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nTranslator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

nThe single room of North City University wasn’t too luxurious, but all the necessary facilities were there… It was just that living alone made Qiu Ren, who was used to a four-bed dorm, feel a little lonely.

nLuckily, he had a Nightmare Seed with him.

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nQiu Ren took everything out of the luggage and organized them once. The most important things inside were his laptop, the mouse graphics tablet Qiu Ren used to make a living with, and a few stacks of unfinished game proposals.

nAfter Qiu Ren came to this world, he had made a lot of drafts of movie scripts and game projects.

nA small part was written by Qiu Ren himself, while the rest was from his original world.

n“Let’s try it with the Dark Souls series first.”

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nQiu Ren picked the thickest game project plan out of a pile of drafts. This project included the design concept of the Dark Souls Trilogy.

nHe had also prepared some simple drafts for the Demon’s Souls before that and the spiritual sequels, Bloodborne and Sekiro.

nBut for now, Qiu Ren felt like Dark Souls was the most suitable, and Dark Souls III had the most perfect game system.

nThinking of this, Qiu Ren looked at the Level D Nightmare Seed he had put on his desk.

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nThis Level D Nightmare Seed had the fantasy genre. If it was truly derived from the Level S Nightmare Seed in the Central Research Institute, then there shouldn’t be any problem using it as a demo for Dark Souls to test the compatibility of that Lord of Nightmare and the world view, game rule template, and power system of Dark Souls.

nQiu Ren didn’t delay any longer, as he didn’t have much time right now. He jumped into this Level D Nightmare Seed without having dinner.

nWhen Qiu Ren opened his eyes again, he found that he was in a dark space.

nAnd yet, this dimension wasn’t borderless like the space where the Lords of Nightmare were. The floor here was made up of flagged paths covered with bloodstains. Looking out, it seemed to be one or two thousand square meters large.

nThe only conspicuous thing in the entire space was a collapsed city wall, or was it an outpost?

nQiu Ren carefully walked to the edge of that collapsed city wall and found a soldier’s corpse in armor. A spear had pierced through the body of this soldier, and he had already turned into a skeleton.

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nJust as he wanted to search what the dead body was carrying…

n“Owooooo!” a long howl exploded in Qiu Ren’s ears.

nA wild wolf as emaciated as a fowl rushed out from nowhere and bit at Qiu Ren.

nQiu Ren stretched out his arm to block the wolf’s bite, but the pain of his flesh being torn apart still came from his arm!

nWhere did this dog come from?

nQiu Ren found that the size of this wild wolf was at least that of a North American gray wolf. It was over two meters long, and it almost crushed Qiu Ren’s arm when it bit him.

nHowever, it didn’t bite down completely. When it was halfway there, it felt something amiss.

nThere were smells of more than one Lord of Nightmare… on Qiu Ren’s body.

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nTapir’s smell only made it feel a bit scared, but the other Lord of Nightmare scared this grey wolf senseless. It let go of its mouth and quickly took a few steps back.

nIt went all the way back to that dead body and stared at Qiu Ren with a vigilant look.

nThis grey wolf should be the body of consciousness of the Nightmare Seed.

nThe consciousness in Level E to Level C Nightmare Seeds would be mainly animals. As for Level B Nightmare Seeds, they would start to have a certain degree of intelligence. Level A Nightmare Seeds had an almost complete personality but with more or less some mental defects. Only the Lords of Nightmare in the Level S Nightmare Seeds had self-consciousness comparable to that of humans or even cleverer.

nQiu Ren swung the arm bitten by the grey wolf and used a few Creation Points to heal the wound. He then observed the attitude of the wolf.

nIt looked like if Qiu Ren wanted to purify this Nightmare Seed, he must defeat this grey wolf first.

nHowever, the way to defeat it wasn’t just to create a shotgun and kill it. Judging from its behavior, it was willing to accept Qiu Ren’s challenge.

nBut he should have a good fight with a sword and a shield like a real man!

