Chapter 4: The Game of Suffering
Among the first batch of twenty players summoned by Hang Yu, there were eight warriors, six rangers, three warlocks, and three monks. He waited a full five minutes before the first player finished customizing his character and descended into the barracks dormitory.
“Damn!”
“This is freaking awesome!”
“Is this really a game?”
“Am I about to actually transmigrate?!”
This player, whose ID was "Ye Li Meng", had customized his character into a shiny-bald, musclebound hulk, and chose the profession of Abyss Warrior. After consecutively checking vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, he found that not only were all five senses fully functional, but they also felt completely real, causing his eyes to well up with tears!
Virtual reality?
Could this still be called virtual reality?
What the hell was the difference between this and reality?!
Ye Li Meng was just about to pull down his pants for further inspection.
At that moment, several more players descended in beams of light.
These players, like Ye Li Meng, first showed expressions of shock without exception.
Once they discovered that all sensory functions were near-perfect, they all revealed excitement and ecstasy.
“Holy crap!”
“It’s really this realistic?”
“Am I dreaming?!”
“I had signed up for this beta test just to report it as a scam!”
“Same here! I thought it was a prank and was prepared for a visual disaster!”
“Has virtual reality technology progressed this insanely? I never thought I would actually get to play something like this in my lifetime!”
“……”
While the players were chatting amongst themselves,
Hang Yu randomly pulled up the stats of one of the players.
————
Name: Midnight Pig Slayer.
Class: Abyss Monk.
Level: Level 1.
Attributes: HP 40, Mana 40, Strength 4, Agility 4, Spirit 3, Will 7.
Talents: Fourth Calamity (Hidden), Heavenly Dao’s Blessing (Hidden).
Skills: Healing Spell, Well-Trained.
Vital Energy: 0/100.
Backpack: 5 cubic meters.
————
Hang Yu asked, “Are the players’ initial equipment, skills, and attributes the same as those of regular unit types?”
Xiao Ba answered, “Yes, because this player entered with the template of an Abyss Monk, so his equipment, skills, and attributes are identical to those of an initial Abyss Monk.”
Hang Yu noticed that each profession’s attributes differed: warriors had higher strength, rangers had higher agility, warlocks had higher spirit, and monks had higher willpower. Every class started with one active skill and one passive skill.
The warriors’ active skill was: Iron Armor Technique.
The rangers’ active skill was: Gale Step.
The warlocks’ active skill was: Flame Arrow Curse.
The monks’ active skill was: Healing Spell.
Additionally, every player had a passive skill called "Well-Trained".
The effect of this skill was similar to muscle memory: even a couch potato who never exercised in real life could naturally and smoothly perform some difficult maneuvers in the game, thereby guaranteeing that each player possessed the most basic combat ability.
Besides that, players possessed two hidden talents granted by the Heavenly Dao Cube.
This was the players’ true core ability and the greatest distinction between them and regular units.
【Fourth Calamity】: A special hidden talent. Souls summoned from other worlds by the Heavenly Dao Cube, due to their souls and bodies being permanently locked by the Heavenly Dao Cube, possess the abilities of immortality and infinite resurrection. However, each time they die, they lose a certain amount of Vital Energy.
【Heavenly Dao’s Blessing】: A special hidden talent. Players summoned by the Heavenly Dao Cube receive the blessing of the Heavenly Dao, granting them 1000% increased loot drop rates and Vital Energy gains!
————
So powerful!
Utterly heaven-defying!
It was already expected that players would have the ability to resurrect infinitely.
After all, this was the core competitive advantage of the Player units!
Other lords had to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and resources to cultivate a high-level unit, and once it fell in battle, all that effort would be wasted.
Even if resurrection was possible, the cost was prohibitively high, so such troops were treated like precious treasures, rarely risked on the battlefield.
But Hang Yu had no such worries.
The Fourth Calamity was an inexhaustible and limitless force, growing stronger through setbacks and battles!
Players also possessed another hidden talent: Heavenly Dao’s Blessing.
To summarize its effect in one sentence: ten times the experience, ten times the loot.
Hang Yu had not anticipated that players would have such broken abilities — it was practically cheating!
This would dramatically accelerate the development of his territory, an utterly unexpected and delightful surprise!
However.
There was a problem.
There were two key resources crucial for territory development.
The first was "Abyssal Magic Crystal", an essential universal material for recruiting units and constructing the territory, also serving as a widely circulated currency among the lords of the Stars and in the Abyss World.
