Chapter 762: The Myth in the Darkness—Dark Souls! (Asking for Monthly Tickets)

Time wound back to the moment before departing from the battlefield.

A new quest: Myth in the Dark

Quest Objective: The Host must elevate personal skill to a higher tier.

Skill Ratings: Novice, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Combat Master, Combat Grandmaster, Monarch, Demigod…

Reflecting on this, he wondered why the ratings felt so much like a video game.

Yet, considering the nature of his system, he quickly found his peace with it.

Fang Qi glanced further down the list at several subsequent tiers, but those were far beyond his current scope of concern.

Fang Qi stole a glance at his own combat skill rating.

Current Host Combat Skill Rating: Combat Grandmaster

Quest Objective: Elevate combat skill to Monarch

Quest Reward: The *Dark Souls* Series

Quest Description: Brother, care to link the fire?

Having received this quest, Boss Fang would frequently play older games—such as the first and second installments of *Resident Evil*, or *The Legend of Sword and Fairy 3*—to hone his combat techniques and push his limits.

…

Some time had passed since the catastrophe befell the Orc Kingdom and its neighboring realms.

The Orc Kingdom, along with the smaller human nations surrounding it, had begun a gradual recovery, aided by a multitude of benevolent souls.

Though the road to restoring their former prosperity remained long, the passing of the calamity allowed many to breathe a sigh of relief, their spirits growing lighter.

…

"Whew..." Fang Qi stretched lazily, looking at the *Resident Evil 2* before him, which he had finally cleared using only a knife. Meanwhile, *Diablo II* had reached Act V of Hell difficulty, and his final showdowns with Chong Lou in *The Legend of Sword and Fairy 3* were requiring fewer and fewer items…

Accompanying these milestones, completed or on the verge of completion, came the sharp chime of a system notification.

Quest complete. Permission to release *Dark Souls 1* unlocked.

…

Following the launch of *The Burning Crusade*, even the new branch store was inundated with a massive influx of players. The remaining folded-space sections of the new store, which Boss Fang had prepared early on but had yet to utilize, were now packed to capacity one after another.

The system's serialized quests mostly mirrored the progression from Act I to Act V of *Diablo II*, where the release date of a subsequent installment was determined by the sales volume of the previous one; thus, the *Assassin's Creed* series naturally continued its publication.

Furthermore, with the new expansion of *World of Warcraft* just opening, the new players who had flocked to the store specifically for *World of Warcraft* were naturally disinclined to notice any other titles, regardless of their caliber.

Thus, at this moment, Boss Fang was in the shop…

"Little Sera, the preview for a new game is out in the shop today. Aren't you going to take a look?" Boss Fang coaxed persuasively.

"Oh, I'm busy leveling to 70!" She gazed at the vast, pristine land before her with immense excitement. "Wow... is this Outland?"

"Look at that person... she has a flying mount!" Helen, standing beside her, tugged at her arm and shrieked.

Boss Fang: "..."

He then turned his gaze toward Haxin nearby.

The upright, middle-aged assassin offered a thoroughly awkward laugh. "My teammates are carrying me through a dungeon..."

On the screen was a massive chessboard hall; they were having a grand old time playing chess inside the Karazhan raid.

"..."

He had no choice but to visit the Jiuhua City branch. "Little Yue..."

"Boss is trying to trick me into playing horror games again!" Jiang Xiaoyue pouted, pointing at the dark knight on the preview cover with an expression of utter displeasure. "I won't fall for it!"

"This game, I absolutely will not play!"

Beside her, Little Bell covered her eyes as well. "Never playing horror games again! Never again!"

The last time she watched Boss Fang play *Outlast*, it looked as fun as hide-and-seek, but when she played it herself, it nearly scared the deer out of her.

She continued to sit before her computer, operating her Tauren to laboriously grind through quests.

If you won't play, I'll play alone...

Fortunately, the population base across the various stores was immense, and the subsequent quest requirements set by the system were not particularly demanding. With Boss Fang playing it himself, a small circle of players formed, satisfying the conditions to unlock the continuation.

By this time, a considerable period had passed since the initial launch of *The Burning Crusade*.

Because raid lockouts spanned a long duration, even high-end players found themselves with an increasing amount of leisure time.

…

"Ding! Sales for *Dark Souls 2* have reached 1000. Unlocking permission to release *Dark Souls 3* and activating the *Dark Souls 3* cinematic trailer."

At this moment, Fang Qi finally heard the long-awaited system notification chime.

Simultaneously, a Kobold had just booted up a computer and logged into Penguin Communication.

Suddenly, a recommendation caught its eye. On the cover stood a knight clad in ancient, weathered armor, his entire body smoldering with embers—not leaping flames, but the faint, lingering sparks left behind when kindling burns down to ash.

"What's this? *Dark Souls 3*?"

"Astonishing!" The Kobold's eyes widened in sudden realization. "A new game has actually been released?"

It casually clicked to open it.

The screen before it revealed an expanse of boundless dark.

A lingering, cold, and despair-inducing darkness, as though the entire world remained in an era of chaos.

As the vision traversed continuously through the deep gloom…

"But then there was Fire." As a weathered, ancient voice echoed in the ear, faint sparks indeed manifested within the darkness.

"And with Fire came disparity." Upon a barren, desolate land where almost no life existed, a fierce conflagration erupted. "Heat and cold, life and death, and of course… light and dark."

An ancient aura washed over the viewer, as if a long-sealed gate had been thrown open, retracing the steps of history to the primordial dawn of the world, when life first stirred and light severed from dark…

Carrying a stillness and desolation reminiscent of the primal separation of chaos, the tale… began.

Torrents of rain poured down amidst flashing lightning and rolling thunder. The sea of clouds beneath their feet surged like terrifying, tempestuous waves. Four colossal dragon statues stood guard in the four directions. Accompanied by the heavy, forceful tolling of a bell, an ancient deity seemed to ride a primordial dragon through the sky, wielding golden lightning and soaring through the nine heavens, just as countless myths and legends sang praises of.

Within an ancient, vine-overgrown grand hall, countless white candles of varying lengths flared to life like starlight. Dark, somber blood slowly drifted upward, converging toward a single point.

…

A fingertip brushed against that withered Lordvessel. From the bottomless abyss behind it, a colossal crowned skull slowly crawled out from the deepest dark.

…

In the direction where the pilgrims prostrated themselves, immense mountains loomed, and an ancient, unimaginably massive castle seemed to stand upon the precipice of the world!

"I stand here… I am a Lord of Cinder, and this is my throne…"

"Death will only destroy you, again and again…"

"Only you… have survived among these cursed ones…"

Voice after voice lingered in the ear… An incredibly ancient figure, existing seemingly only in myths and legends, descended upon a dragon, golden lightning coalescing in his hand… What a sacred and pure thunderbolt it was, cast down like the judgment of the gods!

Within the field of vision, nothing remained at last but a blinding expanse of golden, divine retribution!

His mouth hung wide open, almost the entire time, without a single sound escaping, until the very moment it reached its end, when Mr. De suddenly realized...

A legend, an epic... neither was enough to describe even a fraction of it!

It felt as though his entire brain were trembling.

"This is a myth!" He removed the virtual headset, his trembling voice shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Where is the myth?!" A crowd of elves twitched their pointed ears...

In an instant, they all crowded around him.

.

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ps: For other games, you can always play the sequel first and look into the predecessor later, but Dark Souls... whether you have played the previous titles or not, some things truly require the existence of a predecessor to support them.

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