Player 1

Chapter 10 Level 1(8)
So it must be hiding somewhere else.Although I was not sure, I told myself that as long as I kept researching, the clues to the tomb would appear in front of my eyes sooner or later.That's what the last lines of Halliday's poem should say.

If other hunters have come this far with the sextet, they have hitherto kept it a secret.I've never seen anything about Tomb of Horrors on any of the hunter sites, of course, maybe that's because my theory about D&D mods is dead wrong.

So I continued to watch, read, listen, and learn, trying to find the brass key someday.

And when the moment did come, I was sitting in Latin class daydreaming.

0007
Our teacher Yuan Ke is standing in front of the classroom, slowly explaining Latin verbs.She said it first in English and then repeated it in Latin, all the words automatically appearing on the blackboard as she pronounced them.Whenever I do this kind of boring verb explanation, I think of the lyrics from "School of Rock"[52]: "Run, go, take, give. Verbs! You are everywhere!"

When Teacher Yuanke explained the verb "to learn", I was repeatedly recalling this lyrics in my mind. "Learning," she read in Latin, "is easy to remember because it is similar to the English word 'understand', which also means 'learn'."[53]
The word "learning" reminded me of the poem when I was bored: "You still need to learn more knowledge. This is the prerequisite for obtaining the key, and this is the first priority for reaching the top of the points."

Teacher Yuanke continued to teach and made a sentence with this verb. "We come to study at school," she repeated in Latin.

I was suddenly enlightened and observed the students around me. Who needs to "learn more knowledge"?
student.

I'm on a planet full of students who all need to "learn more".

Could the tomb that the poem speaks of be hidden here, on Ludus?On this planet I've been trying to leave for five years?

Then it occurred to me that ludes is also Latin for "school".I took out the Latin dictionary and looked it up, and found that the word has another meaning: in addition to "school", it can also mean "play" or "game".

game.

I fell off the stool at the secret base and hit the ground hard.The Oasis host captured my action and wanted to make Wade San also fall in the Latin class, but the classroom system prevented this action, and a big word flashed in the center of my screen: Please sit down during class!

I told myself not to be too happy.There are also hundreds of private schools and universities located on other planets in the Oasis.Poems may also be about them.But I still think Ludus is more reliable.It was James Halliday who donated over a billion dollars to build this Oasis public school system, which is realizing the full potential of Oasis as an educational tool.Before his death, Halliday also set up a separate foundation to ensure the continuous operation of this education system.The foundation also provides free oasis hosting and network access to poor children all over the world, so that they can enter the oasis to learn.

It was the GSS's own programmers who designed Ludus and all the schools in it, so it's entirely possible that Halliday gave the planet its name, and he could also write in the planet's code unnoticed into whatever he wanted to hide.

Such thoughts roared in my mind, like nuclear bombs detonating one after another.

In the original "Dungeons and Dragons" mod, the entrance to the Tomb of Horrors is near "a low hill, only as high as a flag, two hundred yards wide and three hundred yards long", and there are many black pebbles on the hill, if Looking down from a height, you can see that the stones form the shape of a human skull.

But if such a mountain was hidden somewhere in Ludus, wouldn't it be discovered by accident?
Maybe not, Luders' school is separated from the school by a vast forest.Some forests are extremely large, covering an area of ​​hundreds or even thousands of kilometers.Most students don't go in and explore because there's really nothing worth seeing there.Like Ludus' lands, rivers, and lakes, its forests are nothing more than simple codes to fill in empty spaces.

Of course, because of the long stay in Luders, I explored a lot of forests to pass the time, including a few farther away from the school, but there were only sprawling trees, and small animals such as birds, rabbits, and squirrels roamed in the forest. The time passed by. (Killing these critters doesn't give experience points, I tried.)
So somewhere in the vast and neglected forest of Ludus, it is entirely possible that there is a small hill of gravel paved in the shape of a skull.

I'm trying to open a map of Lourdes on the screen.No, because I am still in class, the system stops me from moving.And the exploit used to get into the school library doesn't apply to the Oasis map.

"Damn!" I cursed unwillingly.The classroom system filtered the swear words, so neither the classmates nor Teacher Yuanke heard the words.But the warning reappeared on my screen: swear word block - misbehavior warning!
I looked at the time on the screen, and it was seven minutes and 20 seconds before school was over.I gritted my teeth and counted the seconds, and my thoughts continued to race.

