Wasteland Forbidden Zone.
Yu Huaiting leaned against a massive section of dry bone, gasping for breath.
Half of his white hair had been scorched, and his face was covered in blood and black ash.
Just a minute ago, he’d been trapped in a sea of fire by a hidden NPC in the instance.
If he hadn’t—in a state of extreme desperation—forcibly crushed a life-saving item called [Death Substitute Straw Doll] that had cost him a full thirty thousand points, there wouldn’t even be ashes of him left.
“Cough… damn, that was intense.”
Yu Huaiting spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, a sick sort of excitement flickering in his peach-blossom eyes.
Just as he was about to take a recovery potion, his system panel suddenly notified him of a new message.
A red light flickered, and an envelope with a tacky pink heart appeared before him.
“What now?”
Yu Huaiting frowned and casually opened it.
[Yu Huaiting, what are you doing!]
Yu Huaiting stared at the panel for a full half minute, then suddenly let out a low laugh.
The laugh tugged at his burns, making him cough.
“Such a temper…”
“Poor thing. Probably rolling on the ground in pain right now.”
Yu Huaiting licked his cracked lips, somewhat gleeful.
He casually wiped the blood off his face, opened the reply box, and magnanimously sent back two words. Then he closed the communication, hefted his greatsword, and melted back into the darkness.
…
Loading zone, rest room.
Fu Songcheng sat on the edge of the bed, clutching an emptied intermediate recovery potion test tube.
The burns on his legs had mostly healed, but the aftershock of the burning still left him drenched in cold sweat.
Beep.
The system notification sounded.
Fu Songcheng opened the panel with a cold face.
On the screen were only two lonely words:
[I’m fine.]
Fu Songcheng froze.
He stared at those two words for a full minute, the rational string in his mind creaking under the strain.
“I’m fine?”
Fu Songcheng let out an incredulous sneer. “Who the hell asked if you were fine?!”
Are you alright?!
He took several deep breaths, forcing down the urge to curse aloud.
Fu Songcheng considered himself quite capable of controlling his emotions—but when it came to Yu Huaiting, he genuinely couldn’t help wanting to hit someone from time to time.
Being bound to someone like this would drive him insane.
The next morning, Fu Songcheng took the initiative to contact Chen Muhuai.
They met at a cheap drink bar.
“Engineer Fu, you’ve come around?”
Chen Muhuai looked a little more energetic, gazing at him hopefully. “Ready to take on the ‘Veteran Leads Newbie’ missions with me?”
“No.”
Fu Songcheng cut him off directly. “I’m here to ask about the mechanics of formal instances. Especially a newcomer’s first formal instance.”
The smile vanished from Chen Muhuai’s face instantly. He scratched his hair irritably. “Engineer Fu, why won’t you listen to reason?”
Fu Songcheng’s tone was calm. “Chen Muhuai, we’ve worked together. You know my personality. Every decision I make is the result of careful consideration.”
“I don’t fight unprepared battles. Tell me everything you know.”
Chen Muhuai stared into Fu Songcheng’s deep, utterly unruffled eyes, and finally let out a defeated sigh.
He knew that once Fu Songcheng made up his mind, it couldn’t be changed.
As his former subordinate, all he could do was help as much as possible.
Honestly, he didn’t want to finally run into an acquaintance in the game only to watch him die in an instance.
Chen Muhuai lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Instance matching is progressive. You just left the novice village—if you actively queue or get forcibly pulled into a formal instance, your first one will absolutely be a D-rank instance.”
“D-rank doesn’t sound that high?”
“The rating isn’t high because the monsters or rules inside won’t kill you before you can even understand what’s happening.”
Chen Muhuai smiled bitterly. “But D-rank instances usually have explicit clearance quotas. The system will rigidly mandate, for example, that a four-person instance requires a survival rate of no higher than 75%.”
Fu Songcheng’s gaze sharpened. “No higher than 75%? Four people go in, one must die?”
“Exactly!”
Fu Songcheng’s fingers unconsciously rubbed the sports wristband on his wrist.
If it were purely this kind of mutually undercutting, interest-above-all scenario, he wasn’t afraid—in fact, he found it rather to his taste.
He never cared about others’ lives or deaths. As long as he could weigh the pros and cons, he was confident he could be among the 75% who survived.
But now, he had a time bomb strapped to him.
He wanted to enter instances, earn points, climb the ranks.
But he absolutely could not go in at this critical juncture.
What if, while he was in a D-rank instance scheming against teammates and fighting for his life, Yu Huaiting—over in an S-rank instance—suddenly got slashed by some monster again…
Even if it were just 10% of the slowness or agony shared over, in a formal instance where every inch mattered, it would be enough to kill him ten thousand times over.
“I understand.” Fu Songcheng stood up and smoothed the collar of his combat suit. “Thank you for the intel.”
