The Cub Raised in a Horror Game - Chapter 4 - The Strange Gothic Castle

In the evening, Chu Wang carried the baby in a simple homemade carrier strapped across his chest. He placed earplugs and earmuffs on Inia, then wrapped a long scarf snugly around her, leaving only her big round eyes peeking out.

Perhaps because tall buildings were scarce on the 36th level, the night wind was quite cold.

Chu Wang carried her up to the roof of a nearby abandoned factory. From there, they could see the distant sea surface, shimmering in the light of the setting sun.

A closer look at the boundless ocean, however, revealed that the surging waves seemed frozen; the illusion of churning waves was merely the sunlight gliding across the peaks of the wreckage.

The evening wind blew over, and a soft clanging sound echoed from the frozen surface of the sea.

In reality, this ocean was composed of countless discarded scraps and trash.

Chu Wang stared at his watch. The moment five o’clock arrived, the ground began to hum, and immediately afterward, a portion of the sea abruptly disappeared.

As if a whirlpool had formed on the water’s surface, the previously stable structure of the trash sea collapsed toward the empty space. Amidst a jarring chorus of impacts, this ‘sea’ briefly came alive.

Chu Wang used his thumb to measure the distance. Against the roaring sound, he squatted down and used a stone to make calculations on the rooftop floor.

The 36th floor was a colossal garbage disposal center, and the people living here could naturally only be regarded as the cockroaches and mice of the waste bin.

Every seven days, it would randomly purge a selected area, wiping out both the trash and the ‘pests’ within it.

Many wanderer players believed that life and death were determined by fate, but the young boy did not think so.

The adults had grown accustomed to being crushed by various rules and orders, and Chu Wang would have become one of them, too. But ever since he was abandoned at the age of eight, a nameless fury had burned in his heart, leading him to constantly and silently question: Why? By what right?

The rule of random purging on the 36th floor had become an accepted law of nature, like the rising and setting of the sun, embraced by all players. Yet, Chu Wang tirelessly calculated and experimented, determined to find the underlying pattern.

A year had roughly fifty-two weeks. Over six years, Chu Wang performed over three hundred calculations, finally allowing him to discover a regularity within the seemingly random slaughter and purging!

The young boy stood up, using the sole of his shoe to wipe the numbers clean from the ground.

He glanced down and saw the baby, tightly bundled and immobile beneath the earmuffs and scarf, only her large eyes blinking as she looked around, clearly curious about everything in the world.

Chu Wang couldn’t help but stroke her head softly, a smile appearing on his face. “This week, we’re going to move to a new home.”

Inia’s ears were thoroughly plugged, so she heard neither the humming of the earth nor the collapse of the garbage sea, nor did she hear the young boy’s words.

After her head was patted, she tried to lift her small face, but being too tightly wrapped to move, she hummed and fussed discontentedly.

Chu Wang removed her earplugs and earmuffs and sat with her on the edge of the rooftop.

Watching the scenery, the baby finally quieted down. Her large, amber eyes reflected the sparkling sea of trash under the sunset.

Looking down at Inia’s focused expression, Chu Wang smiled.

“In your eyes, what does the world look like…?”

The young boy’s quiet murmur dispersed with the blowing night wind.

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After dinner, the children began packing their belongings.

Because the Thirty-Sixth Floor undergoes a weekly random area purge, no faction here has been able to establish a fixed territory the way they have in other floors.

Although they weren’t as sharp as Chu Wang, the players who had lived here for many years each had their own methods of predicting the great purging, though none were as accurate as his.

Even the most capable person could be taken away at random if their luck was low. Because of this, the player groups on the thirty-sixth floor tended to be loosely connected. Aside from the black market, there were very few large-scale player organizations, and almost no individuals who stood out as overwhelmingly powerful.

Chu Wang was one of the local notorious players. Four years ago, the ten-year-old boy took two children out to search for supplies and returned to find their shelter ransacked, with one child severely wounded and the other dead.

After learning the attackers’ features from a dying child, Chu Wang spent three months patiently stalking and following the five-person vagrant team, breaking them down one by one until he had killed them all.

The next day, he walked straight into the black market and sold the bloodstained loots as if nothing had happened. From that moment on, his name began to spread.

The vagrant players all knew of a young boy who led a team made up entirely of children, a boy whose methods were precise and unflinching. Offending him was like provoking a rabid dog. Once he had you in his sights, there was no escape.

However, as long as no one provoked him, he remained almost invisible. He kept to the outskirts with the younger children, living quietly, gathering supplies, and staying far from trouble. In the eyes of most, he posed no threat at all.

Children born and raised in the spatial world all share one thing in common: they are never afraid of death. They have never seen the good things the wanderer-players once had, nor do they know how vast the world is beyond this landfill.

