Fear. Hair-raising fear completely enveloped Chen Gou.
An indistinct, twisting shadow approached him under the blanket of the dark night. It was something freaky and frightening that was slowly coming closer.
Through the metal bars of the window, he could see that this body was unstable and extremely twisted. The eyes were wide open, with blood-red pupils.
Her hair was messy, and she looked skinny and pale. The housewife outfit she was wearing had long since been tattered and torn, revealing her naked arms that were covered in mud.
The muscles on her neck were swollen and deformed. A worm-like thing wiggled underneath the skin on her face, climbing to her forehead…
What kind of monster was this?
Just a minute ago, Chen Gou had been playing a game inside his university dorm on Earth. Then, suddenly, his vision had blurred and he had arrived at this strange world and witnessed terror unlike anything he had ever seen or experienced before.
That freakish body arrived before the metal bars. She had noticed Chen Gou and she viewed him as her next prey.
Chen Gou's instincts forced him to move backward until his back came into contact with the wall. He could retreat no further.
The housewife forced her head through the metal bars. She squeezed and squeezed with all her might, tearing her skin and crushing her bones, much like a snake trying to squeeze into a rabbit's burrow.
Fortunately, the metal bars held on, only changing shape slightly. She managed to force her head through, but her shoulders remained stuck outside.
Chen Gou breathed out in relief.
However, at that very moment, her lower jaw dropped and her mouth opened extremely wide, like a man-eating flower unfurling its petals that were lined with teeth.
Then…
A round tongue more than a meter long appeared.
He was dumbfounded.
This thing would cause females to cry and males to sweat… He seemed to have seen it before.
Strigoi!
Chen Gou, whose youth enabled him to possess a great memory, quickly recalled. The huge-tongued "housewife" before him was exactly the same as the Strigoi he had seen in the American TV series "The Strain".
With a body like a zombie, stiff movements, and a love for human flesh, its thick and agile tongue distinguished the Strigoi from other zombies or walking dead.
"Did I enter the world of vampires?"
As thoughts churned inside his head, that whipping tongue suddenly expanded and stretched forward by three more inches.
It was now long enough to reach Chen Gou!
Strigoi did not infect humans with poison but with a strange parasite known as bloodworm.
Bloodworms would immediately enter the body the moment one was pierced by the thorns located at the tip of their tongue. They could not be removed, and they stayed until a living person transformed into a long-tongued monster.
At this moment of danger, Chen Gou instinctively grabbed the tongue with his hands, as though he was holding a poisonous snake, and raised it high and far away from himself.
The tongue wriggled violently, much like a muscular python that possessed extraordinary strength. Chen Gou hastily twisted his body, heaved the tongue onto his shoulder, and used all his might to pull the tongue like he was playing tug-of-war.
The "housewife" contorted and screamed in pain. As her head was stuck between the metal bars, she could not advance any further or escape. Her hands waved helplessly in the air.
The tongue was extremely slippery and was ferociously wiggling, trying its hardest to escape Chen Gou's deathly grip. However, Chen Gou had entered a frenzied mode and refused to let go no matter what.
The harder the Strigoi struggled, the harder Chen Gou pulled the tongue.
The vein on his neck protruded. He did not want or dare to let go.
Usually, in the face of death, extraordinary strength would erupt forth from humans.
With a ripping sound, he beat the Strigoi at this tug-of-war. He successfully ripped the tongue and windpipe from the Strigoi's throat.
A fat, long piece of flesh wriggled on the ground, seemingly possessing a life of its own. Its owner remained hanging outside the window, convulsing intermittently before collapsing lifelessly.
One long, thin white worm burrowed its way out of the twisted piece of tongue and swiftly approached Chen Gou.
This was the main body of a vampire. The human body was simply a shell for vampires to live in.
Chen Gou, who knew how frightening the bloodworms were, already had his guard up. He quickly kicked the tongue to the side and crushed it against the gravel below his feet, only feeling satisfied when it was completely pulverized.
The danger was mostly eliminated. What was left now was the clean-up.
There was a huge number of bloodworms in the Strigoi's body. All threats would be removed only when the carcass was completely burned.
Then, a mechanical and emotionless voice suddenly echoed in Chen Gou's head.
"System notification: The host has killed a Level-1 magical creature called Strigoi. 10 Awakening Points have been obtained. Awakening Magic has been activated."
"System notification: The host has been successfully awakened. The baptism of the body with magic is now starting…"
"System notification: The baptism is complete. The host has awakened the innate magic skill True Summoning."
Chen Gou was befuddled when he heard what this voice said.
"What are all these things? Magical creatures, awakening, innate skills…"
Even if he'd accidentally stumbled into a time-travel portal and had been teleported into the alternate world of The Strain, it would have been impossible to obtain any skills.
"Could all this be but a retarded dream of mine?"
