The farming site was quiet.
Unfortunately for the players who were just grinding for their level up, it was not the peaceful quiet they had hope, but more like the aftermath of a nuclear fallout that destroyed a family picnic.
Grounds were burned, swords jutted from the ground like grave markers. The faint sound of wind brushed through the distant trees, carrying the ghostly fragments of system notifications that were screaming [You have defeated X player]
I exhaled, fingers twitching from adrenaline and carpal tunnel.
I could not hold it anymore, I must let it out, I can not… Oh my god, oh god, it's coming, it's coming!
"MUHAWHWAHWAAWHWAHWAWGWAHWAHAHWAWHA"
I laughed out loud, standing on top of several deceased players.
"Okay, let's do a headcount," I mumbled while humming to the game's soundtrack from the PC days that I memorized in the back of my mind.
That girl from the Poison Dragon's cave… Hailie, was it? She popped my cherry for the VR version's player kill. That softhearted white-haired ranger girl who gave up her home address like this was Facebook in 2008, sweet girl, big boobs, died confused and pathetic.
1/15
Then the squad in the wood of seven, a tight little group of adventurers trying to farm without fear, all proud of their basic starter gears and poor reaction times.
8/15
That one random mage who snuck up behind me, then the guy with twin blades that tried taking me head-on.
10/15
J97 the guild leader. He was a good one, completely destroyed the confidence and will to fight back of the rest afterwards, would've been poetic to save him for last, but can't help it if he stood in front of me.
11/15
And then, the four out of five who tried to run after J97 fell.
15/15
And that left number sixteen. And I intentionally left the weakest looking one, who had a female avatar.
Female avatar never meant anything in the PC version and all lives mattered the same, but in the VR version? Hwehwehe.
Of course I have to leave her alive.
I glanced over at the last survivor, laying on the ground and panting her lungs out, just on the edge of passing out from all the running, or maybe she was in pain because I struck her throat with the handle of my knife?
She was around half HP if I calculated correctly.
The glossy white trim of her support robes was singed at the edges, and the blue feathers from her hat were drooping. Her legs were bent awkwardly, like she hadn't quite meant to sit and hadn't quite resisted collapse either.
I immediately recognize who it was, considering there wasn't much female characters in the [Lion's Parade]. She was CoffeeCoffeeCoffee. But I heard one of the dead guys calling her DreamDream? Man, these guys have really unoriginal names.
She was breathing hard, cheeks flushed not from battle, but from sheer disbelief. The kind of look you give your screen when you get one-shot by a bugged mob, or when someone exploited something huge and the developer rolled back the progress of the server so you lost 24 hours of farming.
I took a slow step forward.
Grass crunched beneath my boots, coded with crispy and horny-inducing sounds, thanks to the devs' obsessive detail work.
The ground was soft and uneven from the earlier kicking and wrestling, my footprints mingled with many others, overlapping in the massacre.
I stopped about five feet in front of her, and she didn't flinch.
"Fifteen," I giggled maniacally. "You'd make sixteen."
I tilted my head and lick my lips while observing her avatar from top to bottom. She looked like hell, fair enough, because it was yours truly who had personally brought the domain to her doorstep.
[The Fool's Knife] dangled in my fingers as I spun it around like I was showcasing something, it was still stained with fresh blood from her friends and comrades.
I then crouched, squatted down right next to her half-immobile body and put the blade right near her beautiful cheek.
"Hey~" I said softly, cutely, beautifully, and friendly, I think. "You wanna live?"
She looked up at me, her eyes full of suspicion and fire, and she didn't speak so I continued:
"I'll let you live… If you give me a little kiss on the cheek."
Her face was neutral, leaning on anger. But when I finished muttering those words, it immediately changed to absolute disgust and repulsion.
I leaned in a little, letting my grin stretch crooked. "I'm kidding," I said. "Unless you're into that."
Still no answer.
Was I acting weird? No way right? I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to ask someone, especially if they wanted to keep their character alive. I was just giving her a chance! I am a very reasonable and thoughtful woman!
I tried to flirt with her in a non-creepy way… Uh, okay, maybe in a slightly creepy way, but anyways, I respected her. Most would scream, beg, run, or just freeze and accepted their death with the sad inertia of a bad internet connection. She hadn't done any of that.
She just watched me with disgust, an emotion that broke my heart.
So I stood.
"Alright then," I said, flicking my knife up, catching it by the handle mid-air. "I respect your answer."
I actually don't, but that was a cinematic thing to say.
I turned my back on her and started walking toward the forest, heading back to the Catacombs.
But I stopped just after a few steps to make sure I was in range of her hearing for these next words:
"Tell what's left of your guild what happened here, tell the others, too, no matter if it's [DarkHeavens], the greatest player, or the strongest guild ever, [Destiny]. Tell them…"
DreamDream didn't move, but her head tilted slightly, as if bracing herself.
"Tell them the final boss isn't at the [Labyrinth of Eternity]. But she's out there, among them, grinding EXPs."
I smiled wider.
"I'm leaving you alive on purpose. So that someone will remember."
She was too stunned to answer… Perfect! Mufwehehe.
I faded into the trees, the flickering light of my footsteps dying out beneath the canopy like the last embers of a bad dream.
I logged off five minutes later after making sure I was somewhere safe. I was not built to walk another handful of hours back to the catacombs right now.
It was pitch black in my apartment, my mouth tasted like stale air and drools. My neck had that weird VR gel crust on it. My head spun like I'd done a hundred backflips in a space simulator.
I'd been playing for twenty straight hours.
I sat up, barely, and reached for the room-temperature emergency glass of water I left on my desk.
"That's enough villainy for today," I muttered. "Even world bosses need sleep."
I downed the last mouthful, wiped my lips, and looked around my dirty, dark, empty apartment.
Then I noticed it.
I rubbed my eyes.
…
I rubbed it again, harder, trying to refocus.
I rubbed even harder for the third time, before realizing that I was not hallucinating.
"Who are you?" I asked the shadow figure sitting on my living-room PC, with crossed legs, staring back at me while I was down on my pod.