The Trembling World

Chapter 17: Masters of the experts

The creation of this type of situation couldn’t be blamed on the stupidity of the players. In the real world, they could be the type of people who rarely left their house – otakus and fujoshis. They were the type that rarely exercised and engaged in physical activities, so they would obviously never be as nimble as Liu Gan.

[TN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi_fandom#Fujoshi]

Liu Gan was a parkour and mountain climbing expert, not to mention that these type of four story building were no big deal to him – even if was a ten story building, scaling the exterior wall would be as easy as walking on leveled ground for him. Only the plaza was an exception, otherwise normal areas like this wouldn’t be able to trap him.

The Trembling World was the type of game that resembled real life body qualities, in each and every capability. It seemed that nearly everything has been taken into account within the game, so the players starting stats were used as a basis.

Of course, all this was Liu Gan’s personal speculation of the game so far. As to whether or not this was still a game, this was the question that bothered Liu Gan the most. Right now though, was not the time to debate that question. Persevering and surviving through this game was his most important priority.

“Boss, what direction did you come from?” the plump-player asked Liu Gan after the 5 male and 1 female players came down from the building.

“It’s best if you don’t go in that direction – it’s the plaza where a corpse tide occurred previously, If you don’t believe me though, you can walk a few blocks towards it to find out. If you walk past the plaza, there are densely populated zombies” Liu Gan replied to the plump-player.

“Indeed. From the moment we entered the game, the streets had at least a dozen zombies just wandering. From the direction you came, there was a loud explosive noise, which attracted all of them over there. Then, they never returned” a skinny-glasses player nodded in agreement to what Liu Gan had said.

“Boss, are you alone? Would you like to join our squad?” Plump-player asked Liu Gan.

“Squad?” Liu Gan had a hesitant expression. His alloy metal limbs were a secret that he didn’t want others to find out, to avoid bringing himself more unnecessary trouble. If the other players decide to report him for it, the system would correct it back to normal. Even though the calling for GM and Logout function was greyed out, who knew when this function would return?

“Night’s coming soon, we should find a place to camp out. Camping in these kind of locations definitely requires someone standing guard, so being part of a squad is better.” the plump-player hard-sold the idea to Liu Gan.

“If you don’t want to join the squad, then forget it – just explain to us the situation with the plaza over there” Green-haired player cut off the plump-player’s sales pitch to Liu Gan.

The green-haired player stood near a yellow-haired and red-haired player, all looking at Liu Gan. The three looked around the ages of 17, 18, and their exterior appearances were nearly identical to each other. In the real world, they all knew each other, as at the green-haired player’s house they all logged in to game there. Upon transferring into The Trembling World, they all arrived at the same coordinates.

[TN: honestly I’m glad the author doesn’t give the minor characters names. This way we readers don’t have to memorize it]

After entering the game, they had been trapped on the top of the roof, unable to leave. Even though they felt as if the game was relatively realistic, they were also bewildered. They hadn’t yet experienced the dangers of zombies. So they couldn’t contain their naive excitement and expectations for this game world. The moment they could leave the rooftop, and discovered that there were no zombies nearby, and the last remaining one was eliminated by Liu Gan, they couldn’t help but feel disappointment. So they wanted to find a zombie in order to experience the joys of slaughtering.

“You guys are really lucky, being able to transfer to this location as a starting point on the rooftop, even if you were trapped, but you never had any life threatening danger. When I entered, it was a squad of 10 players. Shortly after being transferred to the plaza, a player was bitten, and then carelessly screamed and created noises which lead to a corpse tide. Luckily, me and another player were fast enough to escape. The other 8 players were also within the corpse tide.” Liu Gan had accepted two grenades as tribute, so it was acceptable to share his knowledge with them.

Based on what had happened to the 6 players, Liu Gan guessed that for all the others of the ten thousand players trapped within the game, every single one of them, upon entering, had a random starting scenario. He and the other 9 players were sent to the plaza center and encountered a small BOSS with a large corpse tide. These 5 male and 1 female players were a lot luckier, because in this region there weren’t too many zombies, in addition to being safely trapped on top of a rooftop.

If Liu Gan was sent to the rooftop, he would not be as distressed as he was before when he was trapped in the plaza during the corpse tide – on top of a billboard just waiting idly, unable to escape.

“Of the ten players, were a large majority female?” the red-haired player asked Liu Gan

“All were male.” Liu Gan replied, and was wondering why he would ask such a weird question.

“You all were too stupid! Ten male players and together you were nearly all wiped out – you guys must be inexperienced with these types of zombie games?” the red-haired player said in a demeaning manner while posing with his machete on his shoulder – trying to look cool. At the same time, his expression was as if looking down at Liu Gan.

“Maybe.” Liu Gan looked at red-haired player, without much explanation.

“You came from that direction so you must be familiar with going back to the plaza right? How about you take the lead and guide us there, and we will help you clear out the zombies so you can have your revenge!” The green-haired player also suggested this to Liu Gan, and raised his machete eager to fight.

“I don’t have a need for you guys to avenge anything, that place is somewhere I definitely don’t want to go back yet, so you guys don’t need to go sacrifice yourselves.” Liu Gan tried to dissuade the green-haired player.

“Sacrifice? You coward! When the corpse tide was occurring you probably weren’t calm enough and everyone ran away separately, right? No wonder you guys were all wiped out…” the red-haired player looked despicably at Liu Gan. Also, when Liu Gan had said ‘sacrifice’ in a saddened type of tone, it caused the red-haired player discomfort, which added to his hostility towards Liu Gan.

“Indeed, if it were you game experts at that place, then you guys wouldn’t be like us noobs.” Liu Gan laughed lightheartedly in reply to the red-haired player. Obviously, they can’t be persuaded by words, so Liu Gan wouldn’t do any more unnecessary actions – if the other players wanted to sacrifice themselves, then it was their business.

“We 3 are experienced in these type of zombie games. The last time we played [Peerless Zombies], we each had a machete, and after setting up our formation we were able to plow through twenty thousands zombies. We came out unscathed and got rewarded a gold medal achievement.” the red-haired player said all this when he heard ‘experts’, so he flaunted his previous game achievements in front of Liu Gan.

[TN: I don’t want to say left 4 dead, but the game style is similar except open world.]

“Unscathed? Gold medal achievements? You guys definitely are game experts!” the plump-player said to the three youth player with his thumb sticking up representing how much he worshipped them. He’d played with his friends before in [Peerless Zombies] as well, and had watched strategy video guides, but never had he achieved coming out unscathed and gold medal achievements.

“I really misjudged you guys, you are definitely masters among experts! If you three don’t go to the plaza to massacre, then it would be a waste of your talent!” Liu Gan flattered the three youthful players with dyed hair.