Free Action

Free Action

The Feather-Eyed Apostle's show of killing players to establish authority, followed by his brainwashing, lasted more than forty minutes before it finally ended.

Mu Sichen noticed something: the town residents' SAN had stayed within a stable range the entire time, barely changing at all.

By contrast, several players' SAN had fallen sharply. It was already below 40, and the fact that they could keep from screaming was impressive enough.

Clearly, just hearing information related to Big Eye made people dizzy, and wearing the cloak caused an ongoing loss of sanity. So why were these town residents so stable?

At last, the Feather-Eyed Apostle finished his speech. A Follower beside him said, "Dear, lovable residents, next is the free activity period. As long as you return here before 19:55 and go back to your rooms, that will be enough. During this time, you may enjoy life to your hearts' content and move about as you please. Every door in this town will be open to you."

They could actually move freely during the "Night." Mu Sichen had thought they would be trapped here and brainwashed without end until "Daylight" arrived.

If the "Night" was this safe, why had the diary owner preferred to starve until he ate his book rather than leave his room?

Mu Sichen felt that the world seen through the diary owner's eyes was clearly different from the attitude he saw from the town residents.

At that point, the Follower continued, "Under the Great Being's protection, the Town of the Eye is an absolutely safe town, an ideal home for every person. However, this is only true if you thank and revere the Great Being from the bottom of your heart. Those Fallen hiding among the crowd, those who would endanger the town's peace, will be purified by the Great Being. Those who are not sincere enough, whose faith is not firm enough, please step forward and accept the Feather-Eyed Apostle's baptism. Otherwise, you may encounter danger."

The Feather-Eyed Apostle waited a while. Seeing that no one stepped forward, he said, "Dear, lovable people, I hope that within the Town of the Eye, you may gain eternal joy and happiness."

With that, he spread his eye-covered wings and flew into the fog, vanishing from sight.

The Followers also chose different directions and entered the luminous mist.

The town residents seemed to have their own destinations as well. Each chose a road with clear purpose and left.

In less than five minutes, only Mu Sichen and the three surviving players remained in the plaza. Even "+543" did not stay behind; he left with a dozen or so town residents who had formed a party.

Once everyone had gone, one player could no longer hold out. He collapsed onto the ground, his face pale, his lips cracked, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.

Tears streamed down his face despite himself. His voice shook as he stammered, "I-I-I... just tried to log out. I secretly opened the System panel and searched for ages, but I couldn't find the logout button. Can we r-really l-log out?"

Another player's SAN had dropped as low as 26. She said nothing, just sat on the ground and kept scratching at her eyes, muttering that bugs were growing inside them.

Pushcart Player looked at Mu Sichen and forced out a friendly smile with great difficulty. "Thank you for earlier. You saved me. You're... also a player, right? I felt you hit my foot with something. It was an iron tool over a meter long, but you don't have a weapon under your cloak now. You put it into your weapon slot, didn't you?"

Pushcart Player was not entirely stupid after all. He could work out Mu Sichen's identity from the details.

Mu Sichen neither admitted it nor denied it.

Pushcart Player smiled bitterly. "Did you also receive a game pod mailed by My Ideal Town? I really thought I was lucky at first, being chosen by such an amazing game. I never thought..."

From his words, Mu Sichen confirmed that the other players had the same experience he did: they had all received a closed-beta invitation, filled in an address, obtained a game pod, and then been transported here.

"What's your name?" Mu Sichen asked.

"Call me Old Niu. My game ID is Daily-Grind Workhorse," Pushcart Player said.

"Call me Xiao Mu," Mu Sichen said.

"What should we do? Stay in the plaza and wait until 19:55 to go back to our rooms?" Old Niu asked.

"I'm afraid not." Mu Sichen looked around. The fog was growing thicker and thicker. The plaza was already shrouded in it. In a few more minutes, it would be so dense that they would not even be able to see the people beside them.

This was not a safe world. Staying where they were was just as dangerous as exploring the fog. Waiting passively for death and actively struggling to survive were both dangerous; the latter might bring them into danger more easily, but at least it offered a chance at life.

Mu Sichen took out the pickaxe and walked over to the two players lost in despondency. He lightly tapped each of them on the top of the foot.

The crying player looked up at Mu Sichen through tear-blurred eyes.

After using the pickaxe twice in a row, Mu Sichen's MP bar was instantly emptied, and two Self Stickers appeared in his hand.

He placed the two Self Stickers on the backs of the players' necks. The player who had been shouting that bugs had gotten into her eyes immediately raised her head to look at Mu Sichen. She was a young woman.

Mu Sichen said to them, "This is all I can do. The rest depends on you. You all have a game system and a starter tool. Use the System well and protect yourselves."

The young woman touched the back of her neck. She had been in agony just now. All she could see was a swarm of black wriggling worms drilling toward her eyes. She kept trying to pull them away with her hands, but the more she pulled, the more there were. She had been terrified and frantic, even developing the urge to dig out her own eyes.

Then the person before her had patted the back of her neck. A wave of coolness had traveled from her nape straight into her mind, and her vision had cleared in an instant. All the worms disappeared.

Only then did she realize that everything just now had been a hallucination.

The young woman asked, "What exactly is this place? What was that feathered, eye-covered monster just now? What did you stick on me?"

Mu Sichen looked at her SAN, which had barely risen to 30 after the Self Sticker was attached, and shook his head. "I can't tell you. I can only remind you that here, don't listen to what you shouldn't hear, don't look at what you shouldn't see, and keep your sanity."

