Chapter 2: Entering the Game
Chen Sui spent nearly the entire morning studying his fish tank's miniature world.
He discovered that time seemed to flow faster inside the tank — roughly twenty times the speed of the normal world.
As for day and night cycles, since Chen Sui hadn't put any ornamental fish in yet, the tank light hadn't been installed. The cycle simply followed the outside world's natural rhythm — meaning ten days of daylight, ten days of night.
These Fishfolk seemed to possess a rudimentary level of intelligence, capable of forming small-scale social behaviors.
Sure enough, by the end of the morning, they had already managed to start a fire.
At first, Chen Sui was genuinely impressed — he thought it was wild that these little Fishfolk could even burn the plastic decorations.
But when he reached his hand in to feel around, he found that the artificial rock formations and tree decorations — all originally made of plastic — had long since become real.
Goodness.
Chen Sui immediately rushed online and ordered several rubber-made gold bricks.
Rush delivery — ASAP, ASAP, ASAP!
It wasn't until his stomach let out a long, rumbling growl that he snapped back to reality. Glancing at the sun hanging high outside and the clock's upright hour hand, he realized it was already noon.
Out of sheer curiosity, Chen Sui had actually wanted to watch the Fishfolk make babies — but in broad daylight, they were just wandering around aimlessly.
His thoughts drifted to something else:
"That Strange Egg… I should be able to get more of those, right?"
"I brought this talent back from Azure, so does that mean if I want my little world to develop better and faster, I need to check things out inside the game?"
Chen Sui came to a realization.
Azure was clearly something special. Since the world's arrival was still nearly a year away, he needed to take a look — if anything came up, he could plan ahead.
"Besides, with no job, I need to find a way to make money. Gold farming in this kind of game can bring in decent cash, but it usually takes a lot of time and effort. Whatever — I'll go check it out first."
His mind was made up.
Chen Sui went to fill his stomach first.
He tore open a pack of White Elephant Instant Noodles and was still ripping open the seasoning packets — he liked his food heavy on flavor, so he always dumped in every single packet, full to the brim.
Add a fried egg and a sausage on the side, and it was practically a feast.
Fancy cuisine never sat right with him. This kind of simple food was what he enjoyed most.
After lunch, Chen Sui paced around the room a few times to help with digestion, then immediately returned to his room, picked up his Virtual Reality Gaming Helmet, inserted the Azure Game Chip, and began connecting.
After a brief transfer through the mental domain, Chen Sui felt his mind ascend to heaven as his consciousness entered the game.
All physical senses were now connected.
Boom —
It was as if a roaring tide surged through his mind, then slammed him violently onto a sandy shore. After a brief moment of disorientation, the world filled with the chattering of seagulls and the pungent smell of fish wafting past his nose.
Chen Sui opened his eyes. The scene around him had transformed into a small fishing village.
Brilliant sunlight bathed a golden coastline. In the distance, a whale's cry rang out, and the enormous spout of water it blew from its back left a vivid rainbow arcing through the air.
His clothes had changed into a set of coarse linen garments, along with a pair of worn, woven straw sandals.
Even though this was his first time experiencing Azure, Chen Sui couldn't help but praise how realistic it was.
The physical sensations all over his body, the sights and sounds around him, and the quality of light and color were all utterly flawless — every imperfection had been perfected.
Chen Sui nodded, his eyes conveying his satisfaction.
The game was in free mode — no tutorial, no hand-holding. Quests and events all had to be triggered on your own.
His goal? To become a master of sea beast taming.
Looking around, Chen Sui noticed that among the players who had pets, eight out of ten had named theirs Pikachu.
And then there was that one player with "Pallet Town Strongman" floating above their head…
Chen Sui opened his character panel.
"Alright, let me see what the hell my Chromatic Talent is actually good for in here."
Player: mlgbfirst
Talent: Lord of Creation (Chromatic)
Lord of Creation: Cannot capture sea beasts within the game. Upon killing a sea beast, there is a chance to obtain a [Strange Egg]. The highest quality that can be hatched from the Strange Egg is one grade above the quality of the slain sea beast, with the original quality guaranteed as a minimum.
