MMPS Ch. 45

Chapter 45: Eternal Night Breaks Dawn

Since obtaining the Armor-Piercing Awl, its powerful capabilities, enhanced by the embedded Tier 2 Red Core, had yet to be tested in actual combat.

With a weapon in hand, the tide of the battle shifted in an instant. Yu An gripped the Armor-Piercing Spike tightly, switched from defense to offense, and charged toward the strange man.

The peculiar man was agile, darting behind scattered furniture under the cover of darkness. While the Picture Within the Painting Core didn’t significantly enhance Yu An’s vision, tracking a target in such a dim environment was truly challenging for his eyes.

Zhao Ran, however, was different. In the pitch-black surroundings, the strange man appeared to Zhao Ran as if he were standing in broad daylight on an open field, utterly exposed.

“He’s circling to your rear left. There’s a shovel lying horizontally right in front of you, and some dangling debris slightly upward to your left. Bend down to step over it, then turn and grab him directly. Nothing else will hinder you.” 

As Zhao Ran spoke, Yu An moved into action. Unbothered by the indistinct outlines in the darkness, he navigated swiftly. Reversing his grip on the Armor-Piercing Awl, he crouched low, pivoted sharply, and slashed through the darkness. The blade traced a blood-red arc, grazing the man’s cheek. The sharp edge cut across his left eyeball, slid over the bridge of his nose, and carved a vicious groove through his right eye.

Blood sprayed forth, and a warm splatter landed on Yu An’s cheek. The man let out a pained, guttural scream and turned to flee, nimbly leaping over obstacles before dashing out the back door of the small cabin. Yu An attempted to follow him, but in the pitch-black chaos, he accidentally struck his knee against the edge of some debris. The pain brought him to a crouch, clutching his leg and gasping.

Zhao Ran crouched beside him and rubbed his injured knee: “You’ll be fine.”

“You knew there was something in the way and didn’t tell me.” Yu An grumbled as he gritted his teeth, rising to his feet. Limping to the table, he propped himself up and sat on the wooden surface, rubbing one leg while letting the other dangle.

“You were running too fast. I didn’t have time to warn you.” Zhao Ran explained, pulling out a chair that had been used by the dead man, brushing off the dust before sitting down. “Don’t chase him. There might be traps.”

“I didn’t expect to pull the Armor-Piercing Awl out in the Game Illusion Chamber,” Yu An said, examining the sharp, gleaming cross-shaped blade. The distorted core embedded at the junction of the hilt and blade emitted a faint red glow. “Your character is a traveling artist, so wearing the refinement badge strengthens your painting ability. My character can’t do that.”

“Try drawing something else. How about a handgun?” Yu An suggested, sitting cross-legged on the table and scrutinizing Zhao Ran’s sketchbook and paintbrush. “The Picture Within the Painting Core can’t produce living creatures and only creates objects the same size as the drawing.”

“A handgun’s too complicated.” Zhao Ran replied, picking up the brush with his left hand and dabbing it in paint. Enhanced by the refinement badge, Zhao Ran’s painting time was significantly reduced, allowing him to finish a drawing in just a few seconds.

“I can’t do it. I don’t remember the exact details of a handgun.” Zhao Ran admitted, scratching his head with the end of the brush. He never used guns due to their recoil, and though he knew how to assemble each component, recalling the precise shapes in his mind was proving difficult.

“Try drawing a core instead—a Perspective Core, the Radiograph’s Eye,” Yu An suggested, leaning over with interest. He had initially wanted Zhao Ran to draw a  Core Storage Analyzer, but that was likely even more intricate than a handgun. A simple eye-shaped core would be easier.

Relying on memory, Zhao Ran sketched the Tier 3 Red Function Core—the Radiograph’s Eye. Enhanced by the refinement badge, his depiction of the core appeared so realistic it seemed almost tangible.

Yu An activated the Picture Within the Painting ability, attempting to extract the item from the sketchbook.

“It won’t come out.” Yu An muttered after several tries, his fingernails now smeared with paint.

