5 We Threw Up Before the Fight Even Started

At the foot of the mountain at the edge of the wilderness, five suspicious figures approached a large cave.

"Is it here?"

Xu Zhe asked the others in a whisper, glancing around cautiously.

"This should be the place. The arrow indicated that it was here." Sun Shuai stared at the cave, his eyes shining. "That's odd, I don't see the little monster." 

Zhuang Dafa, whose figure resembled a 200 jin oil barrel, made a somewhat strenuous effort to squat down. He inhaled sharply, and asked a little uncertainly, "Do you smell something?"

"It smells like blood." Ma Xiaoling, who was dressed in light clothes and straggling behind the group said, "This place is scary. Look over there, at the entrance of the cave. Isn't that a skull?"

Xu Zhe's gaze followed the direction which Ma Xiaoling was pointing at. When he saw the shattered bones and skulls on the ground, he could not help exclaiming, "This is no doubt a-hundred-percent real simulation, it's so realistic. If this company goes public, their stocks will skyrocket."

"Skyrocket my *ss. A leek 1like you shouldn't think too much about it." Sun Shuai pursed his lips when he heard Xu Zhe's shocked tone, and brought them back to the topic at hand. "It looks like the mission we have to accomplish is in there. What should we do now?"

"Let's formulate a strategy." Xu Zhe took a step forward, he was one of the older people in the group. "Before I went AFK, I used to be a gold farming commander…"

"Why are you wasting your breath?" Liu Chuanfeng, the somewhat rebellious long-haired teen who had been standing at the front of the group, laughed coldly. "We're just playing a game, what's all the fuss about?"

As he finished speaking, before anyone had the chance to react, Liu Chuanfeng already stood up and swaggered towards the cave, into the entrance.

"He's too disorganized and undisciplined." Zhuang Dafa criticized him under his breath, watching as Liu Chuanfeng entered the cave.

Xu Zhe shook his head in exasperation, whether when he was playing games in the past, or after when he had started working, he encountered many people who behaved this way. He walked up to Zhuang Dafa and patted his broad shoulders lightly. "Don't mind him, it's just a game, it's not a bad idea to let him scout ahead too."

Inside the dark cave.

Meng Yang stood on edge inside the wooden cage. When he saw the long-haired teen walking in, his heart jumped with joy.

"He's here! He's here! The dummy is here!"

He resisted the urge to wave. Meng Yang had decided to pretend to be an NPC and even spent some time coming up with his lines.

"The task is over here, baby!" 

The only thing Meng Yang felt he was missing was a big, glowing, yellow question mark above his head.

At that moment, he thought that the long-haired teen would come up and interact with him while the pig-headed monster was asleep, and help him find a way to secretly escape.

However…

He watched as the long-haired teen stood with his legs slightly apart, stopping about ten meters from the pig-headed man. He scanned the interior of the cave with his eyes, then abruptly turned and ran back out the cave.

'Hey, come back!'

Meng Yang screamed silently as he watched the long-haired teen run out of the cave. At that moment, he wished he could hit him. 'You're here to complete your mission, why are you running?'

Outside the cave, Xu Zhe, Sun Shuai, Zhuang Dafa, and Ma Xiaoling were getting ready to enter the cave. However, as they were about to enter, they were greeted by the sight of Liu Chuanfeng's greasy hair swishing behind him as he sprinted out the cave, his face pale.

"What's the matter?"

Zhuang Dafa looked confused. Just a moment ago, he watched Liu Chuanfeng swagger in with confident strides. Now however, in a blink of an eye, he left looking pale and overexerted. 

"Urgh…"

Liu Chuanfeng pushed past the four of them and held onto a rock outside the cave for support. He leaned forward and threw up, his eyes watering.

"Everyone, get back!"

As an experienced commander, Xu Zhe's first response when he saw Liu Chuanfeng's reaction was to pull the group backward. Based on his experience in dungeons, 90% of these cases were likely thieves of hunters who had attracted monsters.

After waiting a few minutes, Xu Zhe observed that there was no movement from within the cave, and let out a sigh of relief. He turned to look at Liu Chuanfeng who was almost done with his dry heaving and asked, "Liu Chuanfeng, what's the matter?"

"It's…it's terrifying!"

Liu Chuanfeng retched a few more times, then slowly stopped, turning to look at them. "Inside…Inside the cave, the smell was so foul it could suffocate you. The place was littered with shattered bones and rotting flesh, it's a slaughterhouse. There was even a human head that had been torn in half. F*ck, this…who was the one who came up with this d*mned design?"

Liu Chuanfeng felt his stomach spasm, then he dry heaved once more.

"Wimp!" Sun Shuai glanced at Liu Chuanfeng nonchalantly, he did not live up to such a noble name.

"Oh yeah? Why don't you give it a try?" Liu Chuanfeng spat and glared at Sun Shuai. Ever since the start of the game, he had not liked the guy, and it was not because of his looks.