Fish Coins: 0
Status: None
Sea Beasts: Skyroam, Fishfolk, Tun Fish…
Uh…
That username… was just something he typed randomly…
Chen Sui's eyelid twitched when he saw his own ID, but he kept scrolling down.
When he reached the talent description.
Hm?
Chen Sui froze for a moment.
He rubbed his eyes and confirmed he hadn't misread it.
"This is insane?"
The Lord of Creation talent in the game actually let him kill sea beasts to have a chance of obtaining that beast's egg — and potentially hatch one of even higher quality.
Chen Sui had done his research. Azure's pet-capturing mechanic was notoriously brutal. While it followed the old-school formula — lower HP means higher capture success rate — the truly painful part was that you only got one shot per capture attempt.
A single capture net cost ten Fish Coins.
And one Fish Coin went for as little as three yuan on the trading market, with prices already creeping close to five yuan on the high end.
So the typical process for an ordinary player trying to catch a sea beast was: gather a group of people to grind it down to near-death, then attempt the capture. If it worked, great. If not, repeat the whole process.
The time cost and financial cost were both enormous.
Chen Sui just had to kill, kill, kill — and the sea beast eggs would come to him. He didn't need to worry about anything else.
Chen Sui's gaze slid further down.
This sea beast list… was exactly the creatures living in his fish tank.
But Chen Sui wasn't surprised. "So the game and reality really are connected. I was half-expecting some kind of discount in the game version…"
Chen Sui scrolled hard, pulling the list down for a long time without reaching the end.
He already knew — every creature in his fish tank had followed him here.
No wonder Lord of Creation was a Chromatic Talent. If this developed into the late game and he pulled all the sea beasts from his fish tank out, each one spitting could change the enemy's blood type!
Chen Sui casually set his ID to hidden. He planned to find a place to grind mobs and test the difficulty first.
Leaving the small fishing village and walking a few hundred meters ahead, he spotted a beach packed with players. It was a stretch of shoreline crawling with red crabs — quite a few of them, each about half a meter in size, scuttling around everywhere.
There were plenty of players too. Those with pets had their pets do the fighting; those without pets were hurling rocks. Very down-to-earth…
These sea beasts displayed no health bars, and while players could respawn after death, a sea beast that died was gone forever. This near-realistic combat experience was one of the game's defining hardcore features.
[Red-Mantled Tide Crab]
Quality: Common Quality
Rank: Wavecrest Rank, Tier 3
Talent: ?
A carnivorous sea beast with lethal capabilities. Considered quite dangerous — ordinary people are advised to keep their distance.
Red-Mantled Tide Crabs… this must be a grinding spot.
Common Quality was white-tier, just one grade above the gray-tier Poor Quality.
Wavecrest Rank was the first rank in the world of Azure. According to the official rules, Wavecrest Rank was the threshold for entering the Transcendent realm. Each rank was divided into nine stages. As for the ranks beyond that, no one knew yet.
As for talents… those were innate abilities that sea beasts came with. The stronger the talent, the better. The whole reason people hunted sea beasts was to get one with a powerful talent.
The game had just entered open beta, and many studios and wealthy players were rushing to blaze trails. Rumor had it that a single sea beast with a top-tier talent had already been bid up to over ten thousand yuan.
Of course, Poor Quality and Divine Grade sea beasts had no talents — because for those two extremes, talents were either irrelevant or unnecessary.
Chen Sui found a quiet, inconspicuous corner.
"Since I'm already here, I should be able to summon, right?"
Chen Sui rubbed his chin. "Right now, if I'm summoning, the carnivorous fish are out of the question — no combat ability. The only useful ones are the Fishfolk and the little jellyfish. But the Fishfolk… too ugly. Let me summon that little jellyfish first and see."
As he thought this, he had already tapped on Skyroam.
The next second, a warning popped up on the screen:
Danger! Summoning a Divine Grade sea beast will trigger a heavenly anomaly, cause the rules to collapse, attract the attention of mysterious sea beasts, and bring about unimaginable consequences.
Do you wish to summon?
