Bai Liu always smelled a strong fishy odor coming from the front row whenever he got into the car. He had always assumed it came from Andre, since the man ate large amounts of rotten fish steaks this morning, but he hadn't expected it to be coming from the driver instead.
That meant the fishy smell he'd noticed in the car yesterday had probably come from the driver as well, but it hadn't been anywhere near as concentrated as it was today.
The stench on this driver was much stronger.
Bai Liu glanced at the driver and felt that he… might as well be a monster too.
[Warning!!! Player identification error!]
[The NPC is not a monster! Cannot be entered into the Monster Book! The NPC is merely in an alienated state!]
[Player identification error: The NPC's trust in the player has dropped dramatically and may act aggressively toward the player.]
The driver slowly tore off a bite of the sandwich in his hand. His wobbly eyes flicked toward Bai Liu for a moment before his tone suddenly turned nasty.
"...Do you think I smell disgusting?"
Bai Liu wanted to say yes, but hastily denied it on the surface. "No."
"You're looking at me like I'm a monster. Heh—bloody arrogant rich man." The driver said grimly. He turned back around to eat and stopped responding to Bai Liu's questions.
Tch. This is troublesome.
Bai Liu thought quietly that it had suddenly become much more difficult for him to obtain information.
He couldn't force the driver either—the panel had already warned that the driver might become aggressive toward him.
Bai Liu glanced at Lucy beside him, whispered a few words, and coaxed her into asking the driver instead.
The driver snorted, but answered Lucy's question anyway.
"The attractions of Siren Town are, of course, related to mermaids." The driver laughed so hard his eyes trembled, and it was unclear who he was even talking to.
"Our fishing isn't for ordinary fish. We have special mermaid fishing activities, held only at night. And our wax museum isn't an ordinary wax museum either—we turn the caught mermaids into wax figures and put them on display."
"The first mermaid skeleton we ever caught is displayed in the wax museum."
"A mermaid fishing activity?" Bai Liu asked. "You really caught a mermaid?"
The driver ignored him.
After Lucy asked again, the driver finally answered.
He gave a meaningful smile. "Yes. Although the first one was a very beautiful mermaid, the ones caught afterward were inferior—deformed, incomplete—but they were mermaids nonetheless."
Andre snorted with sudden contempt. "It's just a gimmick. You don't really believe that, do you?"
Jeff opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again—probably because he'd been beaten up by Andre that morning and didn't dare speak against him.
But Lucy was different.
She shot Andre a dissatisfied glare and said loudly, "I believe it! What about you, Bai Liu?" She turned toward Bai Liu, her expression indignant.
"Seeing is believing," Bai Liu replied lightly. "We'll know once we see the fishing event tonight."
Andre didn't dislike Lucy, but he mocked Bai Liu relentlessly. "I just hope some people don't take the opportunity to watch the night fishing and run away crying."
A wicked grin spread across his face as his eyes swept over Bai Liu. "If you fell off the boat screaming and got caught by the fishermen, mistaken as a mermaid, and made into a wax figure—we definitely wouldn't save you."
Andre shrugged exaggeratedly, smiling impishly, as if he had already imagined Bai Liu falling into the sea.
Bai Liu remembered that he still had an unresolved bet with Andre for tonight.
Lucy had filled him in on the details that morning.
Andre and Bai Liu were supposed to hire two canoes and drift on the Siren Sea at night. Whoever couldn't endure it and returned first would be deemed a coward—and unworthy of Lucy.
Lucy herself hadn't wanted the bet, but the role Bai Liu was playing left him no choice but to participate.
In a horror game centered on [mermaids], the sea in the dead of night was undoubtedly terrifying.
Bai Liu would never allow himself to go to such a place with someone who clearly harbored malicious intent toward him—especially when he still didn't understand the situation.
There was no doubt in his mind that if Andre encountered him at sea, Andre would overturn his boat and bury him beneath the waves.
Bai Liu couldn't swim.
In a way, the mermaid of Siren Town—whatever it truly was—was far less frightening to Bai Liu than the sea itself.
Bai Liu would not go near the sea unless it was necessary.
The scowl on his face clearly expressed his rejection of this so-called betting event.
Andre laughed mockingly. "Look, look—there's our young master. What do you have over me besides money? You don't even dare go near the sea."
Bai Liu nodded with genuine pleasure. "I'm nothing but rich."
And that was more than enough to satisfy him. He was happy even with virtual coins.
Andre: "..."
Why does this man look like he's just been complimented?
Andre snorted. "So you're giving up on Lucy by refusing to go?"
Bai Liu was just about to tell Andre that he had no intention of participating in such a death-defying event when the coin on his chest suddenly vibrated, and a mission prompt popped up.
[Side Quest Triggered: Ship of True Love]
[Objective: Player Bai Liu must complete the bet before leaving Siren Town and defeat Andre.]
[Reward: 100 bonus points]
Bai Liu: "..."
One hundred points.
The desire for money instantly overwhelmed his fear of water. Bai Liu replied calmly, "No. I'm going—and I'm going to beat you."
