When he finally found the passage to the next level, he missed the time again.
The clearance time was 4m16s.
Brother Yin: …
"Niu Boyi, he's the real Niu Boyi!" Brother Yin didn't know whether to praise or scold him now; he even had a premonition that if he tried to open another file, the map would undergo another transformation.
The 2-minute time limit to open the door seemed designed to cure all kinds of perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"This time, let's continue with the rest of the game. At least after we get familiar with the game's mechanics, we'll reconsider the fact that there are 30 people without injuries and there are still two minutes to open the door."
Brother Yin chose to give up immediately; the new game had just been released, and there was no need to waste too much time on insignificant details in the first game.
Many missing elements would entice players to gradually complete them and strive for perfection when the game was worth continuing to play.
He guided the character to jump towards the steps ahead, and the huge container below contained a strange liquid.
Petri dishes were connected together with countless pipes, and only a few candles burned slowly in the dim environment.
Standing in front of the huge container was a man wearing a blue cloak and carrying a blue syringe.
The needle tube behind this NPC was bound with an iron chain. Upon closer inspection, there seemed to be something inside.
The ice-blue round thing twisted constantly, resembling the cells collected during the game.
[Hehe, let's see who's coming...]
[You can call me a collector; I may be the only good person you can meet here. ]
[As long as you give me the cells you looted from the enemy, I can give you some useful things...]
[If you find the blueprint, maybe I can provide you with something more... experimental. ]
Then, a trading interface popped up.
The right side of the interface displayed the number of cells he had, while the left side showed what could be exchanged.
After a few random clicks, the cells on his body were consumed.
Near the gate where the collector stood, he saw another mutant businessman.
The merchant didn't require cells, but gold coins.
He still had three variations: red, green, and purple.
"Good guy, the game's system is indeed rich. After playing it, there are no major issues. You should give it a try. Although I've only played one level now, there shouldn't be any major problems in the game," Brother Yin nodded in affirmation.
He quickly entered the next level, the Avenue of the Guilty.
A dead body hung with iron chains on the gallows. In this world full of iron chains and cages, it looked oddly harmonious.
The supposedly pleasant rural scenery in the forest was already permeated with a sinful atmosphere.
The environment here wasn't as dark as in the sewer. This side had already entered the outside world. Iron chains could be seen everywhere in the background picture, and iron cages resembling birdcages hung from the branches.
But everyone knew these weren't real birdcages.
As soon as he emerged, he encountered a few monsters. What differed from before was that the forms of monsters were more diverse this time.
Even the game's monsters wore transparent pink masks.
Slashing with a knife, the blade bounced off, and the monsters within the protective cover suffered no damage.
A faint, pink current thin line pulled in one direction on the light shield covering these monsters.
Brother Yin ran toward the direction of the current, with the monster behind him in pursuit. He spotted an orange doll continuously emitting shield energy towards the monster.
With a few swift cuts, he crushed the orange doll, and the shield on the monster quickly disappeared.
"It's true that the game has become a little more interesting." The corner of Brother Yin's mouth curled up in a knowing arc, and he began to feel some joy upon discovering the game's novel settings.
But then, he noticed the armored warrior with a machete in hand leaping across the platform, slashing towards him.
A group of monsters swarmed.
On the unavoidable platform, the monsters ahead and behind attacked simultaneously.
"Damn, can't you come one by one?" Brother Yin frantically fought back, but his dodging also disturbed the moths hanging above another platform.
This time, monsters attacked from all directions in an instant.
It wasn't that he didn't want to avoid them, but he couldn't avoid them at all.
Cannonballs thrown by monsters from a distance, ejection attacks, monsters with machetes, moths overhead...
All this made Brother Yin's head spin.
His health bar rapidly depleted, nearing zero.
"Oh, ouch, these things don't play fair!" Brother Yin screamed in a strange mix of agony and frustration, but his cry couldn't halt the mobs' relentless assault.
As he watched his health bar empty and the screen dim, Brother Yin didn't dwell on it. He had only reached the second level. Even if he died and respawned a million times, he would at most start from the Avenue of the Guilty.
When the screen flickered back to life, revealing the familiar beheading platform, the giant wreck, and
the prisoner's cell, he was dumbfounded.
Starting from the first level after dying?
Seriously? Was it really that annoying, game?
He immediately felt it couldn't be true; there must be a mistake.
But when he considered that this game was produced by the studio behind "Digging for Ascension," he couldn't help but shudder.
—hiss
Other studios might not be capable of such a small detail, but this studio was truly capable.
He clicked on the game's homepage again, fixing his eyes on the row of text in the game introduction that sent shivers down his spine.
Danger is always present, death is always imminent, no checkpoints, just kill, die, learn, repeat!
"I'll be darned..." Brother Yin was stunned. "This really means starting all over again..."
As he saw his distraught expression, others who had experienced the pain of playing "Digging for Ascension" before couldn't help but commiserate.
"Don't speak; high blood pressure alert..."
"I thought the word 'repeat' was just a joke, but when I saw the actual repetition, I was furious!"
"… Guys, let's stop talking. I was about to give up on the game, but it's actually really fun to play!"
"When I was playing, I saw a piece of equipment separated by a door, and it asked me to sacrifice 1,000 gold coins to take it away. I thought, can't I just break all the doors along the way? So I broke the door, well, I got the curse of the gods..."
Sacrificing gold coins could take away equipment, but forcibly breaking the door to take it would incur the gods' curse.
Under the god's curse, any damage (including poisoning) would immediately lead to defeat.