"Everyone, calm down, it's just a game, and we're a team right now."

Sensing the discordant atmosphere within his team, Xu Zhe reassured them hurriedly and kept glancing back at Liu Chuanfeng. "So, Slam-Dunk, did you see the target of the mission?"

"Yeah, what's it like in there?" The 200-jin-oil-barrel-bodied Zhuang Dafa asked.

Only the pretty girl dressed in light garments stood slightly farther away. Even if it was just a game, following a group of male players into a dark cave was not something a pretty girl would do. 

"It was too dark, I couldn't see it."

Liu Chuanfeng rubbed his slightly itching throat, he always felt like this game was way too realistic. It even made him throw up, must be the 3D motion sickness.

When he noticed the odd looks the others were giving him, he cleared his throat and added, "But I did see the mission's monster, it's humongous, but it was asleep."

"Alright, then let's get it!" When Xu Zhe heard that the monster was asleep, he no longer hesitated and said to the others, "Let's hurry up and finish the story's mission."

"Alright!" The others nodded, then entered the cave together.

The cave was a little more than ten meters deep. It was very spacious, and over four meters tall. The area of the cave must have been around 200 or 300m2.

Along their way, they saw ridges formed out of skulls, and skeletons in piles as dense as the forest. They saw human hair matted on the ground, and flesh rotted into the dirt. There was an endless stretch of corpses and blood, and the smell was unbearable.

The terrifying and eerie atmosphere made it feel as if they had entered a demon's cave.

"This…is it not horrifying enough?!" Liu Chuanfeng asked as he saw the others ahead of him slowing down their pace. He was pinching his nose, staggering behind the group.

However, just as he finished speaking, the three people in front of him suddenly turned around and rushed out of the cave. They ran to the entrance of the cave and started dry heaving.

"We haven't even started, it's too gross!"

"It smells horrible!"

"I can't handle it!"

"Urgh!"

"So, am I still a wimp, huh?" Liu Chuanfeng could not help but secretly feel happy at the sight of Sun Shuai's pale face. He thought of it as payback.

Sun Shuai, on the other hand, was not in the mood to care about Liu Chuanfeng. His complexion was pale, and cold sweat prickled his skin. Never in his life had he encountered such a shocking, eerie, and revolting scene.

"We could just stop playing. This game is too disgusting!"

"Yes, we can dismiss the party now. Let's add each other on WeChat, we can play PUBG together!"

"This is a holographic simulation, they're probably just doing this to test our reactions!"

The crowd outside was creating a commotion, and Meng Yang who was stuck in the wooden cage inside the cave was startled. He had finally tricked – no, summoned- five people here. They had not even done anything yet, and they already wanted to leave?

As for the cave's condition, Meng Yang thought it was shocking and revolting as well, it was like a scene from a gory Hollywood film. However, he had been here right from the start after he traversed through dimensions, so he had more or less gotten used to it. He did not consider a normal person's perspective at all.

Fortunately, even though a few of them voiced out about returning to the real world, they were still reluctant to exit the game. Even though the scene inside the cave was as horrifying as it was repulsive, the uniqueness of a 100% virtual reality game overcame what they had seen.

At the cave's entrance, they were slowly adapting to the situation. Even Ma Xiaoling who was standing far away, upon seeing them enter the cave, she stealthily inched forward too.

They pinched their noses as they advanced, their eyes slowly adapting to the lighting within the cave. At the center of the cave, other than the revolting scene, the four people could make out several large, sturdy wooden cages at the far end of the cave. There seemed to be people trapped within the cages. 

However, at a spot in the middle of the cave, there was a large pig-headed creature lying on top of a messy pile of straw. The sound of its snoring was thunderous, and it was fast asleep.

"Now…now what?"

The oil-barrel-bodied Zhuang Dafa who stood at the front of the group stared at the pig-headed man on the ground, his voice shaking slightly, and his last few words accidentally came out high-pitched.

They did not blame him, this game was way too realistic. The inside of the cave seemed like a scene from purgatory, and the pig-headed man was huge, like a demon king.

"Let's gank him!"

Liu Chuanfeng, who had somewhat gotten used to the horrible scene within the cave, said as he held his nose.

"Quiet down." Xu Zhe's expression changed slightly and quickly grabbed Liu Chuanfeng. He swept his gaze across the others. "We're just going to charge him without any weapons?"

Liu Chuanfeng, who was standing at the furthest end of the group, suddenly seemed to react to his words. He cursed in a low voice, "F*ck, this stupid game didn't even give us any starter weapons."

"Cheapskate!" Even the quiet and cold Sun Shuai could not help but criticize the game as well.

The atmosphere became quiet for a few minutes, Zhuang Dafa who was standing at the front of the group snapped out of his daze, and asked them, "How about we give it a go?"

"Sure!" The other three nodded and stepped back simultaneously. "You first!"