Nurturing Humanity

Chapter 42: Surprise, Surprise

Deep down, everyone was totally impressed. The shrieks of all of the ones who went up and play dead felt so surreal.

One would even suspect they had taken lessons of sorts.

On the other side, one of the players logged out of the game after dying. He sweated for quite a while before his convulsions subsided, and he then logged on to a forum.

“You guys might say that I’m lying, but hell, playing that game almost really, really got me killed… That game is just too damn real! I died back there, and it felt like I was subjected to some medieval torture. I sure as hell ain’t gonna experience something like that ever again.”

“Are you a masochist? Can’t you just turn down the pain? Isn’t it said that the game allows for sensation adjustments?”

“There was a bug back there and I’ve asked the developers to look into it. I indeed turned down pain when I was fighting the boss.”

Heated discussions erupted right away as soon as that post was posted.

That was the first bug they encountered, and no one had expected to finally see a bug in such a real game. It did not take long for the other players who died and logged out to add that they went through the same thing. They had all turned down the sensation of pain, and yet that did nothing to alleviate the situation.

No way, you too?

Yeah, count me in too.

If that was what happened with everyone, it became apparent that what happened was not a system bug. They came to speculate that someone forced them to experience pain at 50 percent, every time they were killed by the boss in the game.

All of them found themselves gasping at the conclusion they came to.

This is just too damn hardcore!

The developers really are brutal as**oles!

A group of people went on to give their two cents after that.

“I guess it’s one of the settings in the game—no one is allowed to challenge the boss over nothing. What happened was some kind of punishment through death.”

The others who watched from the sidelines felt the discussion to be increasingly interesting, coming to realize just how real that game really was, and that it was definitely a different world that mimicked reality, instead of the regular online games. Nothing would have happened when one died when going on raids in other games, yet no one expected that it was different with that particular one, where one suffered spams and convulsions so intense in reality after dying in game, that it was practically an experience of death.

That death punishment was deemed unreal and insane.

They were impressed at how it was truly a different world.

“The degree of freedom allowed in the game is insanely high. We really need to dig for everything ourselves. Quick, tell the ones still in the game, that it really hurts like hell if they die!”

“There’s no way of notifying them. They can’t come out and look at the forum while being in-game after all.”

“So what then?”

Umm, well… just let them get a taste of the pain we went through, I guess.

The faces of many turned gloomy, seemingly feeling that it was not them getting excited over the idea of taking down the boss on the first day of the second testing, but having massive number of players experience tragedies unlike any other on that day. A good number of players died, spasming and convulsing as they experienced what death was like. Everyone regressed into spores and returned to the starting point, veterans and newbies alike.

Xu Zhi remained nonchalant while sitting on his chair.

He never had any thoughts of being hostile to those players and simply let them develop in the game. At that moment, however, he found that eating dinner on the chair at his compound while clapping down the bugs was quite a relaxing activity.

That felt like watching TV while eating.

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

The players rushed to their deaths without a second thought.

“Brothers, time for me to show you people what it means to be a tough bug!”

Arrggghh!

Unnervingly eerie shrieks were heard all over the place.

Xu Zhi remained patient and nonchalant as he clapped the ant-like things down one after another.

To him, doing so felt very countryside-like. He was, after all, somewhere in a compound of a farming village, and especially so given that he was just sitting under a tree, where there were often bugs climbing up his body, which he just clapped them down without second thoughts.

At that moment, that Final Chicken slowly sneaked into Xu Zhi’s lunchbox as everyone watched.

“Hehehe, I finally got here. Prepare to die, boss.”

Chen Wenshan laughed maniacally while he brought the dozen of others of his pack, lying down on the sea of rice grains as they turned about, trying to dig deeper into the dishes.

Those players that kept throwing themselves to their deaths stopped charging, after seeing what was happening with the Final Chicken.

“After countless sacrifices, we finally got to this stage, and we’re about to end the boss.”

“He’s in the lunchbox!”

Countless of them had tears streaming down their faces.

Although they knew very well that the shrieks of the martyrs were faked, yet all of them felt so real with the way they acted. All of them felt a tragic pride deep down, as the sounds of the painful shrieks were still heard.

The survivors were unable to help feeling so; the martyrs sounded too tragic at their deaths.

They thought that even pigs died a less painful death when they were slaughtered.

Finally made it into my lunchbox eh? What a sacrifice you people made to pull that off indeed. Xu Zhi was feeling slightly startled at that moment but thought little of it as he picked his lunchbox up again and began eating, just like how he usually did.

If he wanted me to eat him so badly, I guess I could just oblige and eat him then…

He took mouthful after mouthful.

The gaze from the bugs hiding in the crevices of the chair was searing hot. “Yes, that’s it. Just keep eating. Come on, come on, hurry up! You’re about to chomp down on the Racer of Mount Haruna, you’re about to chomp down on the Final Chicken, and you’ll meet your doom soon enough!”

