122. So, these are underworld Pokémon, are they?

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Accompanied by somewhat hoarse opening music in a descending key, a middle-aged man in a white lab coat appeared in the exact center of the screen. His head looked as though it had been covered in a layer of adult-video mosaic censoring.

“Hello, I’m the Professor. This is the world of spirits. Every day, we live, play, and, of course, battle alongside spirits...”

Through the graphics, which looked like something from an old-school game console, Chen Shang saw the “Censored Professor” speaking, while dialogue boxes kept appearing at the bottom of the screen.

The Censored Professor then took a red-and-white ball from his pocket and tossed it onto the ground. A floating, spherical monster with five or six mouths appeared on the screen.

“What the hell...” Chen Shang felt a vague sense of unease as his finger continued tapping the Enter key. “This thing doesn’t seem much like the games I used to play...”

After a routine introduction, a question suddenly appeared on the screen:

“What is your name?”

“Moonshadow Spiritwind.” Chen Shang casually entered the game name he used most often.

“Moonshadow Spiritwind, is it? Heh heh heh... Enjoy the game!”

New text appeared on the screen. For some reason, however, the letters were blood-red—and they continued to grow larger.

Just as the crimson words expanded to their limit, the screen flickered, and the image shifted to a bedroom.

“Huh? It doesn’t let me choose my gender?” Chen Shang complained offhandedly. “I wanted to play a female character.”

Melodious yet hoarse background music rang from the speakers, and the young male character the player was meant to control appeared in the very center of the screen.

“Today is my first day as a spirit trainer. I need to hurry... What’s going on?”

The boy in the room muttered to himself. Then the screen suddenly shook, as though an earthquake had struck.

Immediately afterward, control of the boy was handed over to the player. Chen Shang pressed the arrow keys, guiding him out of the room and downstairs.

The moment he reached the bottom, Chen Shang saw the game screen transform into a dilapidated living room. The furniture had been wantonly torn apart and smashed, while what appeared to have been a carefully prepared breakfast lay scattered across the floor, as though a demolition crew had ransacked the place.

“What happened here? Why has it turned into this?”

The boy’s panicked words appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“No! I have to get outside and see what happened!”

“Damn, this is getting creepy!”

Chen Shang did not touch the keyboard, yet the boy in the game walked out of the house on his own.

The instant he left the building, the environment on-screen suddenly darkened, and the background music became sinister, reminding Chen Shang of the most famous “Purple O Town” theme in the series.

With the aid of the dim streetlamps within the game, Chen Shang could barely make out that his character was standing in a decrepit little town. At the same time, a prompt appeared in the upper-right corner of the map:

“Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Hometown”

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Chen Shang frowned and began moving the character around, but he soon sensed that something was wrong.

The character first emerged from an unoccupied residential compound. Beyond it, however, lay a familiar little town.

“It’s the place where I lived as a child again...”

The layout of the town was exactly the same as it was in his childhood memories. In other words, not only the town outside, but even this town within the game was a perfect recreation of his childhood home.

“Damn it, who’s so obsessed with the place I lived when I was a kid?”

Chen Shang grumbled unhappily.

At that moment, a dialogue box appeared in the game:

“GRAAAAHHHHH—!”

A greasy-green humanoid monster came charging toward the game character, waving its claws as though it intended to seize him.

Chen Shang could still control the character. In other words, this was not a scripted cutscene in which death was unavoidable.

He immediately moved the character and began fleeing in every direction. Yet more humanoid monsters crawled out from the shadows. They looked like corpses and specters stitched together from mismatched pieces, and even through the mosaic-like graphics, they were horrifying.

Chen Shang could do nothing but keep pressing the arrow keys while frantically shaking the mouse in his hand, maneuvering the character through the monsters.

Perhaps the air in the internet café was too foul, or perhaps he was simply too tense. Chen Shang suddenly felt as though he could not breathe.

Although Chen Shang was a game designer and rather confident in his gaming skills, he managed to endure for three full minutes while surrounded by the monsters.

The monsters, however, moved incredibly fast, and there were far too many of them. In the end, one mistake was all it took for Chen Shang to be caught.

The screen suddenly flickered and transitioned into what appeared to be a turn-based battle scene.

The boy controlled by Chen Shang stood in the lower-left corner, while the monster stood in the upper-right.

At last, he could see the creature clearly. It was a humanoid zombie with three arms, its body covered in scars, much of its flesh peeled back and hanging loose.

“It looks a lot like something from a B-grade zombie movie. But compared to the freaks occupying Nightpivot City, it’s actually rather comical.”

Chen Shang tossed out the remark casually.

Within the battle interface, Chen Shang was automatically taken to the “Spirit Bag.” Inside were six spirits available for selection:

“Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Left Hand,” “Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Right Hand,” “Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Left Foot,” “Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Right Foot,” “Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Head,” and “Moonshadow Spiritwind’s Torso.”

The illustrations for all six “spirits” depicted bleeding severed human limbs.

“For god’s sake, this thing is seriously twisted!”

Chen Shang cursed, immediately closing the spirit-selection screen and clicking “Run.”

The next instant, time around him came to a standstill. Blood-red words appeared once more in Chen Shang’s mind:

“Luck Check: 1d100 = ???”

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Once again, the game had given him a dice roll without telling him the target number. In such circumstances, Chen Shang decisively rolled a hundred.

Or at least, that was what he intended. The number displayed atop the die was ninety-eight.

“Huh?”

Chen Shang glanced at the glove on his right hand. Sure enough, the glove seemed to have less than a third of its power remaining, and its mechanical fingers had become far stiffer than before.

It appeared that with the battery nearly depleted, the dice glove could only roll a number close to what Chen Shang had in mind.

“It’s running out of power this quickly? Can this thing even be trusted?”

Even so, ninety-eight was still a critical success. The game screen displayed a successful escape, and the character broke free from the battle.

At the same time, the monster that had just caught up to him suddenly stiffened and stopped where it stood. Chen Shang seized the opportunity and continued running toward the outskirts of the town.

At last, he guided the character out of the town. The surrounding scenery underwent a complete transformation, and the background music changed with it.

The town behind him turned into a sea of flames the moment he escaped.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a spirit-battling game? Why does it feel more like a survival-horror game?”

Chen Shang turned the character around, only to see a desolate cemetery.

While Chen Shang was lost in the game, the clock on the internet café wall struck twelve. From somewhere in the distance, he could faintly hear the heavy, sonorous tolling of a bell from a tower.

Chen Shang felt the air around him growing hot. He hurriedly tore his gaze from the screen and looked around.

At some point, the internet café had caught fire. The smell of smoke and the searing heat rushed toward him.

The flames seemed to have leapt down from the upper floors and were rapidly spreading toward the computer room where Chen Shang sat, like a greedy, insatiable beast determined to devour everything in its path.

“There’s a fire? When did that happen?!”

Chen Shang cried out in surprise and quickly moved away from the desk.

The fire inside the internet café grew increasingly fierce. Before the flames could spread completely, Chen Shang took advantage of the opening and sprinted through the glass doors to escape outside.

At the very moment Chen Shang left the computer desk, the boy in the computer game was suddenly struck by a colossal tentacle.

When the tentacle withdrew, all that remained on the screen was a pool of mangled flesh.

The game screen immediately went black. A string of eerie violet words appeared and began growing larger:

“The struggles of mortals are futile. You are nothing more than a pawn of fate.”

Accompanied by the sinister background music, the computer was swallowed by the flames and burned to ashes.

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