nIf Qiu Ren said, “Time has changed! Doggie!” and took out a shotgun to shoot it, it might directly bite Qiu Ren instead and cause mental damage to him.

nThe Creation Points for making a shotgun would be used on this Nightmare Seed.

nThis might be difficult to understand. For example, if Qiu Ren used some Creation Points to feed the wolf a piece of meat, the wolf could use the power it got from the meat to spit out a shotgun to Qiu Ren.

nIf it didn’t want to spit out a shotgun and directly bit Qiu Ren instead, there was truly nothing he could do.

nThis was the difficult part of purifying a Nightmare Seed. It must be a creation that the consciousness in the Nightmare Seed could accept. At the same time, it must reduce the stubbornness and strength of the Nightmare Seed.

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nThere were also ways of directly destroying this Nightmare Seed: let the characters from other Dream Seeds invade this place and kill this grey wolf. However, there would be nothing left after killing it.

nWhat Qiu Ren wanted was the Dream Seed after the nightmare was purified, not a pile of broken pieces.

n“Is this what you want?”

nA sword appeared in one of Qiu Ren’s hands and a knight’s shield on the other. He adopted a posture to prepare for a fight.

nThat wolf howled to the sky and bared its fangs. It looked like it was ready to duke it out with Qiu Ren.

nHowever, Qiu Ren wasn’t in a hurry. He had no idea how to use the sword and shield in his hands. After all, most Dream Explorers wouldn’t use these weapons.

nIf Qiu Ren truly wanted to use this wolf to test the combat system of the Dark Souls, then he would need to add a few rule templates to this battle.

nRule template was a name used between Dream Makers, but Qiu Ren preferred to call it game mechanism.

nThe most intuitive example was that in most Shooter Dream Games, players only needed to do the action of loading the bullets if they wanted to do so. This was a game mechanism that sacrificed the real shooting experience for gameplay.

nIf players had to load the bullets into the backup magazine after emptying all their rounds like in the real world, it would affect the pace of the game and make it “not interesting.”

nOf course, this didn’t include some of the shooter games that pursued extreme authenticity.

nThe Dark Souls had a lot of game mechanics. Among the combat system, the two most essential mechanisms were rolling and rebound.

nQiu Ren originally planned to change the rolling mechanic to the sliding in Bloodborne, but after a second thought, he kept both of them. Simply put, it was a “dodging” action.

nWhen the Dream Explorers did the rolling and sliding action, they could get an invisible time of a few tenths of a second. The attacks from their enemies would pass by right next to their bodies.

nThe other one was rebound. When some attacks from the enemies were about to connect, the Dream Explorers could bounce off the enemy’s attacks and give them a fatal blow if they used the shield at a good time.

nThese two mechanics were the reasons why the battles of Dark Souls made people suffer and made their blood boil.

nWhen Qiu Ren used his Creation Points to create these two rule templates on the combat system, the wolf shook its head and looked a bit doubtful. Nevertheless, it still accepted Qiu Ren’s amendment on the rules.

n“Let’s try.”

nQiu Ren went into a fight with this wolf using the default combat system.

nIt obviously had rich experience in fighting against humans. Qiu Ren’s first two attempts ended with this grey wolf biting his neck. The notice “YOU DIE” popped out.

nOf course, this grey wolf didn’t really want to kill Qiu Ren. It was accurate in how hard it bit. Every time it chewed his neck, it released its mouth whenever it saw that Qiu Ren wasn’t moving. It then stepped back a little, signaling Qiu Ren to continue to challenge it.

nIn fact, rather than an enemy, this wolf looked more like a training partner. This made it difficult for Qiu Ren to slash it directly with his sword.

nIn the end, Qiu Ren fought with the wolf for more than an hour. While at it, he modified the rule template of the combat system bit by bit to a level he was satisfied with.

nIn the last round of battle, Qiu Ren seized the opportunity and directly smacked the wolf down on the ground with the shield. He then stabbed the sword straight in its neck.

