Chapter 583: Tyrant and Licker Appearing as Minor Monsters?!

"Aaaah! Aaaah!"

Needless to say, even several "heavyweights" from the Golden Sunshine Mercenary Corps—a group reputed to be among the town's most valiant—were so terrified they leapt from their seats. The others, naturally, fared far worse.

Even for female players who had chosen Claire as their protagonist, entering the tavern only to have that zombie—eerily similar to the ones from the first game—look up from devouring a corpse was a bone-chilling shock.

"How can such a mystical realm even exist?!"

"This place isn't meant for cultivation at all—it's meant to terrify people!"

Several mercenaries immediately began to clamor.

They were, after all, veterans of a hundred battles; if they were granted even a fraction of their cultivation, wouldn't they have cleared the place out with sweeping victories?

A few mages deeply agreed; if only they could cast a spell inside, even a tiny fireball would suffice!

Yet this place stripped them of everything. The mercenaries cried out, "To artificially inflate the difficulty by forcibly suppressing our power—what a despicable tactic!"

"And the monsters inside simply won't die!" Krait bellowed. "It took my Earth-Shattering Kick—a combat technique aimed right at the zombie's chest—and its ribs shattered, yet it still didn't die! It just casually walked over to bite me. Does such a monster even exist in this world?!"

Worse still, they would lie on the ground and play dead—that was the most infuriating part! Otherwise, he wouldn't have perished quite so quickly.

Resident Evil 2 was far different from its predecessor; in the sequel, nearly the entire city was devoid of living souls, with zombies roaming everywhere, whereas the first game only confronted players with a single zombie at the start.

Coupled with the current realism difficulty, which lacked the balancing adjustments of the original game, the gulf in difficulty was easily imagined.

"I bet no one can last a single minute among those monsters!" the blonde-haired Krait declared, his face flushed with agitated conviction.

He considered himself an expert at challenging foundational mystical realms under suppressed power; if even he was left utterly helpless when surrounded, how could anyone else possibly...

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a sharp gasp of wonder echoed through the room: "Wow! Is this a magic musket?! How incredible!"

Magic muskets were also known as dwarven muskets, a weapon they had clearly encountered before.

The men turned to look and saw a few youths seated near the shop entrance. They had just been frightened into pulling off their virtual headsets, but now they were all huddled around a girl named Xi. She was controlling Claire, holding something that resembled a magic musket spitting fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

They watched as she hastily made her escape outside.

"..." The mercenaries exchanged glances. "You can actually play this realm like that?!"

Overconfident in their own strength, they had naturally found it difficult to accept the logic of the game, relying instead on their own combat techniques to fight blindly to the bitter end.

As the female protagonist of Claire's route, she was rescued by Leon’s gunfire shortly after the opening, making it far easier to notice such items.

This game had always been exceedingly generous to its female leads.

Though the zombies were numerous and the journey was fraught with heart-stopping thrills and endless screaming, she managed, by the skin of her teeth, to break free.

Unlike the original version, the system’s edition of the game did not restrict players to just one or two fixed paths; searching through this small town, every shop and house could be entered.

If one could cautiously avoid the ubiquitous zombies, it was possible to scavenge content absent from the original game—various weapons, hidden monsters, and more.

Ammunition was strictly limited, but knives, daggers, and even weapons casually scavenged from the ground could serve as arms, sufficient at least to handle a stray zombie.

Having escaped the undead encirclement, the youths explored the town with pistols in hand. Though the atmosphere was oppressive and tense, a rush of post-crisis relief and the thrill of an adventure on the edge of life and death surged from deep within them.

Particularly, this journey through a town that felt like the end of the world evoked a profound sense of solitary adventure.

"Oh! This is just too cool!"

"Fantastic!"

The youths gathered around, whispering in awe.

Though peril lurked at every turn, an urge still lingered deep within their hearts, compelling them to keep exploring—to discover what had happened to this world, why these people had transformed into monsters, and whether there were new, even more powerful magic muskets to be found.

"How can this be...?"

