Starting from Zero

This unknown small village in front of me is filled with a mist of light purple that is too thick to dissolve. This mist is very strange. When I was outside the village, I felt that I simply couldn’t see the thick fog, but as long as I stepped into the clear dividing line at the entrance of the village, this thick fog would appear in front of my next moment, covering everything five meters away. In a piece of nothingness. As for the boundary of the village entrance...

This is actually not a substantial line, but a boundary between two different states. Outside of this boundary, that is, outside of existence, everything is normal. The ground is brown soil, with green plants growing outside, the sun is hanging in the sky, and the weather is fine. Although it was close to the evening, the sunlight was still very strong, and even the sun was a little hot.

However, within this dividing line, the ground instantly turned into a kind of brown mud, as if it were the product of re-solidification of mud stirred with blood plasma. The plants on the ground all show a half-faded ash-gray, which looks a bit like an old pencil drawing. The sun in the sky is still there, but the light intensity is like the environment seen with dark sunglasses, not to mention the dark, it also has a cold feeling. Coupled with the fog that obstructs the line of sight, this is properly the rhythm of the ghost house in the deserted village!

To say that players in the game are afraid of ghosts, they should still be afraid of this. But in fact, most players will not be frightened by the so-called ghosts in the game. This is not to say that the ghosts in the game are not strong enough, in fact the opposite is true. Unlike the ghosts in the legends that only have a shadow, these ghosts in the game can cause actual damage. According to the level in the legend, this should already be regarded as the level of high level wraith. However, in fact, the players in the game are rarely scared by these powerful ghosts, because for the players, they are just monsters.

"Zero" is not a horror game. People's fear of ghosts often comes from imagination of the unknown, rather than a substantial threat. According to this principle, ghosts that can be seen but cannot be touched are actually far more scary than ghosts that can actually fight you. Once the player attacks the fool and finds that they can hurt the opponent, then the fear will drop immediately, and the speed is very fast. In addition, everyone’s fear of ghosts often stems from psychological pressure caused by the environment. Give a simple example. The same horror movie, a person watching in a deserted old house on a thunderstorm night, or watching a large group of people in a downtown square at noon on a scorching sun, it’s horrible It feels definitely the difference between Heaven and Earth. If you watch it in the former way, even a bad ghost movie can scare many people, and even if there is no ghost movie, many people can cry directly, while the latter... even the world’s top ghost. The film is probably not scary in this environment.

Because human fear needs these conditions to stimulate, and the ghosts in "Zero" are all classified as undead creatures. In fact, these are monsters for players to level up, but The shape is a little special. Therefore, in the absence of a suitable atmosphere, these undead creatures, no matter how strange they are, are actually intimidating. After all, "Zero" is a combat game, not a horror game. The designers did not deliberately create a horror atmosphere from the beginning. In an environment with high visibility, a large group of players armed to their teeth, even if they encounter skeletons, zombies and Nether Soul, can completely howl and rush up with a fat beat to turn the opponent into EXP. In this case, where is there anymore? What kind of fear exists?

However, the current situation is a little bit more troublesome. In the deserted village in front of him, although it is not yet certain whether there are undead creatures, at least the atmosphere is quite scary now.

Maybe they didn't notice it. Since entering this village, the distance between Christina and Gold Coin and me has been constantly getting closer. Originally, the distance between the four of us was more than one meter, but now it almost became the three of them walking next to me. Even though their expressions haven't changed much, I know that they are actually getting scared. This has nothing to do with strength issues, it is purely an instinctive reaction. Most girls have no resistance to this thing, just like most women are afraid of insects.

Although they were a little scared, Christina and the others did not say it right away. Instead, they still insisted on going forward with me with a sullen face. Besides me, the three women on the scene All have clearly entered a state of combat. The Heavenly Venerable sword in the hand of gold coin has the light blue rays of light, the golden light flashing on True Red’s body from time to time, and the surging magic power on Christina’s body all tell me very clearly that these three women The strongman is about to collapse now.

Although it has not been attacked for the time being, I know that if this goes on, it will definitely be worse if the battle occurs. In the current situation of these three, as long as there is any disturbance, they will definitely throw away their strongest attack without the slightest hesitation. So, in order to avoid unnecessary accidents, I must do something in advance.

"Emménées." After summon exited Emménées, I pointed forward directly: "Clear the illusion. In addition, help the three of them do a visual filter."

Emiennes glanced in front of her, and then suddenly mutter incantations in her mouth walked forward two steps, and then suddenly stretched out her right hand index finger forward, a white circle of light instantly rippled from her fingers, and this There is not only one aperture, but with the emergence of the first one, it starts to diffuse outward at a very fast rate of three times per second one after another. Each of these apertures spread out and hits the white mist, which immediately pushes the mist back a certain distance, and as the aperture of one after another continues to push outward, the mist covering the entire village will soon be full. Being pushed out, the visibility returned to normal in an instant, but the sun was still dying and dying, as if the sun was about to go out.

As the visibility increased, the expressions of Christina and the others obviously began to relax, and they seemed to have just discovered their lost self-control, and they were very surprised to put away their power. .

After Eminis successfully expelled the mist, he immediately turned his head and said to Christina: "Don't resist, I will add a visual filter for you."

