Zhao Gao: "We finally made it."
"Tap tap tap tap tap…"
It seemed there were footsteps nearby.
Not long after, a group of people suddenly ran out from inside the village and quickly surrounded Saiki and the others.
"W-What's this situation?"
"I don't know!"
An elderly man walked out from the crowd and asked seriously: "You all… are you humans or ghosts?"
"Of course we're humans!"
Su Sheng: "We're humans, Village Chief."
But the old village chief in front seemed a bit unconvinced.
Li Qing poked her head out: "Grandpa, it's me!"
"Xiao Qing, where did you run off to? Grandpa was worried sick about you."
"Oh! Xiao Qing is back."
"That's great. We were looking for you for so long earlier."
After seeing it was Xiao Qing, the villagers relaxed.
Li Qing stepped out from the group and explained reassuringly.
"Grandpa, they're the ones who brought me back. I got lost outside the village earlier. They're good people!"
The old village chief's serious expression instantly turned kind and amiable. He smiled as he walked up to Saiki: "Sorry about earlier. Are you all alright?"
[Mm, we're fine.]
(This old man changes faces really fast.)
Zhao Gao: "Village Chief, could you please step aside first and let us enter the village?"
The old village chief turned back, scratched his head, and waved them in: "Sorry, sorry, I'm getting old and muddled. Come in, please!"
Everyone followed the old village chief into the village.
Saiki observed the surrounding buildings. From the architecture, the era seemed a bit later, but he couldn't tell exactly how much. Even in Saiki's time, there were still quite a few rural villages like this.
The village chief waved to dismiss the villagers, letting them go about their business, then led the group to his house and had them sit down.
The moment Saiki sat on a stool, the system jumped out, waved a panel in front of him, and said: "Saiki, look, the quest is complete. You successfully checked in at Beginner's Village."
Saiki looked. The panel indeed showed check-in successful, but then another prompt appeared asking the village chief about "Medusa."
Without hesitation, Saiki asked directly.
[Village Chief, do you know about Medusa?]
So straightforward that everyone was stunned. They had just received the system task too. Shouldn't they chat casually about daily life first before getting to the point?
After hearing Saiki's question, the village chief's face darkened. He stood up, walked to the door to check that no one was around, then sat back down and asked quietly.
"You all… came from another world, right? Does this have something to do with the horror game?"
"Holy crap, Village Chief, how do you know?"
Everyone was somewhat surprised. They originally thought the village chief was just an NPC, but he even knew about the horror game.
"Looks like it's you guys too."
The village chief sighed when the topic came up, as if recalling something unpleasant.
"Grandpa!"
Li Qing walked to the village chief's side, placed her hand on his shoulder, looking worried.
"I'm fine!"
The village chief patted Li Qing's hand, then began to explain.
"Actually, several years ago in our world, many people suddenly disappeared. It was a long time before they came back. They said they had been forcibly pulled into something called a horror game world."
"Only by surviving could they escape, and once pulled in once, there would be a second time, a third time, endlessly."
Everyone fell silent. What the village chief described sounded exactly like their own current world.
"Although I heard that those who survived seemed to gain some miraculous powers, fewer and fewer people came back afterward. Until some of the ones who returned… were no longer human… they were ghosts. No! Evil spirits!"
The village chief's body began to tremble. He hugged himself tightly, as if he had personally experienced it. After calming down a bit, he continued.
"Later, fewer and fewer people remained. More and more ghosts appeared. Some people in the village gained those strange powers and protected the village.
Until the protectors grew fewer and fewer. When a large group of ghosts approached the village, a young man abandoned the village and used his strange power to cover this village, trapping those ghosts and us together!"
"The one you mentioned earlier, Medusa—we have someone in our village who turned into a ghost. She has been lingering near the village lately and has turned quite a few of our villagers into stone."
Someone who grew up in the village, got tainted by the anomalous, and turned into a ghost—actually wants to kill everyone in her own village?
Li Ming: "That's too much. This is…"
"Bang!"
Zhao Gao slammed the table, clenching his fist: "Really too much. We absolutely can't let her get away with it."
[Oh~ Got fired up, huh? Not bad.]
Zhao Gao turned to Saiki with a smile: "We're counting on you, Saiki-god. Catching that Medusa should be no problem for you, right!"
(What do you mean? You're not doing anything? Then why did you slam the table earlier! Just to show off?)
"Village Chief, about that Medusa—do you know where she is?"
The village chief and Li Qing exchanged a glance, then he turned worriedly to the group and asked: "Actually, you don't necessarily have to go find her. I know you probably want to capture her, but she's very dangerous. Since you helped my granddaughter, I originally should tell you.
But precisely because you saved my granddaughter, I don't want you to go find her. You can choose to live peacefully in the village. There won't be any major ghosts near the village. Even if there are, they're just small ones, like those wooden people."
Zhao Gao [Just stay here. Living in the village isn't bad either. After all, that Medusa really is dangerous, and after going back we'd still get pulled into the horror game anyway. Thinking about it, it doesn't seem so bad.]
(Your head's broken!)
Su Sheng [Seems reasonable. If I could live together with Miss Li Qing, that would be such a wonderful thing!]
(Hey! She's still underage.)
Li Ming slammed the table and roared: "No way. We have to go back. There are important people waiting for me!"
"Uh…"
Li Ming noticed everyone looking at him, realized he had lost composure, and calmed himself: "Sorry, I was rude!"
[Village Chief, we have to find Medusa.]
Akiyuki: "I want to go back too."
Zhao Gao coughed twice: "That's what I was going to say earlier too."
(Oh, really?)
"That's right, Village Chief. We have to find Medusa. And if we don't, she'll keep hurting people in the village. That way Xiao Qing's future won't be good either."
Su Sheng spoke with righteous indignation, not forgetting to flash Li Qing a reassuring smile.
Su Sheng [As long as we capture Medusa, the villagers will think highly of me. Xiao Qing will respect me because of it, admire me, fall in love with me, and be unable to resist me.]
(You really are something else!)
"Sigh~ Alright. Actually, Medusa doesn't come out all the time. Most of the time she stays in a hospital at the border between our village and another village."
[Ghosts in a hospital? Ghost hospital?]
"That's not an ordinary hospital. That hospital is very strange. The doctors and nurses inside aren't just humans—there are those ghosts too!"
Just as the village chief finished speaking, the system task updated to go to the hospital, investigate Medusa's information, and capture her.
(Yare yare daze, why did the main quest that was in the village suddenly become going to a hospital? Troublesome, so troublesome, really so troublesome.)
Saiki was speechless.
[Would anyone really go to that kind of hospital?]
Village Chief: "If someone in our village gets seriously ill, they still go there."
[You guys really dare to go!]
"Actually, the ghosts there aren't necessarily bad. If you're just going to get treated and you pay, they'll cure you completely. They won't kill people casually. Of course, if you don't have enough money, they might take your organs in exchange."
[That sounds way too horrifying.]
The village chief stood up, walked to the window, and looked toward the moon: "If you insist on going, tomorrow I can take you there. But if you want to go find those monsters, you can't just barge in casually. I've heard they're hiring there. I can take you to have a look."
[Then thank you, Village Chief.]
The village chief nodded. Seeing it was getting late: "It's too dark today. I'll take you to one of our empty houses in the village to rest first. Tomorrow I'll take you to see!"
Everyone stood up.
"Thank you, Village Chief!"