nThe wolf didn’t struggle anymore. It made eye contact with Qiu Ren as he yanked the sword out and took a few steps back.

nThe wolf didn’t have many expressions. It went over and laid next to the dead body of that soldier to rest in exhaustion.

n“Are you starving?”

nThe sword and shield in Qiu Ren’s hands all disappeared.

nQiu Ren thought the reason why it didn’t hurt him was probably because of the Lord of Nightmare at the Central Research Institute.

nThe wolf didn’t answer Qiu Ren. It looked burned out. Qiu Ren only had to kill it constantly until it couldn’t maintain its own consciousness. Then, it would automatically disappear.

nThis Level D Nightmare Seed would also be purified to a Level D Dream Seed.

nHowever, Qiu Ren wasn’t satisfied with this. A Level D Nightmare Seed could also swallow the emotions of other people and evolve into… a Level C Nightmare Seed.

nQiu Ren was planning to raise this wolf a bit bigger and fatter and see what would happen…

n“Let me think…”

nWhile Qiu Ren was fighting with it just now, anger rose in his heart after being defeated several times in a row. Its power obviously became a lot stronger.

nThis wolf fed on humans’ anger. This was a lot easier than the tricky requests of those Lords of Nightmare.

nQiu Ren swiped his finger and checked how many Creation Points he had right now: 1721 points.

nThe scholarship North City University gave Qiu Ren had two thousand Creation Points. That was comparable to a large amount of money.

nIn building a Dream Dimension, the construction of rule templates was one of the projects that used the most Creation Points.

nQiu Ren had already used 267 points for creating two rules, “rolling” and “rebound.” This was even under the premise that “rolling” and “rebound” only had an effect on this wolf.

nIf Qiu Ren wanted to “rebound” the attack of that Lord of Nightmare, he would probably need at least a hundred thousand Creation Points.

nQiu Ren pondered for a while and decided to make this wolf a bit fatter. For this, Qiu Ren started to build a… mini-game which was enough to make people so enraged that they would smash a wall.

nThe wolf suddenly pricked up its ears and looked around anxiously.

nUnder Qiu Ren’s construction, a large pile of building fragments rose from the ground. These irregular building debris stacked up bit by bit, rising into the sky.

nThe wolf looked at Qiu Ren in confusion. It might be thinking, “What the hell is this human doing?”

n“This is the source of your food,” Qiu Ren said as he tapped the water tank under this pile of building debris and a long climbing stick.

nThe wolf squinted its eyes, yawned, and went back to sleep with a bored look.

n“Crazy! The water tank makes food for me? Will there be humans falling into it?”

nQiu Ren didn’t say much to this wolf. He spent almost two hundred Creation Points again to add some rule templates to this water tank and finished building this mini-game.

nQiu Ren had kind of completed the construction of this Nightmare Seed. The mini-game was composed of groups of buildings in front of the grey wolf. The players had to jump over the debris mountain to get to the wolf. The humans joining the game would be its food, while the gameplay could be used to test the demo of Dark Souls.

nThe last thing Qiu Ren had to do was to upload this Nightmare Dungeon to the World’s Dream Dungeon Level Library.

nIn the Celestial Empire, people were allowed to directly upload Nightmare Dungeons below Level D. An official review was needed before uploading Level C Nightmare Dungeons, though. If they uploaded it without being reviewed and were caught, they could go to jail.

nQiu Ren named this Nightmare Dungeon, “Getting Over It.” After the upload finished, the number of visits was zero.

nIt was a Level D Dream Dungeon and was even a nightmare. So, it would be shocking if someone would enter before he promoted it!

nQiu Ren pondered for a while and started checking the operation of Battle Royale on the World’s Dream Dungeon Level Library.

nThe popularity of Battle Royale was now rising straight up.

nAfter Tapir opened the “little biscuit mode,” its popularity had soared to newer heights. The number of people online right now had reached 2100, and there were 193 games in progress.

