Vampire Princess Guide in Progress - Volume 1 Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The True Beginning of the Game or Life

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“Wait, stop!” Nolan quickly stepped forward and shouted.

Death each time can be revived?

Wasn’t it already stated that from this moment on, all conventional revival methods would be ineffective?

But it was too late. The radical player had already used the Corrosive Grass, and moments later, everyone saw his HP value rapidly drop to the red line. His expression also began to contort.

Something was wrong… this was different from the usual situation when using items.

“What… what’s happening, why… it hurts so much.” He clutched his stomach, fear gradually appearing in his eyes.

But what he faced were other players with even more terrified expressions.

Everyone watched helplessly as his HP value gradually decreased until it reached zero.

“Help… help me…” The thin man collapsed to the ground, convulsing, with blood flowing from his nostrils. Eventually, his body disintegrated into crystal fragments, leaving only a red crystal cluster at the original spot — that was the death record of a player.

It preserved the audio-visual recording of the player’s final moment of death, originally serving as a warning sign for other players in the game.

And after the man fell and turned to dust and fragments, there were no signs of revival…

No one could believe what the divine statue had said — that is, until the first sacrifice appeared.

After witnessing a player’s death firsthand, Nolan almost instantly stopped breathing. The surrounding crowd gathered together, staring blankly at the red crystal cluster — or rather, a tombstone.

“He’s… he’s really dead? Gone…”

“Damn it! What kind of joke is this!”

“That’s impossible, right? Does anyone have him as a friend? He must have just gone offline, right!? He must have returned to reality, right!?”

However, when the player’s game friend hurriedly opened his friend list.

The man’s avatar was indeed grayed out, but instead of showing 【Offline】 next to his ID, it displayed — 【Dead】.

“Hey, hey, hey… I never thought I’d actually be risking my life to play a game! Isn’t this just a game after all!? Isn’t this just a prank or Easter egg? That player from earlier must have been hired by the game officials to create atmosphere, right!?”

Perhaps it was at this moment that the plaza descended into complete chaos.

The tightly wound string in everyone’s heart snapped, and immediately the crowd surged with unbearably chaotic noise.

In the midst of the panicked crowd, Nolan lowered his shocked face and immediately sprang into action, checking his friend list to look for Croft, who had teamed up with him. As teammates in the game, their positions would be displayed on the mini-map.

At this moment, he too must have witnessed this absurd scene that had occurred in the game.

Regardless of what the deity had said, from this moment on, the HP bar displayed beside all players had become their life bar.

But when Nolan ran to the location shown on the map, he couldn’t find the burly man he remembered. Instead, what met his eyes was a petite girl standing in place, hugging a beginner’s magic staff, her body trembling slightly.

“C-Croft?” Nolan hesitated for a moment, checking the map again.

There was no mistake. The teammate’s position was shown right here, and it ultimately pointed to the girl in front of him.

“W-what?” The petite girl hugging the magic staff raised her beautiful, pale little face, blinked, and then looked down at her body, seeming to realize only now that she had appeared in the game with her real-life appearance.

The girl’s original name was Lan Xingyao.

After regaining naming rights, Nolan could see that her game ID had been changed to 【Cross】.

Nolan’s eyes froze for a second. So the first “catfish” he had met in the game turned out to be a loli pretending to be an older man — but now was clearly not the time to worry about such things!

Whether she was an old man or a loli didn’t matter; regardless, she was a friend he had made in this game.

Especially now, at this moment when the game had begun to undergo a complete transformation.

“What should we do, Nolan… is all this real? Is it not a hoax? Did that person really die?” The petite girl’s face was filled with terror as she looked up at Nolan, blinking her bewildered large eyes. Clearly, she wasn’t mentally prepared for something like this.

“How could this happen? Can we still get out of here alive?”

Even though Nolan still found it hard to believe, the fact remained that the player had died after using the Corrosive Grass, with no possibility of revival, and the miserable manner of death was definitely not something that should appear in a game.

No one had the courage to verify its authenticity with their own life.

Whether this was a game farce or they had been transported to another world, what they could do now was to find a way to survive.

“Come with me, Cross! If we continue to stay on the first floor, we’ll soon be caught up in various conflicts. We need to find a way to reach higher floors quickly.” Nolan grabbed her arm and ran outside with her.

This was absurd… this farce was so real and yet so fake that it was impossible to tell which was which.

But the game had indeed changed in certain ways. The seven rules announced by the statue were being realized and implemented right before their eyes. The nature of the game had completely changed, and it had truly begun.

However, even assuming all this was real, he had no reason to be on the losing side in this game. He had been immersed in the beta test almost the entire time, and knew the maps of the first three floors like the back of his hand.

He was even thoroughly familiar with the attack patterns and mechanisms of monsters and bosses. The countless deaths and revivals during the beta test had now become valuable experience to rely on.

He recalled the safest route to the second floor, avoiding dangerous bosses in the wild, and securing the best leveling spots.

He could survive, or rather, he had to survive. The rapidly beating heart in his chest was proof of this. No one wanted to die easily, especially not in a game.

Even if it was all a farce, he had reason to see it through to the end.

Additionally, unlike during the beta test, he was not alone now.

Besides him was a girl who was running along, panicked and helpless. With his current Lv.3 and equipment, plus experience that only allowed him to protect himself, it was difficult to fully look after others.

He needed to find a way to safely reach the fourth floor as quickly as possible.

If the system database had truly malfunctioned for some reason and preserved some elements from the beta test…

Nolan’s gaze fixed firmly on the other half of his character panel that had been partitioned off. The illustration of a white-haired, red-eyed girl was sealed by dark chains — 「Vampire Princess Tilia (Lv.45)」.