The Reader and Protagonist Definitely Have to Be in True Love

Du Ze was behind Xiu. The reader thought of the hint that was written on the sign at the maze’s entrance. However, Du Ze could see that Ariel’s arrows could break the vines but they simply grew back and even multiplied.

Both magical and physical attacks were useless; the vines were incredibly powerful. Du Ze thought that this was probably one of the Tower of God’s checkpoints. It was like a maze chase game,1 how brutal!

The ground was wet with the vine’s juice that flowed down when they were cut. Ariel failed to notice where she was stepping and almost slipped on the juice. Enoch used his shadow shifting ability to grab Ariel and move her away from the vine’s attack. Watching them take on the vines in a hopeless battle, Xiu issued the order to retreat. He and Rachel will stay to beat back the vines while the others escape.

Du Ze was just about to turn around when a vine that was as thick as his wrist rose up from under a pile of cut vines and wrapped around his ankle. Some silly, cute person was raised up in the air by the vine.

“Du-”

Du Ze heard Xiu shouting the first half of his name then the vines pulled on his headphones’ wires. The vines ran away with him like a scammer running away with his ill-gotten gains.

Du Ze, who was now without his headphones, tried to grab a vine and escape but he was pulled into a tangle of vines.

Countless vines came from all directions and wrapped themselves around Du Ze tightly. The friction of the rough vines sliding over his body made his skin tingle. Du Ze was dragged deeper into the depths of the vines; he tried to struggle but his whole body was covered in vines with no room to move, much less escape.

A flash of light split the vines around Du Ze. He looked up and saw that Xiu had rushed into the midst of the vines. In spite of the vines that completely surrounded him, Xiu determinedly reached into the mass of vines enveloping Du Ze and grabbed Du Ze’s hand, trying to pull him out. However, Du Ze’s skin was slippery with the vine’s juice so his hand slipped off Xiu’s.

The vines had restored themselves so Xiu had to cut them up again. Du Ze tried to pull the vines off and go to Xiu but a vine wrapped itself around his waist and pulled him back. Du Ze, randomly waving his arms around, accidentally grabbed a green fruit and squeezed it by reflex.

“Snap.”

All of the vines suddenly trembled as though they were in great pain. They hung limp then finally began to wither. The people outside were startled to see the vines dying but they did not have time to think and just hurriedly pulled Du Ze and Xiu out of the mass of vines.

Enoch asked curiously: “What happened?”

“There was a fruit. That should be their weakness.” Xiu spoke this sentence then went to see how Du Ze fared.

Du Ze cut a sorry figure. His whole body was covered in the vine’s juice. Although it was not unpleasant and even smelled a little sweet, the slippery feeling felt very weird. Du Ze walked away from the others and found a more private place. He pulled up his clothes to check his body. Xiu saw at a glance that Du Ze’s back bore the mark of the vines. The bright red stripes were printed messily on his white skin, making it look as though he had been abused, but giving off a weirdly pleasant fragrance.2

Xiu couldn’t help but stretch out his hand, wanting to touch Du Ze’s back, but the vines that had been motionless until now suddenly made a strange noise.

Du Ze pressed on the red marks on his belly. In some places the vines had broken through his skin. The marks were itchy and sore.

His headphones were on strike so he didn’t notice anything strange until Xiu patted him on the shoulder. Du Ze found that a strange situation was unfolding right in front of them. A group of porcelain people were climbing out of the withered vines. If not for their lifelike expressions, Du Ze would have really thought that they were a bunch of figurines and not real, living creatures. Each porcelain person was about half a meter high and as soon as they saw the people outside, they began to wail and say something.

Seeing that Du Ze was not wearing his headphones, Xiu knew that Du Ze could not hear anything so he wrote on Du Ze’s hand: [They say that they are the porcelain people that were caught by the vines. They are begging us to escort them home.]

It looks like one of the Tower of God’s side quests. According to the porcelain people, their home is right not too far away and sending them home will not take a lot of effort.

After the group had tidied their clothes, they escorted the porcelain people back to their home. However, after a short time walking, they found that the porcelain people were quite troublesome. They were only half a meter high which meant that their walking speed was very slow. In addition, since they were made of fragile porcelain, they did not dare to run in case they crashed into something and were broken into pieces.

Xiu summoned his cute pet team. He wanted each of them to carry a group of porcelain people, only to find out that the seemingly small and fragile porcelain people were extremely heavy.

Because of these reasons, they were considerably slowed down and it took them half a day to walk to the next fork in the path. This revealed another problem. The elf mark Ariel read said they should go to the right but the porcelain people said that their home was on the left.

Du Ze looked at the pitiful porcelain people, they have gone this far and sending them home shouldn’t be bad. Maybe this is a side quest and if they escort these porcelain people home they might get information and items that can help them fight the BOSS.

Thus Du Ze and the others turned left. After a bit of rest, they finally reached the porcelain people’s home after one day. The group of porcelain people cheerfully thanked them then disappeared into their homes without a trace.

This is… No?!

What a good reward! They didn’t get anything except a good guy card! They escorted the porcelain people for such a long time, they could have given them a sip of water at least, bas***d! OMG!

(TN: 好人卡 – literally “good guy card.” Either it means proof that you are a good person or it means you got friendzoned with the other person saying “you’re a nice guy… but I don’t like you that way.”)

The empty grass in front of them seemed to be laughing at them but there was nothing they could do. Though they felt a lot of resentment, all they could do was to backtrack and return to the original path. Du Ze and the others spent half a day to return to the fork in the path, only to feel the familiar vibration from the ground again. The vines came rushing at them.

“Destroy its fruit.”

Compared to the last time they fought the vines, now that they knew its weakness, they were much more calm. The fruit was deep inside the mass of the vines and must be attacked with ranged weapons. It was then that the bow and arrows provided by the Tower of God showed their worth.

Ariel aimed at the green fruit. The vines seemed to understand the danger and pulled back, wrapping the fruit with layers of vines to protect it. The elf princess loosed the bow string and the arrows pierced through the dozens of layers of vines and hit the center of the fruit with great precision. The fruit immediately burst.

It was as though the vines’ pause button had been pressed. They fell limply and withered. Just as Du Ze and the others were about to walk away, a group of porcelain people climbed out of the dead vines again. History repeated itself and those half-a-meter-tall people cried and begged Xiu to escort them home.

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Translator’s Notes:

Our precious little reader was kidnapped by plant tentacles! Noooo! I can’t believe he was all tied up by the vines like that. They even left marks on his skin and covered him with their juices.I thought for sure Xiu would be insane with rage but instead he seemed to be interested … *cough* Do you think I’m right and Xiu was turned on by it?By the way, the vine’s juice should probably be translated as “sap” but since thathappened to Du Ze, I figured that “juice” would be funnier.