Chen Sui stared at the warning, a little dazed. That little jellyfish was that powerful? A heavenly anomaly?
In any other game, he would have ignored the risk and hit confirm anyway, just to see what happened and taste the chaos firsthand.
But this game had a certain eerie quality to it. Chen Sui didn't dare mess around.
Fine then…
He'd summon a Fishfolk instead.
With a wave of his hand.
Instantly, a dazed Fishfolk appeared beside Chen Sui. Its enormous fish head sat between its two shoulders, green scales still dripping with brine and slime. Its posture was hunched and its appearance grotesque — like one of the shadowy figures from the Cthulhu legend of Innsmouth…
The Fishfolk looked at Chen Sui with a completely blank expression, as if devoid of all emotion.
Chen Sui stroked his chin, puzzled. In the real world, the Fishfolk would bow their heads to him, as if recognizing him as their creator. Even if they didn't know who he was, they shouldn't be reacting like this — as if he were a total stranger.
"Is what I summoned in the game some kind of copy?"
The thought crossed Chen Sui's mind, and he felt it was probably right on the mark.
After all, no living creature would be this completely unresponsive.
"Alright, that works too."
Chen Sui nodded and looked the Fishfolk up and down.
[Fishfolk]
Quality: Superior Quality (Green)
Realm: Wavecrest Rank, Tier 2
Talent: Brute Force (Strength increased by 50%)
A rare intelligent creature. Legend has it that it carries the Deep Blue Bloodline of the sea within its body — though nowadays, that's just a legend…
"This Fishfolk… Superior Quality?"
Chen Sui was a little surprised. Superior Quality was one grade above Common Quality. He had assumed this dopey-looking Fishfolk would be Common Quality at best.
"I wonder what its combat ability is like?"
"Whatever — since it came from my fish tank, it's basically my own kid. You're Wavecrest Rank, so I'll call you Wavecrest."
Chen Sui said with a grin.
The Fishfolk, upon hearing this, remained blank and unresponsive as ever.
"Right, I forgot you're a copy."
Chen Sui shook his head and swept his gaze around the area.
Plenty of players were fighting Red-Mantled Tide Crabs.
But it wasn't going as smoothly as one might expect.
He watched someone hurl a boulder the size of a human head down onto a crab with tremendous force — the kind of impact that could clearly bend a sheet of steel.
Yet when it landed on the Red-Mantled Tide Crab, the rock let out a dull thud and bounced off.
Someone else's fish pet charged in, only for the Red-Mantled Tide Crab to lazily extend one claw and snip off half the pet's tail.
Chen Sui raised an eyebrow. He suddenly realized that these Red-Mantled Tide Crabs crawling all over the place were actually quite formidable.
"No wonder… everyone's grinding these things. Are they actually that tough?"
Chen Sui muttered to himself, rubbing his chin.
Then he looked toward Wavecrest, who had already walked ahead. "Wavecrest, go hit one. If you can't handle it, don't push yourself — this thing looks pretty hard…"
Before he even finished speaking, a dull, muffled thwump rang out.
Chen Sui froze and looked down. A red crab had been punched clean through the body by a webbed fist. His mouth was still opening and closing, but the Red-Mantled Tide Crab was already hanging limp, claws drooping, completely still.
Wavecrest raised its head, its blank, dead-fish eyes staring weakly at Chen Sui… looking utterly harmless.
If it weren't for the poor Red-Mantled Tide Crab dangling from its hand, Chen Sui might have actually believed it was harmless.
Killed a Wavecrest Rank sea beast: Red-Mantled Tide Crab.
Lord of Creation talent cannot obtain a sea beast baby. Instead, obtained [Red-Mantled Tide Crab Egg (Green)]. Guaranteed minimum hatch: white Common Quality sea beast. Maximum possible quality is one grade above the original sea beast's quality.
Obtained [Red-Mantled Tide Crab Egg (Green)] ×1
Obtained Red-Mantled Tide Crab Damaged Corpse ×1
Tip: Damaged corpses can be brought to a Sea Beast Salvage Dealer for processing and dismantling.
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Edited by Fat Goose