Chapter 71
Chapter 71
[Congratulations, player Xiao Huai! You have received a god’s blessing. Victoria, the Goddess of Slaughter, is bestowing her divine blessing upon you.]
[Victoria’s Blessing] Details:
The player may use the Goddess of Slaughter Victoria’s skill, Lethal Lotus. While the skill is active, the player will receive ten percent of Victoria’s divine power.
The lotus flames inflict a burning effect upon enemies within a fixed area, dealing continuous damage for a period of time. Highly effective in group battles.
Restrictions: The lotus may persist for up to one hour. After use, the skill enters a forty-eight-hour cooldown.
[Note: A message from Victoria: Little beauty, don’t embarrass me. This is my signature skill.]
No one could see the contents of another person’s system interface without permission.
To everyone else, Xiao Huai was merely staring blankly ahead.
Just then, an NPC dressed in black slowly approached him.
“Greetings. Player Sanity has been detected at 2. To prevent you from losing control in the game lobby and impairing other players’ experience, you will now undergo forced teleportation. Do you accept?”
The instant the other players heard this, they scattered in every direction. Shock covered their faces as they exchanged looks, as though they had heard something utterly impossible.
His Sanity was only two… That meant he had already entered a pseudo-monster state.
Xiao Huai merely glanced at the NPC. Calm and indifferent, he pressed a hand to his abdomen and walked toward the exit.
The black-clad NPC blocked his path. “Excuse me, but do you misunderstand the meaning of *forced teleportation*?”
Xiao Huai suddenly smiled. “Do you think I’m going to lose control? I haven’t caused a disturbance in the lobby or broken any rules.”
The question stunned the NPC. Just as Xiao Huai had said, there was not the slightest sign that he had lost control.
And the prerequisite for forced teleportation was Xiao Huai losing control inside the game lobby.
Xiao Huai walked around the NPC and continued slowly outside. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going.”
By the time the NPC recovered and tried to say something more, Xiao Huai had already vanished into the crowd.
Players-Only Hospital.
The moment Xiao Huai appeared, nurses surrounded him and guided him through the admission process. Compared with his previous visit, the service was considerably more attentive this time.
Because his Sanity was so low, he needed to be hospitalized until it recovered.
His mind was currently filled with hallucinations of demons and monsters. When the black-clad NPC had approached him, what Xiao Huai had actually seen was a mass of ground meat.
Losing control… An ordinary person would have nearly gone mad once their Sanity fell below fifty.
But Xiao Huai endured the pain and adapted to the hallucinations as though he were already accustomed to it all.
* * *
Elsewhere.
At a gathering place where gods dined, Victoria idly toyed with her fork while checking the Gods’ Livestream to see whether Xiao Huai had gone online.
A god could choose to apply for an NPC role in a particular player’s next game.
But there was no guarantee they would be selected.
The system controlled the algorithm. Sometimes it would not choose a single god from the applicant pool.
That was one reason Victoria had wanted so badly to keep Xiao Huai. Once she missed her chance, catching him again would be difficult.
“Victoria.”
A deep male voice came from behind her.
Victoria’s pupils widened slightly. Loki appeared before her with a broad smile.
But how much chilling menace lay hidden beneath that smile?
Loki sat beside her. A plate of strawberry cake appeared in his hand, and he pushed it toward Victoria.
“Your favorite dessert, made with the freshest ingredients.”
Victoria looked at the scarlet “strawberry cake.” Every strawberry had been fashioned from a heart.
Her eyes lit up. “You’re not angry with me?”
“Angry about what? That you failed to keep the little toy?” Loki propped up his chin and grinned.
A sleeping beast seemed to lurk within his amber eyes.
Multicolored bells appeared in his hand. He played with them one-handed, and they immediately released a brilliant glow.
Victoria had already begun eating with gusto, popping the “strawberries” into her mouth one after another.
She glanced at the bells. “You still haven’t thrown them away?”
“Why would I? They hold the toys I once loved most. Every one of those lights is proof that they made me happy.”
Victoria understood at once. “So you really do blame me for failing to keep Xiao Huai.”
“Hee-hee-hee. If that little fellow had truly broken in your hands so soon, I would have been a little disappointed instead.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “You saw how he cleared the instance afterward?”
“I did.” Loki drew out the words as though sinking into an exquisitely pleasant memory. “How I envy you. You got to see him looking so beautiful with your own eyes.”
His body had been broken and battered, his Sanity reduced to the pseudo-monster level, and black diamonds shone brilliantly across him.
The diamond showcase had been reduced to ruins.
Behind him, countless monsters roared and raged in despair and agony.
He had used Joseph’s power to command those monsters, which meant he was even madder than they were.
Yet the man who should have committed the wildest acts had remained the calmest of them all.
He had not killed a single one of his teammates.
Loki could not stop laughing, a trace of obsession burning in his eyes.
His lips moved. “I can hardly imagine how thrilling it would be to drive him past the breaking point and into madness.”
Just imagining Xiao Huai weeping and begging him, breaking down, surrendering, and stepping to the brink of destruction…
How exhilarating would that be?
“Still, I keep feeling that more than one person has their eye on him,” Victoria said.
“Of course they do. He’s so unique,” Loki replied.
Plenty of gods in the Gods’ Livestream had been drawn to him without even realizing it.
“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the players. Do you think a god could become a player?”
A blurred face kept surfacing in Victoria’s mind.
She vaguely sensed that it belonged to Lu Yuanshi, but even though they had parted only a short while ago…
Victoria had already forgotten his face and even everything about him.
It was as though all those memories had been blurred.
But how could a god’s memory be so easily obscured by a human?
Loki looked at Victoria with amused mockery.
“A god pretending to be a player? Ha! You really do have a wild imagination. Only that exalted one could possibly achieve such a thing. But do you truly think someone who has ignored the horror game for more than ten thousand years would leave the divine temple because of Xiao Huai?”
He closed his hand around the bells, playful intrigue entering his eyes.
“He cannot leave the divine temple, nor can he develop certain desires he should never possess. If that day truly comes, now *that* will be interesting.”
Victoria stopped eating.
“Ragnarok. Divine punishment…”
The words slipped unconsciously from her lips. Then she gave an awkward laugh. “Mm, you’re right. Perhaps I misunderstood.”
That exalted one could never leave the divine temple.
The price of his departure was far too great.