This was a world where merely understanding it would bring contamination. A player with only 30 SAN left could not withstand the mental shock of the truth.

As fellow players, Mu Sichen would not stand by and watch them die when he had the ability to help. But by the same token, he was not a savior. With his current abilities, what he could do was far too limited.

After the pickaxe attacked, it could trigger the "Undermine" skill and produce a Self Sticker.

The condition for activating "Undermine" was Mu Sichen's own strength.

For a Follower brainwashed by Big Eye, Mu Sichen could hit him countless times with the pickaxe and still fail to trigger "Undermine," because Mu Sichen was not strong enough to "undermine" Big Eye. Qin Zhou, however, could.

On the other hand, if someone had been mentally contaminated by the Feather-Eyed Apostle, Mu Sichen could trigger "Undermine" by attacking them with the pickaxe. But his strength was limited; after making three Self Stickers, his MP bar would be emptied.

The MP bar and HP bar recovered slowly over time. HP recovery depended on the severity of the injury: the more serious the injury, the slower the recovery, and if it was too severe, Self-Healing would become impossible. The MP bar, however, could fully recover in three hours.

In other words, after three hours, he would be able to make three more Self Stickers.

Under these circumstances, giving two Self Stickers to two players who were nearly mad was already Mu Sichen's limit.

More than that, he simply could not do.

The fog grew denser and denser. Mu Sichen said, "Visibility is too low here, and who knows what dangers are hidden in the fog. I'm leaving."

"I'm going with you!" the three players said in unison.

Mu Sichen shook his head. "The place I'm going should be very dangerous. Your minds may not be able to withstand it."

"Then how are we supposed to survive?" Crying Player asked. "How can we go home?"

"I don't know how to go home either. I can only act according to the System's instructions. Since the System brought me here, while I'm still weak, I can only obey it for now," Mu Sichen said. "As for surviving, although I can't tell you what's going on here, I can offer you one choice. Do you want to live on in confusion and happiness, or struggle to survive with eyes open? If you choose to struggle with eyes open, then I still won't say anything. You'll have to explore everything for yourselves."

Perhaps because the young woman had personally experienced the hallucination and nearly dug out her own eyes, after Mu Sichen saved her, her mind was actually a little clearer. She asked, "When you say living on in confusion and happiness, you mean those town residents, right? If we're like them, we can become very safe."

"Yes." Mu Sichen nodded.

This was something he had only just figured out himself.

The diary owner and those numb town residents were both town residents, yet one had ultimately gone mad while the others lived quite well. Even after listening to the Feather-Eyed Apostle's brainwashing, their SAN had not changed much. Mu Sichen had been thinking about why there was such a huge difference between the two. Just now, when he heard the Follower mention that "Fallen would encounter danger in town, and those who felt their faith was not firm enough should accept baptism," Mu Sichen understood.

The reason was whether or not they believed in Big Eye.

When one's mind was normal, hearing about Big Eye's deeds would cause the brain to protect itself and produce a reaction of resistance, so one would feel dizzy and SAN would fall. But if one was like the town residents, stopped resisting, and trusted Big Eye from the bottom of the heart, SAN would stop changing after dropping to a certain level. One would smoothly merge into the town, numb but safe.

But someone like the diary owner, who knew the truth, strongly resisted Big Eye, and yet had no way to resist Big Eye's power, would ultimately be fated for madness.

Mu Sichen did not want to become like the town residents. The only road before him was to stay clear-headed and fight madness.

The three players fell silent for a while. Crying Player gritted his teeth and said, "At least I'll be able to live, right? Tell me first, then I'll decide whether to do it."

Seeing how insistent he was, Mu Sichen sighed, stepped forward, and whispered the town residents' method of staying safe into Crying Player's ear.

Crying Player froze for a moment, then immediately understood why Mu Sichen had been unwilling to say it.

It was as simple as opening one's heart. If Mu Sichen had not said it, Crying Player would never have thought of it and would have kept trying to resist. But now that Mu Sichen had told him, the thought would follow him forever like a curse. Whenever he encountered even the slightest danger, the idea "Forget it, just give up" would rise in his mind and never disappear, until he died or became one of Big Eye's followers.

He gave a bitter smile and said to Old Niu and the young woman, "He's right. Without enough resistance, you really shouldn't know anything at all. Ignorance is safer than understanding. Too bad I've already heard it. You two... if you want to stay clear-headed, you'd better not listen."

The young woman and Old Niu had both experienced the pain of being controlled by hallucinations. They wanted to live with clear minds, not inside illusions.

The fog was already so thick that they could barely see one another even standing face-to-face. Mu Sichen pulled up his hood to cover his face and said, "I'm leaving. The place I'm going will definitely be dangerous. I can't protect you. If you follow me and run into danger, I won't save you. I may not even be able to protect myself."

After saying that, he walked in the direction "+543" had gone.

With such abnormal SAN, "+543" was definitely a Fallen, and a powerful one at that.

Mu Sichen needed to find the "Pillar." He did not know what it was, but he knew it had to be something capable of harming Big Eye.

If he were "+543," and he had risked coming to the Town of the Eye, he would definitely be Big Eye's enemy. In that case, following "+543" was the most likely way to find the "Pillar," and it was also certain to be the most dangerous.

Mu Sichen disappeared into the fog. The young woman and Old Niu exchanged a glance, then both ran after the direction in which Mu Sichen had vanished.

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Author's Note:

Qin Zhou (hugging a tentacle and playing with it out of boredom): When is Mu Sichen going to come fleece me? He missed my fleece again this chapter! My fleece smells the best!