novellk Chapter 17 The Demon in Human Skin
Chapter 17 The Demon in Human Skin
It was about ten meters away from the camp.
Behind the massive, rusty gear, the old laborer who had just received a piece of dark bread from Lynn was clutching his mouth tightly, his body trembling like a leaf.
He had originally hidden here to see how these outsiders planned to survive on Bolton's turf, or to see if he could get another bite to eat.
But he witnessed something completely beyond his comprehension.
The young man with the buzz cut who had drunk the poisoned seawater lay curled up on the mudflat.
The poison took effect extremely quickly; the young man's limbs convulsed wildly like a spasmodic wild beast, and white foam mixed with gastric juice kept gushing from the corners of his mouth.
Logically, when a person suffers such excruciating pain, their eyes should be filled with fear and despair at the prospect of death.
But the old laborer swore that he saw a strange kind of excitement in the young man's eyes.
Those eyes were staring intently at a point in the void, while the person muttered incoherently things like "This pain engine is amazing" and "If only there was a recording."
A few dozen seconds later, the young man's convulsions stopped, and he breathed his last.
The old laborer held his breath, and then saw something even more chilling.
The remaining companions, facing the corpses on the ground, showed not a trace of grief, nor even panic.
The young man with the iron sword stepped forward, poked the corpse with the hilt, and asked with a hint of doubt, "It's really dead. The corpse didn't respawn. Does this game have a corpse-running mechanic?"
The tall man next to him, holding a rusty iron pipe, frowned and looked the corpse up and down as if it were a piece of wood.
"I don't even know if this game has respawn points, and I haven't figured out the death mechanics yet. It would be a real problem if I accidentally destroyed my corpse and got my account deleted."
The tall man looked around.
"First, find something to wrap it up. If we determine in a couple of days that this body is useless, we can just throw it in, drive in live piles, and compact it. That way, we can save on building materials."
The young man with the iron sword and the other two nodded in agreement.
The four men pulled a tattered canvas from the rubble heap and wrapped the bluish-green corpse tightly into a long, cocoon-like shape. Then, like dragging a bag of cheap flour, they pulled him into the shadows of a corner of the camp.
Just then, a gray greyhound came running over from the side.
The dog was clearly interested in the roll of canvas on the ground. It went over and sniffed it, then naturally lifted one of its hind legs and urinated on the cocoon in the corner.
The old laborer's eyes widened; it was an absolute insult to the dead!
However, the young man with the iron sword not only didn't drive it away, but instead burst into laughter, reaching out to pat the greyhound's head: "Good dog! You knew we were going to lay the foundation, so you helped marinate the raw materials for the piling, right?"
The tall man holding the iron pipe also laughed and cursed, the two of them treating the corpse as some object they could dispose of at will.
The old laborer, hiding behind the gears, bit his hand hard, using the excruciating pain to forcefully suppress the gasp that was about to escape his throat.
In this sunless shipwreck area, the lowest of the low would kill for half a piece of moldy bread.
Even the most ruthless gangsters, when faced with the corpse of their comrade, will hastily dig a hole and bury it.
And this group of outsiders, with an extremely rational attitude, discussed how to use their companion's body to fill the foundation, and even laughed loudly while watching the dog urinate on their companion's body!
The old laborer tiptoed backward until he was completely hidden in the shadows.
He had to tell others that these weren't outsiders at all; they were a group of demons in human skin!
Soon, the laborers who had been secretly spying around the camp, trying to find an opportunity to steal something, disappeared completely like the receding tide.
The survival rules at the very bottom of the shipwreck area warned them never to approach that open space.
…………
The sky gradually darkened.
While Pearl Harbor may be brightly lit, the shipwreck area is only lit by a few scattered lights and howling sea winds.
Xiaoyu and the little snail leaned against a piece of dead wood, hands on their hips.
"I can't take it anymore, I'm so thirsty I'm practically burning up." The little snail licked its dry, cracked lips, its voice hoarse.
Xiaoyu threw away the half-broken iron pipe in her hand and rubbed her sore arm.
He had just tried to run with the bucket to dig the foundation, but without food and fresh water, his stamina was dropping rapidly, and now even swinging the iron pipe felt strenuous.
"There's no fresh water around, just scrap metal." Xiaoyu glanced at the dark sea in the distance. "That old NPC wasn't lying. That bastard Bolton really has cut off our livelihood. The water we brought out probably won't last long."
Around the dilapidated wooden hut not far away, the workers consciously made room for these new devils, and Lynn sat quietly on a wooden chair missing a leg.
He was well aware of the current predicament: force could deal with the immediate enemy, but it could not solve the problems of water and salt.
Lynn brought up the system panel in his mind.
Just as the whole roasted lamb breathed its last, a log message popped up in the system's backend, visible only to him:
[The user "Roasted Whole Lamb Ah-Hmm" has lost vital signs.]
The body is beyond repair.
[Reprojecting consciousness requires 100 system energy points; estimated cooldown time: 48 hours.]
Lynn glanced at the more than 8,000 energy points he had accumulated in his account from the previous siege of the Floating Pigs, his expression completely unmoved.
The cost of reviving with 100 energy points is nothing to him.
