As a player, can you be normal?

Chapter 773 Nighttime
Just after Li Nuo finished speaking, a pigeon flew in from outside.

A pigeon wearing glasses.

Soren and Lino maintained contact by sending glasses via carrier pigeon.

A scroll the size of a palm fell out of the pigeon's glasses.

I am Sauron.

I noticed from the "Explorer's" strategy panel that you have triggered a level 200 side quest.

What are you and Xiao Wu doing?

What did you guys do?

[What are you guys thinking?! Just follow the main storyline! Why bother with a level 200 side quest?! Li Nuo! Ugh—! Do you know how difficult this quest is?! As someone who can look up guides, I can't find a single one for this quest!]

I know you're thinking right now, "Wow, this mission must have a really good reward!"

Don't forget, our main goal is to break through level 99, not to do something reckless!

[You can try using the pigeon's glasses; they'll tell you about the most dangerous things that are happening recently. The way they're presented will vary from person to person, but I can't interfere too much right now; I'm doing something big.]

[Did you understand? I'm doing something big! You guys just need to calm down a bit, kill a few players, and level up. We all have a painting now, right?]

So please, Li Nuo, don't do anything stupid, please.

Li Nuocai wouldn't listen.

He picked up the glasses, and they automatically enlarged to a size that a human could wear.

The Cursed Glasses

[Effect: A one-time use item for the "Explorer" that allows you to view recently crucial "strategy CGs"]

"What did Soren say?"

Xiao Wu looked at him expectantly.

Li Nuo stuffed his glasses into his pocket.

"Soren said, let's go all out and court death."

Then he stopped answering questions about "how to bring the dead back to life," picked up the pigeon, and headed out to the kitchen, taking Mr. Derby with him.

What do we do now?

Amro shouted, he truly, truly believed in Lino.

"Do whatever you want."

Li Nuo raised the pigeon in his hand.

"Do you prefer pigeons for soup or crispy braised pigeon?"

……

By evening, all the citizens would consciously go home, and before the moon was high in the sky, there would be no living people left on the streets.

The tavern where Li Nuo and his friends were located had already closed, and the kitchen staff and the owner had all gone home.

It was still dusk outside the window.

Inside the tavern, Amuro retrieved two bottles of red wine from a crate.

"The price is..."

He glanced at the price list; this bottle of red wine was a collector's edition.

So Amuro pulled a ruby ​​from his pocket and placed it on the table; its value was enough to buy a small house in the central city of the Sumerian continent.

Xiao Wu squinted as she took the wine glass.

"Mr. Amuro... what are you doing?"

"You can't take other people's things; you have to pay for them."

Amuro's answer was as mechanical as an AI program, but he really wanted to pay.

Miaham took out his wallet, pulled out some banknotes, handed them to Amro, and nodded with a smile.

"This amount of money is enough."

"no……"

Miaham was surprised that Amuro had rejected her.

"Miss Muto Sora..."

Xiao Wu didn't immediately realize that she was being called.

"Miss Xiao Wu!"

"Ah, what's wrong?"

"He didn't even pretend..."

Miaham asked Xiaowu.

"Yeah, all the Federation's drivers are mentally unstable..."

Amuro took his neurotic good-guy persona to the extreme, refusing to take a single penny from others.

He sensed that the tavern was a bit messy, so he picked up a rag and started cleaning the room.

Xiao Wu downed a large glass of red wine in one gulp.

Inside, only she, Miaham, and Amro were present. Lino was dragging Mr. Derby into the kitchen to prepare medicine.

"I must remind you both again."

Miaham, who was helping Amuro clean the house, came over carrying a bucket of water.

"Nightfall is the night of the hunt, and our memories will be damaged to varying degrees. You should know what the night of the hunt is, right?"

Xiao Wu and Amuro nodded, without saying anything more.

Yharnam is essentially a world of the conscious, where every night is a night of hunting.
Yharnam in the painting is repeating the long-lost Bloodborne.

The origins of the Night of the Hunt involve the Church of Healing.

Ugh, it's that damned Healing Church again; it's involved in everything in the main storyline.

In its early days, the Healing Church used the blood of the ancient gods to perform blood therapy, which led to the fanatical worship of Yharnam. However, blood therapy was accompanied by beastification, so the Healing Church formed a hunter organization to assassinate those who had become beastified, that is, to kill those patients whose treatments failed.