Lucy threw her arms around Bai Liu emotionally. "Oh, baby! We must stay together when you come back and have a lovely evening."
Bai Liu silently removed Lucy's hand.
The driver turned his head and said, "You should visit our wax museum during the day. Mermaid fishing takes place at night."
The group agreed.
The driver drove the car around to the back of a beach.
Bai Liu saw a large amount of sun-bleached wreckage scattered across the shore.
The driver explained that this was where the mermaids had been caught. Those wrecks were broken remains of mermaids that had been captured; some were so badly damaged that they had simply been discarded on the beach.
Bai Liu could clearly see massive fish-tail bones and several pale skulls strewn across the sand. Fishing nets were laid out beside them, left to dry.
Some fishermen emerged to clean up the bones and nets and glanced up at Bai Liu and the others.
Bai Liu hadn't paid much attention to the townspeople at night, but now that he saw them clearly in the daylight, he realized something was off.
These townspeople looked extremely strange.
They bore an eerie resemblance to the driver, but appeared even more disturbingly inhuman.
The whites of their eyes were unnaturally pale, while their pupils were no larger than soybeans, floating loosely in their sockets.
The distance between their eyes was unusually wide, positioned so far apart that they seemed to grow near the sides of their faces—much like Bai Liu's impression of a catfish.
They also had grayish-black, marble-like patterns around their eyes, spreading from their eye sockets down to their necks. Under the sunlight, their movements were sluggish and uncanny—the backs of their feet repeatedly rubbing against the sand as if something beneath the skin were itching unbearably.
If Bai Liu wasn't mistaken, there seemed to be green scales on the backs of their feet, already loosening, on the verge of peeling off.
They gave Bai Liu's passing car a slow, dull smile, like children who had just caught the scent of food.
Lucy was clearly frightened by the fishermen's appearance and murmured, "They look so strange."
These fishermen looked even stranger than the driver—less like humans, and more like grotesque deep-sea fish that had somehow crawled onto land.
The driver swallowed the last bite of his foul-smelling sandwich and smiled, his mouth full of black teeth stained with surimi. "Really? We all look like this here. Probably because we eat all kinds of fish. Not very healthy, I suppose."
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes. He instinctively thought these townspeople looked like monsters—but his thoughts stopped midway.
He had already misjudged the driver once.
Although the driver and these townspeople were clearly inhuman, the driver could not be recorded in the [Monster Book]. These townspeople resembled the driver so closely that there was a significant possibility they also failed to meet the game's criteria for monsters. If he accidentally triggered the hostility of so many NPCs at once, the consequences would be disastrous.
That said, Bai Liu wasn't foolish enough to truly believe that this group of bizarre townspeople was harmless.
There were only two explanations for something not being classified as a monster:
First—it truly wasn't one.
Second—it simply hadn't met the Monster Book's standards yet.
"Siren Town" had an extremely peculiar setting, involving states such as [Hatching] and [Alienation]. The mermaid wax figure could be hatched. Andre had shown signs of alienation earlier that morning. And these townspeople, too, seemed to be in some sort of transitional state—neither fully human nor fully monstrous—which explained their abnormal appearance.
As for what these states ultimately led to, Bai Liu didn't know.
His instinct told him they would eventually become monsters—but instinct wasn't enough. He needed confirmation.
Bai Liu slowly shifted his gaze to Andre, who was sitting in the front.
It wasn't that Bai Liu couldn't have saved Andre last night.
It was simply that, to him, an NPC like Andre—someone who already harbored hostility toward him—death is worth more than survival.
Andre watched the driver suck his fingers with relish, and his appetite surged uncontrollably. His eyes went straight as he swallowed hard, scratching at his itchy cheeks in irritation.
Then, through the rearview mirror, he shot Bai Liu a resentful glance.
Bai Liu was so rich—so why couldn't he even spare a few fish steaks? Andre was starving now. Just looking at what the driver was eating made him want to snatch it and devour it himself.
But the driver ate far too quickly. Before Andre could act, the sandwich was already gone. The driver patted his stomach, his expression blissfully intoxicated.
Watching the driver lick the minced fish from the corner of his mouth with obvious enjoyment, Andre recalled the moist, smooth, irresistible taste of the fish steak. Saliva flooded his mouth, and his throat bobbed involuntarily.
He had never eaten anything so delicious.
No, not just the fish steaks. Every kind of fish here was prepared in a way that made it impossible to stop eating. The flavor was maddening.
The driver sighed contentedly. "It's delicious. Only the fish in Siren Town tastes this good."
Lucy agreed enthusiastically. "Yes! I've never had fish this delicious—it's so fresh."
"No," the driver corrected her with a strange smile. "It's not fresh. The secret to Siren Town's fish is that it's never fresh. This kind of fish isn't tasty when eaten fresh at all—it has to be marinated and specially processed after it's rotted."
His smile grew even more unsettling. "You're eating a very special kind of fish. One you won't find anywhere else. A fish unique to Siren Town."
Lucy asked curiously, "What kind of fish?"
The driver replied softly, smiling—
"Mermaid."