LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 12: Siren Town
Bai Liu understood why the driver would describe the first merfolk salvaged as beautiful and high-class. The originally finely carved merfolk statues were like shoddy, cheap tourist souvenirs compared to this.
Bai Liu always had a good impression of seemingly expensive items. He stepped forward and looked at the introduction next to the merman.
[Siren. On the evening of xx, xx, x, Siren Town caught this organism in a collective fishing activity. It was verified by relevant agents and confirmed that there are no artificial factors. He is a rare creature grown naturally under purely natural conditions. Once caught, he was already in the state of a corpse. He was sealed in a solidification liquid and kept in the central exhibition hall of Siren Museum for visitors to see.]
This thing should be a monster, Bai Liu thought.
As Bai Liu looked down at the introduction of the merman corpse, the fingers of the merman’s right hand flicked imperceptibly. Suddenly, the coin on Bai Liu’s chest vibrated like crazy and countless bright red panels popped up one after another, superimposed in front of Bai Liu like a system failure.
[Siren Town Monster Book has refreshed – Siren King (2/4)]
[Monster Name: Siren King]
[Weaknesses: None (the player isn’t required to explore the monster’s weaknesses)]
[Attack Method: ??? (Unexplored)]
[You have triggered the wandering god-level NPC, Siren King!]
[The survival rate of the game instance ‘Siren Town’ is declining rapidly. It is being recalculated… the original clearance rate was 51% but now it has dropped to ??%!!]
[Warning! Warning! This NPC is extremely dangerous and there are no clear weaknesses. Once the NPC wants to kill, the player can’t use the weakness to escape. There is only a dead end. Please speed up clearing the game and quickly escape from Siren Town before the NPC wakes up!]
[It is predicted that the NPC will wake up in one day. Please speed up the exploration progress!]
Bai Liu raised his eyebrow. He… had he encountered something extraordinary?
Bai Liu calmly looked at the red warning text on the panel. He was still thinking about countermeasures and didn’t know that this warning almost frightened a senior cloud player who had been accidentally passing by the big screen in the central game lobby. (Cloud player = players who know the game in an indirect manner such as online strategy guides, videos etc but haven’t actually played it themselves)
Wang Shun was a veteran cloud player who sat in front of the big screens in the central game lobby for many years. Now he was standing there staring at Bai Liu’s small TV.
Cloud players were those who spent less time playing games and more time watching others play. This allowed Wang Shun to get a lot of game-related information so he could play better in official games. He had been watching the game videos for so long yet this was the first time he had seen the god-level wandering NPC on the game screen. This made Wang Shun stare at the screen in a trance. After repeated confirmations, he murmured, “Is this right? This… is the god-level wandering NPC right? Who is so unlucky as to enter the instance of the god-level wandering NPC?”
In the entire system, there were thousands of horror games that were considered independent instances. The NPCs and monsters in each game were different and fixed, just like different games displayed at a game store. There was no interference with each other. The process of players entering each instance was independent and there was no merging with each other.
It wasn’t known when it happened but a strange wandering type NPC suddenly appeared. This NPC would randomly appear in a horror game, moving through the games unreasonably and even becoming attached to one of the monsters inside. This monster was transformed from a normal monster to a god-level monster with huge lethality. This caused a lot of players to complain.
However, the probability of triggering this NPC actually wasn’t high. Wang Shun had watched the small TVs for many years and had never seen anyone trigger this god-level wandering NPC.
It was also because the lethal power of this god-level wandering NPC was so huge. Usually he wiped out the entire team so quickly that the audience had no time to see his appearance. The players were all dead. Therefore, there were many rumors about the god-level wandering NPC but there was very little information. Once he appeared, it was top information for cloud players like Wang Shun!
If he collected the information then he might be able to sell it for points! Wang Shun was instantly attentive. He would stick to Bai Liu’s small TV today!
Still, it was amazing that such a famous god-level NPC appeared on the very edge of the central screens. If it wasn’t for Wang Shun’s habit of scanning all the screens and seeing the red warning signs, he might’ve missed it.
“Is the system’s algorithm incorrect?” Wang Shun murmured to himself in front of Bai Liu’s screen. “Why should this type of video be in such a position on the edge? This player performed very well. He is about to gather the first page of the monster book and he is so calm when seeing the god-level wandering NPC. This psychological quality is good enough…”
He clicked on his game manager and inquired about the player Bai Liu. Then his eyes slowly widened.
