Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Glacial Realm 3
"Why can’t we fight back?" Perry Yates asked.
The young man explained, "You’ve probably heard of the Wasteland game. I was one of the players who participated in it back then.
In that game, players had to face harsh environments and resource shortages.
But none of that was the most critical part. You could endure the harsh environment as long as you found a safe shelter, and resource shortages could be alleviated by finding treasure boxes."
"If none of that was the most dangerous, then what was?" someone asked impatiently.
Perry Yates looked at the young man. She didn’t say anything, but she already had her suspicions.
"It was the natives.
The natives of this world can’t open treasure boxes. After they accidentally discovered that players could touch and open them, they started capturing players everywhere and taming them into dedicated Treasure Hunting Mice.
Once tamed, a player loses their player status and is trapped in this world forever."
"If being tamed means being trapped here forever, then why did you stop us from fighting back just now? Aren’t you trying to harm us?"
This statement immediately resonated with the other players, and they glared at the young man, their eyes filled with fury.
"Taming takes time," the young man said. "The reason I didn’t want you to fight back is that if you resist or hurt someone during the taming process, you’ll be killed immediately.
To the natives here, we aren’t their equals. We’re like pets, you know what I mean?"
Everyone fell silent after hearing what the young man said.
After a long time, someone finally broke the silence and asked, "So we just wait?"
"Of course not," the young man said. "As long as you resist being tamed, you’ll eventually find a chance to escape.
If I’m not mistaken, we should be allowed to move about freely tomorrow. Those big guys will act friendly toward us to lower our guard."
Next, the young man shared many more of his experiences from the Wasteland game.
It wasn’t until late into the night, after everyone had fallen into a deep sleep, that Perry Yates suddenly heard a faint sound.
Slowly opening her eyes, she saw that the young man’s cage across from her had been pried open at some point.
Although there were many cages in the room, the number of captured players was even greater, so some cages held more than one player.
At this moment, the player who had already gotten out of his cage didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he opened a multi-person cage, dragged one of the players out, and somehow managed not to wake a single person during the entire process.
The player he had grabbed, in particular, was like a dead pig, completely still and letting him do as he pleased.
He just waved his hand over that player’s body, and in the next second, that player transformed into his exact likeness.
Then, the young man locked that player inside his own cage.
After doing all this, he dusted off his hands and prepared to turn and leave.
The moment he turned, his eyes met Perry Yates’s.
In the next second, a Thorny Rose covered in sharp spikes appeared from Perry Yates’s hand, tightly wrapping around the young man’s vulnerable neck and immobilizing him.
"You’d better not move. My Thorny Rose is poisonous, you know," Perry Yates reminded him with a smile.
"What do you want?" the young man asked through gritted teeth.
"I’m leaving too." Perry Yates lifted her chin and said, "Help me."
Seeing the young man remain silent, Perry Yates didn’t waste words and directly tightened the thorns wrapped around his neck.
The spikes pierced his skin, and the young man immediately felt a numbness spread from the wound.
Seeing that Perry Yates wasn’t joking, the young man decisively gave in. "Okay, okay, I’ll help you, I’ll help you! But you have to get this thing off my neck first."
At his words, Perry Yates retracted the vine.
Under her watchful gaze, the young man dragged a female player out of a cage, transformed her into Perry Yates’s likeness, and then locked her back inside the cage.
After all this was done, the young man looked at Perry Yates, his expression seeming to say, ’Is this good enough for you now?’
Seeing this, Perry Yates tossed a piece of candy to the young man. "It’s the antidote."
Hearing her say that, the young man finally realized that half of his body had gone numb without him noticing.
He popped the antidote candy into his mouth, and the paralyzing effect was instantly relieved.
Once his body returned to normal, the young man headed for the exit. Seeing this, Perry Yates followed him.
The young man noticed Perry Yates’s actions but didn’t stop her.
From what just happened, he had already witnessed Perry Yates’s combat strength.
He didn’t like dragging along dead weight, but he didn’t mind if it was a capable companion.
Especially since she had just given him the antidote candy. ’This shows she’s not a bad person at heart,’ he thought. ’Maybe we can cooperate.’
Thus, with a tacit understanding, the two reached a consensus.
The two of them felt their way around and successfully squeezed through a gap in the door.
Whether it was because the natives were overconfident in their cages or they thought the players wouldn’t have the guts to escape, there were no guards posted outside the door, which was convenient for the two escapees.
As soon as they got outside, a blast of cold wind hit them, making both of them suck in a sharp breath.
Perry Yates was fine, as her set of gear was no joke. The young man, however, was miserable.
His outfit, while cool-looking, wasn’t warm at all.
Seeing him shivering like a frozen chick, Perry Yates took an extra cloak out of her dimensional space.
The three animal hides had been large enough that even after making two sets of quilts, mattresses, carpets, clothes, and cloaks, there were still leftovers.
The scraps weren’t exactly whole, but they weren’t exactly fragments either. Not wanting to be wasteful, Perry Yates had pieced all the material together, resulting in this cloak.
"Thanks,"
the young man said, wrapping the cloak tightly around himself.
"You’re welcome. You must have more clues you haven’t shared yet. For the sake of us having just gone through life and death together, why don’t you tell me?"
The young man: "..."
’Is that how you use the phrase "life and death together"?’
However, since they had already decided to cooperate, the young man didn’t hide anything and told her what he knew.
"You should know from the game’s start that there would be 150,000 natives in this game. Without knowing about the treasure boxes, I didn’t pay much attention to them. After all, it’s not like previous games haven’t had natives.
But with the treasure box factor, things are different."
Hearing him say this, Perry Yates asked curiously, "How are they different?"
The young man pointed at the village. "Do you think this village looks like it can house 150,000 people?
Even the natives fight among themselves. When conflict breaks out, players like us will be the first to become cannon fodder."
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