Chapter 2: Taking Yuanbao Away
Inside the cavern, the massive beast had only a sliver of health left. It was seconds away from death.
The rest of the party had begun to relax, and the team leader launched the final attack.
Just then, a flash of gold streaked in from the cave entrance behind them.
It was a tiny ball of golden flame. It sliced through the freezing air and shot straight into the beast.
The team leader had the clearest view. He froze for a second.
Whose attack was that…?
The flame vanished into the beast’s body.
Its entire frame shuddered.
Then, to everyone’s astonishment, it rose to its feet again.
When the Ice Qilin looked at the “humans” before it this time, its gaze had turned vicious. It threw back its head and roared.
The icy blue of its eyes deepened.
That was the warning sign for its ultimate.
Several players at the front had been closely monitoring the boss’s condition. Their eyes widened.
“Wait, it’s—”
“Why is it ulting again?!”
“Fall back! Fall back!”
“ROAR!”
But it was already too late.
With another thunderous roar from the beast, a bone-chilling blizzard exploded through the cavern.
Countless blue motes of light rose from beneath the ground, gathering and taking shape in midair.
With a low hum, a towering magic formation appeared, illuminating the entire cave.
[Ice Qilin] — [Song of Ice and Snow]
The players had been completely unprepared. There was no time to escape.
In the blink of an eye, the entire party was frozen into ice sculptures.
Their movements locked down as their health bars plummeted. Several of the squishier players didn’t even last two seconds before dying on the spot.
Party voice chat erupted into chaos.
“What the hell happened?!”
“Is this a bug?!”
“Doesn’t the Ice Qilin only use its ultimate once…?”
On the map, the Fuling Region was classified as a safe zone with a relatively low danger rating. Its only dungeon boss was the Ice Qilin, located here in the rear mountains of the upper district.
The Ice Qilin was powerful, incredibly tanky, and its ultimate was an instant death sentence no matter who you were. Even stacking your entire equipment set with high-defense items wouldn’t save you.
Fortunately, the timing of its ultimate was fixed.
As long as players left the cave at the right moment and reentered after the attack ended, they could clear the dungeon without much difficulty.
Once that strategy became common knowledge, the Ice Qilin’s difficulty dropped dramatically.
This time, the team leader had brought several beginners from his guild. To play it safe, he’d even added extra people to the party.
Everything had gone smoothly.
Until now.
Had the boss mechanics changed?
Or was this really a bug?
Whatever the reason, they’d somehow gotten wiped.
In Otherworld, death always cost a level outside the arena. Players would also randomly drop items from their inventory.
Level-protection items were far too valuable for ordinary players to use casually, and before tonight, no one had expected anything like this to happen.
One by one, the frozen player statues shattered, signaling their deaths.
Eventually, only the team leader remained standing.
He wasn’t going to last much longer either.
Over voice chat, he tried to reassure everyone.
“I’ve already contacted the closest guild members. They’ll come over and pick up our dropped stuff—”
Before he could finish, he caught a glimpse of something golden through the raging snowstorm near the cave entrance.
It wasn’t very big.
It looked like…an NPC’s spirit form?
Before he could get a better look—
Crack.
His vision went black.
[You have died. You will now be transported to the respawn point.]
Not far away, the little golden fox cautiously poked its head into the cavern.
The blizzard had already weakened considerably.
Dong Li’s voice came from behind it.
“Rongrong! Stop running off!”
A short while earlier, the little fox had jumped out of Dong Li’s arms and darted into the forest.
Dong Li had chased after it while calling Yuanbao’s name when the ground suddenly began to tremble beneath his feet.
It felt as though the entire mountain had been disturbed from its sleep.
The sky turned frighteningly dark in an instant, while an eerie white glow appeared from somewhere ahead.
Dong Li instinctively sensed that something was wrong.
But the little fox ignored him and kept racing toward the white light.
As the owner of the spirit form, Dong Li shared part of his consciousness with it. He could vaguely sense that there probably wasn’t any danger ahead.
And something had definitely happened.
Even if Rongrong did have a habit of running around and rarely listening to him.
Dong Li glanced back at the pitch-black trail behind him.
In the end, he decided to keep going.
Following his sense of the little fox’s location, he hurried after it.
After walking a little farther, however, snow unexpectedly began to fall inside the forest.
