Inside the cramped, suffocating coffin.
Wu Xiaomi could only hear her own anxious breathing, and the strange, squirming sound coming from behind her.
“Help…”
She called out in a trembling voice, but the sound of a shovel dumping soil outside drowned everything out.
“Thud, thud, thud—”
In that moment between life and death, maybe it was the adrenaline kicking in.
Wu Xiaomi regained a bit of strength and clarity.
She tapped on the coffin with all her might, drumming out a rhythm.
“Did you hear that?”
The sound of shoveling outside suddenly stopped.
“Huh?” Muxi sounded puzzled.
“Something’s knocking on the coffin, and that rhythm… that’s the ritual dance rhythm!” Nanalia exclaimed. “How does it know the rhythm of the ritual dance?”
“These puppet creatures do still have a lot of mysteries we haven’t figured out,” Muxi muttered, “Maybe we… let it out and study it some more?”
“But it’s too dangerous…” Nanalia hesitated.
“Don’t worry. It won’t escape.”
Muxi jumped down into the pit and pried open the coffin nails one by one with his shovel.
“I’m opening it. Be careful.”
With a kick, the coffin lid flew open.
A petite figure lunged out and rolled messily onto the dirt.
“Wu Xiaomi?!”
Finally free from the darkness of the coffin, she saw daylight again.
But the horror wasn’t over.
“Something’s…”
Clinging to her back.
Wu Xiaomi stiffly turned her head.
A pale mask loomed inches from her face, painted with a grotesque smile.
It was a doll, a body cobbled together from wooden limbs, wearing a mask on its head.
Yeah, nothing like a summer chill.
“Bang—”
With a dull thud, Muxi smashed the doll back into the coffin with his shovel.
He hooked the coffin lid with his toe and slammed it shut with a boom, locking the doll inside once again.
“Are you okay?” Nanalia immediately knelt beside Wu Xiaomi, not caring about the dirt, and checked her for injuries.
Wu Xiaomi was still shaken.
She always prided herself on being brave—she wouldn’t flinch even in a 1v10 street fight.
But fearing something that creepy was instinctive.
Especially since she’d just shared a coffin with it.
If Nanalia hadn’t heard her knocking…
She didn’t even want to imagine the rest.
“So… your unlucky spawn point was inside a coffin?” Nanalia said with a helpless laugh.
“You… how did you know it was a spawn?” Wu Xiaomi asked with a trembling voice.
“I’m not some old granny. I watch Pineapple Pineapple too, okay?” Nanalia helped Wu Xiaomi up.
“Walkthroughs, scores, milky-white space and all that…
People really sympathize with what happened to you all. Your homes destroyed, stranded in a foreign world, forced to do dangerous tasks… Luckily, the Nerrifa Continent is huge, and your population is less than a thousandth of the natives’. There’s plenty of room for you here.”
So that’s how Nerrifa’s natives viewed Earth’s refugees.
“Look, I even commented on your dance video.”
Nanalia waved her hand and pulled up Pineapple Pineapple.
Under Wu Xiaomi’s dance video, the top comment was indeed hers.
[Nanalia: That’s my student right there! [em:sfgirl:045]]
The replies were lively too.
[Master Ball! Caught a fox-eared witch!]
[Teach me too, sis~]
[Such a gentle witch teacher, love her!]
“Thanks to you, I got a little famous too!” Nanalia said excitedly.
“……”
Wu Xiaomi didn’t even know how to respond.
This girl was totally chaotic.
Still, thanks to Nanalia’s change of subject, her nerves began to settle.
“That thing just now…”
“A cursed doll. It appeared in the village yesterday after you all left,” Nanalia frowned. “No idea where it came from. Its movements are strange, and it’s extremely aggressive.”
“Didn’t the barrier get restored?”
“It did, but somehow, these dolls still manage to show up in the village…”
Nanalia clearly didn’t have an answer.
“Anyway, let’s head back to the shrine first.”
As they strolled down the street, despite it being midday, every house in Harvest Village had its doors tightly shut.
No farmers in the fields, no blazing hounds herding on the pastures.
It was like the whole place had turned into a ghost town overnight.
“We notified the villagers this morning, told them to stay home and avoid going out alone to prevent injuries,” Nanalia explained.
A faint mist lingered in the streets, the air heavy with an eerie, suffocating silence.
This vibe reminded Wu Xiaomi of the horror games she used to play.
And thinking of horror games brought memories of the chaotic friends she used to play them with.
……
They say children from troubled families are more prone to escaping into virtual worlds.
Wu Xiaomi wasn’t sure if she counted as “troubled.”
After all, she never really had a family to begin with.
But she definitely used to lose herself in games.
Though she couldn’t afford many, being poor and all.
More vivid than the games themselves were the friends in her gaming group.
[Monsoon]—that was the name of the group.
Simple and artsy, sounded like a bunch of hipsters sharing poetry.
