Bai Liu understood why the driver had described the first salvaged mermaid as beautiful and high-level.
Compared to the exquisitely preserved mermaid skeleton, the wax mermaid figures looked like a cheap, shoddily made tourist souvenir.
And Bai Liu happened to be very fond of things that looked expensive, so he stepped forward and examined the profile displayed beside the mermaid.
[Siren, on the evening of xx, xx, xx, xx, Siren Town. The creatures caught during a collective fishing operation were verified by relevant agencies and determined to contain no artificial synthetic components. They are rare creatures that developed naturally under pure environmental conditions.]
[…At the time of capture, the specimen was already deceased. It was subsequently sealed in a curing solution and preserved in the central gallery of the Siren Wax Museum for public viewing.]
This thing should be a very powerful monster, Bai Liu thought.
As he lowered his gaze to read the introduction of the mermaid skeleton, the fingers of its right hand inside the glass case twitched almost imperceptibly.
The coin pressed against Bai Liu's chest suddenly vibrated violently. In the next instant, countless bright red panels burst into view, stacking one after another in front of him like a system malfunction.
[Siren Town Monster Book Refresh — Siren King (2/4)]
[Monster Name: Siren King]
[Weaknesses: None at this time (players are not required to explore the monster's weaknesses)]
[Mode of Attack: ????? (Unknown, to be explored)]
[You have triggered the wandering god-level NPC: Siren King!]
[The survival rate of the "Siren Town" game copy is rapidly declining and is currently being recalculated… The original clearance rate was 51%, and it has dropped to ??%!!!]
[Warning! Warning! This NPC is extremely dangerous and currently has no identifiable weaknesses. Once this NPC initiates a kill, players will be unable to escape by exploiting weaknesses and will only face death. Please accelerate the game-cracking progress and evacuate Siren Town before the NPC awakens!]
[Estimated time until NPC awakening: one day. Please expedite your quest!]
Bai Liu raised his eyebrows. He was… encountering something extraordinary?
He stared at the crimson warning text, calmly considering countermeasures, completely unaware that the alert had nearly frightened a senior cloud player passing by the massive screen in the central game hall out of his wits.
Wang Shun was a veteran cloud player who had been stationed in front of the central hall's big screen for years. At that moment, he was crouched there as usual, staring blankly at Bai Liu's small broadcast window.
A "cloud player" was someone who spent far less time entering game copies and far more time watching others play. Wang Shun's main responsibility was collecting gameplay data and reporting it to the player guild organization he belonged to.
But despite watching countless gameplay recordings over the years, this was the first time he had ever seen a wandering god-level NPC appear on the central game screen.
Wang Shun stared at the image, confirmed it twice, and finally spoke in a daze.
"Am I seeing this right?! Th-this is that wandering god-level NPC, isn't it?! Who was unlucky enough to enter a copy with a wandering god-level NPC…?"
There were thousands of horror games within the system, each one an independent game copy.
The NPCs and monsters in each game were fixed and distinct, much like different titles displayed in a game store. They did not interfere with or affect one another.
Similarly, the process of players entering each game copy was independent; different copies would never merge or overlap.
But at some point, a bizarre wandering-type NPC appeared.
This NPC could randomly manifest in any horror game copy, roaming unpredictably through the game world. It could even possess an existing monster, forcibly transforming an ordinary creature into a god-level entity with terrifying killing power. This caused a lot of players to complain, and every time they enter the game, they are trembling, afraid of triggering this wandering god-level NPC.
However, the trigger probability of this NPC was actually extremely low. Wang Shun had watched countless gameplays over many years, yet he had never seen anyone successfully trigger this wandering god-level NPC.
That was also because the lethality of the wandering god-level NPC was terrifyingly high. Usually, the moment it appeared, the entire team would be wiped out instantly. Before the audience could even catch a glimpse of it, the players were already dead. As a result, countless rumors circulated about the wandering god-level NPC, but very little concrete information existed. Whenever it did appear, however, it became top-tier intelligence for cloud players like Wang Shun.
If all the information could be collected, it could even be sold for points.
Wang Shun's attention sharpened instantly. Today, he was firmly planted in front of Bai Liu's mini screen.
