Rong Yi lay on the soft tentacles wearing a black tank top, with an iron rod across her abdomen. Her uninjured arm hung down freely.
Her boyfriend, X, in the know, lowered some tentacles, allowing Rong Yi’s fingertips to gently skim the icy seawater, accompanied by the sea breeze brushing past, creating an extremely pleasant sensation.
Even though their destination was far from pleasant: Rong Yi intended to scare the merfolk with her boyfriend and their formidable weapon, aiming to locate the enemy’s stronghold and take them down.
“Drip, drip, drip—”
X: You can put down your other hand too. I’ll narrow the tentacles so both hands can touch the water.
Rong Yi tried to move her left arm which had been hit by the steel rod earlier. It was sore with even a slight shift.
“Hiss—”
Rong Yi: It seems like my arm is broken; I dare not move now.
X: !!
X: Are you hurt?!
The tentacles swiftly braked on the surface, causing Rong Yi to slide a few feet due to inertia.
X: Does it hurt? Don’t move, I’ll find a place to bandage you up!
X, who had been moving along the cruise ship’s periphery, suddenly turned towards the deep sea.
Watching the cruise ship disappear into the distance, Rong Yi nestled on the soft tentacles. Despite the vast expanse of sea and sky, she felt oddly undaunted.
Rong Yi: Do you know? You’re not how I imagined you.
X: Screech.
Rong Yi: In my imagination, you’re cute and soft, not—
Not an excessively giant octopus.
X: Am I not soft now?
Rong Yi felt the enormous sucker supporting her gently contract, providing a luxurious yet slightly elastic sensation.
Rong Yi: …Soft.
She gazed at the dim moonlight behind the clouds and yawned.
Rong Yi: I’m tired. Can I sleep for a while?
X: Go ahead.
The soft tentacles slightly expanded and curved inward, creating a safe space for Rong Yi to nestle in.
Indeed… so soft…
The day’s exhaustion weighed heavy on Rong Yi, and amidst the hypnotic white noise of the tentacles brushing the sea surface, she drifted into dreams.
She dreamt a dream similar to the previous night’s.
In this dream, she and her boyfriend were running again.
Her boyfriend in the dream transformed into an octopus from the sea, standing with two sets of tentacles, using one as a hand.
She grabbed his tentacle, feeling the soft and elastic palm and the suckers tightly embracing her.
They stood in the orange sunset, and their kiss felt like touching a cold, slippery fish.
“Rong Rong,” he called her in a gurgling voice as the tentacles wound around her, showing deep affection:
“Shall we go find SpongeBob?”
Rong Yi gasped, waking abruptly in the eerie dream!
Beneath her was not the dream foam mattress of her boyfriend but clean and soft sand.
Under the faint moonlight, the sand sparkled with colorful rays. Rong Yi picked up some sand and found that individually, they were ordinary grains, but together, they shimmered with dazzling colors.
It was mesmerizing.
She gazed at the night sky, her hand resting on something hard. Looking back, it was the colorful seashell X had proudly shown her in a previous video.
This is the beach where her little boyfriend used to video call her!
She looked around: on one side was the sea lapping against the beach, on the other side were jagged rocks. It was hard to see clearly in the darkness, but it seemed there weren’t any plants swaying with the sea breeze.
This was a lifeless rocky island.
Where did her little boyfriend go?
Rong Yi remembered he had mentioned he “learned to mimic.” Oh! He must have gone to change his appearance so she wouldn’t be scared.
Actually, she wasn’t as afraid of him as she was at the beginning.
After all, who would be afraid of a soft Simmons mattress?
What would he mimic into? Her little boyfriend always appeared so cute and soft during their chats. The image he mimicked would surely be lively and adorable, just like the dream she had the first night on the ship!
As Rong Yi fantasized, she examined her possibly fractured left arm: there was no external wound, but it was obviously swollen.
Just as she tried to find a position that wouldn’t hurt her arm, using her right hand to support herself to stand up, she heard something scraping against the sand.
A rustling sound, like a group of snakes.
Rong Yi suddenly realized! She staggered to her feet, barely running a few steps—
Mermaids from all directions gradually surrounded her.
Did her little boyfriend accidentally place her in the mermaid’s lair?
That’s right, their original plan was to find the mermaid’s lair, but on the condition that the big weapon comrade was present!
Rong Yi gritted her teeth, picked up an iron rod from the ground, and gripped it in her right hand.
“Bang!”
“Bang bang!”
The iron rod struck the seemingly fragile mermaids, producing heavy thudding sounds.
With previous experience, she now wielded the iron rod more skillfully. Although this damage could only hinder the mermaids momentarily, her goal was never to kill but to escape.
Using the iron rod, she slipped through the gaps between the mermaids. On the rough sand, the mermaids, relying on their tails and slime, moved much slower than on a smooth deck. Their long, sharp claws grazed Rong Yi’s skin but couldn’t catch her, leaving only gruesome scratches.
The mermaids’ eyes, brilliantly colored, now gleamed with ferocity as they watched their prey about to escape!
