If only I could get that [Dragonlord’s Battleaxe]. Killing Steel Slice for it would be the ultimate revenge. Maybe I’d get a shot at him during the hidden challenge.

With that in mind, I diligently continued to prepare for the hidden challenge for the remaining few days, searching up more information online. After all, just like swords and spears, information itself was a deadly weapon when used properly.

“Eclipse Online vampire race,” I murmured to myself while typing the words into my search engine, and then hitting enter.

Will there be new playable races added to Eclipse Online? Vampires, Dwarves, Pixies, and Elves?

New races discovered!! From Ghouls to Vampires, our website has it all! Rankers exposed!? Get the hot and exclusive take, now!

Most of the search results were clickbait without substance, while the others were not even related to vampires at all.

“Eclipse Online… demi-human,” I entered.

The search returned even less relevant information than before. It was as much as I expected, though. The room I died in with the mimic and the two vials of blood was so deep in uncharted territory that nobody at my level had any business poking around there. I highly doubted that any other player encountered a similar race change.

That reminded me. How were Rosalia and Bjorn doing? Rosalia was a gold invitation holder, so even if she died, she’d respawn and be fine once the hidden challenge started, but I was worried for Bjorn. Even though he was just an NPC, he was a stalwart ally when things mattered the most. He even tried to come back to help me when he was already in safety during the mimic fight.

In my eyes, that gave him more integrity than the majority of real players. That was the same reason why I appreciated Rosalia so much. Even in the face of extreme danger, she risked her life to heal a total stranger on the front lines.

I couldn’t say the same for a lot of other people. People in this world were not all good hearted, myself included, and I ran into my fair share of deceitful backstabbers in the past. And that was why even when I was facing loan shark debt in real life, I never batted an eye gifting Books and Rosalia an enormous sum of gold, which I could’ve converted to real life cash if I wanted. It was because trust was something worth more than anything else, and I would never hold my hand when it came to rewarding people I trusted.

Like I said, there’s a time and a place to be stingy, for example like when I was bargaining with the government official and the loan shark. But sometimes, being generous without expecting anything back was the right thing to do. And that was a lot to say, coming from someone like me, whose life until now did not lend myself to be the most generous person.

If you had to ask me why I would trust someone based solely on observing their actions in a game, there was a reason why. It was because how a player acts in game sometimes showed a glimpse of how they would act in real life. It was similar to that old saying about how a man’s true character is revealed by how they treat their waiter. Granted, it might not always be a hundred percent accurate, but a quick observation in addition to my gut feeling was almost always accurate.

It felt stupid to admit this, but my gut feels had uncanny accuracy. I had a degree of anxiousness, overthinking, and inherent distrust that was great for alerting me of danger, almost like Meat Shield, but it was a disposition definitely not befitting of a hero of any story. Heroes needed to be magnanimous and good hearted, rather than weak minded and anxious. But then again I was no hero, and this was not some kind of manhwa story.

But really, could you blame me for being overly anxious? My experiences till now really were not filled with sunshine and rainbows, and even as I sat on this sofa watching tv and browsing the internet, some suit from the government was watching me through that camera sticker on my kitchen countertop. To make things worse, I couldn’t even acknowledge that I knew of the hidden camera’s existence without tipping them off about it. I even considered putting a coffee mug or something in front of the camera, but that would only prompt another doorbell ring by the government for another ‘routine pipework checkup’.

Survival was a challenge, but I was more than capable of living up to the challenge. All my past experiences and scars trained me for it.

I welcomed a challenge. And there was a big one coming up very soon.

I had a gut feeling that the hidden challenge was going to be a survival challenge. And my gut was rarely wrong.

-------

I logged into Eclipse for the first time in almost a month.

[The Hidden Challenge will begin in 15 minutes.]

Because you are a ticket holder, you will respawn at the beginning of the challenge.

Because you are a gold invitation holder, you will be granted the following additional bonuses.

[1x Dragonnip]

[1x All Purpose Campfire]

[1x Gravy in a Jar]

The Goddess Luxuria has high expectations of you.

The God Thor has taken minor interest in you.

It was strange that Thor took interest in me. From what I could remember, my only interaction with Thor was listening to Bjorn swear by him every other sentence.

The fifteen minutes passed by quickly.

[You are now respawning.]

I respawned in an unfamiliar mountain range with low hanging clouds and patches of vibrant green pastures between extreme peaks and valleys. It was a lot more foreign feeling than Jagged Dorsa, although I couldn’t quite describe why. I nearly slid down the slope upon respawning, and had to reorient myself to avoid tumbling down the grassy hill.

Beside me, hundreds if not thousands of players were either respawning or falling out of thin air onto the grass beside me.

“Huh? This feels like the tutorial all over again,” an innocent faced male warrior mumbled beside me.

I never got the chance to experience the tutorial because of my rather unorthodox entry into the game world through chasing Meat Shield into the dimension room, so I couldn’t relate. Perhaps he was referring to the way everyone was dumped into an empty field like a bunch of sardines. Some players were even landing on top of each other, leading to temporarily compromising positions for the female players landing on top of male players and vice versa, and a lot of “get off me!” shouts.

As if I jinxed it, a portal opened right above my head. I rolled to the side, but not quite fast enough.

A massive fat ass came hurtling down towards my face like a giant meteorite on a collision course with earth. I couldn’t even dodge to the side in time.

“Hnnghff!” I groaned, as a rotund female warrior landed right on top of me, knocking the wind completely out of my lungs and flattening me.