Krait, the mercenary who had just confidently sworn that no one could survive a minute, watched his face turn grim.

Turning his gaze, he saw that the female mage had already begun playing the game herself.

Her small pistol barked away in delightful succession.

"Let's try it too!"

"I remember I have a magic musket like that as well!"

As long as they broke through the initial siege, handling lone zombies with melee weapons was entirely feasible for them as warriors; even relying solely on raw physical strength, their combat prowess was hardly weak.

Yet at that moment, the female mage controlling Claire found her character’s physical condition deteriorating rapidly.

On her arm, a claw mark had appeared at some unknown point, now darkening with infection. More unsettling still, something seemed to be writhing beneath the flesh.

"Oh no, that monster's claws are venomous!"

Her vision gradually bled into a crimson hue, and an inexplicable, primal hunger began to claw at her mind. Within moments, the female mage was abruptly ejected from the virtual reality mode.

Simultaneously, on the screen, Claire transformed into a deathly pale zombie, lunging violently toward the viewer!

"Aaaah!" Her hands shook violently, scared out of her wits.

To think that just a moment ago, that character had been herself!

It was like watching a version of oneself from another world transform into a hideous ghost.

"Are these wretched things actually created this way?!"

"Just a single scratch from them turns a person into one of those monsters?!"

Watching the zombified Claire wander aimlessly through the streets on the screen, the mercenaries watching from behind, including the blonde Krait, felt a chill run down their spines once more.

In the original game, one could consume green herbs to recover, but here...

Any potion could only heal physical wounds; as for the virus, a serum had to be found before the mutation took hold, otherwise a mere scratch on the skin would doom a person to become a zombie.

The difficulty was evidently far higher.

Immersed in this completely realistic experience, the mages and mercenaries from this distant continent were clearly beginning to grasp the true horror of these creatures.

The terror did not lie in their individual strength—in truth, aside from possessing greater physical power than an ordinary person, there was nothing noteworthy about them—but the fact that a minor scratch could turn a human into a monster just like them struck at their senses time and again.

Fighting them was a nerve-wracking affair at any given moment.

Even if one emerged unscathed from a battle, a lingering anxiety remained, a dread that a companion might have been scratched and would turn to bite them when their guard was down.

It was a psychological oppression born of atmosphere and environment, a pressure that reached its zenith in Claire's route when the gun shop owner, turning to speak to her, was suddenly devoured by several zombies crashing through the glass behind him.

One never knew when a zombie might appear, for they blanketed the entire city, omnipresent! This oppressive weight was vastly greater than that of Resident Evil 1, because... who could say if the entire world hadn't turned into this hellish nightmare?

In this regard, the entire Resident Evil series could be said to be exceptionally brilliant.

If this were actual reality, such psychological pressure might well cause ordinary people with fragile minds to break completely.

But because it was a game, this dark and treacherous world instead kindled an even deeper desire for exploration.

Almost involuntarily, the female mage clicked to continue, re-entering that extraordinarily bizarre world.

And the mercenary Krait, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, hastily dove back into the game as well.

The difficulty of Resident Evil 2, under full simulation, was entirely incomparable to the first game.

Precisely because of this, for a protagonist who was merely an ordinary person, the omnipresent pressure felt even more overwhelming than before.

For instance...

Because Leon was reporting for duty at the police station, his immediate instinct was to enter and investigate it—a choice shared by every single player.

And just as Crate was cautiously controlling Leon, exploring the police station for a time, a sudden shriek rent the air.

Before his very eyes stood a bald man, built like an iron tower and draped in a green military trench coat—the Tyrant!

Meanwhile, Akane and the female mage, who were playing Claire's route, could not help but gasp in terror.

The ceiling abruptly ruptured, and a hideous creature with its exposed brain dangling free emerged from the rafters—a Licker!

Indeed, the formidable entities that had served as final bosses in the first Resident Evil movie and game had made their entrance shortly after the beginning of Resident Evil 2!

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PS: To the students talking about seven chapters a day, don't ruin me... it'll kill me.

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