Dong Li brushed a snowflake from his sleeve.
The coat he’d worn tonight wasn’t especially thick, yet strangely, he didn’t feel cold.
Then Rongrong led him farther ahead, all the way to a glowing cave.
The snowflakes were drifting out from inside.
A thin layer of snow covered the ground, and the cavern’s towering stone walls looked even grander than the main gate at the entrance to the Fuling Region.
Dong Li tipped his head back.
“Whoa…”
He’d lived here for so long, yet this was the first time he’d known there was a place like this on the mountain.
Whenever he and the other fox spirits came up to gather herbs, they only worked within a designated area along one side of the mountain.
They never set foot on the opposite peak.
Still…
A place this unusual seemed to radiate a certain sense of danger.
Rongrong had already disappeared inside.
Worried, Dong Li followed.
“Rongrong! Yuanbao?”
When he finally reached the deepest part of the cavern and saw what was waiting there, his eyes slowly widened.
Glowing vines grew across the cavern walls.
The blizzard had completely stopped, making everything much easier to see.
Broken ice sculptures littered the ground, along with unfamiliar objects half-buried beneath the snow.
And standing in the very center of the cavern was an enormous white beast.
[Dungeon Boss · Ice Qilin]
[Region: Fuling]
Dong Li stared at it, stunned.
“…Whoa!”
So there weren’t just NPCs.
There were dungeon bosses too!
Perhaps because Rongrong hadn’t sensed any danger, Dong Li wasn’t afraid.
Besides…
The giant beast was covered in short white fur. A pair of horns grew from its head, its long slender tail was covered in scales, and those icy-blue eyes looked strangely familiar.
The beast was staring at Dong Li too.
It took half a step backward, then lowered its head as if trying to lie down.
It looked exhausted.
And then its body began to shrink.
Smaller.
And smaller…
Dong Li blinked.
“Huh?”
The cavern suddenly seemed much emptier.
Once the giant beast had shrunk down, the text above its head disappeared as well.
The palm-sized creature nearly blended into the snow.
It was unmistakably—
“Yuanbao!”
Dong Li hurried forward and scooped up the little creature as it collapsed from exhaustion.
“Yuanbao!” Relief and worry flooded his voice at once. “It really is you! Are you hurt…?”
The dungeon boss…was Yuanbao!
But Yuanbao looked terribly weak now. It curled up limply in Dong Li’s arms, then licked his fingertips as if trying to reassure him.
Dong Li instinctively wanted to feed it something.
He searched himself from head to toe and managed to find only one dried-up medicinal herb.
Yuanbao sniffed it.
Then refused to eat.
Rongrong came over to take a look, immediately lost interest, and went back to playing with the shattered remains of the ice sculptures.
It pawed through the strange objects scattered across the ground, inspecting them curiously.
Before long, it grew bored again and hopped over to the spot behind where the giant beast had been standing.
Then it lowered its head and began digging vigorously through the soft snow.
Dong Li hugged Yuanbao more tightly.
Only now, when he took another careful look around, did he finally notice something strange about the broken ice sculptures.
An arm.
A foot frozen to the ground.
Half of a crystal-clear head…
Th-These were…
There even seemed to be two fingers lying near his feet.
Dong Li hurriedly stepped backward.
Just then, Rongrong dug a black object out of the snow and came running over with it in its mouth.
Dong Li took it and examined it.
It was a small metal plate covered in strange markings, with several buttons along one side.
After fumbling with it for a moment, he pressed one.
A translucent screen suddenly appeared above the metal plate.
Dong Li jumped so badly that he nearly dropped it.
Then he looked down again.
And froze.
[Species: Ice Qilin]
[Region: Fuling]
[Level: 150]
[HP: 35,000]
[Status: Extremely Weakened]
[View Work Log]
There were only a few lines of text.
Dong Li crouched in the snow and read them carefully.
Twice.
His mind raced as he pieced everything together.
Yuanbao was the Ice Qilin.
The Ice Qilin was a dungeon boss.
And dungeon bosses…
Just like NPCs, only existed in games.
The metal plate was cool and pleasantly heavy in his hand.
Dong Li pinched his own cheek again.
Ouch.
Not a hallucination.
“…”
He knew it!
The world he lived in really wasn’t real!
Dong Li’s emotions became a tangled mess.
