Chapter Forty-Six: Savior or Harbinger of Calamity?

“What the hell… what on earth is going on?” Chen Hao stared, dumbfounded, at the figure sprinting off into the distance, unable to recover from his shock for a long time. The enemy’s leader, shielded by his subordinates’ offensive, managed to avoid precise gunfire from the human troops. By the time the enemy’s ranks were mostly wiped out and the humans had a clear shot, the leader had already escaped beyond the range of their muskets.

After all, muskets were the most primitive of firearms, with obvious shortcomings in power, speed, and range. In the end, except for the enemy leader, all the rest were annihilated.

The human troops now set about clearing the battlefield. Some were checking for survivors, others searching the enemy corpses for anything of value or useful intelligence.

Chen Hao watched all their actions closely, his eyes lingering especially on the dead enemies, studying them over and over as if searching for something peculiar.

Vivian, meanwhile, seemed ill at ease amid the bloody, pungent surroundings. She clung to Chen Hao’s side, tugging at his sleeve as if begging him to take her away from this place.

Just as Chen Hao was about to speak, the female leader of the humans approached them. “Greetings, Mr. Human and Miss Elf!”

“Hmm?”

“Huh?”

Both Chen Hao and Vivian uttered confused sounds and exchanged glances, curiosity mirrored in their eyes. In the end, it was Vivian who spoke first. “Excuse me, are you talking to us, Miss?”

The human woman smiled and nodded, “Of course. I imagine, aside from you, little sister, there are no other elves here, are there?”

Vivian nodded, then added, “But… it’s so strange…”

“What is it?” Chen Hao asked, puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

Vivian hesitated, looking from Chen Hao to the woman, uncertain. For reasons she couldn’t express, she shrank slightly behind Chen Hao.

That subtle gesture immediately caught both Chen Hao’s and the woman’s attention. Chen Hao could tell that Vivian was wary of the human woman. This woman was, after all, their rescuer—yet Vivian seemed almost afraid of her.

Though Chen Hao didn’t understand why Vivian reacted this way, her behavior made him instinctively shield her with his arm, his own gaze growing guarded.

Suspicion grew stronger in Chen Hao’s mind. Could Vivian’s reaction be linked to his own doubts? He was mentally preparing himself for combat, quickly assessing the distance between themselves and the woman. How best to protect Vivian and escape safely? If the woman harbored ill intentions, he’d seize her as a hostage and use her to ensure their safe departure. He reasoned that, if she truly was a GM as he suspected, the game company’s protocols would either render them indifferent or force them to protect her at all costs. In such a scenario, holding their leader hostage would prevent anyone from acting rashly.

The woman seemed to have anticipated their wariness and fear, taking it in stride with an amused smile. Then she said something that left Vivian bewildered, but utterly stunned Chen Hao: “Looks like my guess was right. Your identities are indeed unusual—one of you is a developer from Illusion Corp who somehow stumbled into virtual reality, and the other is a computer program that gained self-awareness.”

!!!

Chen Hao could stand it no longer. He grabbed Vivian and bolted. Now he was certain—the woman was a GM, no doubt about it. No ordinary NPC would speak of programmers or computer programs.

And if the GM had already seen through both his and Vivian’s identities, this was a disaster. He could handle himself, but Vivian was in grave danger if discovered. The poor girl still had no idea what was happening; the meaning behind the woman’s words was lost on her.

All she sensed was that the woman carried an aura of danger—like those humans dressed in shark suits holding strange paintbrushes.

Chen Hao’s reaction seemed to confirm her fears. Without hesitation, he dragged her away in full flight.

Truth be told, there was no need to run—Vivian had rested enough to fly again. But Chen Hao, seized by panic, didn’t think of that.

Watching their escape, the woman’s lips curled in a wicked smile. She pulled out a strange device and typed a command: “Block them!”

At once, the subordinates who had been cleaning up the battlefield stopped what they were doing and turned to pursue Chen Hao and Vivian. Fortunately, they didn’t draw their muskets, suggesting their leader hadn’t ordered lethal force. Presumably, she valued capturing Chen Hao and Vivian alive even more.

Chen Hao had no time to care. He had to both evade with Vivian and fend off the NPCs trying to intercept them. The NPCs weren’t foolish enough to try and stop him with their bare bodies—they attacked with their fists and feet. Chen Hao had no idea what would happen if he got hit: would it cost him HP, like in past games, or would it actually injure him, affecting his movements as in real life?

He was utterly at a loss. Normally, in past games, he could just open his character panel and check his status—HP, MP, CP, attributes, buffs, debuffs, equipment, encumbrance, all right there.

But since entering the game this time, he found none of it. The absence was glaring and possibly due to his extremely unusual way of entering the game, or maybe because the game was still in internal development and testing, and those features weren’t enabled yet.

Still, Chen Hao wasn’t about to risk testing it on himself. What if he really was in a one-hit-kill state? If he died in the game, he could just log out—but Vivian would be left at their mercy.

He also feared that if he was captured, they might have some special means to trap his consciousness in the game, preventing him from logging out. None of this was certain, so to be safe, Chen Hao put his own survival first and ran for all he was worth, dragging Vivian along.

When the NPCs attacked, Chen Hao didn’t hold back, using his most decisive moves to take them down. They were, after all, not truly alive—he felt no guilt. Still, wary of driving them to extremes, he was careful not to strike fatal blows, only disabling them so they couldn’t give chase.

From behind a stone, the GM watched Chen Hao with an amused tilt of her lips. “Not bad—so the hero is rescuing the damsel? Judging from his reaction, he’s realized that NPC possesses self-awareness. I wonder what else he knows?”

At that moment, the leader of the strange race who’d fled earlier reappeared at the GM’s side. He didn’t attack; instead, he approached respectfully. “Miss Dong… that human program… seems to be the same individual mentioned in previous reports. For some reason, he awakened in the Elven Forest and encountered the awakened elf program. Together, they escaped five of our sweepers and even deleted them. And that human program, inexplicably, has discovered things about the Primordial World—he seems to know a lot…”

“About the Primordial World… er… Miss Dong…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, for the GM seized him by the throat. “The Primordial World is not something a program like you can touch. As for that human program—hmph! He’s no program. He, like me, hails from the Primordial World.”

“You’re simply unlucky; if you hadn’t been in charge of reconstruction today, you’d never have crossed paths with any of this. But now that you’ve seen, I can’t let you live. Prepare for reformatting!”

With that, Miss Dong twisted his neck with a snap. His body collapsed instantly—and then, where the corpse had been, green motes of light shimmered and the body disappeared entirely.