Crunch, crunch.

Xu Zhi continued holding his lunchbox as he ate away.

“Alright, about time.”

The survivors were getting increasingly agitated.

However, just when Xu Zhi was about to chomp down on the final chicken, he stopped altogether and mumbled, “I wonder what the hell is happening today. Why are there so many bugs biting me? And well, the dishes are really getting cold. Best heat it up in the oven a little bit.

He rose from the chair and went back into the house.

The surviving players were utterly baffled.

Why the hell are you gonna heat the dish up? Everyone looked like their mouths had been stuffed with waste as they looked on, wondering just what was with the boss. They wondered if the developers needed to make a NPC so human, and was there actually a need to warm the lunchbox up, given that the contents had not been sitting around for long?

You wanna make me eat you huh, idiot? I sure am not gonna make it easy for you.

Xu Zhi muttered to himself without paying any heed to those people.

He knew that eating something like that was hardly a big deal. He was not eating people after all, and what he was about to eat was simply bugs that tasted like chicken. Didn’t others go about eating raw fish and raw steaks too?

But then again, Xu Zhi did not like doing it. He still liked eating cooked food better.

He asked the AI if he could cook the bugs for a bit before eating them, and the answer was an affirmative one. That was because that insane player’s creature pack toxins were so unique and potent that they would definitely be just as potent even after being subjected to heating.

Eating it raw, eating it cooked, made no difference with testing out the poisons after all.

As such, he chose to eat them cooked. He still had stomach cancer, and cooking his food would be better for his stomach.

“I can’t believe this!! He’s about to cook me up??”

Chen Wenshan, the bug hiding inside the lunchbox cursed furiously deep down when he heard what that giant said. He was feeling extremely exasperated, yet he did not dare to show up for fear of being discovered. As such, he simply accepted his fate and waited for his doom.

“No matter. My dead body is gonna be able to poison him to death. I’ve turned down pain anyway. Cook me to death, so what?” He said as he tried furiously to calm himself down, feeling himself shuddering and the unease spreading all over him.

Bang!

Xu Zhi chucked the lunchbox into the oven and turned it up to the highest setting, at 280 degrees.

He apparently remembered the grudge that guy in the lunchbox had with him. All the others died in an instant and their pain did not stay long. The one in there however, was about to suffer a horrifying fate of being cooked to death, and that death would come very slowly…

Swoooshh!!

The red light in the oven lit up.

That huge oven felt like some kind of furnace of Armageddon, which was gradually heating up. The entire rectangular space Chen Wenshan found himself in was turning red hot, causing the bug hiding within to tremble furiously. Hot sweat began to show beneath his vibrant crimson feathers, and he was gradually feeling terrible all over.

“It’d be fine.”

“Sh**, this raid really is something. There is even an oven!. I got myself into the boss’ lunchbox and he actually wants to cook me up… but then again, I’ve turned pain down and I’m gonna feel hot either wayl.” He continued to comfort himself, while he sweated furiously and finding himself feeling increasingly uneasy, as if he truly was being cooked alive…

Arrggghhh!!!

He shrieked all of a sudden.

Not gonna feel hot my a**!!

This is god**mn scorching!!

This place is worse than some alchemy furnace , d*mn it!!

Shrieks that sounded more terrifying than the ones who had been clapped to death were heard from the oven before long. No words were able to describe just how excruciatingly torturous the shrieks sounded.

Xu Zhi scratched his head and flashed a beaming, good-willed natured smile as he sat on a chair in the house. “We’d settle our scores once and for all, dude. You would now learn your lesson right here, right now, and you’d know to steer clear of me in the future.”

The way he saw it, that Final Chicken was definitely going to die.

It was best to teach those people a lesson. No actual harm would come to them after the excruciating pain after all, and that would make it clear to them to never mess with me, the maker. You want so badly to sh** on my head and poison my dinner eh? Now you know what it’d cost you to do so.

He was in no mood to actually plan something against the troublemakers, feeling that teaching them one such painful lesson would be more than enough, to put an end to the commotion those idiots caused. He then continued eating his dinner while testing the potency of the toxin of that new creature along the way.

To those people, they were getting all excited about taking out a boss character, yet to him, it was just dinner while messing with them along the way, so as to stimulate the vigor of those who were working for him to evolve creatures, and then testing out traits of the new being.

However, things did not go as planned.

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A crisp, high-pitched call erupted from the scorching oven all of a sudden.

The call of the phoenix?

“That guy had already been in there seven to eight minutes, and you’re telling me that he’s still alive, and still shrieking even now?” Xu Zhi frowned. “Hold on a second. Survival of the fittest. That guy actually made it through all that heat in the oven, and actually evolved??”

At that moment, a surprised comment was heard for the first time from the Insecta Nest mind.

“The first hero of the bugs is has been born.”