The Trembling World

[TN: I hope there’s no mistakes in this one, or I will cry. T_T]

Chapter 8: Roaring Thunder

No matter what happens, the feeling of having alloy metal limbs is far worse than one’s own original limbs. In the real world, Liu Gan has already become a person without limbs – a disabled person.

He would’ve never expected that, after entering “The Trembling World”, his hand and legs would once again return to his body. In this worst case scenario, the recovery of his limbs was the luckiest thing that could’ve happened to him.

Liu Gan tried his best to analyze the situation with his current knowledge. This must be because of the gaming company’s new technology which sends players inside the game world. From the moment he was first inside, there was a full body scanner which probably mistook the alloy prosthetics as his original body parts. The skewed data in the properties of the prosthetics lead to his current scenario.

Regardless of what the truth was, he was lucky to gain something from this misfortune. In this world full of zombies, if he was able to escape from his current predicament, he would use his parkour skills and agile body to survive. It would give him an edge over other players, and thus increase his chance at surviving.

Sitting on top of the iron pillar, Liu Gan was closely monitoring the plaza. He saw that the zombies had devoured all the flesh of the players who were killed – leaving behind just bones as remains in the plaza.

Afterwards, these players still hadn’t relogged back into the game.

Unsure of what came next after dying, and whether it was the fear of logging in again, or as the small-statured player said that maybe if they die in game, they would also die in real life. All these were possibilities which prevented them from dying. This created distress in Liu Gan’s mind.

The log out and call GM function were still not working. Liu Gan could only hope that killing all the zombies would indicate the mission being accomplished, which would let them log out and leave this place.

With this many zombies, trying to kill them wouldn’t be an easy mission. So it must be possible after accomplishing the mission!

If he was able to return to the real world, Liu Gan would find that the his limbs didn’t exist anymore, and he’d became a disabled person again. Then in that case, to him, being trapped in The Trembling World wouldn’t be that much better than returning to the real world.

Even then, he still felt that he didn’t have that much of an urge to find out how to leave the game – all he felt he needed to do was to remain focused and stay alive in order to escape from this plaza.

Liu Gan looked at his alloy watch – the ‘Call GM’ and ‘Logout’ options were still grayed out. Only his player properties option was available. The player menu was pretty simple to maneuver; besides heart rate, temperature showing notifications, the other functions were player level, hunger level, thirst level, fatigue level, health condition, contamination degree, and state of infection – which all showed approximate measurements.

[ED Note: Simple huh…]

Right now, his state of infection color was green, his hunger level was green with a hint of orange, and his thirst level had already changed from orange to red. According to Liu Gan’s calculations, green represented normal. Once these values were out of the acceptable range of healthiness, it would change gradually from red to black. Once it reached red , he needed to be alert – and his condition for thirst was at that level.

A chilly breeze was blowing on Liu Gan, who was sitting at the top of the pillar. The cold breeze was the reason for his repeated sneezing. He turned his eyes towards the direction where the wind was coming from and discovered that, from beyond the horizon, there was lightning flickering in the sky. It looked like it would be right above him soon.

What should come, will eventually come!

A few minutes later, the wind current increased. The chilly winds carried along a hint of moisture as it started drizzle. Liu Gan turned to face the wind and opened up his mouth. He wanted to resolve the thirst problem, but the moment he opened his mouth, he didn’t feel the refreshing moisture of water, but only felt the icy winds making it harder for him to breathe.

However, soon enough, Liu Gan was able to quench his thirst. The thunderstorm with the aid of strong winds accelerated the downpour onto the plaza. Large droplets of rain came from the rolling clouds and splashed onto the ground wildly. Liu Gan opened his mouth toward the sky and with his hand placed together, he started to gather heaven’s gift.

The water gathered on his palms and just when his lips were about touch the water, he suddenly remembered something. He looked to check if the rainwater was normal rainwater. At the beginning of the game, there was a strange type of red rainwater.

Liu Gan quickly drank the water in his palm, this was his solution for the thirst problem. After drinking all the water in his palms, he repeated the process of gathering and drinking. He definitely didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity of free water.

Liu Gan’s worries were unnecessary. Soon after, large single droplets of rain turned into a downpour. It was as if large endless buckets of water was pouring down from the sky. It really didn’t take long for Liu Gan to get soaked. His stomach was bloating from drinking so much water, as the feeling of thirst had very quickly disappeared. If he continued to drink, it would probably make him feel like he was drowning.

“Damn it! I’m full now! Stop raining!” Liu Gan kept wiping his face from the rainwater so he could see clearly, as his body was starting to shiver from the cold wind and constant rainfall. If it kept raining like this, he would freeze to death.

A bright white light reflected off the surface of the water and blinded Liu Gan, followed by a roaring thunderous sound that deafened his ears for the next few minutes. He couldn’t hear clearly at all.

Liu Gan’s heart rate started to increase. Judging from the time after the lightning struck to the sound of the thunder, the place lightning struck very close to the plaza. If the lightning got any closer, the billboard would definitely serve as a lightning rod and Liu Gan, who was sitting on top of this iron pillar, would get definitely get electrocuted as well.

Liu Gan quickly covered both his ears, to prevent the sound of the next thunderclap from deafening him again.

Right after the first clap of thunder, another flicker of bright light flashed across the sky in front of Liu Gan. Loud booms of explosion-like sounds from lightning surrounded Liu Gan. With each thunderclap, the distance seemed to be getting closer. Liu Gan’s heart was pounding with fear, and his heart rate kept increasing as thunder roared throughout the sky.