Looking at the dark hole above, still dripping with thick blood, Ben was only able to experience it because he was lying in the CosmosVR game pod. Otherwise, he would have been holding onto a table or wall right now because his legs had gone weak.
What was even more unfair was that the old man left and took his shotgun with him.
Compared to the small handgun in his hand, the shotgun the old man had earlier clearly offered a greater sense of security.
It's worth remembering that in the previous game, shotguns were considered very useful weapons early on.
Even though there were fewer bullets, one shot could take down a small monster. It was nothing like the handgun, which just scratched at them.
After calming himself down a bit, Ben looked at the small handgun in his hand and sighed.
This small handgun would have to do. It was certainly better than going at the monsters bare-handed with a fruit knife, right?
He had no idea what kind of monsters were outside.
With regret, Ben prepared to go outside and investigate.
But as he was about to make a move.
Crack!
With a breaking sound, a grayish-white claw pierced through the floor beneath his feet and grabbed Ethan's lower leg.
"Damn it!"
Amidst Ben's terrified scream, Ethan was directly pulled into the basement.
Thump.
The game camera wobbled back and forth a few times, clearly indicating Ethan had fallen hard.
Ben, on his end, was still a bit shaken.
Who would have expected a hand to suddenly pop out from below and drag him down while he was just walking?
The game camera returned to normal, and the flashlight turned on, revealing a pale face in front of Ben.
"Holy crap!"
The most basic curse word, expressing the deepest fear, a barrage of combined emotions made Ben's heart beat rapidly.
By the time he clearly saw everything around him, he gasped.
'Dead people? All dead people?'
'What's going on? What happened in this village?'
Ethan expressed Ben's inner doubts with disbelief.
However, this was a question that no one could answer at the moment.
"Wait, something spooky just dragged me down. Where is it now?" Ben suddenly realized something, and his heart twitched.
It was obvious that "it" was a monster. It couldn't possibly be the bus driver, specially making a path for Ethan, could it?
Looking at the densely packed corpses, Ben swallowed hard.
He had already imagined a scene in his mind: the monster was hiding among these corpses, waiting for him to advance so it could deliver a brutal blow.
And he noticed that some of these corpses had interaction options.
This immediately reminded him of a game he had played before – "Outlast."
It made you curiously look, and then the seemingly dead corpse would suddenly come to life, scaring the player to a breakdown.
Taking a deep breath, Ben narrowed his eyes slightly, slowly controlling Ethan to move forward and trigger the interaction button.
Slowly, Ethan reached out towards the hanging corpse's head and then lifted its head up.
The pale face was covered in blood, appearing to be a victim of some brutal injury in life.
But unexpectedly, it was indeed just a dead body.
"What's going on? Is this Boss Lucas's mercy?" Ben became curious.
Based on his understanding of Boss Lucas, he shouldn't be this kind of person!
The moment this thought appeared, a sharp, desperate roar suddenly sounded behind Ben, scaring him so much he jumped. The next moment, a monster with messy hair, a pale face, gray eyes, and sharp claws and teeth lunged and bit Ethan's left hand.
Crunch, crunch.
The sound of bones shattering rang out, and blood continuously gushed from his palm. Ben's heart trembled just watching.
Ethan struggled and fought with the monster in front of him in the basement. With a snap.
The monster bit off Ethan's pinky and ring finger.
Then the monster fiercely grabbed Ethan's clothes and smashed him against the wall.
The wooden house was smashed through, creating a large hole. At the same time, Ethan was thrown out of the basement.
"No! My hand! This is really like Outlast! But they used scissors to cut off a finger in that one, one on each hand. This one just took off two? And ate them? Will this hand even grow back?"
Looking at Ethan's bloody and mangled left hand, Ben was completely bewildered.
What did Ethan's left hand do to deserve such treatment?
The previous game featured a physical separation, and this game starts with two missing fingers. In the previous game, the hand was intact and could be reattached. In this game, the fingers were probably chewed to a crisp, right?
Seeing the monster emerge from the basement, Ben quickly took out his small handgun and shot at the monster's head.
There were a total of 20 bullets, but Ben was very careful when shooting the handgun, always aiming directly at its head.
This was a horror game, not an FPS game, so every bullet was very precious.
However, even on the lowest difficulty, Ben used twelve bullets to finally take down this creature.
The main reason was that this guy was very agile, even ducking and sidestepping to dodge attacks.
Another thing that pleasantly surprised Ben was that Ethan in the game could also block, and after blocking, he could kick the monster in the lower body to counterattack.
While it couldn't compare to Chris's unmatched combat skills in the previous game's DLC, it was clearly a setting that gave players a greater sense of security.
Recalling the conversation between Ethan and Mia earlier, Chris seemed to have trained Ethan for a while, so learning to block made sense!
"But are my fingers really gone?" Looking at the monster on the ground, Ben felt a pang of frustration.
He washed his hand with the only bottle of hand sanitizer he had, but his fingers didn't grow back.
This made Ben wonder.
Could it be that Ethan's two fingers will be permanently damaged from now on?
That would make life very inconvenient.
And if there were a sequel, with his left hand having to suffer so much in each installment, he might end up becoming a one-armed hero.
After dealing with this villager that looked like a werewolf, Ben returned to the previous room to search. He successfully found a pair of wire cutters.
Clearly, when it came to puzzles, the game was basically the same as the previous one, requiring the use of various items to open the path forward.
After cutting the chain on the large iron gate, Ben took a deep breath as he looked at the path ahead.
Following the path, Ben controlled Ethan and arrived at another farmhouse.
Inside, he found a radio. From the radio, Ethan received some information: a woman told survivors to go to Luisa's house by the farmland.
But soon, the farmhouse was attacked again by werewolf villagers.
Fortunately, in this house, Ben found another twenty bullets on the first and second floors.
After defeating the werewolf, who experienced a moment of danger but no actual harm, something surprising happened next that made Ben pause.
First, when the werewolf died, it didn't turn into a corpse. Instead, it calcified into powder, just like Eveline in the previous game.
So, is this village related to the mold virus?
Secondly, what surprised Ben was that defeating monsters dropped money!
Although the number wasn't very appealing, he directly received 250.
But that wasn't the important part! The important part was the money!
What did money represent?
It represented shops, it represented consumption!
(End of chapter)