Vampire Princess Guide in Progress - Volume 1 Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The End of the First Day in the Game

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They successfully reached a safe zone town before nightfall.

Although there was no setting like “towns close their gates and refuse visitors at night,” the reason they rushed to arrive before sunset was for safety considerations. The transition between day and night in the game also affected a part of the map’s ecosystem.

At night, some monsters that wouldn’t appear during the day would spawn in various places on the map, especially bat-like creatures.

Additionally, night vision wasn’t as clear as daytime, making it quite possible for a beast to suddenly jump out from a bush and attack unexpectedly. Monsters wouldn’t move around the map with bright health bars visible all the time, otherwise a plain viewed from afar would just be filled with moving health bars.

Only when approaching within a certain distance, or within visual range — when you clearly see a monster and gaze at it for more than 3 seconds — would the monster’s health bar be revealed.

“Are we… safe now?” the petite girl beside him asked cautiously.

“Yes. Like the Pure White Holy City, as long as it’s a safe zone, no attack incidents will occur. Even if someone tries to attack others with weapons, the attack will be deflected by the town’s anti-combat mechanism without causing any damage.”

“That’s great, I was so scared…”

Cross seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, her small frame visibly slumping a little lower.

It appeared that the monsters they encountered along the way had given her quite a fright, and she would occasionally glance up at Nolan’s HP value, as if repeatedly confirming whether he was still in a healthy state.

Earlier, during the battle with the wolf pack, the speed at which his HP value decreased had clearly frightened her.

At the same time, when entering Morning Dew Town, she also noticed a buff called “Star Protection” appearing under her character panel. It remained active as long as she was in the safe zone, granting immunity from attack damage, with fall damage being almost negligible.

Even jumping from a great height wouldn’t kill you, and the minuscule HP value that might be reduced would immediately be restored.

Nolan looked up at this familiar town where he had spent a long time during the closed beta.

“Let’s stay here for the night and continue tomorrow. We also need to level up a bit more. Going to the second floor like this would likely get us killed on the way — the monsters there are basically all level 5~10.”

“Mm.” Cross nodded firmly. “Do monster levels continuously increase with each floor?”

“Yes, they basically increase in increments of 5 levels. The first floor is levels 1~5, so the second floor is 5~10. For players to explore the map smoothly, they generally need to not just match but exceed the monster levels.”

Cross pondered, if that pattern continued, by the time they reached floor 100, wouldn’t the level requirement be 500!?

Of course, no one knew what the high-floor maps would be like. During the closed beta, only a few players had reached the fourth floor, where monsters were levels 15-20. With the gradually diversifying monster types appearing there, battles were already becoming less straightforward.

Nolan and Cross walked together through the town, first finding an inn as their resting place.

They spent 160 Star Coins to temporarily rent two rooms on the second floor of the inn, meaning the unit price was 80 Star Coins per night. The two rooms were adjacent with only a wall between them. If Nolan hadn’t discovered that Cross was actually female, he might have chosen a room with a double bed.

As their footsteps echoed alternately on the wooden stairs leading to the second floor, the petite girl suddenly seemed to realize something.

“S-sorry… Nolan.”

“What is it?” Nolan looked at the girl who wore a guilty expression.

“I lied to you. I-I probably can’t be your good buddy in the game anymore, but thank you for being willing to teach me how to play this game earlier…”

Huh? Hearing these words, Nolan was momentarily stunned.

Then, a feeling of wry amusement welled up from deep inside him.

Especially when he saw Cross’s serious expression while saying such humorous words. Had she created a middle-aged man account with the idea of “being able to play freely with boys”?

Or was it… her personal preference? Did she prefer more mature men?

But no matter how you looked at that muscular, bronze-skinned strongman, he completely lacked the melancholic qualities that girls typically like in older men. The most likely conclusion was that she had simply created a character out of curiosity, casually designing it before starting to play — after all, even the name was randomly generated.

To be honest, if their game bodies were their actual physical forms, Cross in reality would probably only be about 150 cm tall, appearing even smaller than Nolan’s own sister. That excessively pretty face would likely cause certain lecherous individuals to exclaim in frustration, “Damn it, why would someone so cute pretend to be a middle-aged man?”

But this could hardly be considered deception in any objective sense, so there was no need for such a formal explanation.

“I… how should I put it… Apart from being close with my sister, I’m indeed not very good at interacting with women.”

Nolan unconsciously scratched his head, his tone showing some hesitation. “But being ‘good buddies’ and such isn’t really that important now, right? No, I mean, it wasn’t critical even before…”

For a moment, Nolan seemed somewhat incoherent.

