Messenger of Calamity

Chapter 3: "You're Dead"

Yan Qing had forgotten when he had downloaded this game, probably to pass an inspection, since he worked at a gaming company, and it would be inappropriate not to have his own company's game on his console.

He probably had only opened it once, registered a character, and never played it again.

So, what’s going on here? Not only have I crossed into a game world, but I’m even playing an MMORPG, which I dislike the most?

To take it a step further, even if I can open this game, this world has no other players, does it? Could this be the infamous single-player private server?

Though it felt somewhat confusing, since he had nothing else to do, Yan Qing clicked to open the game 《The Messenger》.

"Resist harmful games, reject pirated games.

Be aware of self-protection, beware of scams.

Moderate gaming benefits the brain, excessive gaming harms health.

Arrange your time reasonably, and enjoy a healthy life."

Yan Qing was somewhat disappointed.

He had thought that the game would have transformed after entering this world, with functions like "Deep Blue Stats" or "Simulation Modeling." But seeing these eight lines, he felt that the game was probably just a game after all.

Then, the opening CG flashed by quickly.

Strangely, even the account login was skipped, and it went directly to the character selection screen.

When Yan Qing looked at his character list, he froze.

He still remembered that the character he registered was called "Laplace Demon," which was his universal character name across all games.

It was supposed to be a female character with an appearance somewhere between Shiranui Mai and Tifa, and the most time he had spent on this game was in the character creation screen.

However, the only character in the game library was named "Yan Qing," and visually, it was a male character who resembled him extremely closely.

The location shown was "Secret Realm · Thieves' House."

Could it be…?

Yan Qing’s eyes flickered, and an inexplicable excitement arose in his heart.

He decisively chose to log into the character "Yan Qing"!

However, the screen popped up a login failure message.

"This character is already in the game."

What?

Yan Qing tried several times, but he still couldn’t log in.

If he wasn’t mistaken, this game character "Yan Qing" should represent himself.

This also meant that as long as he logged into this character, he could strengthen himself in the game.

Attribute points, pet recruitment, weapon inlay, skill enhancement… Even the most basic, run-of-the-mill experience point system would be a huge help to Yan Qing!

Because 《The Messenger》 had quite a variety of gameplay, in addition to fighting monsters, players had many ways to gain experience and hone skills.

Yan Qing might be able to level up quickly in a short period of time.

However, since he couldn’t log in, everything was in vain.

Yan Qing looked at the screen unwillingly. To log into the "Yan Qing" account, he would have to log off himself, but besides death, was there any other way to log off?

He couldn’t bring up the game panel in reality to exit the game—he had tried every system incantation, from ‘linkstart’ to ‘Deep Blue.’

Even though he knew this console was the only lifeline to this world, unfortunately, it was like a flower in the mirror or a moon in the water—visible but unattainable.

For the next half hour, Yan Qing tried various methods to "log off," such as pretending to sleep to fool the console, but to no avail. He lay on the bed, looking at the screen with an expression of frustration, like a billionaire who had forgotten his bank card password.

"Sigh."

Yan Qing placed the console on the bedside table, pulled the blanket over himself, no longer caring, and went to sleep.

But in less than two minutes, he picked up the console again—he refused to believe that this console was completely useless!

However, the screen now didn’t show "Character Selection," but rather "Create New Character." It was likely that when Yan Qing had put the console down, he had accidentally pressed another character slot, so the system directly entered the new character creation section.

Yan Qing instinctively wanted to exit, but suddenly realized something: if the game character "Yan Qing" really represented him, what would happen if he created a new character?

Since he had nothing else to do anyway.

The first step was the character creation and naming process.

Yan Qing instinctively wanted to create a female character, somewhere between Tifa and Shiranui Mai, but the console had clearly mutated.

What if he created a curvy female character, and the console mistakenly identified her as his body…?

Yan Qing decided not to take the risk, but he also couldn’t be bothered to design his own face. He simply selected the default male character face #01.

The next step was the attribute allocation, which was the main focus.

Yan Qing hadn’t really studied this game, but he was still a player, so with a quick glance at the introduction, he more or less understood what was going on.

The starting character has four main attributes: "Health," "Spirit," "Agility," and "Comprehension."

"Health" affects the character's health points, stamina, physical attack power, physical defense power, movement speed, vision, disease and toxin resistance, and a series of other body-related secondary attributes.

"Spirit" affects the character's mana, skill strength, mental resistance, intuitive perception, and a series of other soul-related secondary attributes.

"Agility" affects the character's attack speed, dodge rate, hit rate, and other skill-related secondary attributes.

Among them, "Agility" is negatively weakened by one-third of the difference between "Health" and "Spirit." For example, if a character has 20 points in Health and 10 points in Spirit, their "Agility" will be reduced by -3, meaning the character's agility value will be reduced by 3 in calculations.

This is because both high health and low spirit, like a 'brain-dead big car driver,' and low health and high spirit, like a 'genius in a wheelchair,' mean the character cannot fully exert their potential, and this shows up in the data as a reduction in agility.

But no matter what, "Health," "Spirit," or "Agility" are not as important as the fourth attribute: "Comprehension!"