“…Fuck! This is actually a newcomer playing the game for the first time?! Seriously?”
[Game Forum – Did anyone see the new player on the central screen who just came up from the newcomer area?]
1L: Rising up in the first game, okay! Let me make a bet if this year’s new star rankings will have him?
2L: You’re dreaming. It is all gods fighting for this year’s rankings. This person just got his screen promoted. If you open it too early then you will be ridiculed.
3L: It’s impossible. This person must be cold. I was watching his small TV and his luck was too bad. He actually encountered the god-level wandering NPC. It is estimated that this game will be the last game of his life. Unfortunate child, silently mourning for him.
4L: Fuck? He was very good in the newcomer area before. Why is this… still, he is really amazing. He might not necessarily die.
5L: Is there anyone who doesn’t know that the wandering NPC is a bug? This NPC has no weaknesses. Every time he appears, the player is basically destroyed because they can’t run away. I feel that the balance of the game is broken. The system probably made the unsolvable bug of the wandering NPC to fool the players…
6L: This newcomer is too unlucky. His strength is clearly good but his luck is really bad. Forget the extremely difficult Siren Town instance but he also encountered the wandering NPC… the clearance probability of this is basically 0. RIP.
7L: I was pretty optimistic about him before. I thought he was likely to get the highest points record of Siren Town because he has a really strong mentality.
8L: I remember that the highest score for Siren Town belongs to God Mu right? I remember that without charging, it was more than 1,300 points. God Mu is now in the top 10 of the new star ranking. This newcomer can’t survive.
9L: I also watched this newcomer’s small TV. The god-level NPC is amazing. When I played it, the central exhibition hall contained an ordinary mermaid called Siren Banshee. Now the god-level NPC came and it was directly turned into the Siren King.
10L: What is this newcomer still thinking about? Just commit suicide. It is meaningless. He will die and it will be a miserable death.
11L: He didn’t know. The first time I played, who would’ve expected to encounter a bug?
12L: However, as an NPC, this face value is too high, although I became dizzy after seeing him and can’t remember too well. I think my goddess Xin Xing who is among the top 10 high face value players can’t compare to the face of this NPC. Has the system adjusted the system’s face value to the max? This is also a bug…
13L: What a pity. This newcomer’s face is fine. If he doesn’t die then he has a chance of making it into the top 10 high face value players…
14L: Fart, his pretty boy face looks like a hammer. The top 10 high face value players also looks at operation, okay? He will be cold this time…
[1 new person liked Bai Liu’s small TV, 416 new people have saved Bai Liu’s small TV, no one charged player Bai Liu.]
[512 new people are watching player Bai Liu’s small TV but no one likes it. It is really strange. Is it because the player isn’t performing well? Please give a thumbs up!]
[The number of new likes is too small. The promotion of player Bai Liu to the edge of the central screen is about to expire.]
Bai Liu knew nothing about these discussions and was staring silently at the merman in the glass cabinet. This was undoubtedly the highest level boss in the entire game. The system clearly told him that faced with this boss, players had no way to use the weakness to escape.
After the boss woke up, Bai Liu must die.
Bai Liu didn’t like this feeling of being absolutely restrained but since the game said so, he really couldn’t do anything against the other party. But— Bai Liu flipped his coin between his fingers while thinking.
Before waking up, this merman might be able to bring a trace of survival to Bai Liu.
Bai Liu touched his chin and boldly thought about trying to use the Siren King to gain some benefits for himself. If he spoke this idea aloud then the group of people outside would probably be speechless. They would say that a newborn calf wasn’t afraid of a tiger.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know anything. Bai Liu regarded the Siren King as a monster he could handle at will, it was just a bit more advanced and difficult.
In the game, there was no boss that was impossible for a player to face, even if they had terrible stats. As long as there were no bugs in the game, this was just a means to whet the player’s appetite and make it more mysterious even if it was bluntly stated that the monster was too much for a player to handle.
The thing Bai Liu didn’t know was that he encountered the ‘god-level wandering NPC’ who was also known as the bug of the game.
They stayed in the museum until the evening. The driver came to pick them up and the museum keeper said goodbye to them in an old and decaying voice. “It has been a long time since there has been such a large-scale merfolk fishing activity. After tonight, Siren Museum can finally usher in new merfolk statues.”
There was a strange pleasure in his smile as his eyes rolled toward Bai Liu. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”
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Proofreader: Purichan