Rong Yi heard a strange retching sound behind her. As she ran, she glanced back and saw the two nearest mermaids’ chests and abdomens heaving, as if they were nauseous?
“Urgh!”
One of the mermaids spat out a white, lard-like sticky membrane at a tremendous speed, enveloping Rong Yi like a fishing net!
A mix of the peculiar aroma of rainbow fish flesh and fishy stench hit her nose. The membrane, though seemingly soft, was extremely tough and hard to tear apart.
Struggling within the net, Rong Yi barely managed to make a small hole to escape, only for another mermaid to vomit out a similar membrane, trapping her again.
Rong Yi: …
Her injured arm came into contact with the membrane. Initially, it just felt gross, but as time passed, her skin began to itch. Looking down—
The membrane was dissolving a thin layer of her skin, revealing fresh, red flesh underneath!
These membranes—turned out to be the mermaids’ digestive organs!
She struggled more fiercely, recalling the scene that happened on the ship—
The mermaids had targeted the sleeping Raymond. If a bewitched sleeping player faced this slow and thorough attack, they wouldn’t have any will to resist and might just, slowly and happily, be digested completely!
Rong Yi was wearing an I-vest, the upper half of her body exposed so much skin that her shoulders already had a miserable red mark on them. Her pants had also been eroded, and the white mucous membrane had stuck to the skin of her legs as if it had a sense of humor.
She simply lay down on the beach and tried to roll over to rip the digestive nets away from the mermaid’s body. However, the mucous membrane wrapped itself around her body in a circle, making contact with a larger area and causing more damage.
In order to survive, she could only endure the pain for a moment, Rong Yi gritted her teeth, and after rolling around three times, she really tore these mucous membrane nets out of the mermaid’s mouth!
The two-tailed mermaids cried out in pain, and angrily opened their claws towards Rong Yi, who was wrapped into a mummy by the mucous membrane nets!
The net can’t get rid of it for the time being, so Rong Yi can only arch like a maggot on the ground; the mermaids at the back aren’t really fast, after all, the sandy ground prevents the slime from sliding.
If there was a second player present, watching them would be like a tortoise chasing a snail. There’s a bit of tension, but it’s more of a laugh.
With the itch of erosion on his body and the mermaids in hot pursuit behind him, Rong Yi used his life’s work to scuff his way forward on the ground!
Aaaaahhhh! She cried out in her heart: “I can’t believe you put me in this place, you’re dead, Mr. Ai!
“Pfft.”
“Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.”
With a few sounds like crushing watermelons, there was a sudden silence behind them.
But Rong Yi was only concerned about escaping, and didn’t care at all.
She finally swarmed to the edge of a reef, rubbed against the reef and stood up, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap her way forward.
I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to do that! This is much faster, you dead mermaids can’t catch me!
“Rong Rong.”
A low, slightly hoarse male voice suddenly sounded behind him.
Rong Yi froze.
She stopped her zombie jump and carefully jumped back.
Inside the mermaid’s body, the flow of □ was transparent.
Only in the heart, there was bright red blood.
Why does Rong Yi know this?
Because the tall and leggy man in front of him, whose handsome face was still stained with blood, was pulling one of his hands back from the back of the last standing merman, holding the still beating mermaid’s heart.
Harder, crushing.
“Pfft.”
He shook off the blood and flesh on his hand without much care, and stepped over the mermaid’s body on the ground, and came to the face of Rong Yi, who was wrapped up in a dumpling.
Reaching out, he gently stroked the layers of digestive mesh on her body.
Under his pale and slender palm, the soft and difficult to entangle digestive mesh turned into liquid, and as much as possible detached from Rong Yi’s skin, flowing into the sand and disappearing without a trace.
This hand lifted up Rong Yi’s chin, who was already frozen, her black hair hanging down in front of her forehead, her clear eyes with a murderous aura that hadn’t dissipated yet, and her voice lowly called out to her: “Rong Rong.”
He didn’t seem to speak often, his tone was husky and stiff:
“It’s me.”
“You promised you wouldn’t give up on me.”
Yung Yi, the rich woman who had always imagined she could keep her little darling, had sore skin, sore arms, and a mixed feeling in her heart.
Where is her cute little boy?
What about her cute boyfriend?
The imaginary can in her arms in the shy blushing online love object it?
Her brain overloaded, she rolled her eyes and fainted.
“Rong Rong?!”
The little boyfriend with the first copy of the beautiful mannequin face was kneeling on a floor of colorful shells in a regular manner.
When Rong Yi woke up, this was the scene she saw.
“Well, adapting to circumstances, even found myself a washboard, very enlightened.”
She leaned against a smooth reef, half lying on the beach. The dead mermaids that had previously littered the ground were now nowhere to be seen. Rong Yi didn’t know, nor did she want to ask Hao Yuesheng where those bodies had gone.
Her left arm wasn’t hurting as much as before. Rong Yi looked down and saw her arm wrapped in splints and bandages hanging from her neck. It looked pretty authentic.
