As the shadow drew closer, Dell finally saw their true form—an indescribable group of monsters!
Staring at the monsters’ grotesque, meat-like faces and their slimy, soft limbs, Dell was horrified. His already unstable mental state, made worse by the recent revelations, was now further shaken by the terrifying appearance of these creatures. Crawling out of the cellar, he grabbed his axe and prepared to carve a bloody path through them.
“This monster... doesn’t seem right.”
Captain Qi Fang approached the garden and immediately spotted the creature standing in front of the cellar. It was an insectoid covered in a hard shell, with antennae like ants and what seemed to be something writhing behind it.
Upon closer inspection, Qi Fang discovered that the creature had multiple tentacles growing from its back, which was unlike the monsters in the manor earlier—this one looked even more bizarre and terrifying.
“Engage from a distance. Don’t get too close!” Qi Fang instructed his team calmly. His experience told him that with such clearly abnormal creatures, the best approach was to probe from afar. Getting too close could lead to unpredictable consequences and heavy casualties.
“Understood!” The long-haired girl, Lan Qi, took out a laser gun and decisively shot at Dell from a distance.
Dell heard the monsters communicating among themselves with incomprehensible sounds, and then saw an incredible beam of light coming toward him. Instinctively, he felt something was off, so he quickly moved to evade the light, only to find that the beam could curve.
Zzzzz—
A massive wound was torn across Dell’s body, with blood and entrails spilling out. He stared blankly at the bloodied holes in his body and the tentacles flailing behind him.
Dell had no idea what the tentacles were or how to continue thinking. His body swayed and he fell to the ground, unconscious.
Qi Fang frowned as he looked at the fallen monster, signaling his team to stay away for now. After seeing the kill count increase by one on the Overseer’s panel, he finally relaxed and approached the corpse to check its belongings.
Usually, such unique monsters dropped valuable items, and they wouldn’t miss the chance.
They quickly collected an axe, a cross, an amulet, a black notebook, and a brass key.
None of the items were particularly valuable, and the team was disappointed, tossing most of them aside. Only the black notebook was kept, as it seemed to contain potentially valuable information. They planned to study it to better understand the storyline of this dungeon.
In the Real World
[You have died.]
Ke Su stared at the blood-red prompt on the game screen, his hands frozen on the keyboard, feeling an impulse to smash it.
He watched as the humanoid monsters that killed his character looted his corpse and scattered his backpack’s contents, almost mockingly indicating that there was nothing of value.
Ke Su fell silent, his mouth twitching, and opened the strategy guide, finding no hints for this level at the end.
This ordinary ancient European-style puzzle game had introduced futuristic technology—a laser gun that could curve!
Ke Su had never seen such a bizarre game development. He suspected it might be a hidden storyline, speculating that the game designers had come up with some bizarre alien-themed plot involving a faceless god, which made the protagonist so easily defeated no matter how one maneuvered.
Though he wanted to criticize the game design, Ke Su was still obsessed with achieving the true ending.
Only by completing the true ending could the evil god truly awaken, and the game could then transition to the evil god character hunting the protagonist in the manor, turning it into a supernatural chase game.
Ke Su found this transition quite appealing, as Dell’s experiences were rather oppressive, which he didn’t enjoy.
Opening the save points, Ke Su discovered the most recent one was before entering the cellar, and his mood soured.
He would have to replay the cellar scenario, which was time-consuming. He hoped there might be an option to skip or accelerate the storyline.
With this in mind, Ke Su pressed the rollback button, preparing to replay the scenario, knowing now that the laser gun could curve. He planned to figure out how to counter it, as game developers wouldn’t design an unavoidable death scenario. He must have missed an item in the dungeon that could lead to success, so he would need to search carefully.
Meanwhile, in the Overseer’s space, the team checking the black notebook suddenly noticed something was wrong.
“Captain, the data on the panel seems off...” Lan Qi said, horrified, as the time on her information panel began to blur, and the text became unstable, flickering like erratic electrical currents.
Zzzzz—
Captain Qi Fang looked up in shock, seeing the sky above turn grayish-white, with unstable, snowflake-like ripples reminiscent of old black-and-white televisions from centuries past, sending chills down his spine.