But click inside, and you’d never guess what kind of weirdos actually hung out there.
The vibe was hard to describe…
No matter how scary the game was, once they got involved, it always turned into a comedy.
She wondered how they were doing now.
No matter how tough they acted in games, in real life they’d probably pee themselves if they saw a ghost, right?
“…Just barely doable.”
?
Not far ahead, a man stroked the stubble on his chin and nodded at a doll standing at the corner.
Wait—no, a person can’t… they shouldn’t…
“Hello there.”
The man waved at the doll.
No one knew when the doll had appeared.
It was the same dangerous one that had been terrorizing the village, wearing a twisted mask smeared with blood to form a smile.
The doll was upside-down, limbs contorted in the opposite direction of its body, creeping toward the man.
Its screw-fastened joints creaked with every movement.
“Oh, so eager already… you naughty thing, being so forward… oh my, uncle’s getting shy!”
In a flash, the doll squirmed right in front of him.
The man grinned confidently: “Spell Sequence 97—Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon!”
Light flared from the man’s fingertips.
But that was all it did…
In the spell sequence, there was no such thing as “Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon.” Sequence 97 was just “Light Spark”—a basic light-emitting spell.
“Boom—”
The man was sent flying, crashing into the wall behind him.
Cough “So it’s not afraid of holy light…”
“Reckless,” Village Chief Muxi arrived with his sword drawn, striking the doll’s mask with one clean blow.
Though it looked like mere plastic, the mask sparked as it clashed with the blade.
“—Soul Bind—”
Nanalia twirled her ribbon, trying to restrain the doll.
But it was abnormally agile, twisting its body into a slithery shape and slipping through the gaps in the ribbon.
Then it vanished into the ground, nowhere to be seen.
“You nearly got yourself killed,” Muxi turned to check the man’s injuries, “Using a harmless light spell against a cursed entity—were you trying to die?”
“At least… now we know it’s not afraid of Sequence 97,”
The man smiled.
His body was tough; even after being slammed in the stomach like a cannonball, he only came away with a bruise.
The pain made him grimace. “Oof—can’t let those bastards see me looking like this.”
“Already saw it! Hahaha—”
A large group of raiders came strolling up from the street corner.
Their clothes were tattered, but they carried a wild, unrestrained energy.
They didn’t have the strict discipline of the “Ark” group, nor the heavy sense of duty of “Ember,” and definitely not the intellectual aura of “Beyond.”
Wu Xiaomi looked at them, and somehow… they felt different from every other raider she’d seen.
Hard to explain.
But they had a comforting vibe.
Like a shot of morphine, dulling the pain of her situation.
“Village Chief Muxi, Witch Nanalia… we’re here to help.”
The man stood up and shook Muxi’s hand: “I’m Ah Lei, leader of the Monsoon Adventuring Group. That’s right, you heard right—not a raiding party, but an adventuring group.”
“Adventuring group?”
“Exactly. Adventure—not for conquest, not for survival, but for the experience.”
Ah Lei? Monsoon?
Wu Xiaomi’s mouth formed an “O”.
No way…
Her dumb old gaming group… wasn’t their admin named Ah Lei?
“By the way, um…”
Ah Lei could face monsters and twisted dolls without flinching.
But now, in front of Wu Xiaomi, he ducked his head shyly, stammering like a teenager.
The other Monsoon members were the same, sneaking glances at her and blushing furiously.
“Y-you’re… you’re that dancer, right? The one who’s gotten super popular lately…”
“Oh?”
“Y-yeah, the Sequence 78—Siren’s Dance video…”
Oh…
Wu Xiaomi nodded.
“You’re… even prettier in person than in the video.”
Pfft.
She suddenly wanted to laugh.
“‘Games are way better than girls,’ ‘Women only slow down my blade draw.’” Wu Xiaomi quoted with mock seriousness.
Ah, Lei looked like he’d been struck by lightning.
“H-how do you know that?! No—I never said anything like that!”
His brain was short-circuiting.
“Ah—Lei—Pigeon—Pigeon~” Wu Xiaomi sang mischievously, “It’s in Monsoon’s group announcement, you know~”
“Y-y-y-y-you—how do you know that?!” Ah Lei looked like he was about to scratch a full apartment layout into the ground with his toes.
No way! Their group was full of lonely single guys, all committed to gaming for life—at most they watched a few vtubers… how could a girl have seen all their group’s secrets?
And she’s this cute?! Not a hint of the real world on her, even more beautiful than any vtuber!
“Nice to meet you in person,” Wu Xiaomi gave a graceful curtsy, “Hello, group admin—I’m ‘Xiao Mila.’”
Xiao Mila?
The one who never used voice chat, only ever sent stickers, and blended in perfectly with all the thirsty degenerates in the group that Xiao Mila?
He… she… was a cute girl all along?!
His entire worldview just shattered.