"Comprehension" affects the rate at which the character’s skill experience increases, with every 1 point of Comprehension increasing experience by 1%.

A new character only has 10 free attribute points, and even if all of them are allocated to "Comprehension," it only increases the experience by 10%. It doesn’t seem like much, and adding them to other three attributes would give the initial character a better gameplay experience.

However, Yan Qing learned while chatting with colleagues that in 《The Messenger》, there are very few ways to increase Comprehension, while Health, Spirit, and Agility all have various methods of improvement.

Many players find it difficult to level up by the time they hit the fourth class transfer because they didn’t allocate enough points into Comprehension, while those with maxed Comprehension can only hit a bottleneck by the sixth class transfer. Moreover, 《The Messenger》 is a subscription-based MMORPG, and maliciously, it doesn't provide any reset attribute items, meaning players who allocate their points wrong must start over with a new character.

1 point in Health, 1 point in Spirit, 1 point in Agility, and 10 points in Comprehension!

Next, he selected the game mode. However, Yan Qing noticed that the first two options, "Adventure Mode" and "Shura Mode," were grayed out and unselectable, leaving him with only "Real Mode" to choose.

"Adventure Mode" is the most popular PVE mode with normal experience gains;

"Shura Mode" is a PVP-exclusive mode that grants 200% experience gains, allowing players to level up quickly in PVP battles, while greatly reducing rewards from dungeons and wild monsters, essentially only allowing players to play in the battlefield;

"Real Mode" grants players an additional 5% experience, but the cost is that they only have one life, and death results in the permanent deletion of the character.

Clearly, only self-punishing players and experts would choose "Real Mode." Yan Qing had never tried Real Mode, but at this point, he had no choice but to give it a try.

As for the character's name, he decided to go with... 'Yan Yi'!

He could choose from three affiliated beginner villages of the three main cities: "Jiangnan Affiliated Beginner Village," "Chang'an Affiliated Beginner Village," and "Nevernight Affiliated Beginner Village." Yan Qing randomly selected "Nevernight Affiliated Beginner Village" and then chose to start the game.

As the screen lit up, Yan Qing saw the newly created character 'Yan Yi' appear in a village, wearing cloth clothes and holding a wooden stick, not even wearing shoes.

Ah, this really is just a game?

I thought I would cross over or something...

Yan Qing got familiar with the controls and planned to accept a quest and level up, but after walking around the village twice, he immediately realized something was wrong—there was no one in this beginner village?

Not only was there no one, but it was also in ruins—burnt houses, collapsed grass huts, knee-high weeds—everything looked like an abandoned village. He entered one of the burnt houses and saw a water tank. He clicked to check if there was anything inside, and then the screen displayed a horrifying scene that made Yan Qing’s eyelids twitch: inside the water tank were two highly decayed skeletons, one large and one small. From their clothing, it appeared to be a woman and a child.

Standing in the center of the village, Yan Qing was confused.

There were no quests, no monsters, no beginner village, what should he do next?

There was a road leading out of the village, and Yan Qing could only try to explore along the path.

This time, his luck was good, and he soon reached the main road, even seeing some passersby. When he asked for directions, the passersby either avoided him or raised their weapons in caution. Only a kind old farmer told him: "Keep going forward, and you’ll reach Pingcheng, but you should head back to the village."

Pingcheng, though not the main city of the game, should have quests, right? Even if there were no quests, at least there would be NPCs. Yan Qing thought that even if he couldn’t level up by killing monsters, he could still learn skills from other NPCs to level up.

Pingcheng was indeed very close, or rather, ‘Yan Yi’ moved very fast. Within a few minutes, he arrived. Although ‘Yan Yi’ only had 1 Health, which was the average health for an adult, as a game character, ‘Yan Yi’ could consume stamina to run faster, and when his stamina was about to run out, he would return to normal speed and wait for his stamina to recover. Just this "run-walk" cycle was enough to make 'Yan Yi' pass many merchants and peasants along the way.

At the city gate, there were hunched woodcutters carrying firewood, local nobles riding donkeys with followers, and traveling merchants carrying bundles.

They were all lined up on the left side of the city gate, waiting to enter the city. On the right side, although there were also guards, no one was entering from there.

Yan Qing was naturally too lazy to wait in line, so he went straight through the right side, but was stopped by the guards.

Guard: "Who are you?"

Yan Yi's character in the game popped up a dialogue option.

Yan Yi: "Traveler, I want to enter the city."

Guard: "Where’s your pass?"

Yan Yi: "Pass? I don’t have one."

Guard: "Who do you know here?"

Yan Yi: "I don’t know anyone."

From the screen, it was clear that the guard scratched his chin and then exchanged glances with the other guards.

They gave a strange smile, and then two guards came over, one on the left and one on the right, flanking 'Yan Yi' and pushing him into a camp near the city gate.

Yan Qing tried to leave, but the Game Notification ‘Yan Yi’’s health was too low, and his strength was not enough to break free from the two guards’ control.

Once inside the camp, a muffled sound suddenly echoed, and 'Yan Yi' collapsed to the ground.

The screen went black, and the health bar dropped by one-third.

Soon, the health bar was depleted, and the game displayed a prompt:

"You died."