Before she could speak, Hao Yuesheng, who was kneeling in front of her, hurriedly said, “I’m sorry, Rong Rong, I didn’t expect you to wake up so quickly.”
Now he spoke more fluently than at first, but his voice was still deep and hoarse, not matching his playful tone at all, “After all, you were snoring on my arm.”
“No no no, I mean, you slept so peacefully!”
“I’m going to transform, go to the mall to buy clothes, medicine, and bandages. So I left you here for now.”
“In fact, I drew a circle around you, so the mermaids wouldn’t dare to come near you!”
Rong Yi: …What a familiar and classic protective mode.
Rong Yi felt he was doing it on purpose, knowing she would be angry, so deliberately chose the best-looking face she had seen in a previous instance to imitate, to soften her heart.
He appeared as an unparalleled handsome man, but looked up pitifully at her from below—
Damn it, he knew she would soften up!
Rong Yi did indeed soften up.
Her boyfriend, with good intentions, occasionally made mistakes. What could she do to him?
She looked up at the sky, wishing she had a cigarette in her hand:
“…Make the best of it, we can still get through this.”
When Hao Yuesheng heard this, he knew she had forgiven him. He immediately stood up happily, brushed the sand off his knees, approached Rong Yi warmly, and a faint blush appeared on his pale face.
“Rong Rong.”
“What?”
“Rong Rong, Rong Rong, Rong Rong!” He repeated her pet name like a broken record.
“I’ve been wanting to call you like this for a long time.” His eyes, like when he was in octopus form, were clear and blue, greedily staring at Rong Yi’s graceful profile, her scarred skin, and the faint muscles she had developed in the past few weeks.
“But in every instance, I never got to be of the human race.” He took off his snowy white coat he had just exchanged in the game mall for Rong Yi to wear:
“I don’t even have vocal cords, so I can only watch you, afraid of scaring you.”
Rong Yi lifted her right hand and gently touched Hao Yuesheng’s pale neck: “Here, do you have vocal cords now?”
Hao Yuesheng shook his head, his eyes sparkling, “No, I learned to resonate with other organs to produce sound!”
“…That’s amazing.” But she didn’t need a detailed explanation; it might reduce her ‘sanity points.’
She summarized the information she knew: Her younger boyfriend was an NPC in the game and could move between different instances.
No wonder he always found excuses not to see her.
Before, Zhang Haiyang said that only the “Roaming Boss” could move freely between instances, so her boyfriend—
Was he the rumored terrifying “Random Boss”?
Where is the horror? Clearly so cute.
Even thinking back to the appearance of the octopus from before, it’s still soft and adorable. At this moment, Rong Yi has completely forgotten the saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
In the first copy, it was a handsome male puppet; in the second copy, it was a male nurse; in the third copy, it should be the senior schoolmate, unexpectedly replacing the original scripted NPC just to pursue a campus romance with her.
The more she thought about it, the cuter it seemed.
Realizing she inadvertently revealed a creepy smile, Rong Yi subconsciously glanced at Ai Yuesheng next to her – luckily, he didn’t notice. She immediately composed herself.
No, now is not the time to secretly enjoy.
Shouldn’t she be worried that her lover is just a pile of data, how will their relationship develop in the future?
Although society is already very advanced and open-minded, there is indeed no precedent for falling in love with data.
How will she introduce him to her real-life friends? How will she take him to meet her parents? Where can they get married if it comes to that?
She could even envision herself exchanging rings with a flash drive.
The more Rong Yi thought, the further she went, even imagining if they were to adopt children in the future, would the government accept a family with one non-human parent?
She furrowed her brows in distress.
There is a more fundamental, more principled issue arising from these unrealistic pink bubbles.
Rong Yi has always been rational and refuses to deceive herself.
So she will not evade this fundamental question:
The Lucky Carnival has harmed many people, and she has already joined hands with Fanning Ze to crack the game, liberating the players trapped within it completely.
By that time, how will Ai Yuesheng, as the game boss, react?
The game is the fundamental existence of Ai Yuesheng; logically, he must defend the game.
But with so many players’ actual lives involved in the game, Rong Yi cannot sit idly by, she is not yet so blindly in love as to be unable to distinguish right from wrong!
“Rong Rong?” Sensing her emotional fluctuations, Ai Yuesheng nudged her again, “What are you thinking about?”
“Little Ai.” Rong Yi’s tone was serious as she turned to him, grasping his shoulder and staring into his beautiful deep blue eyes, she said with difficulty, “I also have something to tell you face to face.”
“You’re an NPC, I’m a player. There are things I can’t tell you, but if one day I have to leave you…”
“Remember, I will love you forever.”
Just because I was born human, I cannot betray humanity.
The author has something to say: Sister Rong considers that in the future, she will have to sacrifice small love for a greater cause.
Looking at how she herself had evoked a tragic atmosphere, Little Ai looked worried, embarrassed, and didn’t know how to explain it.
Also, the story scene has appeared!
Nahhhh if that actually happened it would be so heartbreaking!!!