Chapter 2 (Volume 22) Weird Town

The unknown small village in front of me was filled with a lavender mist that was so thick that it couldn't be dissolved. This mist was very strange. When you are outside the village, you can't even see the thick fog, but as soon as you step into the obvious dividing line at the entrance of the village, the rolling thick fog will appear in front of you the next moment, covering everything five meters away. Covered in nothingness. As for the dividing line at the entrance of the village...

This is not actually a line, but the boundary between two different states. Outside this boundary, outside existence, everything is normal. The ground is brown soil, green plants are growing outside, the sun is hanging in the sky, and the weather is very good. Although it was almost evening, the light was still very strong and even made people a little hot.

However, inside this dividing line, the ground instantly turned into a kind of brown-red mud, as if it were the product of mud stirred with plasma and re-solidified. The plants on the ground were all a half-faded off-white color, looking a bit like ancient pencil sketches. The sun was still in the sky, but the intensity of the light was like the environment seen with dark sunglasses. It was gloomy and had a cold feeling. Coupled with the fog that blocks the view, this is exactly the rhythm of a ghost house in a deserted village!

If players in the game are afraid of ghosts, they should still be afraid of this one. But in fact, most players are not scared by the so-called ghosts in the game. This does not mean that the ghosts in the game are not strong enough, in fact it is quite the opposite. Unlike the ghosts in the legend who are only phantoms, these ghosts in the game can cause actual damage. According to the legendary level classification, this should be considered the level of a high-level wraith. However, the fact is that players in the game are rarely scared by these powerful ghosts, because to them, they are just monsters.

"Zero" is not a horror game. People's fear of ghosts often comes from their imagination of the unknown rather than a substantial threat. According to this principle, ghosts that can be seen but cannot be touched are actually far scarier than ghosts that can actually fight you. Once the player attacks the fool, they discover that they can damage the opponent. Then the fear will immediately decrease. And it's very fast. In addition, people's fear of ghosts often comes from the psychological pressure caused by the environment. Give a simple example. The same horror movie can be watched by a person hiding in an abandoned old house on a thunderstorm night, or at noon on a scorching sun. Watch with a large group of people in a downtown square. This feeling of horror will definitely be different. If you watch it in the former way. Even a bad ghost movie can probably scare a lot of people, and even if there is no ghost movie, many people will be scared to tears. And the latter...even the world's top ghost movies probably wouldn't scare people in this environment.

It is precisely because people's fear needs these conditions to inspire, and the ghosts in "Zero" are all classified as undead creatures. In fact, they are monsters for players to level up, but they are in a special shape. Therefore, without a suitable atmosphere, no matter how strange these undead creatures look, they are actually not scary to people. After all, "Zero" is a fighting game rather than a horror game, and the designers did not deliberately create a horror atmosphere from the beginning. In an environment with high visibility, even if a large group of well-armed players encounter skeletons, zombies, and ghosts, they can roar and rush up to them and beat them all into experience points. How can this be done in such a situation? What fear exists?

However, the current situation is a little bit more troublesome. Although it is not yet certain whether there are undead creatures in the deserted village in front of us, at least the atmosphere is quite scary right now.

Maybe they themselves didn't notice that since entering this village, the distance between Christina, Jin Coin, and me has been getting closer and closer. It used to be that the distance between the four of us was more than one meter, but now it's almost like the three of them are walking close to me. Although their expressions didn't seem to change, I knew that they were actually starting to get scared. This has nothing to do with strength, it is purely a matter of reaction. Most girls have no resistance to such things, just like most women are afraid of bugs.

Although they were a little scared, Christina and the others did not say anything right away. Instead, they still insisted on walking forward with me with a straight face. Except for me, the three women at the scene had obviously entered a fighting state. . The light blue light on the Tianzun Sword in Jin Coin's hand, the golden light that flashes from time to time on Zhen Hong's body, and the surging magic power on Christina's body all tell me very clearly that these three strong women are almost there now. collapsed.

Although I haven't been attacked yet, I know that if this continues, it will definitely be bad if a battle breaks out. Given the current situation of these three people, as long as there is any slightest sign of trouble, they will definitely throw their strongest attack at them without hesitation. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary accidents, I must do something first.

"Emenis." After summoning Emenes, I pointed forward and said, "Clear the illusion. In addition, help the three of them create a visual filter."

Emenes glanced ahead, then suddenly murmured something in her mouth and took two steps forward. Then she suddenly stretched out her right index finger and pointed forward. A white halo of light instantly rippled out from between her fingers, and this halo was not There was only one line, but with the appearance of the first line, it began to spread outward very quickly at a speed of three lines per second. Each of these apertures spreads out and hits the white fog, which will immediately push the fog back a certain distance. As the apertures continue to push outward, the fog covering the entire village will soon be completely covered. After pushing it out, the visibility returned to normal in an instant, but the sunlight was still so gloomy, as if the sun was about to go out.

As the visibility increased, the expressions of Christina and the three of them began to soften obviously, and they seemed to have just discovered their gaffe, and were very surprised to put away their power.

After Amynis successfully expelled the fog, she immediately turned to Christina and said, "Don't resist, I'll just add a visual filter for you."

