Vampire Princess Guide in Progress - Volume 1 Chapter 13

Chapter 13: An Absurdly Strong Female Player?

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The flickering light from the brazier cast twisted shadows on the stone walls. In a shadowy corner of the tavern, a man wearing a cloak sat against the wall and spoke these words. His black attire’s outline was well-hidden in the corner, so much that initially no one noticed his presence.

The coarse Wild Boar cloak emitted a strange, faint green glow. The bristles protruding from his shoulders still bore traces of tusk scratches. The cloak’s hood tilted slightly to the left at a subtle angle, perfectly exposing the man’s right eye to the dancing firelight.

His entire demeanor radiated the aura of someone who didn’t fit in.

Nolan only needed a single glance to recognize that the man was wearing the green-quality equipment 【Wild Boar Cloak】.

Not only that, but his gauntlets seemed to be of similar quality, possibly making it three pieces of green-quality gear…

And as Nolan had guessed, the man introduced himself.

“I’ll be straightforward. My name is Raven, I was a player during the game’s closed beta. Clearing the highest level of this game is absolutely impossible. I even believe that we might never be able to defeat the second-floor BOSS.”

“Friend, why do you say that?” The burly warrior Kilo asked, looking toward Raven.

“Hehe… As new players, you probably don’t understand. Don’t be fooled by how the first-floor BOSS was defeated in just 6 hours on the first day. That was only because the mechanics were thoroughly understood during the closed beta. Even so, some Pioneer Group Players still failed about twenty times due to insufficient initial equipment resulting in low stats before finally clearing the first floor.”

“But now as you know, this isn’t just a game anymore. If you die here, you really die. No one dares to charge forward fearlessly like in a game anymore. Haven’t you heard? Just at sunset, the Pioneer Group Players disbanded their guilds.”

After all, those guilds were initially established by players who were like the first PVE echelon, formed to take the lead in defeating BOSSes together.

Now that they couldn’t exit the game, defeating BOSSes would become an extremely dangerous activity in the game, perhaps the most dangerous without exaggeration. The guilds’ founding principle had become invalid. Simply put, some players had come to the game to farm gold and grind for equipment and materials to sell to other players for real-life profit. Now this was also no longer viable.

“I see… Indeed, the heavy responsibility of clearing floors shouldn’t fall solely on the Pioneer Group Players.” Though saying this, Kilo’s brows furrowed slightly as he asked, “Is there really no guild willing to continue challenging BOSSes, not even the second floor…”

“I know what you’re asking. Because they reached the fourth floor during the closed beta, you think at least the second floor can be cleared successfully?”

The closed beta player Raven bent his legs and rested his arms on his knees, speaking with absolutely no hope: “But actually, during the closed beta, the second and third floor BOSSes were defeated by an absurdly strong female player who seemed like an official GM.”

“Although we had some understanding of the floor BOSSes, no team had time to develop strategies before she had already cleared them, understand? And now the BOSS strength has increased to 100%, going there would be suicide.”

The absurdly strong female player… naturally referred to Tilia Scarlet, who was Nolan.

But Nolan just quietly glanced at the sealed half of his character panel. Although he was dissatisfied with being mistaken for an official GM, now was not the time to argue.

“However, if you’re asking about guilds, there is one that hasn’t disbanded, called 《Iris Knights》. They’re the ones who defeated the first-floor BOSS. They were also a group of very capable players during the closed beta, but after the game changed, there’s been no news from them.”

Under these circumstances, who could possibly clear the floor BOSSes?

After all, everyone is trapped in this game forever waiting to die, so what’s the point of struggling now? The game BOSS strength has doubled! Even with complete understanding of the mechanics, the difficulty is incomparable to before.

This time, Kilo fell silent. As a non-beta tester, he didn’t understand the specifics.

But if what this cloaked closed beta player said was true, trying to progress upward would indeed be extremely difficult, especially with the condition that they couldn’t afford to lose. No one would be willing to take that risk.

The final result would be that everyone would lose hope.

“Besides, don’t count on staying in the safe zone to scrape by. Remember what the statue in the Central Plaza said about players needing to pay close attention to in-game activities. Although no activity-related information has appeared yet, I must say that the 【Beast Tide】 activity was announced during the closed beta but never actually implemented.”

“Beast Tide? What’s that…”

“Simply put, it’s a monster attack on the city. It wasn’t implemented during the closed beta because the Beast Tide was scheduled for the third month after the game’s launch, but the closed beta only lasted one month. If this hasn’t changed…”

On this point, Nolan knew Raven’s words were true.

Although the strength of the Beast Tide monsters remained unclear, if that event still existed in the public test, then everyone staying in the safe zone without progressing upward would be unable to reach higher levels or acquire stronger equipment. When the Beast Tide arrived, there would be many uncertainties.

Strong players might handle the Beast Tide with ease, but players who hadn’t leveled up or were still at Lv.1 would face dire circumstances if no one was willing to protect them.

In other words, becoming stronger was necessary in this game. The path to strength lay in reaching higher floor maps, which required defeating lower floor BOSSes. Clearly, this was the current logic.

But floor BOSSes… no one believed they could be defeated anymore.

“Then aren’t we… just waiting to die no matter what?”

“If even those top-tier players in the first echelon have given up on clearing floor BOSSes, what can we possibly do?”

“That female player from the closed beta… will she appear again? She’s our only hope now, right? Didn’t she single-handedly defeat the second and third floor BOSSes? But is she even in this game now?”

Noticing the atmosphere becoming increasingly grim, Nolan gripped his fingers. He knew this situation was terrible. If no one had confidence in clearing this game… sometimes difficulties themselves aren’t enough to break people, people break themselves first.

The so-called Star Lord was definitely not a good game developer.

It didn’t understand how to reasonably set stage-by-stage goals for players. Presenting the final goal of 100 floors all at once, with that overwhelming difficulty, would make everyone hesitate. It had simply used force to keep these players — who might otherwise have been discouraged and left the game — trapped here.

Although in practice, there was no difference between progressing a few floors at a time and targeting all 100 floors at once.

But people cannot live without hope. Whether or not reaching the 100th floor was truly possible, sinking into hopeless negativity and pessimism would likely lead more psychologically vulnerable players to choose to end their lives… Even if they couldn’t reach the higher floors, surviving should be the primary goal.

Everyone deserves to live. A group of innocent people should never die in a game.

So, after much consideration.

Nolan, who had remained silent until now, finally stepped forward with his thoughts and addressed everyone: “There is hope.”