After a short time, the game screen showed up again.
And it was even clearer than before.
At the same time, the old man in the wheelchair from earlier was gone.
Ben wanted to look around, but found that he could only look to the left, where there was a large pool of blood on the ground.
It was like a doorway, with the blood leading to another world. A blood-covered claw reached out from the blood, and then a scary werewolf crawled out, dripping blood from its fur, and slowly moved towards Ben.
At this time, Ben still couldn't control anything.
"What the heck is this! I thought this was a soul-like game!"
Ben swallowed, feeling a little nervous.
In VR mode, he could clearly see the werewolf's fierce face, teeth, blood-soaked fur, and sharp claws.
But just as the werewolf's claw was about to touch him, a flame suddenly burst into the werewolf's claw, and quickly spread over its body.
With a terrible howl, the werewolf was burned to ashes.
Before Ben could relax, he saw corpse-like gnomes appear beside him.
These pale, skinny little monsters made strange hissing noises. Their eyes were just empty sockets, and their noses and mouths were like long, scary cuts.
They looked like ghosts. These creatures grabbed Ben's legs, hands, and clothes, and crawled up to his face.
"What are you doing, don't come near me!"
Ben couldn't help but speak. The visual impact was too strong.
Was he playing a soul-like game or a horror game?
'Ah! You realize you're a hunter...'
Along with Ben's scream, a woman's surprised voice suddenly sounded in his ears.
The screen went black and then lit up again, and Ben found that he could move.
In the game, the character he had just created was sitting up in a hospital bed.
At the same time, the name of the place appeared in the lower right corner: Iosefka's Clinic.
Based on the bookshelves and the blood transfusion equipment by the bed, he could tell that this was the same scene as before.
But the blood on the floor, the werewolf turned to ashes, and the pale, skeleton-like little monsters all seemed like a dream. There was no trace of them in the room.
"This doesn't feel like a soul-like game at all. Why is it so scary!?" Ben quietly swallowed.
Instead of rushing out, he used the voice chat to connect with Zack.
"Zack, something's not right with this game! It's too scary!" Ben couldn't help complaining.
"Yeah, it's a bit too dark, and it's full of mean tricks! I just started and got killed by that werewolf at the door. I thought it would be easy after seeing Boss Lucas's demo, but it turned out to be a trap!" Zack had already respawned in the Hunter's Dream. Looking at the small gift on the steps, he couldn't help complaining and wanted to tell Ben what he found.
But before he could finish, he heard Ben's voice in the voice chat: "Okay, I'm going to explore the game. I get it, don't spoil it for me!"
Zack stared at the three beginner weapons in front of him, frozen in place.
He was full of questions. What did Ben get?
......
Ben hung up the voice chat with a smug look on his face.
He was already five minutes ahead. Zack had already died once, and he had learned an important piece of information.
With this good news, Ben wasn't in a hurry to move forward. Instead, he carefully looked around the room.
A chair was lying on the floor, and the surrounding bookshelves were full of books, but they were covered in thick dust.
Some books were scattered on the floor, and various broken surgical tools were placed randomly on the cabinets.
There were also various broken blood transfusion bottles on the floor.
Everything around was dark and old, and the floor creaked when he stepped on it.
Ben felt that the whole environment was ghostly.
Along with the werewolf and the pale little monsters from before, if he hadn't known this was a soul-like game.
Ben would probably have quit the game right away.
Because it looked and felt like a horror game.
It gave him a very heavy feeling.
Ben tried to move around in the room.
Even though there were no button tutorials yet.
After trying a little, Ben found that most of the actions were basically the same as in Dark Souls.
That meant the battle system probably wouldn't change much, which made Ben very happy.
"This feels much better. With the base of Dark Souls, I think suffering in this game will be easier to take."
"But I have to say, the character design in Bloodborne is much cooler than in Dark Souls." Ben couldn't help but admire the hood, small cape, shirt, and slender body of the main character.
But after admiring it, Ben quickly realized one problem: he didn't have a weapon.
Even the Deprived in Dark Souls starts with a small club.
He destroyed everything in the room again, breaking everything.
Ben confirmed that there were no weapons in the room. The only thing he found was a note placed on a chair.
It said: Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt.
It was hard to understand what it meant.
But that was the style of soul-like games. The whole story and world view were hidden in various fragments of clues, letting players piece them together themselves.
"This kind of atmosphere is what a soul-like game is all about!" Ben put the small note he found on the chair back where it was and sighed.
The slightly strange scenes from before, along with this dark atmosphere, made him a little scared.
But now, he was also hooked, especially by the mysterious content of the note. It felt like a hook, making him eager to know the story of Bloodborne.
There was only one way out of the clinic, so there wasn't much of a choice.
Ben carefully explored forward, and came to a closed large room. There were some hints on the ground along the way.
If he got close, the white, skeleton-like little monsters from the earlier cut scene would pop up, holding a scroll with various control buttons written on it.
Like the messages in Dark Souls, this was clearly Bloodborne's unique message system.
He tried out various actions.
After trying out attacking, dodging, and other functions, Ben basically understood the basic controls of the game.
Then he continued to explore forward.
Passing through the door of the room, Ben came to a large hall.
The light was dim, and the floor was in ruins. In the hall, countless hospital beds were scattered in disorder.
Judging from the surgical tools beside some of the beds, and the dried blood on the floor, it seemed that this had been a blood transfusion operating room.
On the first floor of the clinic, Ben suddenly heard a crunching sound. Walking a few steps forward, he saw a giant werewolf gnawing on a bloody corpse in front of him.
The crunching sound was a little scary, but Ben smiled.
"Just as I expected! There are no weapons early on. This must be the Asylum Demon from the Dark Souls prequel. Zack probably died at its hands. Giving it half health gives players the illusion that they can attack, but it's really Boss Lucas's conspiracy. The weapons must be hidden further down the road!"
As Ben was commenting, the werewolf stopped eating and pounced on Ben.
Not noticing how fast the werewolf was, Ben was slashed by a claw, losing about a third of his health.
At this time, Ben noticed that a third of the health bar in the upper left corner was in a weakened state, which was clearly the blood recovery mechanic that had been mentioned.
Ben didn't choose to try to recover blood, but instead skillfully dodged the werewolf's second attack, and turned to run away.
"Goodbye, werewolf!"
Then, looking at the werewolf in front of him, Ben dodged, ran past the werewolf, and ran out.
"Boss Lucas really looks down on people too much. Does he really think we who carry the flame are useless?"
"Naive, young!"
"Soul-like games will never deliberately make things difficult."
"Even though Boss Lucas's demo showed that the werewolf can be killed, as long as you get behind it, cause it to stagger, and then do a visceral attack to deal a lot of damage, but that's definitely not the right way to beat it."
"After all, it requires a lot of skill. It might not be difficult for old players like me, but you also have to take care of new players, so the answer is simple: just go around the wolf."
Ben was smug. He felt that he had completely seen through the fog.
Passing through the corridor, in the room behind the werewolf, he saw something glowing on the floor. He picked it up and saw three blood vials.
The werewolf was chasing closely behind, and seeing this, Ben quickly ran forward and pushed open the door of the clinic.
At this time, the werewolf was attacking from behind, but in soul-like games, opening switches and doors puts players in an unkillable state.
After pushing open the door, Ben dodged with an invincible roll, avoided the werewolf's attack, and entered the courtyard.
Looking back, the giant werewolf was stuck in the doorway.
(End of chapter)
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