Chapter Forty-Two: Vivienne Appears Again

What the hell! What’s going on here? Why are these people imprisoning an elf? What are they up to? That elf probably isn’t Vivian, right? The little girl should be safe in her own room in the Elven Forest right now. Besides, judging from my previous conversations with Vivian, it seemed that humans and elves got along quite well! If a human wandered into the Elven Forest, the elves would even arrange temporary lodgings for them.

So why are these people capturing an elf? Did this elf commit some crime, or is there another reason? Or perhaps these mounted warriors aren’t even human? They’ve all covered their faces and are wrapped up tightly; I can only guess their identity from their attire, but I can’t be sure, so I’m feeling uncertain.

There’s also the fact that this is a game world. It’s normal for the world settings and backstory to differ from reality. After all, elves couldn’t possibly exist in the real world, right?

Chen Hao decided to remain above and observe quietly. He wanted to see where these warriors planned to take the elf, hoping to figure out what their identities were and why they’d captured the elf. That way, he could deepen his understanding of the game world, which would be useful for opening his own online game studio in the future.

Although the other party was on horseback, the riverbed path below was winding and uneven, not as smooth as up above, so their pace wasn’t fast, and the journey was longer. Chen Hao wouldn’t fall far behind in speed.

Having trained in martial arts, he was much stronger than ordinary people in endurance, explosiveness, and stamina. Moreover, perhaps because he was in the game world, he didn’t feel any fatigue at all. He’d been following these warriors for about twenty minutes and hadn’t felt the slightest tiredness or shortness of breath.

Hey! This feels pretty good! Chen Hao thought to himself. Just then, there seemed to be some commotion among the crowd below. The procession slowed and stopped. Loud shouting rose from the group below, voices brimming with anger and panic.

Perplexed, Chen Hao lay low and peeked down into the canyon. Soon, he understood the source of the turmoil below: the elf who had been confined in the wooden cage had somehow broken free.

But perhaps because the elf had been imprisoned for a long time, his body seemed stiff as he struggled out, and even his wings couldn’t fully unfurl. All he could do was flutter and leap low in the air, dodging the warriors trying to recapture him.

As the warriors leaped to seize the elf, some of their hoods were finally knocked aside, and Chen Hao got a look at their true faces. It turned out these creatures weren’t human at all. They had human forms, but their faces were monstrous, like beasts.

Their faces were hard to describe, as it was difficult to find any animal in the real world resembling them.

How did the game designers come up with such bizarre designs? Chen Hao couldn’t help but wonder. What imagination!

The elf and the warriors below tangled for a while longer. The elf’s limbs and wings finally loosened up, regaining their vigor. He stopped entangling with them and spread his wings, soaring into the air—heading straight toward Chen Hao’s position.

Oh hell! Chen Hao couldn’t help but exclaim, “Please don’t see me! Please don’t see me!”

He wasn’t even sure why he was so nervous. It’s just a game—what could happen if he was spotted? Could they really kill him? Even if he died, it would only be in the game; he’d just respawn.

Maybe it was because the virtual reality game was so lifelike, or perhaps because Chen Hao hadn’t logged in through normal means, so he felt a bit panicked.

His prayers went unanswered. The elf flew straight toward Chen Hao’s side, ignoring the other two canyon edges, heading right for him.

At that moment, Chen Hao was trying to play ostrich, lying down with his head hidden. But this was just self-deception, as the elf spotted him immediately and exclaimed in surprise.

“Huh?! Chen Hao?! What are you doing here?”

Hearing this, and recognizing the slightly familiar voice, Chen Hao looked up in disbelief. “What the hell! Vivian?! What are you doing here?!”

The elf who flew up from the canyon riverbed was indeed Vivian. She’d been too far below for him to see clearly earlier, so he’d thought she couldn’t possibly be Vivian. Yet it was her.

“Vivian, aren’t you supposed to be at home? How did you end up here, and get caught by those guys below? Who are they? No, what are they?” Chen Hao hurriedly asked, “And are you hurt? Why did they capture you?”

“Ah! Now’s not the time to talk about this!” Vivian waved her hand anxiously. “We should first shake off those guys and find a safe place to hide!”

“Isn’t this safe enough?” Chen Hao looked at Vivian in bewilderment. “I’ve been wandering around here for a while, and there’s almost no path to climb up, plus it’s a long way up from below. They shouldn’t be able to... Oh hell!”

When Chen Hao glanced downward again, he was stunned. He saw those humanoid monsters, realizing Vivian had flown up, jump off their mounts, draw daggers, and use their weapons—daggers, spears, axes—to wedge them, layer by layer, into the canyon wall.

With each weapon thrust in, one would climb up a layer, then use another weapon passed from below to go up another step.

Their movements were extremely swift, not at all like a spontaneous action—everything was rhythmical and orderly, not chaotic in the slightest. Clearly, they had practiced this climbing method beforehand. Chen Hao had underestimated these monsters’ abilities.

This is a game world, after all; anything can happen. Maybe the programmers had already given these monsters the skill to scale cliffs.

Chen Hao himself didn’t care much about them climbing up, but Vivian was different. She lived as an NPC in the game world. Although she had self-awareness, she wasn’t the same kind of being as himself. Vivian still depended on the virtual reality server as an electronic program.

She had no actual physical body to rely on. To put it plainly, she was just a stream of data. Without the virtual world, Vivian might not exist at all.

Chen Hao didn’t know if releasing Vivian’s consciousness into the electronic network would allow her to survive, or if she could exist in some other form. But according to basic principles of electronic information data, if Vivian died in the game world, her self-awareness would likely vanish.

She might resurrect like other NPCs without self-awareness, because that’s how the game is programmed. But such resurrection would reset her data, like restoring a phone to factory settings or reinstalling a computer system—a complete wipe.

Before the wipe, all Vivian’s memories and information would be lost. If she was lucky, maybe her self-awareness would remain. If not, her consciousness could be completely erased, leaving her as an NPC with no self-awareness, only following pre-set game logic and scripts. This was absolutely something Chen Hao didn’t want to see.

It wasn’t because Chen Hao felt anything special for Vivian or liked her particularly, but because he couldn’t bear to see such a remarkable, self-aware electronic existence disappear. This was a groundbreaking discovery: a self-aware electronic program, without hostility toward humans, only full of curiosity—how rare is that!

Chen Hao was grateful the game company designed the elves to coexist peacefully with humans. Imagine if the programmers had made the elves hostile toward humans, and then one of them gained self-awareness—what would happen? It might really turn into a scenario from a Terminator movie.

So, when he saw those monsters rapidly climbing up, Chen Hao’s first reaction was to stand up, and, amid Vivian’s startled cry, scoop her up from the ground and sprint away from the canyon edge as fast as he could.