The Hunters organization has now been incorporated into Bayer Kinworth's organization; Lenny of the Tribunal and Mr. Derby are both later Hunters.

The Night of the Hunt is a curse, a curse that the hunters will forever linger on the night before their death. So they returned to Yharnam, picked up their knives, and returned with them the citizens who had been turned into beasts by the blood healing. Some of them did not turn into beasts and remained conscious, but they were a minority.

In summary, the Night of the Hunt can be simply described as: a group of delusional teenagers dressed as hunters, wielding serrated knives, hacking people to pieces on the streets of Yharnam.

The world depicted in the painting, however, reveals another truth.

The people in this city are all living, breathing human beings. They cannot control themselves and can only wait for the night to fall so that the returning hunters can slaughter them. If they do not die in one night, they will have to wait for the next night.

What is the meaning behind this massacre game?

Xiao Wu was pondering.

"What kind of experiment is Cain Hearst conducting using this game...?"

She was extremely uneasy.

Because she entered the world of the painting through her special identity as a prostitute, and the person who gave her the ticket said she was a special Jinchūriki (a powerful virgin), it means that the hidden Cain Hearst must have been watching her all along.

Xiao Wu did indeed feel like she was being spied on.

Expressing perception is actually quite simple.

When danger approaches or you have a strange feeling, you will feel a tingling sensation as if someone has placed their finger about 1 mm in front of your forehead. The stronger your perception, the more sensitive you will be to this sensation.

As night approached, Xiaowu gradually felt a hand wandering around her skin, but it didn't touch her; it was purely harassment.

While Amuro and Miaham were talking, they noticed that Xiaowu's face was stiff and her eyes were staring blankly at the sunset outside the window.

"Miss Xiaowu?"

"I always feel like someone is watching me."

Xiao Wu pursed her lips, then stood by the window and took off all her clothes in front of the setting sun.

"If you're going to watch, then watch openly and honestly!"

……

Below the ground.

A surreal illusion. On a desolate mountaintop, an ancient castle sits like a colossal beast, its dark spires piercing the night sky as if to tear the moonlight apart. Thick stone walls are covered with withered vines, their dry branches twisting and coiling like veins, whispering hoarsely in the wind.

This is Cainhurst.

The vampire castle hidden in the shadows of Yharnam.

Inside the castle, huge crystal chandeliers hung from the towering dome, but the candlelight had long been extinguished, replaced by eerie blue phosphorescent flames that flickered strangely in the darkness.

Along the long corridor, ancient portraits hung silently, yet the eyes of the nobles in them seemed to be moving, staring at every intruder. Their lips curled slightly upward, revealing sharp canines, as if silently mocking the folly of mortals.

At the far end of the hall, a long table was covered with dark red velvet, and a silver candlestick held a burnt-out candle, its wax dripping and solidified into blood-like shapes.

The vampire queen, Mariana, sat at the far end.

She held a knife and fork in her hand.

A steaming bowl of instant noodles sat on the table.

what……

Times are progressing.

Since instant noodles came into existence, many nobles have secretly eaten them, since they are convenient and quite tasty when eaten occasionally.

But Queen Mariana did not enjoy the meal.

In front of her was a huge framed picture, twice the height of a person, in which was Xiao Wu undressing in front of her.

"What does this girl mean..."

Mariana took a deep breath.

From the moment Xiao Wu and Li Nuo entered Yharnam, an immense sense of oppression formed above Cainhurst. The monsters gathered outside the castle howled, indicating that the terror of the newcomers was enough to destroy everything here.

She had to use picture frames to monitor Xiao Wu.

If the abyss is secretly watching you, you'd better take your pants off. Xiao Wu embodies the sexual tension of this statement through her actions.

Marianne was indeed in a state of confusion.

In her mind, strong people should be elegant beings, and what kind of person would take off their clothes in the sunlight?

A gust of cold wind swept by, and the candlelight suddenly went out.

In the darkness, low chuckles came from all directions, and several pairs of red pupils appeared on both sides of the long table.

"That girl is a perfect Jinchūriki."

Someone was talking in the corner.

The Queen picked up a fork, rolled up the instant noodles, slurped them into her mouth, and then chewed with a sigh.

"That won't do either...they'll destroy Cain."

Mariana stood up. She was nearly three meters tall, and the height and build of vampires were very different from that of ordinary people.

She looked back.

There were restless, panting sounds behind me.

There was thunder outside.