“Oh, I’m sorry hun~” the large woman chuckled as she removed her enormous posterior from my body. “Oh my, you’re a cutie~”

“Not interested,” I replied, eager to get away from her as soon as possible. I shoved off her heavy body and extracted myself from underneath and walked away, brushing the dirt off my armor. Just my rotten luck to get struck by an oversized bowling ball of pudding. The obese warrior continued to try to follow me around and grab at my stomach to ‘feel my abs’, so I summoned my adamantite poleaxe to send a message. She decided to switch targets and harass someone else after that.

I looked around. Things started to organize themselves organically.

Players were human after all, so after a chaotic initial ten minutes, people sorted themselves into a crowd of sorts on the hill. It almost looked like a concert gathering in a VRMMO setting.

There were so many different players representing all different kinds of classes and types, and even different races.

“Watch it!” a brutish orc player grunted as he bumped shoulders with me and knocked me back, even though it was clearly his fault for walking into me.

Not wanting to start a fight or draw attention to me at the very beginning of the event, I let the transgression go this time.

This was the first time seeing a playable monster race up close, and it was remarkable to see how I could still recognize the human facial features on the ruddy-greenish slack jawed brutes. There were a few orcs scattered around the field, with large tusks and imposing bodies. The last time I saw an orc was during the battle of Mountain, so it was strange seeing them in a neutral setting, being piloted by players.

I wondered if my demi-human race state had any physical indicators. Running my hands over my ears and activating my camera mode function to examine myself, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. My ears were not faintly curved or pointed like I expected, and my teeth looked the same as always.

However, it was undeniable that my senses were a bit sharper than before, after my race change.

Taking another look around, it was obvious that the caliber of players that reached the hidden challenge was a cut above that of the average Eclipse player. They all had to perform something unique or exceptional to earn a ticket to the competition. Just a cursory look around was enough to know that some of these guys got their ticket through combat feats, while others resorted to trickery or more subtle methods.

A beautiful female player just walked by me wearing some of the most expensive looking form fitting armor I’d ever seen, and had a pair of angel wings fluttering gracefully behind her. I recognized the wings as one of the most exclusive items on the entire cosmetic shop. She was wearing the equivalent of a full outfit from Gucci while carrying several bags from Louis Vuitton and Prada. Or, at least that’s what it seemed like from my unsophisticated and uncultured point of view that knew nothing about brand name clothing.

Eclipse Online could almost be considered nightlife after nightlife, and was an important part of people’s social lives now. Both guys and girls wanted to get dressed up nicely, and some treated the game as if they were going clubbing in a fantasy setting.

But still, seeing extremely geared out players who were superior in both form and function reminded me of how poor I was, with my rain boots and tattered sorcerer’s forgotten dark robes I bought at a discount at Evelyn’s shop in Talos a while ago. At least the forgotten king’s crown gave me some semblance of sophistication, because even from a distance, anyone could tell that it was a rare item.

Suddenly, the sky darkened, and a small portal appeared above us.

Out stepped a small white figure from the portal. Upon second glance, it was a… rabbit? Its appearance was rather cute, making the serious look on its face unbefitting of its size and stature and fluffiness.

The rabbit pulled out a circle pad from the portal, and placed it under his feet in mid air. He then took a carrot out of his pocket and brought it to his face with the thick butt end up, like a microphone.

“Ahem, attention.”

The rabbit’s voice seemed a bit quiet. All the players on the field looked up at the animal, and began to murmur to each other. Within a few seconds, the chit chat became loud like an ambient noise soundbyte of a busy coffee shop.

Tapping its carrot microphone as if it was malfunctioning, the rabbit shook it vigorously a few times and took a bite from the tip, before bringing it back in front of his face.

“Ahem…” munch, munch.

“I said, ATTENTIOONNNNNNNN!” he screamed into the microphone, this time the sound magnifying several thousand times louder. Bits of barely chewed carrot flew from his chubby cheeks.

His voice was like a thunderclap in the sky, and several players rubbed their ears in pain. Quiet immediately settled upon the field, and the chit chat died down to complete silence.

“There, that’s better,” the rabbit said matter-of-factly. “Ahem. My name is Beelzebub, otherwise known as Bubs, or Beelzebubs.”

“I’ll be your guide for the hidden challenge today–”

“Go to hell, you almost broke my eardrums!” a female bounty hunter with an eye patch over her left eye shouted. Her voice was clear because not a single other person was talking.

Bubs glared at her and hopped off his podium, landing right in front of the female bounty hunter’s face, his little feet levitating above the ground. The rabbit scowled and pushed his face straight into hers, then pretended to roll up his sleeves even though he didn’t have any sleeves to roll up.

“You got a problem, lady? Huh? Wanna fight?”

The bunny rabbit raised its short, stubby arms and smacked the woman across the cheek.

“Who said you could INTERRUPT ME?” Bubs screamed into her face, while smacking her left and right at every syllable.

“DISQUALIFIED.”

Before the female bounty hunter could even react, Bubs pulled out a massive hammer twice the size of his own body from his pocket and swung down on her. The hammer connected with a clean crack, breaking and flattening her head into a gorey mess. Blood and fragments of skull spilled everywhere as her lifeless body sank to the ground.

“Who’s next?” Bubs said with a scowl on his face, his bunny teeth sticking out cutely alongside his round baby cheeks despite his hostile attitude. He tapped his hammer down repeatedly on his left hand, as if he was expecting another challenger to step forward.