Soon, a huge stream of information flowed into his mind. His head felt like it was exploding. Then, he closed his eyes and entered a state of semi-consciousness.
Did Zhuang Zhou dream of being a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream of being Zhuang
Chen Gou did not know if he was the butterfly or Zhuang Zhou.
In his dream, he was an ordinary university student of the 21st century on Earth. His hobbies, outside of studying, were watching movies and playing games.
He was especially obsessed with competitive games, from Warcraft to Dota and to League of Legends. He had played his way through all of these games.
A moment later, he was a tragic youngster living in the Blue Wave World.
The word "tragic" was appropriate because almost all his memories were filled with hunger, cold, poverty, and death in the past 16 years of his short life.
The only thing these two people had in common was that they were both called Chen Gou.
Humans and evil spirits coexisted in the Blue Wave World.
The term "evil spirit" was an umbrella term used to refer to all magical creatures that attempted to invade this world. One of them was the Strigoi.
There were also zombies, spirits, walking dead, demons, and many more.
It struck Chen Gou as strange that almost all these evil spirits could be found in the TV series he had watched before.
For the sake of resisting the evil spirits, a portion of the humans had awakened. They possessed magic and were known as Awakeners.
The body of each and every single one of the Awakeners would be baptized by magic when they were successfully awakened, thus becoming a magical body.
At the same time, a unique innate ability would be activated. These abilities were known as innate skills.
All these skills could be obtained through the magic numbers only the Awakener could see.
For example, after his awakening, Chen Gou saw the following information:
[Name: Chen Gou]
[Age: 16]
[Identity: Apprentice Demon Hunter]
[Level: 1]
[EXP: 0/100]
[Strength: 5]
[Agility: 4]
[Intelligence: 9]
[HP: 450]
[MP: 220]
[Skill: True Summoning]
[Magic Attribute: Summoner]
[Tier: Unique Innate]
[True Summoning Level 1: This skill contains a summoning hall that holds one Battle Guardian at the current level. You can summon the Guardian from the hall to aid you in your battles when you use this skill.]
[Level-1 Battle Guardian: 500 HP, 200 MP, 50 ATK. No fatal weakness. Can be summoned again after being destroyed. Skill cooldown: 1 hour. Skill duration: 30 minutes.]
[Note: The Battle Guardian possesses the same number of skill slots as the host. It can learn synergistic magic skills!]
[Reminder: This skill can be upgraded, giving you more and stronger Battle Guardians!]
[Remarks: You can reject the calling of the Death God when you are summoning the Warrior God.]
When Chen Gou stopped thinking about the chaotic memories and information, he saw the introduction of True Summoning. He felt relieved and developed a hopeful yearning for the future!
He had yet to test the skill out, but it was not hard to guess that this summoning skill was powerful.
There was only one Battle Guardian at the moment. However, upon upgrading the skill, there would be a second and third Battle Guardian, or even more. That way, he would possess an elite team, complete with warriors, mages, and clerics.
Based on his memories, he knew that this world was a very dangerous, cruel, and frightening place.
Ordinary folks with no abilities were very lowly and faced the constant danger of becoming food for the evil spirits. Simultaneously, they had to endure the oppression and exploitation of the human race's experts.
Their lives were bitter and hard. The average lifespan of an ordinary person was less than 50 years. For Chen Gou, who came from the 21st century, this was practically hell.
One could change their fate only by mastering powerful magic skills and possessing immense strength!
Being an Awakener who had activated a decent innate skill provided Chen Gou with a good starting point on the road to becoming an expert.
A short moment later, Chen Gou suppressed his excitement and started to think about the real questions.
If insufficient and unsuitable skills were learned, the advantage of True Summoning would be lost. It would even become inferior to other innate skills.
Skills superseded everything else in accordance with the value of this world.
Skills usually came from two sources.
The first was inheritance. Skills used by some experts were transferable to others by using special means.
The second source an Awakener could learn skills from were Skill Crystals dropped by evil spirits. The magic skills of evil spirits had a certain probability of being condensed into Skill Crystals upon their death.
"System notification: The awakening of the host is successful. You possess a random choose-1-out-of-3 lucky skill draw chance. Do you want to use it?"
The emotionless voice spoke again at the right moment.
Chen Gou was not surprised by the existence of the system. After all, he had obtained a portion of the information he had received previously from it.
The origins of the system were extremely mysterious. Its purpose was to cultivate the strongest experts and help the Blue Wave World completely stop the invasion of evil spirits.
All evil spirits in this world came from a magical dimension constructed from the imagination of the humans on Earth. Therefore, the hosts had been chosen from Earth.
In summary, the humans on Earth imagined various monsters for entertainment. Thanks to a mysterious magic, real worlds had been formed in an unknown space.
Due to an unknown connection with Earth, the Blue Wave World had suffered as a result and had thus been invaded by evil spirits.