Lightning illuminated what was behind the Queen.

A skeletal dragon is chewing on the carcass of a wild beast.

Its name is "Midiel," a creature from the Second Age, from the era of Dark Souls. This dragon's life is coming to an end, and it needs a vessel to hold its soul.

This is the truth behind how vampires select "human jinchūriki".

Cain Hearst has been hiding in the shadows for too long. If he doesn't make a change soon, the day when the vampires will be completely wiped out is not far off.

"Your Majesty, our good friend wishes to see you."

There was a voice in the darkness.

Queen Mariana turned around, and from an unassuming painting in the corridor emerged a gentleman wearing a top hat.

"Mr. Fenrir."

"You are still as beautiful as ever, my Queen, after a year apart."

Fenrir appeared before the Queen in an instant, as if by teleportation. He looked up at the Queen's chin and saw her nostrils, which were as black as holes.

"Since you've shown up, does that mean the Healing Church is up to something again?"

Cainhurst and the Healing Church had a long-standing conflict, but are now cooperating.

Fenrir took the blood vial he had prepared earlier from the table, shook it in his hand, and admired the red marks left by the blood as it washed over the glass vial like a tidal wave.

"Your Majesty, I suspect this is the pure blood you collected for your experiments?"

"Yes, Mr. Fenrir."

But judging from the Queen's cautious attitude, Cain was more like an "employee" of the Healing Church.

"The Night of the Hunt... lasted for a whole year. Of the more than six hundred beast-transformed patients who died, less than one percent of their lives could be used to extract this blood. May I ask... what it was used for?"

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I don't want to say."

Fenrir kept staring at the painting that was monitoring Xiaowu. In the painting, Miaham was dressing Xiaowu, while Amuro hid in the corner, not daring to look directly at Xiaowu who had just taken off her clothes.

In another painting, Li Nuo is slurping a bowl of noodles in the kitchen, with a large pot of hot water bubbling behind him indicating that he is preparing medicine. What he is looking at is unknown, but interestingly, Li Nuo is wearing glasses.

"They are coming..."

"who are they?"

“I’m not sure either, but Your Majesty, I’d like to offer you a friendly reminder.”

Fenrir turned and walked down the corridor, his body bursting with thick black mist. His profile was shrouded in the night-like fog, but his dark eyes remained untouched by the darkness.

"You'd better not let them find Cain Hearst, or the entire vampire clan will be wiped out on the night of the hunt."

Queen Mariana sat back down and continued her meal.

The dragon's face was pressed against her back.

"Then let this night of hunting never end, until they leave or die..."

She just finished speaking.

In the painting depicting Li Nuo, Li Nuo has taken off his glasses and is looking at her.

The Queen saw inhuman malice in the eyes of this gentle-looking man.

At that moment, a terrifying thought occurred to the Queen: Could it be that... she, who seemed to be monitoring others, was actually being monitored?

When this thought came to mind, Li Nuo in the painting suddenly stood up, turned his back, and urinated in the corner of the wall.

"illusion……"

Mariana breathed a sigh of relief.

Li Nuo shook himself, then zipped up his pants.

The glasses given by Sauron could only be used once, and their effect should have lasted longer, but with the appearance of Fenrir, the glasses' "peeping" ability was sealed.

It doesn't matter.

At least he learned about the relationship between Cain and the Healing Church, and understood the true purpose of the Night of the Hunt, but none of that mattered.

His original plan was to see what cooperation was possible with Cain's vampires. However, with Fenrir's appearance, the unknown conspiracy of the Healing Church in the shadows came to light. So, Lino has now changed his plans. He intends to make Cain's vampires disappear from history completely, such as by slaughtering them all.

It was nighttime, which was "the night of the hunt".

Li Nuo picked up the newly prepared decoction from the table.

[The Decoction of a Lesser Ancient God]

[Quality: Garbage]

Toxicity: 10%

[Effect: The decoction is cloudy, indicating a failed product. Using it will forcibly reduce your health to only 5%.]

It's just rubbish that's being decocted, but for Li Nuo it's a "miracle."

He put the medicine bottle on the table, and his stomach rumbled.

He then stood up, stepped over Mr. Derby who was unconscious from the smell of the medicine being decocted, and walked to the other end of the kitchen.

Li Nuo picked up the remaining pigeon leg from the counter, took a bite, and wondered as he chewed if vampires could be braised.

(End of this chapter)