Ludus is an inconspicuous world in the first division. From the perspective of people, there is nothing but a school here, and no hunters will come here to look for the brass key.Even I've been embracing the same sentiment before, which proves what a perfect treasure location Ludus is.But why did Halliday choose this place?unless……

Unless he expected a student to find the key.

My mind was still churning after the bell rang.The surrounding students all left the classroom or simply disappeared into their seats.Teacher Yuanke also disappeared, and I was the only one left in the empty classroom.

So, I unfolded the map of Ludus.A three-dimensional sphere floated in front of my eyes, and I moved it with my hands.Ludes is a relatively small planet in "Oasis", only one-third the size of the moon, with a circumference of exactly one thousand kilometers.The whole planet is a whole continent, there is no sea, only a few relatively large lakes.Because the planets in Oasis aren't real, they don't have to obey the laws of nature.There is only daytime on Ludus, no matter where you stand on the planet, the sky is always cloudless, and the position of the sun is also fixed, it is just a virtual light source in the virtual sky.

Many identical triangular symbols on the map mark the location of the campus.They can be found all over the planet, separated only by rolling grasslands, rivers, mountains and forests.The shapes and sizes of forests vary, and many of them are attached to the side of the school.I opened Tomb of Terror next to the map window.There is a crude illustration in the book of what the hill looked like.I took a screenshot of this illustration and dragged it to the center of the screen.

Next, I frantically browsed various pirated software websites, and finally found a cracked version of the high-end oasis map identification plug-in.After downloading it locally with Bulletstorm, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to use it to scan the entire surface of Ludus and find my target, the Tomb of Terror.

After about 10 minutes of searching, it flagged a possible match.

I zoomed in on it holding my breath and put the original image aside for comparison.The shape and skull pattern of the two mountains are identical.

I zoomed out on the map a bit and am sure the north side of the mountain is a patch of broken sandstone and a sand cliff, the same as in the Dungeons & Dragons mod from 67 years ago.

My cries of ecstasy echoed both in the secret cabin and in the classroom.I did it, I really found the Tomb of Terror!
After finally calming down, I quickly made a few more calculations.The mountain was on the other side of Luders, in the middle of an amoeba-like forest, more than 400 kilometers from my school.My character can run up to five kilometers per hour, so even if I go at full speed, it will take at least three days to reach the destination, and this is still on the premise of not eating or drinking.If you use teleportation, you can arrive in minutes.Such a short distance teleportation is not too expensive, maybe a few hundred oasis points are enough.Sadly, I only have one big fat zero in my Oasis bank account.

I thought about it for a while, and Edge would lend me the money, but I didn't want to ask him for help.If I can't even get there by myself, then find a dick easter egg.In addition, I had to lie to Edge to explain why I wanted the money. After all, I had never borrowed money from him before, and any reason now would make him suspicious.

I can hardly contain my smile at the thought of Edge: he'd be fooled when he knew that.The tomb is hidden less than [-] kilometers away from his school, which can almost be called his back garden.

The idea so ignited that I nearly jumped up with excitement, and immediately rushed out of the classroom and down the hall.

Not only did I figure out how to teleport myself to the other side of Luders, but I also figured out how to get the school to help me advance the money.

Every public school in Oasis has sports teams, including wrestling, soccer, football, baseball, volleyball, and some sports that cannot be played in real life, such as Quidditch and zero-gravity capture the flag.Players participating in the competition can synchronize their running, jumping, kicking, and grapple actions to the oasis world as long as they wear a set of haptic suits.The team has night training, pep rallies, and games at other schools in Luders.Our school will send any student who wants to watch an away game for free, and I enjoyed it once before, when our school was in the capture the flag finals against Edge's school.

When I got to the office, I glanced at the school activity list and immediately found what I was looking for—tonight our football team will play at No. [-] Middle School, which is only about an hour away from the hidden catacombs.

After choosing this game, a teleportation ticket immediately appeared in my inventory: a round-trip ticket to Wuqiyi High School.

I stood in front of my locker for a long time, finally put down my textbooks, took my torch, sword, shield and armor, and rushed out of the main gate of the school and across the vast lawn in front of the school.

