.” Yu An read out the NPC’s name. This bald man was a scripted character in the game—appearing to beg while actually extorting travelers, blocking the sole stepping platform across the canal and refusing to budge unless paid five hundred yuan.

Passing this spot wasn’t actually difficult for players; five hundred yuan wasn’t much in-game, easily farmed by killing a few man-eating tadpoles. Ordinarily, Yu An bypassed him by exploiting a glitch—using precise micro-movement to clip his avatar around the corner edge of the Beggar’s hitbox and jump straight across, saving both money and time.

“For two people, he’ll demand a thousand before moving. We have no weapons to farm man-eating tadpoles, and we can’t afford to waste too much time here.”

Although Zhao Ran had entered alongside him, his role remained that of the examiner grading the intern’s third assessment test; unless it came down to a life-or-death crisis, he wouldn’t offer Yu An excessive assistance.

Thinking it over for a second, Yu An glanced back to steal a peek at Zhao Ran.

That look was identical to a dog checking whether its owner was nearby before tearing up the furniture.

Zhao Ran instantly grasped his intent: he wanted to knock the Beggar straight into the water. Anyone else might have held back out of consideration for the infant in his arms—only Yu An definitely wouldn’t.

Yet the Beggar was tall and massively built, several times broader than Yu An. Lacking both weapons and combat-enhancing cores, Zhao Ran didn’t believe Yu An dared take such a risk.

Even thinking so, Zhao Ran still readied himself to catch Yu An before he hit the water.

Calculating the distance precisely, Yu An shot forward from the water’s edge. Just as he had executed countless times inside the game, he planted a foot briefly on the rim of the stone platform, pushing off with the momentum to leap toward the opposite bank.

The sole detail beyond Zhao Ran’s expectations was that as Yu An left the stepping platform, his left hand darted out at lightning speed, snatching the swaddled infant straight out of the burly Beggar’s arms.

Stunned into stillness, the Beggar hastily twisted his torso toward the direction Yu An had vanished.

Landing squarely on the opposite bank, Yu An spun around and abruptly loosened his left hand. Slipping free from the swaddling cloth, the infant plummeted toward the canal—only to be caught by the ankle by Yu An the exact millisecond before hitting the water, dangling upside down in midair.

“You—” Panicking, the burly Beggar threw both arms forward to catch the child. Shifting his weight carelessly, one foot stepped into thin air, and he toppled off the stone platform, sending up a foul, stagnant splash in the center of the filthy canal.

Drawn by the scent of fresh meat, the ravenous man-eating tadpoles surged toward the fallen man in a frenzy, thorn-like fangs tearing relentlessly into their prey. Within seconds, the murky water was dyed a deep crimson.

Utterly unfazed, Yu An took advantage of the tadpoles swarming around the stone platform. Leisurely rolling up his pant legs, he waded into the filthy water toward the spot where the glowing object lay, bending over to grope beneath the surface.

“…”

Frozen in silence for a long moment, Zhao Ran furrowed his brow and ruthlessly docked two points from Yu An on his score sheet.