Chapter 6: Discovered by the System After All

After the meeting wrapped up, Liu Kongkong followed the other NPCs out of the village chief's house and made his way back to his own blacksmith shop. The front door was already shut, and the back courtyard served as the living quarters.

He peeked into the kitchen and was surprised to find it stocked with rice, flour, cooking oil, vegetables, and even some meat.

"They really went all out with the details. Still, I won't be eating here." Liu Kongkong returned to the bedroom, logged out, and went offline. He'd been on for a while now — time to grab something to eat in the real world.

His vision went dark. Once the Game Pod signaled that it was safe to remove the headset, Liu Kongkong opened his eyes.

His first sensation was intense hunger — followed immediately by a wave of dizziness!

Have I been playing that long? Gritting his teeth against the vertigo, Liu Kongkong forced himself upright. But stepping out of the Game Pod only made things worse — the dizziness intensified rather than fading. He braced himself against the wall and shuffled toward his computer chair.

"This doesn't make sense. By the clock, I was in there three hours at most. Does this game really drain that much out of you?" Liu Kongkong frantically downed two large bottles of water and tore open two packs of instant noodles, eating them dry — but the dizziness in his head refused to let up.

Could this game actually be damaging users' brains? Feeling weak, he opened his computer and logged into the official Hunt Heaven forum, where the familiar tagline greeted him on the homepage.

[Are you ready to begin your second life?]

"Second life? More like sending users off to reincarnate." Muttering curses, Liu Kongkong clicked into the forum and typed "dizziness" and "physical changes after logging off" into the search bar. The results that came back left him stunned — the forum was flooded with glowing praise.

He clicked on a thread titled "The Greatest Game in History."

[I'm a hardcore 3D motion-sickness sufferer. I was genuinely worried an immersive game would have me vomiting nonstop. But after playing for a full day, I was shocked to discover there wasn't a single hint of dizziness. Moving and running inside feels exactly like real life. It's incredible!]

He scrolled down and found nothing but "+1" replies all the way to the bottom.

Did I somehow end up with a bootleg copy? Liu Kongkong glanced back at the Game Pod. The thing cost 2,999 yuan — no idiot would bother pirating something like that. He clicked on another thread.

"Am I the Only One Who Noticed Strange Physical Changes After Playing Hunt Heaven?"

So there were others in the same boat. Liu Kongkong felt a flicker of hope and clicked in.

[As one of the first buyers of a Game Pod — which I only got by pulling strings and shelling out an extra hundred thousand yuan — I was among the very first players to enter the game. I logged off after ten hours. I expected to feel weak and starving, but instead I came out feeling full of energy! Not to embarrass myself, but I used to max out at two hours. Today I found a female streamer online and, well — four hours, no problem. Hunt Heaven is truly something else!]

Liu Kongkong was speechless, but he scrolled through the comments anyway.

"I think Hunt Heaven still has some issues — I mean, it let you log off without fixing your brain first."

"Four hours is honestly not that impressive. That's usually just my warm-up."

"You two up there — where'd you get your prosthetics? Grinding needles over there?"

"But to be fair, I really did feel full of energy after logging off. Looks like the promotional claims weren't exaggerated after all..."

Why is everyone saying their body got better? And what exactly had the promotional material claimed? Liu Kongkong stared at the comments as the heaviness in his head grew worse — the dizziness was so bad he felt like he might throw up.

Even so, he clicked over to the promotional page.

After a few minutes of scrolling, he finally found a single line of text.

"…Here, every choice you make will shape this world — and yourself. The attributes you gain in Hunt Heaven will also affect your physical body in reality…"

Holy shit! Liu Kongkong's eyes went wide. The in-game attributes actually affected your real body?!

He thought back to his stat panel — every single attribute sitting at one — and his measly one point of HP. It all clicked. He immediately pulled up the forum to check other players' stat panels.

"Damn it, their base HP is a hundred, and I've only got one?! At this rate, I'll be on my last breath in no time!"