Yet, astonishingly, such a high-level gameplay feed featuring a god-level NPC was positioned at the very edge of the central screen. If not for Wang Shun's habit of carefully scanning the entire display, he might have completely missed it when the small screen suddenly lit up with red warning panels.
"Is the system's algorithm malfunctioning?" Wang Shun muttered in front of Bai Liu's screen. "Why would a video like this be placed in such a marginal position? This player is performing extremely well—the first page of the Monster Book is practically complete, he's encountered a wandering god-level NPC, and he's still this calm. There's no sign of panic or negative gameplay. His psychological resilience is more than solid…"
As he spoke, Wang Shun opened the game manager and pulled up the player information linked to the screen. His eyes slowly widened.
"…This is a rookie playing the game for the first time?! Seriously?!"
-----------------
[Game Forum — Has anyone seen the new player who just moved up from the newbie section on the center screen?]
1L: Clearing the first game and moving up isn't bad! Could he be this year's Rising Star of the Year?
2L: No chance. I'm watching his mini-TV right now. He's insanely unlucky—he ran straight into a wandering god-level NPC. This is probably the last game of his life.
3L: He did really well in the newcomer section before. Why is his luck this bad…? But he is good. It's not guaranteed death, right?
4L: Does no one else think this wandering NPC is basically a bug? It has no weaknesses. Whenever it appears, players get wiped out because they can't escape. It completely breaks game balance. Feels like the system just slapped a fancy name on an unsolvable bug to fool players…
5L: Damn, I was pretty optimistic about him before. I thought he had a real shot at breaking the highest points record in "Siren Town." His strategies are seriously strong.
6L: The highest points record in Siren Town belongs to God Mu, right? He's fourth on the Nightmare Rising Stars list now. This newcomer probably won't even survive this run—he's way out of his depth.
7L: What a pity. And he's good-looking, too. If he doesn't die, he might still have a chance to enter the top ten high-value players…
8L: Bullshit. That pale, pretty face won't get him anywhere. Look at skill before looks, okay? He's definitely dying in this game...
[1 new person liked Bai Liu's mini-TV. Total likes: 416. No one has recharged this player.]
[512 new viewers have entered Bai Liu's mini-TV, but no one is liking it. That's strange—is the player really performing that badly? Viewers, please give a like!]
[Warning: New likes are critically low. Player Bai Liu's edge-position promotion on the center screen is about to expire.]
-----------------
Bai Liu, oblivious to the discussions about him, stood silently as he studied the mermaid inside the glass case—undoubtedly the highest-level boss in the entire game, as the system panels had made abundantly clear.
When facing this boss, there was no way for players to escape by exploiting weaknesses.
Once it awakened, death was inevitable.
Although Bai Liu disliked the feeling of being completely pinned down, even if the game declared it so, there was truly nothing he could do against the other party at the moment.
However, before it awakened, this mermaid posed no immediate threat to his life.
Bai Liu stroked his chin, boldly considering how he might use the Siren King for his own benefit—an idea that would likely have left the onlookers outside utterly speechless, prompting them to remark that a newborn calf fears no tiger.
Unfortunately, he knew nothing of the truth. In Bai Liu's eyes, the Siren King was merely a monster NPC—advanced, dangerous, and difficult to deal with, but still something that could be handled.
There was no such thing as a boss in a game that left players completely helpless. Even monsters with terrifying panels were, at most, challenges to be deciphered.
As long as the game contained no bugs, then no matter how impossible a monster appeared, it was usually just one of the designers' tricks to heighten tension and whet the player's appetite.
What Bai Liu did not know was that the being he had encountered was precisely the so-called [wandering god-level NPC]—a true bug within the game.
-----------------
They stayed in the wax museum until evening. When the driver arrived to pick them up, the museum keeper saw them off cheerfully, his old, decaying voice filled with delight.
"…It's been a long time since there's been such a large-scale mermaid fishing activity. After tonight, the Siren Wax Museum will finally welcome a new mermaid wax figure."
There was an unsettling pleasure in his smile as he rolled his sightless eyes and fixed them on Bai Liu.
"Have a nice evening."