Chapter 6:- Monster Among Us!

In such an environment, anyone would feel their scalp tingle with dread.

After seeing Steve's message, his friends couldn't help but start teasing him.

"Huh? Sentient? Bro, are you sure you didn't get scared stiff?"

"Hahahaha! You're too paranoid. It's just a game."

"What kind of sentience are you talking about? It's just a bunch of code! Maybe it was a bug or something!"

The friends, having not seen the encounter for themselves, naturally thought Steve was exaggerating.

Steve, seeing their reactions, felt a surge of frustration.

"Fine! Let me ask you this—if it was a normal monster, why didn't it attack me the moment it showed up?!"

Steve's fervent defense seemed like he was grasping at straws to his friends. But since he was essentially their leader, they didn't want to argue with him too much, so they replied:

"Alright, alright, bro. We believe you. How about this—when daylight comes, we'll go check it out."

"Yeah, if it's really a bug, we could report it and maybe get some rewards."

"Okay, meeting adjourned. Once it's daylight, I'll head over."

Though they agreed on the surface, none of them truly believed Steve. He knew arguing further was pointless; once they saw it for themselves, they'd understand.

After closing the chat window, Steve immediately opened the forums, searching for anything related to "white-eyed monsters."

He scoured the threads for a long time but found nothing useful. Disappointed, he had to give up.

"Looks like I'm the only one who's seen this…"

The image of that "monster" was etched deeply into Steve's mind. A flood of questions overwhelmed him. However, none of these could be answered now. He'd have to wait until he encountered it again to start uncovering the truth.

...

The night passed quickly.

The day-night cycle in the game was fairly fast, though not as brief as in the original Minecraft. In this world, both day and night lasted three hours each.

Xu Yuan had been working diligently through the night.

He had made several discoveries. Although he was a monster, he wasn't quite the same as the others. For one, he could craft and use tools. Like the players, he also had access to a backpack and quick-bar slots, with the same amount of storage space.

This made things much more convenient. Without tools or a backpack, his progress would have been much slower.

Throughout the night, Xu Yuan used his explosion skill to mine a lot of stone and gather some iron ingots. By the time he had fully restored his health, dawn was breaking.

When he emerged to the surface, Xu Yuan surveyed his surroundings. The terrain was a grassland, giving him a clear view. This, however, made it unsuitable for building a monster spawner tower.

Xu Yuan took two factors into account: first, the terrain; and second, secrecy. The tower had to be hidden from players, or they'd destroy it, hampering its efficiency.

To maximize the spawner's efficiency, it would be best to build it over the ocean. In the game, each area has a limit on how many monsters can spawn. If the tower was built on land, there would be plenty of caves in the area for monsters to spawn in, reducing the spawner's effectiveness.

By building over the ocean, where underwater caves are filled with water, fewer creatures would spawn below, improving the tower's yield.

With this in mind, Xu Yuan set off in search of the ocean. After about half an hour of walking, he finally reached the coastline. He pulled out his crafting table, made a wooden boat, and began rowing out to sea.

He wasn't going to build the spawner tower too close to the shore—that would make it too obvious. After rowing for another half hour, he found a suitable spot and got to work.

The spawner tower he planned to build was the simplest design, a water flow-based system. The principle was straightforward: create a spawning platform about 30 blocks above the ground, and use water to push the monsters off the platform, making them fall to their deaths.

Xu Yuan didn't need to set up a collection system since the items dropped by the monsters were of little use to him.

As Xu Yuan busied himself with construction, Steve and his friends had returned to the scene of the previous day's encounter.

This game world was different from the original Minecraft in some key aspects. In the original, without mods, there were no coordinates displayed. Dying would cause a player to lose everything in their inventory and respawn randomly in the world. Many players would die once and never find their way back home.

In this game world, for the sake of convenience, there was a real-time map. While players still dropped all their items upon death, they could respawn at a nearby location of their choosing. For example, if you died at coordinates 322, 12, 50, you could respawn near that spot.

This feature ensured that players didn't end up too far from home after dying. It was also why Steve and his friends were able to regroup so quickly.

Now, standing at the deep pit Xu Yuan had dug, the group fell into silence.

"I don't remember this pit being here before..."

"This doesn't look like it was dug... it looks like it was blown up…"

"And that stone pillar in the middle... it looks like it was built up from below…"

"Could this really be the work of that 'monster' Steve was talking about?!"

———

The sight of the deep pit left Steve and his friends stunned.

Before this, none of them had believed Steve's story. But now, after seeing the pit, their skepticism began to waver.

Clearly, this pit wasn't naturally formed. When players mine or dig, the holes are usually neat and organized—either a 2x2 tunnel or straight down. But this pit looked like it had been blown open. There was no way a normal player had made it.

Besides, they had confirmed the night before that there were no other players around. So, this pit could only have been made by the "monster" Steve had mentioned.

Everyone knew that the "monster" could use an explosion skill similar to a creeper's. But now, faced with this pit, they were filled with questions.

Why had it gone down there? And why did it build its way back up? Was it searching for something? And why, as a monster, could it even use blocks?

These questions swirled through their minds.

Whatever the case, their perception of the "monster" had changed. What Steve had said now seemed more plausible.

"This is seriously messed up... Could this game have some kind of intelligent AI monsters?"

"That's impossible! If there were, the game company would be advertising it everywhere!"

"The way it acted... It doesn't seem like a monster at all. It's more like... a player…"

"Could it be some kind of mutated player or something?"

"If something like this existed, the forums would be blowing up…"

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