The so-called visual filtering is a kind of illusion, but it is different from the general illusion. The ordinary illusion is added to the target object to confuse the enemy, and this illusion is added to the eyes of one's own person, the purpose is to make some adjustments in the field of vision that one's own person sees according to one's own needs. For example, if you are fighting in a completely dark environment, I can ask Eminis to add this visual filter to our unit, and then share my perfect dark vision into the opponent’s visual filter so that the opponent can see The picture of is transformed from the picture seen by my eyes, which is equivalent to sharing dark vision indirectly.

In fact, besides night vision ability, this skill has many other uses. For example, the method we are currently using is one of them. The effect is to disrupt environmental variables and modify environmental information.

Christina originally had a sense of fear because of the surrounding environment, so Emenes added a visual effect-like filter to her. After this filtering was added, the sky that Christina saw was back to its sunny state, and the colors of the plants and the ground also returned to normal. Of course, these are not facts, but the visual effect processing of what Christina actually sees through that visual filter makes what she sees becomes what it is now.

After the visual effects were modified, Christina and Gold Coin immediately returned to normal. Interfering with these things is equivalent to destroying the atmosphere in the ghost film, although The ghost movie is still that ghost movie, but it's like watching a ghost movie on a square, it doesn't feel scary at all.

"Huh, it feels much better this way." Because the atmosphere became more and more depressing, none of the three of them noticed that their chats were getting less and less, and finally everyone was quiet. It is concentrated attention completely paying attention to the surrounding environment, afraid that something will suddenly pop out from somewhere to scare myself. Of course, even if something really popped out, with the strength of the three of them, it is estimated that they would be slapped to death, but before they actually appeared, they were scared enough by their own imagination.

Without the horrible atmosphere, the actions of a few of us quickly got up. Anyway, the range of sight has been restored, and our strength is here again, so we don’t worry about any problems.

The previous player said that the mission location was in the middle of the village, so we didn't stop, and ran all the way to the center of the village. This mountain village was originally small. The center of the village was nothing more than a small square of more than 200 square meters, and the central location was occupied by a well.

This well is a little bit different from the open well we usually see. This is an outdoor well. The head of the well is surrounded by a black stone to the knee height. , There is also a hand-cranked jack above the well, with a rope tied to it and a bucket hanging from it. There is a roof on this rope reel, which is larger than the well head. It has a wooden structure, but it is obviously very dilapidated, sparsely like a rib board.

As soon as we arrived here, we saw the player who found the task. This guy was squatting on the edge of the well and looking around nervously. He ran away excited when he saw us appear. come over. Obviously he was scared enough to be here before, but besides the horrible atmosphere, this place didn't even have a small monster, so naturally it would not cause any actual damage. However, the more this kind of situation is absent, the more frightening it is. This guy can be considered as willpower very well now.

"Where is the task?"

"It's inside." The player pointed to a house next to him, and then said: "The only living person inside is the person who posted the task. Well, since you are here, the president, then I will go first. I can’t stay in this horrible place for one minute!"

I nodded and said: "It’s okay, you can stick to it. It’s already very good now. The Army God has already added 500 guild contribution points to you, so you can go back first."

After that member thanked you for a while, you don’t want to waste it or waste it. , Unfolded a scroll of city return to the place directly, and directly flashed people. He didn't want to stay in this kind of ghost place for a second.

After the player teleported away, the four of us walked towards the house he pointed to. This is a Japanese-style wooden house. The ground is higher than the outside. The bottom is supported by many wooden piles. The floor of the room is actually more than a foot high from the ground.

Anyway, there are no people here, and we don’t talk about any rules, we just walked into the corridor outside the house wearing our shoes. I was at the forefront, opened the front door, and was immediately smelt by the smell of revenge, and almost no one fell out.

This room is much darker than the outside. There is almost no furniture in the small area of ​​the house. The opposite wall is also collapsed by more than half. From the front, there is nothing but the back. ruins.

Although this house is actually not much different from the ruins, there are people in it, but this person... is not much different from a ghost.

There used to be five people in the room, but four of them became corpses at this time. One of them is on the left side of the gate, hung by a rope and dangling from the beam of the house. Its eyes are big, its tongue is sticking out, and its body has begun to swell and ulcerate. Obviously it's been some days. Most of it is issued by it.

In addition to the one hanging by the door, there are three dead bodies on the floor of the room. One of them should be a pair of mother and child, hugging each other and huddled in the corner, but now there is only a pile of rotten flesh and skeletons, and there is basically no human appearance. If the bones are still there, I can't even tell. What it is.

The last corpse fell in the center of the room. It did not seem to have been dead for a long time. It seemed to be a suicide, and the method used was the most common caesarean suicide in Japan. The guy's hand also held the handle of the long knife that was pierced in the abdominal cavity.

In addition to the four corpses, there is still one living person, but if no one says it, most people will treat this as a corpse at first glance. As for the reason...Is it weird that a skinned skeleton is treated as a corpse?

It can be seen from the clothes and hairstyle that the last living person is a woman, and she is not very old, but at this time, I feel that this is just a skeleton covered with human skin. Girls have no relationship with half a dime.

Hearing the sound of us opening the door, the girl skeleton immediately turned her eyes to our side, and when I saw the response of the other party, I immediately walked over. After I got closer, the other party whispered in a very dry voice and very slowly: "You are finally here, and I thought I could not insist that you are here! I beg you to help us poor people and relieve our suffering. !"

"We are like helping you, but what happened to you? How can we help?"