The second was "Abyssal Vital Energy", the pure energy essence produced by the Abyss, primarily used to level up lords or unit types, generally equivalent to experience points in a typical game.
These two resources.
The main method to obtain them was by killing monsters.
Ordinary units recruited by lords lacked self-awareness.
Without individuality, they were absolutely loyal and selfless.
After a battle, the lord could collect all the spoils and distribute them according to needs.
However, this would likely not work with players.
If Hang Yu forbade players from picking up loot or gaining experience — not to mention whether players would even obey — it would definitely crush their enthusiasm and severely damage their gaming experience.
But if he allowed them to act freely...
It might result in players becoming ridiculously rich, while he, the lord, lacked the necessary resources to build armies and expand his territory.
Hang Yu stroked his chin and said, “Looks like I have to think of some methods to make players hand over their resources!”
Xiao Ba interjected, “Players arrived in this world through the Heavenly Dao Cube. Their bodies, souls, and everything they possess are under Master's control. Master can, when necessary, expel a player’s soul and forcibly take over their body along with all their resources.”
Hang Yu was a little surprised.
Was that even possible?
Players painstakingly leveled up their accounts...
Yet he, as the GM, could directly ban their accounts.
Once banned, players could no longer log in, but their bodies would continue to serve the territory as conventional, non-revivable units... Wouldn't players just become pure, resentful, unpaid laborers?
Hang Yu said, “Even though I can strip players of everything at any time, for the sake of long-term territorial development, I must be cautious. Such actions would destroy the gaming experience, kill the golden goose, and, honestly, curse my own descendants.”
Actually, for Hang Yu, this was not a difficult problem at all.
He had plenty of reasonable methods to reclaim resources.
For example, Hang Yu himself possessed a hidden talent granted by the Heavenly Dao Cube.
【Master of Calamity】: A special hidden talent. As the ruler of the Fourth Calamity, you can draw power from the life and death cycles of the Fourth Calamity. Every time a player is killed by a non-territorial unit, you will receive an extra reserve of Vital Energy.
This talent was easy to understand.
In one sentence: the players suffer, the lord profits!
When players died, they would lose experience, but Hang Yu would gain even more experience from it.
Exactly!
How best to "harvest" the players?
Naturally, by letting them die!
As long as they kept dying during adventures, the Vital Energy they accumulated would automatically flow back into the territory!
This design did not destroy the gaming experience, because death penalties were very common in games.
Before transmigrating, Hang Yu had played plenty of Soulslike games and games with extremely brutal death penalties.
He even thought that merely losing a bit of experience was too lenient — such a light penalty would not sufficiently motivate players to struggle and improve!
Thus, he asked, “Xiao Ba, I don't think that's enough. Can we increase the death penalty?”
Xiao Ba immediately replied, “Of course.”
Hang Yu thought for a moment and said, “Then, from now on, whenever a player dies, all Abyssal Magic Crystals they carry will be reclaimed, and 20% of their backpack items will randomly drop.”
“Yes!”
Now that was more like it.
Every player death would trigger a huge explosion of loot.
Massive amounts of Vital Energy and Abyssal Magic Crystals would easily flow back to him.
Moreover, players’ items and equipment would have a certain probability and proportion of being dropped.
These reclaimed materials, items, and equipment could be stockpiled to enrich the territory's reserves and could also be used as rewards for issuing missions, thus motivating players to act according to Hang Yu’s plans.
Hang Yu had essentially turned the death penalty mechanism into a tax on players!
How dangerous was the Abyss World?
No high-difficulty game in history could compare.
Those highly demonized Famous Generals of the Three Kingdoms and Legendary Heroes of History were not to be trifled with!
The difficulty and suffering involved in hunting even a single top-level Demonized General far exceeded that of clumsy players struggling through Bloodborne, *Sekiro, or Dark Souls!
The more players adventured, the more they died, the more "tax" Hang Yu collected!
If he wanted his territory to become wealthy, he had to make the players suffer!
The more players suffered, the greater the benefits the lord would receive.
The higher the death frequency, the faster the territory would expand, and the more prosperous it would become, eventually forming a positive feedback loop!
Of course.
Everything must be done in moderation.
Hang Yu also needed to handle planning carefully — ideally, letting players enjoy the experience of being tormented, eventually becoming addicted and unable to extricate themselves, rather than quitting out of frustration.