The Explorer's medal guided Caleb to a charred iron cabinet leaning in the corner.
"The treasure clue is hidden inside?" The iron cabinet looked unremarkable; if not for the medal's guidance, Caleb might have overlooked it even if he walked past it.
Creak!
He stepped forward and pulled open the cabinet door, finding a leather-wrapped object inside. But when he lifted the leather and saw what was beneath, his expression immediately turned to horror.
Beneath the leather was, surprisingly, a boy huddled with his arms and legs drawn in! He looked only five or six years old, with no traces of fire on his body, his eyelids tightly shut, his lips purplish-blue, and no sign of life.
"There was a fire outside, he hid in the cabinet and covered himself with leather. Although he wasn't burned to death, he suffocated due to lack of oxygen." Whether this was in a virtual game world or reality, the little boy's tragic fate always evoked sympathy.
Caleb examined the boy's body and noticed a key-shaped pendant hanging around his neck, and a piece of cloth tightly clutched in his left hand.
He first took out the piece of cloth, discovering it was actually a mask sewn together from fabric. The patterns on the mask lacked the playfulness expected of children's toys; instead, they were splattered with bloodstains, appearing hideous and terrifying, exuding an eerie and evil aura.
— Item discovered... — You have obtained the [Evil Voodoo Mask]
[Type: Rare Ornament]
[Effect: When wearing this ornament and successfully startling a survivor, the chance of the opponent falling into 'Real Fear' increases by 30%.]
[Weight: 10]
[Can it be taken out of the scene: No]
[Note: A mask tainted with an evil aura; someone seems to want to use it to complete a ritual.]
"Its function is to enhance the scare effect? It doesn't look like an ornament for a survivor to use?" Caleb then recalled the 'Jaw Ripper' he had stored in his storage box; its conditions mentioned 'Dark Persona'. "Could this ornament also be specifically for 'Dark Persona' players?"
So, if he were to deduce backward from the effect of this ornament... "Do players with Dark Persona need to scare other survivors in the game?" Wouldn't that make them the opposite of normal Persona players?
"Wait..." From this point, Caleb suddenly thought of the charred, ghost-faced man he had just encountered. Considering all of his actions, his goal seemed to be to scare people!
"Could it be... that guy is the 'Dark Persona'? He is actually a game player, not an NPC in the game scene?!" Thinking this, Caleb's face showed surprise. The identities of players entering the game were clearly not fixed. They could be teammates, or they could be opponents.
Next, he took off the key pendant from the boy's neck.
— Item discovered... — You have obtained the [Basement Key]
[Type: Common Item]
[Effect: Opens the basement door.]
[Weight: 5]
[Can it be taken out of the scene: No]
[Note: Why is it here?]
ID: Ricky. This is a studio player. Because of his unique game ID, his studio colleagues often 'affectionately' called him 'Ding Ri'.
Ricky is a persistent player. In one game, he suspected an NPC had clues to a hidden quest, so he persistently accompanied the disheartened and pitiful novelist Orpheus, drinking a dozen glasses of whiskey. His sincerity moved the already drunk novelist, and he successfully obtained a 'The Overseer' novel character from him.
After Orpheus sobered up, he felt that as a gentleman, he should keep his promise, even if it was just a drunken jest. He told Ricky that once he finished deducing the specific plot, he would begin writing the main text, and at that time, he would change the originally set 'The Overseer' character to Ricky's ID name.
After that game ended, Ricky indeed received a letter from Orpheus. The novelist wrote in the letter that he had completed the plot deduction and sent a backup manuscript along with the letter for Ricky to review. After claiming the attachment, Ricky obtained a special identity called 'The Overseer', and the backup manuscript served as the identity marker.
He was overjoyed; this was the first special identity he had obtained, and he also became the first player in their studio to have a special identity.
However, when Ricky combined the 'The Overseer' identity with his 'Personality' to generate a Persona, he was informed by the system that this Persona was a unique 'Dark Persona', and to synthesize it, he must first complete the Dark Persona trial. Then, everything seemed to be pre-set, and his next game was positioned by the system.
He arrived at the scene depicted in Orpheus's novel—the 'Military Factory' after the fire.
Upon entering the game, Ricky found himself transformed into a character named Leo Beck; his special identity, items, and other belongings were all sealed by the system. He could only use Leo Beck's abilities from then on.
"Isn't this the 'The Overseer' character I was supposed to replace?" Ricky immediately noticed the problem. "It clearly stated in the backup manuscript that his name had been changed to my ID name, so why..."
Ricky was a clever man, and he quickly figured out why. The gentleman novelist Orpheus had clearly not kept his promise. He deceived Ricky, only changing 'The Overseer' to Ricky's ID name in the backup manuscript. However, in the officially published work, The Overseer still used the name 'Leo Beck'.
"It doesn't matter, I've got this Dark Persona anyway." Even if Ricky wanted to complain, he couldn't; he couldn't return to the dimension where the novelist Orpheus was located.
Next, Ricky first checked himself. After being transformed into 'Leo Beck', he became an image of someone severely burned by fire... completely charred and scorched.
"Oh right, it seems that in that novel, Leo Beck died in the big fire at the Military Factory."
He switched to his attribute interface and found that all three stances of the survivor were locked, and a strange status—Spirit Body—appeared next to them.
[Spirit Body: You have transformed into a spirit body form, invisible to players who have not mastered relevant skills, and unable to cause damage to any target. Vision range -80%, movement speed +50%, and can pass through objects.]
Then, in the skill bar below, Ricky noticed he had two additional skills.
[Manifest: In your spirit body form, you can temporarily manifest in any environment to scare targets.]
[Spirit Crow Servant: Your spiritual consciousness enters the body of the spirit crow kept by Leo Beck during his lifetime, using the spirit crow's vision to find target victims.]