“It’s probably because every core is an irregular sphere. Drawing can’t replicate those subtle ridges and grooves.” Zhao Ran reasoned. “Unless you take a photograph, it’s impossible.”

“But the Armor-Piercing Awl has an embedded core, and I managed to pull it out,” Yu An countered.

“That’s because it was sculpted and polished into a standard cross-star shape,” Zhao Ran explained.

Though somewhat disappointed, Yu An felt reassured now that he had the Armor-Piercing Awl. At least he no longer needed to waste time searching for weapons or upgrading them.

“Is this really all you can draw? Think of something else.” Yu An urged.

After a moment of pondering, Zhao Ran’s face lit up with inspiration. He quickly began to draw.

“Let me see.” Yu An said, lifting the sketchbook to inspect it. His expression turned puzzled. On the canvas was a lifelike pile of glossy, bouncy, heart-shaped gummies.

“This, I can remember.” Zhao Ran said with a cheeky smile, resting his chin on his hand. “Li Pu buys these at the supermarket all the time.”

Reaching into the painting, Yu An successfully retrieved a handful of heart-shaped gummies. Indeed, the fridge in the interviewer’s house had been stuffed with these strawberry-filled, juice-bursting candies.

Yu An tossed two into his mouth and, under the dim light of an oil lamp, opened the book he had taken from the skeleton. Though some letters were blurred and the language was archaic, he had no trouble reading it.

“Oh, the old man’s newborn grandson was sent as a sacrifice to… this word is strange. I can’t tell if he meant a war god or a monster—perhaps the town’s guardian deity. Later, an outsider arrived in this isolated village and promised the old man he would retrieve the child from the monster. Residents who had lost children to the creature gathered to send him off.”

“The outsider bore a sun insignia on his chest, and the people placed their hopes in him, praying nightly and calling him a warrior.”

“The warrior ventured alone to the monster’s lair but vanished for years. Finally, a lost fisherman discovered his decayed corpse beneath seaside cliffs. He clutched a chipped sword, his back against the rocks, and had etched these words into the stone with his blade: A false light hangs beneath the banner of the God of War, and the void of faith ends with me.”

Yu An’s pupils contracted. He had read this passage in a journal before. On the map of Riyu Town, the design of the lighthouse’s sun flag bore some resemblance to the pattern in the handwritten journal, though the game’s artistic liberties had obscured the connection at first glance.

Under the weak glow of the oil lamp, Yu An leaned over the desk to read intently. Zhao Ran, sitting close by, let his gaze linger on Yu An’s hunched back. A momentary lift of the coarse cloth revealed a sun-shaped pattern on Yu An’s lower back.

Zhao Ran reached out to pull Yu An’s cloak over his exposed lower back. The pixelated infant crawled out of the art box, babbling as it climbed onto Yu An’s back and playfully sucked on its fingers. Yu An, too absorbed in the sheepskin book, paid it no mind.

“Speaking of which, the backstory of the Lost Town aligns with what this old man wrote. In the town, to seek blessings, they would send a young maiden downstream annually as an offering to the Parasite of the Dead Lake.”

“Could it be that the Lost Town is based on RiyuTown? Is Riyu Town haunted? Did it have such traditions?” Yu An raised his eyes to Zhao Ran. “You should know. The boss said you used to live in there.”

Zhao Ran hesitated for a moment before answering truthfully: “Yes. Riyu Town is near the sea, and its unique location plunges it into polar night for half the year, with no sunlight. Someone once spotted a creature resembling the sun deep underwater, leading people to believe the sun had fallen into the sea, causing the endless darkness. Back then, people were ignorant and superstitious, treating the creature as a deity. They offered sacrifices to the underwater monster every year, hoping it would bring light to the town. Warriors also prayed to it before battle, and over time, the monster came to be worshiped as a war god.”

“A brutal monster.” Zhao Ran explained calmly, his eyes fixed on Yu An’s expression. “Ugly, repulsive, and utterly loathsome in appearance. People worshipped it outwardly, but deep down, they all wished they could just burn it to ashes.”

