stjorthotic Chapter 117 [The Miracle Test]
Chapter 117 [The Miracle Test]
Zhang Wei took a deep breath and opened the document.
[Target: ID - Warrior]
Race: Human (?)
【grade:???】
[Health Points: ? ? ? ? ? / ? ? ? ? ? ?]
[Equipment Rating: Legendary (Gold) / Epic (Orange) / Mythical (?)]
[Danger Level: Data overflow, system cannot define.]
[Note: Players are advised not to look directly at the screen to avoid dropping their sanity to zero.]
The screen is full of question marks.
The screen is full of garbled text.
And finally, the system's note, which carried a distinctly human touch of mockery.
"Snap." Zhang Wei's hand fell down, and the expensive virtual scroll turned into light spots and disappeared.
"Guild leader... how's it going? Did you see the stats? Is it an official shill?" The vice-guild leader leaned closer, a glimmer of hope on his face. "As long as the health bar is revealed, we can always..."
"Stop thinking about it." Zhang Wei interrupted him, took off his glasses which were already broken from the battle, and rubbed his temples wearily.
"They're not even in the same dimension." He pointed to the stone axe on the ground, then to the quicksand pit in the distance, formed by the forced alteration of the terrain.
"We were playing Left 4 Dead, fighting zombies with sticks, carefully calculating every drop of stamina we used, and even fighting tooth and nail for a moldy loaf of bread."
Zhang Wei forced a smile that looked more like a grimace.
"They're playing God Simulator or Dynasty Warriors with cheat codes enabled."
"That red mist, if we touch it, we'll delete our accounts and permanently quit the game; but people treat it like a buffet, and even after they're full, they complain that it's a bit too greasy."
"Chase? With what? With our lives? Even if we tie all the players on the server together, one snap of the fingers from that heavily armored guy and we're all gone."
The vice president opened his mouth, but was speechless.
If effort is meaningless, and strategy is a joke in the face of absolute power, then the only truth in this game that claims to be "100% realistic" is that you are just a passerby.
On the other side of the ruins.
Lightning Blade, the top player who boasted on the first day of the server launch that he would get the first kill and become the number one player in the entire server.
He was sitting cross-legged on a broken stone tablet, fiddling with his guild bulletin board.
He deleted the previous announcement.
That was something he wrote two days ago, in a moment of high spirits: "The Elite League is recruiting! Goal: Surpass the 'Pioneer' Squad! We will become the next legend!"
When he pressed the delete key, he felt only relief.
The cursor in the input box blinked as a new pinned announcement was entered.
[The Peak Support Team is now recruiting heroes from all walks of life.]
[Requirements: 1. Loud voice, able to shout "666"; 2. Good mentality, able to watch from a distance without getting scared; 3. Obey commands, go wherever the leader tells us to clean up the battlefield.]
[Slogan: Our greatest victory is being able to cheer on the big boss from afar and come back alive.]
Several core members saw the new announcement and looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Blade Bro... this is too..." an assassin player whispered, "Isn't it too humble? We are at least one of the top three guilds in the entire server in terms of combat power."
"Humble?" Lightning Blade raised his head. "That's called being pragmatic."
He pointed to the battlefield, which was so clean it was almost excessive.
"Didn't you see? Even those NPC clan leaders knelt down, what are we compared to them?"
"Admit it, in this game, some people are born to be the protagonists; what we need to do is not to steal the spotlight, but to cling to the leg that's thicker than our waist."
"And..." Lightning Blade paused, a strange sense of pride creeping into his voice, "Didn't you notice? When that heavily armored man left, he glanced this way; he glanced at us!"
"What does this mean? It means our cannon fodder tactic worked! The boss remembers us!"
The surrounding players fell silent.
An atmosphere known as "Stockholm" is spreading within the guild.
Since you can't beat them, and even looking up at them is too much trouble, you might as well just lie down and enjoy the thrill of being carried away.
Even just smelling the exhaust fumes from behind is better than getting killed by monsters and having to delete your account.
Extend your gaze into the distance.
The edge of the forest.
Not everyone gave up.
There are always some streamers who are willing to risk their lives for traffic, or lone wolves who claim to have unique skills, trying to keep up with the four-person team.
"Guys! This is going to be a huge spectacle!"
The streamer with the ID "King of Wilderness Survival" was yelling at the virtual camera in the air, followed by five or six players with stealth abilities.
"Those four gentlemen have entered the core of the forest! That must be the final chapter of the dungeon! Even if we can't beat them, we can at least spectate!"
"First-hand combat data! Whoever captures it will become the new forum god!"
Under the cover of the fog, the group followed the trail left by the four-person group.
A straight, vacuum tunnel, through which all the trees had been physically crushed, sped forward.
There were no monsters to stop them, because all the living creatures along the way had long since fled under the oppressive aura of that level.
"We're almost there! I see the red light!" The Survivor King exclaimed excitedly, his face flushed.
In the open space ahead, the outline of a huge fleshy heart can be vaguely seen, along with four tiny figures standing there.
He adjusted the lens focus, ready to capture the image.
Just as one of his feet crossed some invisible boundary.
"Buzz—"
Some rule in the air rejected him.
[Passive trigger for Boundary Walker: Spatial Rejection.]
[Judgment: Insufficient space.]
The Survival King felt like he had crashed into a high-speed train traveling at full speed.
No, to be more precise, this space "spit" at him.
The immense elastic force acts directly on every cell.
"Bang!"
The six people were sent flying backwards in an instant, tracing parabolic arcs in the air.
They crashed heavily onto rocks hundreds of meters away, their health bars instantly emptied, without even a chance to revive, and were forcibly logged off as white light.
The live stream camera, which had been running continuously, captured the final scene: no attack came.
It was simply because the woman wearing leather armor had a tiny ripple on her equipment.
They don't even qualify to enter that field.
That battlefield was closed to them.
This scene was broadcast live to hundreds of thousands of online viewers.
The scrolling of comments stopped.
It turns out that the deepest despair is not "I can't beat you".
Instead, it's "I want to see your back as you fight, but even that will be rejected by the rules of the world."
This feeling of helplessness—being unable to even afford a ticket to the "spectator seats"—completely shattered any remaining laughable sense of self-esteem among all players at this stage.
At the respawn point in the valley camp, the streamers who had been killed by bullets walked out one by one, their faces ashen.
A new legend is circulating among the players.
That wasn't some "pro gamer" or a "lucky beta tester".
"These four people... are not players at all."
In a corner, someone whispered.
"They are high-dimensional AIs deployed by game companies to test the limits of their physics engines."
"Or perhaps... the true rulers of this continent, the 'GM Group' that we cannot comprehend."
"This is a test of miracles."
Agnosticism is growing wildly like weeds.
Since we can't understand it, let's mythologize it.
The previously restless player group became unusually quiet and docile at this moment.
They picked up their broken stone axes again and began to diligently polish them; the life-savvy players lit a campfire again and cooked a terrible porridge.
No one is clamoring to be the first to kill someone or to go on an adventure anymore.
Everyone is waiting.
Waiting for the thunder in the east, waiting for those "gods" to decide the fate of this world.
Zhang Wei looked at the distant forest and pushed up the glasses that were no longer on his nose.
"This marks the beginning of a new era."
"However, this time we're not the main characters."