Great, staying at home all the time and losing real-world social skills had already made him inept at proper wording, but in any case, seeing Cross with her magic staff now looked much better than before…

The previous sight had been truly unbearable, just thinking about it made Nolan want to claim psychological damage compensation from Cross.

“Hehe…” Cross, for some reason, also curved her eyebrows and let out a light laugh at this moment, perhaps realizing that Nolan, like herself, wasn’t as socially adept as she had imagined. “I understand what you mean. So Nolan actually has a sister in real life?”

“Yes, probably about the same age as you.”

“But Nolan doesn’t look that old, and your appearance hasn’t changed much, you actually created a character based on your real self?” Cross hadn’t expected someone to be so honest. Was it confidence in his own appearance?

But Nolan just felt that since no one knew him anyway, using his real appearance in this game gave him more of a sense of being reborn.

This became a rare light-hearted conversation between the two after reaching the safe zone following their perilous journey.

Soon, they arrived at their inn room doors.

Having already paid the rent, they only needed to reach out with their hands at their respective room doors, and a window would automatically pop up. After verifying the player’s identity, the door would open. Unless specifically invited by the room’s owner, no one else could enter.

In this respect, the game provided an even greater sense of security than reality.

But the two didn’t just stay in the inn. Instead, they carefully farmed monsters near Morning Dew Town, which was one of their primary objectives in rushing to arrive here — to gain advantageous leveling resources.

Nolan wore the green-quality equipment that had dropped earlier, which significantly improved his safety while farming monsters.

At the edge of Morning Dew Town, there was a clearly visible boundary line of white light about 10 cm high, basically encircling the entire town in an arc shape. This meant that after stepping across that line of white light, one would enter the safe zone.

Even if being chased by monsters, they would be blocked by this white light barrier until their aggro value disappeared and they left.

Each time a player entered, their feet would touch that white light, causing it to flicker slightly. After Nolan and Cross arrived, the light continued to flicker as many other players surged in.

Unfortunately, when these newcomers tried to search for treasures in town, all the chests had already been taken by Nolan, leaving them wailing in disappointment.

Those low-level chests didn’t contain high-quality equipment or ultra-rare items, but they did provide abundant game currency and medicines. As a result, Nolan and Cross together obtained nearly 100 Basic Healing Potions, serving as ample essential resources for their wilderness battles.

More and more players arrived in Morning Dew Town, and the streets gradually grew noisy and bustling.

But that bustle wasn’t an atmosphere of joy and excitement. The air was filled more with fear and anxiety, including the urgency of resource competition, as well as mediation from some relatively calm players.

“Alright, according to the first-come-first-served rule, everyone wants to survive. Rather than arguing here, why not look for new monsters!”

But immediately afterward, a painful roar erupted from the crowd.

“Why is this happening?!” the player who roared cried out.

“I don’t want to go out there again. Just making it here nearly cost me my life. Completing all 100 floors is nothing but a pipe dream!” This despairing player had encountered wild monsters on his way to Morning Dew Town.

It seemed he had just lost his two teammates.

Now left alone to face this absurd game, emotionally he appeared to be completely on the verge of collapse.

And this emotion was rapidly spreading to others. Those who stood motionless with wooden expressions watching this player cry out were probably all questioning in their hearts why they had logged into this game only to encounter such a situation.

This period of panic would continue for quite a long time.

“Let’s go back, it’s getting difficult to farm monsters here.”

“Mm.” Cross put away her magic staff and looked back at the silhouettes of other players battling monsters in the distance.

By the time the surrounding farming areas had gradually become so crowded with players that monsters were outnumbered, making efficiency extremely low, Nolan and Cross had both gained 3 levels, rising to levels 7 and 6 respectively. Having collected large amounts of drop materials, they withdrew from the resource competition.

But their mood remained heavy, as they had essentially snatched away a large portion of resources from other players, who had also risked danger to reach this place only to find the surroundings already claimed.

Yet there was no help for it, this was the survival method imposed by this cursed game.

Late at night, after Cross returned to her inn room, she also saw many bad news in the game’s 【World Channel】 chat interface. She huddled in a tiny ball in the corner formed by the bed and the wall near the window, hugging her pillow and continuously scrolling through the screen with her finger.

The area around Pure White Holy City had completely descended into chaos.

A large group of people hid within the city, panic emotions constantly growing among the crowd. Some even chose to end themselves, while outside, players in disputes had activated PVP and turned red-named, slaughtering other players, only to be killed themselves by other players who had banded together.

And according to the information released in the game announcement:

Today, on the first day of the game, 1,042 players had already left the world.