He was excited and nervous, but also bewildered and completely at a loss.
He didn’t really understand any of this.
And there was no way he could figure it all out in such a short time.
But right now, there was only one thought in his head.
His world really had become a game.
Coming back to his senses, Dong Li studied the metal plate and translucent screen again.
He thought back to how the “outsiders” behaved, then experimentally tapped [View Work Log].
[Work Log — Past Seven Days, Most Recent First]
—November 7
18:37 Entered combat-ready state
18:52 Stamina depleted
—November 6
14:01 Entered combat-ready state
14:16 Stamina depleted
14:20 Died
—November 5
20:24 Entered combat-ready state
20:39 Stamina depleted
20:44 Died
—November 4
…
Other than tonight, Yuanbao had died once every single day.
Dong Li kept scrolling through older records.
Sometimes Yuanbao had even died twice in one day.
Three times.
Dong Li got angrier the longer he looked.
So while he hadn’t known anything about it, Yuanbao had been living up here in the mountains, getting beaten up every day!
Those shattered ice sculptures on the ground had to be the people who’d come to attack the dungeon boss.
Tonight, Yuanbao had managed to defeat them, but doing so had completely exhausted it.
Dong Li looked down.
“Yuanbao, are these people why you keep dying?”
Yuanbao immediately gave two pitiful little whines, sounding as though it were complaining about its miserable treatment.
Dong Li’s heart ached.
And then he got even angrier.
He stood up and kicked half of an ice-sculpture head across the ground.
Holding Yuanbao protectively against his chest, he declared,
“I’m taking you down the mountain.”
Dong Li didn’t care about dungeons or work logs.
He’d come back here specifically to find Yuanbao.
Now that he’d found it, he was taking it with him.
Besides, Yuanbao was in terrible condition.
It needed food.
And wasn’t this all just a game anyway?
If he took Yuanbao away, couldn’t those little metal guys from last night just come out and make another one?
Yuanbao gave a soft whimper and rubbed its head against Dong Li’s palm.
Just then, noises came from outside the cavern.
Dong Li immediately went on alert.
“Rongrong!”
The little fox had been playing nearby, sorting through a pile of objects scattered on the ground.
It had just selected a sparkling orange stone.
At the sound from outside, Rongrong’s ears shot upright as well, its violet eyes turning wary.
Yuanbao had noticed it too.
It raised one paw and pointed toward the rear of the cavern.
Dong Li followed the direction it indicated.
After pulling aside a bundle of dead branches in the corner, he discovered a narrow path.
The sounds outside were getting closer.
Rongrong picked up the orange stone in its mouth and hurried after him.
By the time the first player reached the cave, all he saw was wreckage scattered everywhere.
—
Dong Li followed the narrow passage until he finally crawled out through a pile of dead leaves.
Night had completely fallen.
Faint moonlight filtered down, washing over the mountain forest.
Dong Li had barely left the cave with Yuanbao in his arms and Rongrong at his side when the ground began trembling again.
He didn’t dare linger.
He hurried away.
By the time he reached the mountainside on the other side, the shaking finally stopped.
Everything around him was quiet.
There wasn’t another person in sight.
Dong Li was still a little nervous.
He gently stroked Yuanbao in his arms.
He didn’t know whether he was allowed to do something like this.
He had no idea what the consequences would be either.
But nothing had stopped him from taking Yuanbao out of the cave.
He’d even managed to bring the metal plate with him.
The noises outside the cavern earlier had either come from other nearby snake spirits and fox spirits…or from those “outsiders.”
Outsiders didn’t have fully formed spirit bodies.
And there wasn’t any NPC label floating over their heads.
Which meant they had to be…players.
Players in the game.
That was why they could attack Yuanbao.
Hmph.
Dong Li pulled his hood tighter around himself.
If this world wasn’t real anyway, then there was no point worrying so much.
Just look at the roof he’d blown apart.
It had been restored in two minutes.
No matter what he did, everything could simply be “repaired.”
Dong Li quickly convinced himself.
His nerves disappeared, and his mood brightened as he hurried back toward the alchemy hut.
But just as he was about to reach it, he noticed lights glowing all along the streets.
The residential district was in chaos.
Figures hurried back and forth.
Supervisor Ba was standing guard right outside the hut.
Dong Li slowed down.
After hesitating for a moment, he pulled his hood firmly into place.