On the information panel, the kill count that was nearly completed was fluctuating wildly—sometimes decreasing, sometimes increasing. More alarmingly, the conspicuous red value box at the top displayed:
[Pollution Index: 100]
“When did it reach 100... Wait, it’s now a thousand? This value isn’t on a percentage scale?”
A Zhuang, flipping through the black notebook, was confused and tightened his grip on his weapon.
Though the meaning of the pollution index was unclear, the Overseer’s heightened concern indicated it was no trivial matter.
Upon hearing A Zhuang’s words, everyone noticed the anomalies in the sky and the panel, preparing themselves by equipping their highest-grade defensive items. Even though this was a low-level dungeon, their lives were at stake, so caution was necessary.
Zzzzz—
The snowflake dots in the sky intensified, and the team looked around to find that the surroundings were gradually fading, as if millennia had passed. The manor’s white walls were now overgrown with vines, and the cycle of day and night and the decay of flowers and leaves passed by. Shadows of monsters in human clothes flickered through time, their bodies moving back and forth, turning the scene into a vision of great change.
In just a few seconds, they witnessed the manor’s entire history, from its construction to the bustling past, as the passage of time was vividly displayed before them.
“Time and space... are changing!”
Lan Qi muttered in disbelief, hardly believing her eyes. Despite her extensive experience with countless dungeons, she had never encountered one capable of reversing time. Such terrifying power was present in a low-level dungeon!
Could the Overseer really control time and space?
The team was horrified, realizing their surroundings were transforming, with everything slowly fading into a sepia tone while they remained in color, making them seem like anomalies.
In reality, their incongruity within the world was causing time to fail to flow normally, leading to this chaotic situation.
So engrossed in observing the abnormality around them, they failed to notice that the snowflake dots in the sky were flashing even faster. A massive eye formed from the snowflakes, slowly taking shape, searching for outsiders to this world and clearing the obstructions to the flow of time.
The seven oddly dressed humans were now visible in the giant eye’s pupil, and Ke Su also saw them.
“Hm? Is there a bug in the rollback?”
Ke Su frowned at the frozen screen, stuck after the character's death. The game had zoomed in on the humanoid monsters, and the snowflake dots continued to appear, causing the game to seemingly crash and unable to return to the save point.
Clicking on the humanoid monsters with the mouse, an information panel popped up.
“Overseer Space Team Member?”
Ke Su looked at the title, feeling a strange sweetness on his tongue, lingering in his taste.
Why did the term “Overseer” seem so appetizing?
Through the screen, Ke Su seemed to sense a faint scent of food.
A gnawing hunger overwhelmed his senses, making him feel dizzy, and he reached out to touch the words "Overseer" on the game screen.
As he extended his hand and touched the computer screen, ripples spread across it like a calm water surface, enveloping Ke Su’s entire hand.
Faced with this extremely abnormal phenomenon, Ke Su didn’t notice anything wrong. His pupils turned black, his face flashing with countless eyes opening and closing in sequence, all turning toward the screen, his gaze filled with childlike, pure longing, as if he were both extremely awake and lost in a long-forgotten dream.
[Pollution Index: 1200, 1300—!!!]
[Warning! Warning! Pollution index too high! Initiating backup plan!!!]
In the game dungeon, Qi Fang’s brows furrowed deeply as he saw the information panel turn red, eventually displaying lines of garbled code. His and his team’s bodies began to turn semi-transparent, as if they were about to return to the Overseer’s space.
Qi Fang signaled his team to remain calm, suspecting that an unforeseen danger in this dungeon had prompted the Overseer to summon them back early.
They were powerless to resist and could only comply, hoping to remain silent and observe the changes.
However, the next moment, Qi Fang discovered that the Overseer’s message was not what he expected.
[Immediate termination of soul contract #￥%￥#—!!!]
What? Not a return to the space, but the termination of the contract?
The team stared in horror at the text and garbled codes on the panel.
Although they had often dreamed of leaving the Overseer’s space and returning to the real world, they knew that their connection to the Overseer’s space was crucial for their traversal through countless dungeons.