There was no time to keep browsing. Liu Kongkong staggered over to the Game Pod and dove straight in — he was afraid that if he waited any longer, he wouldn't have the strength to get back into the game at all.

The top priority right now was to raise his stats as fast as possible. He just wasn't sure whether NPCs got free stat points when they leveled up.

He logged in with practiced ease and found himself back in the bedroom. He flexed his hands and feet — everything seemed fine. He checked his experience bar: already at 47%.

Leveling up wouldn't take long. All he had to do was keep cranking out [Deadly Clubs].

He pulled a hundred wooden rods from the shop's storage, picked up his hammer, and started pounding away. About ten minutes later, a resonant clang rang out.

The experience bar was finally full!

Liu Kongkong immediately opened his character panel.

Name: Liu Dameng

Class: Apprentice Blacksmith (Level 2)

HP: 1/1

Mana: 1/1

Strength: 1

Constitution: 1

Agility: 1

Intelligence: 1

Spirit: 1

Available Points: 10

A system notification chimed in his ear, but Liu Kongkong had no time for that right now. He immediately dumped all ten points into Constitution. The moment he did, his HP finally climbed to 101!

"Phew. If the base HP for players is 100, then I should be out of immediate danger. Still, I'll need to put more into Strength and Agility soon." He'd only glanced at other players' HP in his panic earlier — he hadn't had a chance to check their other base stats.

While other players were constantly improving themselves in Hunt Heaven, he'd turned the whole thing into a rehabilitation program. Liu Kongkong let out a wry smile. But since he was already logged in and the shop's storage still had plenty of stock, he figured he might as well grind a few more levels.

Wasn't there a system notification just now? With the immediate threat to his life resolved, Liu Kongkong finally relaxed a little. He opened his message log and found two notifications waiting for him.

"Congratulations, player Liu Dameng, on leveling up. An anomaly has been detected in your character. The system is currently reviewing your case. Please stand by."

So he'd been found out after all. Liu Kongkong let out a sigh. It made sense — a player becoming an NPC was something no game could just let slide. If other players found out, it could seriously damage the game's reputation.

Still, he'd already earned back the cost of the Game Pod. Surely the Hunt Heaven developers wouldn't go so far as to claw that back from him.

With that thought in mind, he opened the second system message.

Due to an anomaly detected during your character's creation process, the system has completed its review and will present you with two options.

Option 1: Delete this character. You will be granted one additional opportunity to create a new character. It has been detected that you earned 44 silver and 80 copper in game currency during your playthrough. The system will not reclaim these funds.

Option 2: Continue playing as your current character. However, given the limited mobility of this character, the system will provide two forms of compensation. Compensation 1: Your movement restrictions will be lifted, and this character will be permitted to travel freely anywhere in Hunt Heaven. Compensation 2: We will assign you a shop manager to ensure normal business operations during your absences. (Your current character cannot attack targets in the wild or accept any quests while in the Starter Village.)

The first option seemed reasonable enough to Liu Kongkong — the fact that Hunt Heaven wasn't reclaiming his earnings was already quite generous. Starting fresh with a new character wasn't a bad deal either. But when he read the second option, his jaw dropped.

The system was actually willing to let him keep playing as the blacksmith shop owner?!

"This game really gives you that much freedom?!" Liu Kongkong couldn't decide. Playing as a regular player would be perfectly enjoyable — and from what he'd seen so far, he genuinely liked the game. But the second option was undeniably more tempting. After all these years of gaming, he'd never once played as an NPC.

"Still… these two compensations feel a little stingy." The first one — free movement — sounded appealing on the surface, but with no ability to kill monsters and no quests to take, "free movement" basically just meant wandering around sightseeing. The second one was even more transparent — it was dressed up as a convenience for when he went out, but really it was just to keep the Starter Village running smoothly.

So which should he choose?

Liu Kongkong stared at the two options, unable to make up his mind.