He’d originally planned to circle around from the side and wait until Supervisor Ba left before slipping into the hut to get some medicine.
Rongrong also lowered itself stealthily and crept into the bushes beside him.
They hadn’t made it far when a familiar shout rang out.
“Who’s there? Stop!”
The bushes rustled.
A slender gray snake slithered out and blocked Dong Li’s path.
Dong Li pressed his lips together and took half a step back.
He pulled his coat closed, hiding Yuanbao more securely inside, then looked up at Supervisor Ba as the man strode toward him.
“What are you doing here?” Supervisor Ba demanded. “Where did you run off to just now?”
Before Dong Li could answer, Supervisor Ba launched straight into a scolding.
Then he mentioned that an alarm had gone off in the upper district earlier.
Apparently, there had been suspicious activity from some sealed demonic creature.
Dong Li stared blankly.
What demonic creature…?
Why had he never heard anything about that before?
“Don’t tell me you went into the rear mountains.” Supervisor Ba eyed him suspiciously. “Running around wherever you please outside working hours… I’m docking two days of your leave.”
Dong Li stared at him expressionlessly.
“Go ahead. I quit.”
He had to brew medicine every day anyway.
What leave?
“What kind of attitude is that?” Supervisor Ba’s narrow eyes widened furiously. “You’re a fox spirit of the Fuling Region. It’s your duty to work hard for this place! And the lords from the upper district will be coming down to conduct a search soon—”
A search?
Dong Li’s heart skipped a beat.
Could they be looking for Yuanbao?
Sure enough, more lights appeared in the distance, accompanied by a growing commotion.
Dong Li wanted to hurry back into the hut, but the gray snake blocked him again.
“Stop right there,” Supervisor Ba snapped. “You still haven’t told me where you went.”
Dong Li turned around.
He stared at Supervisor Ba for a moment.
Then took a deep breath.
He’d already wanted to try this earlier today…
He didn’t want to keep working here anyway.
Supervisor Ba was stingy, picky, and constantly stole his things.
Every day, all Dong Li did was climb the mountain to gather herbs, then come back down and brew medicine.
It wasn’t fun at all.
He’d already taken a dungeon boss away.
So surely punching one NPC wouldn’t matter much either.
Supervisor Ba was still lecturing him endlessly.
Dong Li finally lost his patience.
He braced himself.
Quietly clenched his fist.
And stepped forward.
Rongrong was even faster.
It lunged and smacked the gray snake out of the way with one paw.
BAM!
Dong Li swung his fist with all his strength and punched Supervisor Ba squarely across the bridge of the nose.
He might have looked delicate, but he was surprisingly strong.
Caught completely off guard, Supervisor Ba toppled backward and hit the ground.
At last, the world was quiet.
Everyone else was far enough away that no one noticed anything unusual.
Dong Li rubbed his hand.
Then he looked down.
Supervisor Ba had actually passed out.
And the text floating above his head had changed.
Instead of [Low-Level NPC], it now read:
[Level 1 NPC]
Dong Li stared thoughtfully.
He nudged Supervisor Ba with the toe of his shoe, then looked around.
Nothing happened.
And since no one seemed to have noticed…
Dong Li hurried back into the alchemy hut.
Rongrong kept watch outside.
Dong Li changed into another coat, grabbed his personal medicine furnace, then packed some pills and other belongings into a small bundle.
Before long, he slipped back out of the hut and quietly escaped along a side path.
Rongrong trotted right beside him, tail held high as it looked eagerly from side to side.
Haha!
Dong Li’s heart practically soared.
Without looking back once, he hurried toward the exit of the Fuling Region.
Once there was no one else around, he pulled the metal plate out of his pocket.
Then he made a startled sound.
“Huh?”
The display seemed to have changed.
Two new buttons had appeared in the lower-right corner.
[World Map] [Player Forum]
—
That night, in the dormitory building of Tianheng Star Military Academy.
Lufiel stepped out of the bathroom, water dripping from his hair.
He gave it a few careless rubs with a towel.
Then the communicator on his desk chimed.
Ding—
Lufiel walked over and picked it up.
He lowered his eyes.
The instant he read the message, his breathing stopped.
[Liufeng: Looks like something happened over in the Fuling Region.]
[Liufeng: Wanna log in and take a look?]