They had nothing to lose—barefoot people don’t fear those wearing shoes. And among them, Chu Wang was the one who valued his life the least. So really, what kind of fool would go out of their way to provoke him?

From then on, the children lived steadily and without much disturbance. Seasoned players kept a respectful distance. At times, a newly fallen wanderer, unaware of the unspoken rules here, would attempt to prey on the young—and they were seldom seen again.

Despite this, the children maintained a high level of vigilance. Chu Wang had been scouting the location for their new home for several days: an abandoned shipping container near the garbage sea. The places he chose were always in remote, sparsely populated border areas, which offered the greatest security.

The garbage sea occupied half the area of the 36th floor. A portion of it was relatively stable, suitable for searching for supplies, but there were more people vying for resources there.

Most of the surrounding area was deserted, but stepping carelessly onto the surface of the garbage sea could easily result in a misstep and being swallowed by the trash below. Because of this, experienced scavengers preferred to compete for scraps in the smaller junk piles rather than venture into the “wild sea.”

This constraint was non-existent for Chu Wang, who possessed the Eye of Insight. His new home was found in a remote corner of the wild sea. Not only was it uninhabited, but it also made it easier for him to search for supplies.

Under the cover of darkness, the children, carrying large bundles, quietly left the small base beneath the junk pile.

The baby, strapped to Chu Wang’s chest, was sound asleep, her slender little face resting against his chest, causing a slight plumpness to crease her cheek. The young boy gently rubbed her cheek with his index knuckle, then pulled the scarf to cover the baby’s head.

Inia always slept deeply—the kind of baby who could sleep through a thunderstorm until morning. No matter how the night wind howled outside the scarf, she slept sweetly and soundly in the young boy’s embrace.

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Within the dream, the little one opened her eyes.

She was inside a transparent cube, about the height where the baby could sit upright, raise her hand, and touch the top. The area was roughly the size of a small baby cradle; she could crawl two steps and hit a wall.

Inia was too young to distinguish between reality and dreams. She leaned against the transparent wall, unafraid, and curiously touched the surfaces.

Just then, the small space became enveloped by the starry cosmos; countless starlight glittered around her.

“Yi-yah! Brother! Brother!”

Ever since she learned to say brother and sister, these two words had turned into Inia’s little emotional calls, popping up at random throughout her day.

The stars flowed around her, and the baby curiously reached out to grab them but couldn’t touch any.

Grumble, grumble.

Her stomach rumbled.

Inia was well cared for by Chu Wang and was fed until she was full every day, but this fullness was on a purely ordinary level. As a Dungeon Lord, she could not gain much energy from a purely mundane diet.

…Although this world was currently small enough to only contain the baby herself, a Dungeon Lord, no matter how small the world, was still its master!

Moreover, achieving this small space within a few months already indicated that Chu Wang and the other children had raised Inia exceptionally well, allowing her small world the opportunity to sprout and appear.

Although Inia’s body was nourished, the energy her spirit required had been nearly exhausted when she was drawn into her small world. Within her own domain, that emptiness felt especially sharp.

The game of catching stars briefly ended. The baby lay down, unable to resist eating her hands.

“Wuaah… Hungry!”

Perhaps because her older siblings kept her company all day, speaking to her constantly, and always asking before feeding her, Is the baby hungry or Is Nia hungry, the words surrounding hunger had become familiar. For the first time, Inia clearly felt her own hunger, and from her small mouth came a new sound that was neither brother nor sister.

Yet in the small world, she was completely by herself. There was no one to scoop her up with a grin, no lively voices to surround her. Only the quiet flow of starlight remained.

The baby pursed her lips, and her large eyes, reflecting the constellations, instantly became tearful.

As if sensing their master’s unhappiness, the previously slow-moving galaxy seemed to instantly accelerate tenfold. The stars darted around Inia like snowflakes, making her stare in wonder, forgetting even to cry.

Some stars were dim, while others shone with immense light. A bright little star flew toward Inia, and she instinctively reached out to catch it.

The next second, the silver-white starlight enveloped the baby. Everything turned pure white, then rapidly descended into darkness. When her vision returned, the baby was already in a completely unfamiliar world.

A Gothic-style bed, with black hangings draped over the headboard like a mourning shroud. Moonlight fell along the edge of the bed, yet it carried only coldness.

There was none of the warm air of the small base, none of the dust dancing in the dim light, and none of the slender, warm embraces of the children.

This was an utterly different and strange environment.

The baby opened her eyes wide, staring blankly at her surroundings. She didn’t cry immediately but propped herself up with her small hands and tentatively crawled two steps toward the edge of the bed.

Behind her, the curtain was lifted without a sound. A thin, ghost-pale hand slid into view, and deep within the darkness, two crimson eyes opened, watching the oblivious infant.