nThis was because Tapir could only hold around 190 games at the moment since more than half of her energy was used to resist the invasion of her own kind. So, a lot of people were still waiting to play the “little biscuit mode.”

nIn the list of friends on the World’s Dream Dungeon Level Library… Tapir was one of Qiu Ren’s friends. He had no idea how he had added this friend, but he still sent a message to Tapir.

n“Are you there?”

n“?”

nTapir immediately replied. She seemed to feel like the question mark would make Qiu Ren misunderstand her, so she added another message, “Have you encountered some danger? Mr. Qiu Ren.”

nShe knew how to type!

n“I’m not in danger, but I’ve created a new Nightmare Dungeon. Please help me promote it on the page of your battle royale game dungeon.”

n“Have you… been threatened by other Lords of Nightmare?”

n“No! I’m creating a little game myself! The level code is QXGE-12ZX-KNZ1,” Qiu Ren replied a bit speechlessly.

n“I’ve already… put it up. The Internet humans invented is very… convenient.”

nTapir had just started using the Internet now?

n“Then, it should be fine. I still have some drafts to draw. I’ll contact you if I need your help again next time.”

n“…Hm.”

nQiu Ren looked at the recommendation of “Getting Over It” on the page of Battle Royale.

n“You’ve already waited to enter Battle Royale for so long anyway. Why don’t you come and play this heartwarming little game while you’re waiting?”

nAfter uploading this Nightmare Dungeon, Qiu Ren didn’t care too much about it. The remaining time was tight. Qiu Ren had to draw more character design drafts and setting design drafts for Dark Souls!

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nAt the bottom level of the Central Research Institute, that Lord of Nightmare sealed in the Central Research Institute was caught in some tangled emotions after Qiu Ren left.

nIt was pondering if it was worth it… to ask this young Dream Maker, Qiu Ren, to build a new Nightmare Dungeon for it.

nPerhaps Tapir was only lucky to have encountered Qiu Ren’s outburst of inspiration, which was why he created an extremely suitable Nightmare Dungeon for her?

nWould there truly be a second outburst of inspiration consecutively in humans?

nIt remained silent for a very, very long time. Thinking about it carefully, the environment in the Central Research Institute wasn’t too bad.

nDozens of Dream Explorers headed to all its Nightmare Dungeons to fight every day. They gave it part of their emotional energy as replenishment.

nWhen its own kind intruded it, that annoying monkey would jump to its help. It didn’t have to worry about being the first target to be devoured by its own kind overseas at all.

nNo… it shouldn’t put hope on that monkey. To choose between humans and it, humans would undoubtedly abandon it completely and turn it into its own kind overseas.

nIt must think of a way to protect itself and also a way to protect its children.

nThinking of its children, the heart of this Lord of Nightmare was full of sadness. It sensed that more and more of its children were taken away and then purified by those humans.

nThe memories of the weaker children would be erased. They would be changed to another form. The stronger ones would also choose to betray their own kind and join the side of humans.

nAt first, it resisted, but now, it felt like it was also a pretty good choice to let its children abandon their tragic past. They could embrace a new life after changing their form from Nightmare Seeds to Dream Seeds.

nIt felt another dozen of its children being taken away from it again today. They would probably be purified any time soon…

nBut wait… what was going on?

nThe Lord of Nightmare opened its eyes wide and stood up from its throne.

nIt sensed that a Nightmare Seed that was taken away hadn’t been purified to weaken its existence. Instead, its power as a Nightmare Seed kept growing. It was gulping down emotional energy from all directions delightfully.

nThat one seemed to be… the one Qiu Ren took away?

nWhat was this? It put in so much effort to find a state banquet chef, yet this chef went to make a feast for its pet?

nHow could it be like that? No! Even if it had to die with the Central Research Institute, it had to find Qiu Ren to build a Nightmare Dungeon for it!

nIt must replace this breeder!

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