“We’re out of time.” Yu An said, grabbing the Armor-Piercing Awl and picking up the lantern. He jumped down from the table and hurried in the direction where the strange man had disappeared.

A nagging doubt had been lingering in his mind, one he usually avoided but now had no choice but to confront. Ever since they entered this place, the interviewer’s behavior had been off, carrying an unusual sense of restlessness.

The darkness slowly receded under the faint glow of the lantern. As Yu An stepped across the dusty, aged floorboards, each step made the worm-eaten wood creak underfoot. He bent low, holding the lantern to search for the trail of blood the man had left behind, following it closely.

“Wait.” Zhao Ran said, unusually reaching out to grab Yu An’s hand, his brow furrowed. “This place feels too much like Riyu Town.”

Yu An didn’t take his hand. He was too preoccupied, and he shot a strange glance at Zhao Ran’s outstretched hand.

Pushing open the loose, weathered back door of the room, they found a cobblestone path stretching into the distant darkness. The bloodstains on the ground grew denser. The strange man had only been slashed across the eyes by the Armor-Piercing Awl, yet the amount of blood was far more than expected.

Yu An pressed forward, the lantern’s light revealing a figure about ten steps ahead, sitting awkwardly by the side of the path. From the side, it looked like the person was curled up with their knees to their chest, their posture stiff.

Summoning his courage, Yu An approached and raised the lantern to illuminate the person’s face. A deep, horrifying gash ran across the bridge of their nose, and their face was as pale as if covered in frost, completely devoid of any sign of life.

The strange man was dead, sitting on the ground in this bizarre position.

Yu An extended the Armor-Piercing Awl to push aside the man’s burlap coat, confirming his suspicions.

Just as he had guessed, beneath the burlap sleeves, there was nothing. The strange man had no arms or hands, which was why he had used his mouth to turn the doorknob earlier.

The old skeleton sitting on the wooden chair, writing his sorrowful tale in the leather-bound book, had held the quill in his mouth. The old man they had seen in the house had used his mouth to open the window. The children riding unicycles had held candies and pinwheels in their mouths. All of this was because none of them had hands.

A chilling, unexplainable fear rose from the ground, creeping up his spine and making his hair stand on end.

Yu An turned stiffly, his gaze tracing Zhao Ran’s face with disbelief, then dropping to examine his hands.

Zhao Ran didn’t just have one pair of hands. Did they all belong to different people from Riyu Town?

“What are you looking at?” Zhao Ran asked, momentarily stunned, as if Yu An’s sharp gaze had peeled back his skin, exposing all the ugly, foul things beneath.

A faint cracking sound began to spread from the distance, growing louder and more intense. The cobblestone path split apart, the ground fracturing and collapsing into a bottomless pit. Yu An’s footing vanished instantly. He arched his back, leaping to grab the edge of the crumbling cliff. Zhao Ran’s expression changed drastically as he dropped to his knees, reaching out to grab Yu An’s hand. “An An!”

In the split second he had to react, Yu An chose the cliff edge over Zhao Ran’s hand. Their fingertips brushed briefly before missing each other amidst the cascade of falling rocks.

The rocks tumbled down like a storm, and Yu An, in the weightless state of freefall, slowly drifted into a daze. He didn’t know how long it lasted before his body slammed onto a metal surface. He barely registered the searing pain shooting through his limbs and organs as survival instinct kicked in, making him grab onto anything he could reach.

Yu An desperately clung to a protruding metal surface, driving the Armor-Piercing Awl into the iron sheet to anchor himself and stop his endless fall.

Bright sunlight blinded him as the scenery around him rushed past. A biting cold wind, carrying snow and ice, sliced across his cheeks. The long, mournful wail of a train whistle echoed in his ears.

He was hanging onto a train drifting through the air, its wheels running on nothing but empty void. Looking back, the sun and clouds were left far behind the last carriage. The boundary between daylight and darkness in the sky was as stark as unmixed paint, and this ghostly train was speeding from eternal day into endless night.