They were extremely weak and could not leave this world without the Overseer’s soul tether.
If the contract was terminated now, would that mean they would be trapped forever in this terrifying and unfamiliar dungeon?
What could have happened to make the Overseer so urgently sever the soul contract with them? What contingency plan? What exactly is the Overseer afraid of!!!
Qing Fang and the others were baffled, looking at their gradually translucent bodies, their expressions showing varying degrees of panic. If the Overseer had indeed dissolved their soul contract and no longer restrained their freedom, where would they go?
Would their disappearance, now that they couldn’t return to the Overseer’s space, be permanent?
As everyone despaired about their future, the massive eye overhead finally caught their attention.
In a daze, everyone’s subconscious lifted their heads.
In the snowflake-dotted sky, a huge rift opened, revealing an enormous eye far beyond human capability, as large as a small planet.
The blood vessels covering the eye resembled the undulating mountains of a planet, and the pupil’s center was the planet’s core, bubbling with intensely hot magma. Just gazing at it for a moment brought a searing, painful feeling as if one were at the bottom of the eighteen levels of hell. The intangible mental shock was enough to crush any human who gazed directly at it unprepared.
“An eye... what a terrifying eye...”
A Zhuang mumbled to himself, his face turning ashen the moment he saw the gigantic eye overhead.
His physical enhancement in the Overseer’s space had been focused on physical strength, with little regard for mental fortification. Although he had bought some protective items, his mental threshold was much lower compared to his companions. Thus, upon encountering the eye, his mind was filled with madness and confusion, unable to distinguish reality from illusion, life from death. He clutched his head in agony and screamed in a hoarse voice.
“Ahhhhh!!!”
A Zhuang’s scream seemed to set off a horrifying carnival. Almost simultaneously, the giant eye above appeared to develop spider-web-like cracks, as if a glass surface were fracturing.
Crack—
With a crisp sound of shattering, it was as if the world’s barrier had been breached. The hot magma in the pupil turned into a chaotic, dark amalgam of colors, with distant celestial lights flickering within. A massive arm, so immense it was indescribable, reached out from the pupil, accompanied by nameless mist and chaos, pouring out from the rift’s black hole.
Qing Fang, with his strong mental power, had his eyes bleed the moment he saw the hand. The intense pain nearly blinded him, but to understand the current situation and find a chance to survive, he endured the agony and looked at everything in the sky.
However, as he struggled to keep his eyes open, Qing Fang was shocked to see the giant hand reaching toward them, as if a mountain was descending, moving so fast that escape was impossible. The terrifyingly cold sensation from the nameless mist made his soul emit a mournful wail, leaving him paralyzed.
Looking at his other team members, they were as small and powerless as he was, their flesh torn and bloodied under the invisible pressure.
Would their seven-person squad be wiped out in this low-level instance?
Qing Fang despaired as he watched the massive hand. His body had already mostly disappeared, with only the upper half still vaguely present in this world, yet he could still feel a pain surpassing all worldly suffering and a deep sense of unwillingness.
“Ahhhhh!!!”
Several people in the team screamed in terror as they watched the hand covered in nameless mist and chaos approach them. Their minds and bodies endured immense torture, almost breaking down.
Everyone was engulfed by a deep sense of despair, their faces pale as they awaited their end.
Perhaps this was their fate, no matter how much they struggled to survive, they could not escape.
Yet, just as the colossal hand was about to crush them, it halted and grasped the air about thirty meters above their heads.
Air?
Qing Fang and the others widened their eyes, seeing that the empty air was firmly grasped by the giant hand, torn apart to reveal thin, transparent threads like spider silk.
These threads were breaking from the middle, or rather, from where they connected to the seven of them, the other end leading to an unknown space, quickly retracting as if trying to escape from this space.
However, they could not escape the giant hand’s grasp. The threads were taut at the hand’s fingertips, densely aligned like harp strings, clearly visible against the snowflake-dotted sky.
Qing Fang realized that these threads were the soul contracts that had once bound them, the only link between them and the Overseer’s space, used to control every soul trapped in the Overseer’s space.