As I walked past the red boundary line marking the edge of the school, I looked around to make sure no one had noticed me.As soon as I walked out of school, the name on my head changed from Wade III to Parsifal.Outside of school, I was finally able to use my character name back, with the option to hide it - which I did, of course.

The school is not far from the nearest teleportation station.It's at the end of a cobbled path.The teleportation station is a large temple with a dome supported by white pillars, and each pillar has the teleportation icon of the oasis: a blue hexagon with a capital "pass" in the middle.Because school has just finished, the temple is full of people now.

I walked up to the row of teleporter rooms in the temple—their shape and color always reminded me of Doctor Who[54]—and just stepped into the first empty teleporter room I found, and the door closed automatically up.Because the system automatically recognizes the teleportation ticket, I don't need to enter the destination. I just put the ticket on the ticket gate and wait for Ludus' world map to appear in front of me.The system automatically draws a line between my location and the destination on the map, and at the same time immediately calculates the travel distance (460 kilometers) and the school fee ([-] oasis points).Soon, the teleportation ticket was verified successfully, and the moment "Paid" popped up in the fee column, I disappeared into the light.

At the same time, I appeared in another identical teleporter, of course, on the other side of Ludus.Opening the door and rushing out of the temple, I saw No. [-] Middle School to the south.It looks exactly like my school, with slightly different surroundings.I also saw some students from our school, they were going to the football field, ready to play games or cheer on our athletes.I don't understand why they like to ask for trouble, after all, the game can be watched on video, and in this way, the empty seats in the stadium will be filled by the NPC automatically generated by the system.They'll cheer wildly, eat virtual hot dogs, and even rock out into waves.

I ran in the opposite direction, across the grass behind No. [-] Middle School.A small mountain range loomed in the distance, and I could see the amoeba-like forest beneath them.

I pressed the auto-advance button, and then clicked on the three pieces of equipment in the backpack, so I was immediately wearing armor, a shield on my back, and an iron sword on my waist.

The VCC signal blared just as I was about to reach the edge of the forest, with Edge's name on it.Maybe they want to ask me why I don't go to the basement.If he connected to the video, he would see the scenes around me, including the [-] Middle School that was fading away.I could also turn off the video to hide my location, but that would just confuse him, so let it be loud enough.After a while, Edge's video message appeared on the small split screen in the corner.He was in a PVP arena, and several teams were fighting each other on the battlefield behind him.

"Yo, Z! What are you doing? Masturbating to The Eagle and Wolf?" He gave that Cheshire cat grin again. Space opera movie or something, are you coming?" He raised his hand, and the conversation window closed.

I just texted him back, telling him I had a lot of homework that I didn't have time for, and then I turned the pages of Tomb of Terror and read it carefully again.I read it very carefully, after all, I will soon face the things mentioned in it.

"At the other end of the world, on a lonely hill forgotten and forgotten," was its introduction, "there is a sinister Tomb of Terror. This subterranean labyrinth is full of terrible traps, grotesque and murderous monsters, There are all kinds of rare treasures, including the best magical equipment. Somewhere in the tomb, you may also meet a wicked demilich[55]."

That last point scares me.Undead creatures like liches are usually formed by those powerful mages who use taboo techniques to revive after death; and demigod liches are the best among liches.I have seen this degenerate immortal creature in countless games and fantasy novels. In those works, facing the demilich, everyone is afraid to avoid it.

The introduction reads: The entrance to the tomb is buried in broken sandstone, and after passing through a long tunnel, you arrive at a labyrinth of 33 rooms.The entire dungeon is full of undead creatures, deadly traps, and (basically cursed) treasure.If you pass all the traps and find your way through the maze, you will end up in the room of the demilich Arthur Ralak.That room is full of treasures, but if you touch them, Aserilak, the undead king, will appear and summon a horde of undead creatures to beat you to death.If by some miracle you defeat the lich, take all the treasure and walk away in peace.Mission accomplished, call it a day.

If Halliday were to rebuild Tomb of Terror with this mod, I'd be in big trouble.I'm only level three, and the iron sword I'm holding has no magic blessing, and only has 27 points of attack power.According to the instructions of the mod, almost all the monsters and traps in the tomb can easily bury me. Even if I get lucky all the way to the end, that perverted lich can kill me in seconds.

(End of this chapter)