This resurrection mechanism is alright; it's not too much of a price to pay, and it gives me peace of mind.
Although the energy points generated by players killing monsters and building infrastructure are almost twice the number of credit points he distributes to players, he does not intend to directly apply this number to the players.
At the very beginning of the game, these players were in their most fearless exploration phase.
If they knew that the price of death was only two days' delay, they would definitely do stupid things like lining up to jump into the sea to test the water quality, or strapping explosives to their heads and storming Bolton's base.
Lynn tapped his mind in the void, accessing the chat group's backend permissions interface, and sent a resurrection settlement form to Roasted Whole Lamb.
The sickle of capital is about to be wielded with fierce power.
At this moment, in the chat group, Roasted Whole Lamb, who had been forced offline, was frantically pouring out his grievances.
Although the game doesn't have a built-in screenshot function, he directly typed the content displayed in the VR glasses onto the keyboard.
Whole roasted lamb: "Brothers! I'm absolutely ripping open! Don't you dare drink that seawater! That feeling of my intestines twisting together is unbearable!"
"Hahahaha, why did you go drink seawater?"
Some casual gamers have already gotten into the swing of things and basically know what level of game progress the players who got closed beta access are at, so they have no problem communicating with them.
Roasted Whole Lamb: "I just wanted to try it! And that's not even the worst part! You have to wait two days to revive after dying in this game! And to make matters worse, reviving costs 500 credits!"
500 points! I've been grinding for three days straight, my hands are calloused from all that grinding, and now it's all gone in one fell swoop. I only have 20 points left. I didn't even get a single hit on the monsters in Pearl Harbor, and I'm bankrupt!
Right after Roasted Whole Lamb went offline due to his reckless behavior, other players also logged out temporarily to see if there were any messages from him in the group.
Little Snail: "Holy crap! 500 points deducted for every death? Is this game planner some kind of skinflint?"
Xiaoyu: "My goodness, it's all because of your suggestion... that we should get the money moving."
Little snail: "_(:з」∠)_ I didn't know their sickles were so ruthless!"
He grabbed a bucket and ran: "We're doomed. In our current state, if we still can't find fresh water by tomorrow morning, we'll most likely die of thirst. Does that mean we'll all be bankrupt by tomorrow morning?"
Roasted Whole Lamb: "@Lynn, GM, come out and take your punishment!!!"
Lynn: "I'm just an employee, my brother."
Agent: "Your company has released a veritable capitalist simulator. This isn't playing a game, it's working in a game! (Facepalm emoji) Brothers, we have to survive, we can't afford to die in this game."
Da Niu is rather lazy: "Hey guys, this game is way too difficult. Why don't you give me your closed beta test opportunity?"
Roasted whole lamb: "Roll!"
The panic created by the mastermind behind the scenes has precisely targeted the weaknesses of every player.
Lynn looked at the reactions in the group chat and closed the background interface.
The fear has been sown, and the execution ability of the first test team will be pushed to the extreme.
The current focus is on how to resolve the camp's water crisis without revealing the system's secrets.
Just then, an ID that rarely speaks popped up in the group.
Iron Pot Stew Big Ne: "Those on the front lines, please send me the details of the coastal waste you just mentioned again. Let me think of a solution."
After a moment of hesitation, he immediately used voice-to-text to describe in detail what he had seen during the day: the rocky beach, the abandoned ship, the piles of scrap wood, the conch shells, and the black seawater.
Iron Pot Stew Big NE: "Are you sure the details in this game are as realistic as the real thing?"
Xiaoyu: "It's genuine."
Three minutes later.
Tieguodun DaNe posted a long article, and the words between the lines conveyed two words—professionalism.
Iron Pot Stew Big NE: "This is a hardcore survival game. I feel like you can't think of it like a regular MapleStory game. I'm a Bilibili UP (uploader) who specializes in making hardcore wilderness survival videos."
The scrap wood you described can be smoldered to make crude activated carbon. The pebbles and fine sand on the coast serve as a ready-made physical filtration layer. The discarded seashells in the sea, when crushed and calcined, produce quicklime.
With just these few things, I can handcraft a multi-layered sand filter tower, and use wood ash to neutralize the acid and alkali, thus removing the toxins.
I can't guarantee it's 100% non-toxic, but it definitely won't kill you if you drink it.
Where are the officials? Stop lurking. Send me your number, and I can filter the contaminated water into clean white salt within half a day, and even make you a seafood soup from those seaweed scraps. What you need on the front lines right now is basic chemical knowledge, not fighting.
That's how gaming groups are; you'll find all sorts of people. Guitarists, tattoo artists, fried rice vendors, lawyers—as long as there are a lot of people in the group, you can dabble in any field.
"Really? Give me a LiDLi number, I want to check it out."
"Wow, bro!"
"Damn, does this mean you can't play this game unless you're really skilled?"
The professionalism of this wilderness survival expert has clearly sparked heated discussions.
Lynn sat in the shadows, his gaze fixed on the words "multi-layer sand filter tower" and "acid-base neutralization." This must be the game-changer he needed.
Without relying on any otherworldly magic system, they used purely theoretical knowledge from Earth to break through Bolton's monopoly.