So-called visual filtering is an illusion. It's just different from ordinary illusions. Ordinary illusions are added to the target object to confuse the enemy, but this illusion is added to one's own eyes, with the purpose of allowing one's own vision to be adjusted according to one's own needs. For example, if I am fighting in a completely dark environment, I can ask Ermenis to add this visual filter to our unit, and then share my perfect dark vision with the other party's visual filter, so that the other party can see The picture is converted through the picture seen through my eyes, which is equivalent to indirectly sharing the dark vision.

In fact, in addition to night vision, this skill has many other uses. For example, the method we are using now is one of them. The effect is to mess with environment variables. Modify environmental atmosphere information.

Christina was frightened by her surroundings, so Amynis added a visual effects-like filter to her. After this filtering was added, the sky that Christina saw returned to a sunny state, and the colors of the plants and ground returned to normal. Of course none of this is true. Rather, what Christina actually sees is visually processed through that visual filter. It makes what you see become what it is now.

After the visual effects were modified, Christina and the gold coins immediately returned to normal. The interference of these things is equivalent to destroying the atmosphere in the ghost movie. Although the ghost movie is still the same ghost movie, it is like watching a ghost movie in a square. It doesn't feel scary at all.

"Phew, this feels much better." Because the atmosphere was getting more and more depressing, the three of them didn't notice that their chats were getting less and less. In the end, everyone calmed down and just focused on paying attention to the people around them. environment, I am afraid that something will suddenly pop out from somewhere and scare me. Of course, even if something did pop up, given the strength of the three of them, they would probably be slapped to death. However, before it actually appeared, they were quite frightened by their imaginations.

Without that terrifying atmosphere, our movements immediately became faster. Anyway, our sight range has been restored, our strength is here again, and we don't have to worry about any problems.

The previous player said that the mission location was in the center of the village, so we didn’t stop and jogged all the way to the center of the village. This mountain village is not big. The center of the village is just a small square of more than 200 square meters, and a large area of ​​the center is taken up by a well.

This well is slightly different from our common open wells. It is an outdoor well. The wellhead is surrounded by a black stone that reaches knee height. There is also a well above the wellhead. A hand-cranked hoist with a rope tied to it and a bucket hanging from it. There is a roof above the rope reel, which is larger than the wellhead. It is an all-wooden structure, but it is obviously very worn and sparse like a rib plate.

As soon as we arrived here, we saw the player who discovered the mission. This guy was squatting on the edge of the well and looking around nervously. When he saw us appearing, he ran over excitedly. Obviously, he was quite scared here alone before, but in addition to the scary atmosphere in this place, there wasn't even a little monster, so naturally it wouldn't cause any actual damage. However, the more there is no situation, the more frightening it will be. The fact that this guy can hold on until now is considered to have very good willpower.

"Where is the mission?"

"It's right inside." The player pointed to a house next to him, and then said: "The only living person inside is the person who issued the mission. So what, President, since you are here, I will leave first. This ghost I can’t stay in this place for a minute!”

I nodded and said: "It doesn't matter. It's already very good that you have persisted until now. The God of War has added 500 guild contribution points to you, so you can go back first."

After the member thanked him, he didn't care whether it was a waste or not. He unfolded a scroll of return to the city and walked away. He didn't want to stay in this damn place for a second.

After the player teleported away, the four of us walked towards the house he pointed to. This is a Japanese-style wooden house. The ground is higher than the outside. It is supported by many wooden piles below. The floor of the room is actually more than a foot high from the ground.

Anyway, there was no one here, so we didn’t follow any rules and just walked into the corridor outside the house with our shoes on. I was at the front, opened the door in front, and was immediately hit by the smell of revenge that made me almost fall out.

This room is much darker than outside. There is almost no furniture in the small house, and more than half of the wall opposite has collapsed. From the front, it looks nothing, but from the back, it is almost a ruin.

Although this house is actually not much different from a ruin, there are still people inside, but this person... is not much different from a ghost.

There used to be five people in the room, but now four of them had turned into corpses. One of them is on the left side of the gate, hanging by a rope from the beam. His eyes are wide open, his tongue is hanging out, and his body has begun to swell and fester. It has obviously been there for some time, and it smells bad. Most of it comes from it.

In addition to the one hanging at the door, there are three corpses on the floor of the room. One of them should be a mother and son, hugging each other and huddled in the corner, but now there is only a pile of rotten flesh and bones. There is no human appearance at all. If the bones were not still there, I wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. What it is.

The last corpse fell in the center of the room. It seemed that he had not been dead for a long time. He seemed to have committed suicide, and the method used was the most common method of suicide in Japan: caesarean section. This guy's hand was still holding the handle of the long knife that was pierced through his abdomen.

In addition to the four corpses, there is one living person left, but if no one tells him, most people will regard this as a corpse at first sight. As for the reason...is it strange that a skeleton with a layer of skin is regarded as a corpse?

From the clothes and hairstyle, it can be seen that the last living person is a female, and she is not very old. But at this time, I feel that this is just a skeleton covered with a layer of human skin, and it really has nothing to do with the girl.

Hearing the sound of us opening the door, the girl skeleton immediately turned her eyes towards us. When I saw the other party's reaction, I immediately took the initiative to walk over. After I got closer, the other party whispered very slowly in a very dry voice: "You are finally here. I thought I couldn't hold on to your arrival! I beg you to help us poor people and relieve our suffering. Bar!"

"We really want to help you, but what happened to you? How can we help?" (To be continued...)