“Engineer Fu, you…”
“I’m not entering an instance for now.”
Fu Songcheng gave Chen Muhuai a reassuring smile.
He had to stay in the loading zone for the time being and wait for that madman Yu Huaiting to crawl out of his instance.
As number one on the Power Ranking, that madman surely knew whether there were any unconventional methods—beyond the astronomically priced items in the shop—to break the [Lover] binding.
The wait was longer than Fu Songcheng had anticipated.
Three whole days.
Over those three days, Fu Songcheng had practically mastered all the basic knowledge of the Death Party loading zone, its pricing system, and even the trading rules of certain underground black markets.
But those three days were also the most unbearable of his life.
In that S-rank instance, Yu Huaiting seemed to go out of his way to throw himself onto blades.
The first day, afternoon.
Fu Songcheng was studying a skill book when his left shoulder suddenly felt as if it had been viciously torn by some kind of claw. The pain sent him crashing straight off his chair, and he had to drink an entire bottle of basic recovery potion before the illusion of torn flesh and peeling skin stopped.
The second day, pre-dawn.
In his sleep, he suddenly felt a violent cracking sound in his sternum, followed by a suffocating, dull ache.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood and spent 500 points on an intermediate potion before he could catch his breath again.
The third day, noon.
Even more absurd.
He was walking down the street when a stabbing pain shot through his right eye, and his vision went completely black for five minutes.
He even suspected Yu Huaiting had gone blind in one eye.
In just three short days, injuries large and small kept transmitting through [Damage Synchronization].
Fu Songcheng had originally thought that Yu Huaiting—who could casually transfer 5,000 points—was a generous sugar daddy.
Even if he got dragged down a bit, he could treat it as paid suffering.
But he had completely underestimated the cost.
“Fourteenth bottle.”
Fu Songcheng expressionlessly tossed the empty basic recovery potion into the trash, looking at his pitiful remaining balance of [1090] points.
The crate of recovery potions he’d bought was already empty.
“At the rate he’s drinking recovery potions like water, forget five thousand points—even if Yu Huaiting compensated me fifty thousand, it wouldn’t be enough.”
Fu Songcheng pressed his still-throbbing temples, his gaze ice-cold. “How is this bastard still not dead in there?”
He couldn’t keep waiting idly.
Even if he wasn’t entering instances, he couldn’t just sit around.
To improve his self-preservation skills, Fu Songcheng spent his remaining points to enroll in a crash course.
It was the [Basic Martial Arts and Cold Weapon Self-Defense Class]—a joint venture by several “novice village veterans” like Chen Muhuai.
Though these veterans didn’t dare enter formal instances, they’d spent long stretches in the game and had at least accumulated some hard-won practical combat experience. Earning a bit of hard money from newcomers was only reasonable.
The training ground was set up in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the loading zone.
When Fu Songcheng pushed open the iron door and walked in, over a dozen people were already practicing basic slashing drills.
“Today I’ll teach you how to cut someone’s carotid artery with a dagger while you’re being pinned to the ground.”
A bald instructor was shouting loudly.
Fu Songcheng walked to the corner and drew the enhanced [Dagger] from his waist.
The dark red blood groove flashed a grim, cold gleam under the incandescent lights.
“Your blade’s not bad.”
A cool female voice came from beside him.
Fu Songcheng turned his head.
Standing next to him was a girl in a black tight-fitting combat suit.
She was tying her shoulder-length hair into a crisp high ponytail, a military triangular spike playing between her fingers.
Fu Songcheng paused.
“Lu Xiao?”
Even though her aura had undergone a earth-shaking transformation, Fu Songcheng recognized her at a glance.
This was the very girl who had trembled all over with fear in the novice instance Silent Library.
But the current Lu Xiao—there wasn’t a trace left of that “weak and easy to bully” shadow.
Her eyes were sharp as an eagle’s, her grip on the blade standard and steady. Most striking was the long, thin, not-yet-fully-healed scar on her neck, which lent her an added air of lethal severity.
Lu Xiao looked at Fu Songcheng, a curve utterly devoid of warmth tugging at the corner of her lips. “Brother Fu. What a coincidence.”
Fu Songcheng was briefly surprised for only a second before returning to his composed expression.
He turned to face the training dummy, his gaze turning colder than Lu Xiao’s in an instant.
His mind replayed the undeserved disasters he’d suffered over the past three days, concentrating all his anger and frustration into the right hand gripping the blade.
Whoosh!
Without any superfluous movement, Fu Songcheng’s body lunged forward. The dagger in his hand became a dark red afterimage, slicing with absolute precision through the gap in the dummy’s neck armor.
If this were a real person, the carotid artery’s blood should be spraying the ceiling by now.
Lu Xiao watched from the side, her pupils contracting slightly, unconsciously tightening her grip on the triangular spike.
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