Clearly, the other end of the threads was connected to the mysterious Overseer.
【！！！！】
Qing Fang saw countless exclamation marks on his information panel, seemingly revealing the Overseer’s excessively agitated emotions, captured by their panel still active.
Additionally, he noticed that when the giant hand grasped the threads, their translucency stopped, gradually returning to normal, though a sense of being rejected by the world made them realize they couldn’t stay here much longer.
But living a little longer was better than nothing. Seeing that the terrifying giant hand was at odds with the Overseer, they took the opportunity to drag their weakened bodies to a corner, huddling together and praying for survival.
Qing Fang and the others looked up at the giant hand with complex emotions.
Seeing the enormous hand easily find the seemingly invincible Overseer and the Overseer’s panicked response, their feelings were mixed.
The contrast was too stark; even with prior suspicions, they hadn’t expected the power disparity between the Overseer and this unknown entity to be so clear.
The stark reality before them shattered their understanding and left their minds blank.
They finally understood why the Overseer was like a frightened bird, anxious and fearful.
If what the Overseer feared was this existence, which could bring their souls to the brink of collapse just by showing a hand, then it was perfectly normal for the Overseer to be terrified.
The power of this unknown entity surpassed their understanding of the world, shattered their worldview, and made it almost unimaginable how powerful this existence could be.
The mere existence of this great entity in the world was already the limit of human imagination.
In the real world on the other side, Ke Su was not concerned with the thoughts of the characters in the game. He only felt he had grasped something, knowing that the other end was what he had longed for. Thus, he eagerly tightened his fingers, trying to obtain that thing.
However, the distance was too far, and he felt somewhat powerless.
Ke Su furrowed his brows in frustration.
Zzz—
The giant hand in the sky tightened, pulling the transparent threads sharply back, retracting a significant amount. It seemed something was approaching this black-and-white snowflake-dotted world with the threads.
The giant hand appeared pleased that its efforts were not in vain and exerted even more force.
Crack—!!!
In the next moment, a painful wail echoed from the distant void. The threads snapped, and a piece of strange, colorful, shimmering tissue shattered the snowflake-dotted sky and entered this world.
The giant hand grabbed the tissue fragment but was still unwilling and probed further in the direction the fragment had flown, hoping to obtain more.
There was more of that delicious thing!
Thunk!!!
Ke Su’s shoulder was stuck in front of the computer screen, unable to get through. His head couldn’t fit, and his hand, extended to its limit, could not advance any further.
In the end, like last time, Ke Su completely lost the lead on that delicious thing. Disappointed, he lowered his eyelids and withdrew his hand from the computer screen.
He looked at the palm-sized tissue fragment, chewed it, and unlike the previous barbecue flavor, this time the tissue fragment was like sweet, soft exploding cake, with a delightful aroma, juicy and sweet, leaving an endless aftertaste.
As he chewed the food, Ke Su closed his eyes. The eyes on his face also closed in disappointment. He swallowed the food, calmed his restlessness, and regained his rationality.
Hmm?
Ke Su opened his eyes, gazing at the computer screen, which was face-down on the desk.
The lingering daze in his mind made Ke Su lick his lips, unable to distinguish whether the sweet taste in his mouth was a dream or reality.
After a moment, Ke Su finally woke up, propped up the computer screen, and wondered if he had fallen asleep while playing and ended up pressing against the computer.
He rested his chin on his hand, nostalgic for the sweet taste that lingered in his mouth.
Although he didn’t know where the taste came from, it was indeed delightful.
Ke Su thought about it, looking at the now-normal computer. He rubbed his forehead, recalling a similar sensation a few weeks ago while riding the subway.
At that time, he thought it was the taste of dumplings and liked it so much that he bought many dumplings after returning home, nearly making himself sick but never experiencing that unforgettable flavor again.
Now he tasted that sweet flavor again…
Ke Su speculated with a hint of melancholy that he might be suffering from something like a delusional disorder. The memories before and after the appearance of this delicious taste were quite vague, similar to mental illness.
After some thought, he realized it was the second occurrence of such symptoms. It would be better to go to the hospital for a check-up to avoid worsening the condition and losing his second life.
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