27: Chapter 27 If you die, you have to start over?

Facing the overwhelming mockery and refund requests, PD sat in his gaming chair, his face turning pale and then flushed with frustration.

He had originally intended to hype up Chaldea's new work in the livestream and slap those haters in the face.

But as it turned out, this crude art style left him not knowing where to even begin praising it.

"Forget it, brothers..."

PD sighed, trying to save face. "After all, it only costs about 60 yuan, which isn't even enough for a ten-pull in FGO. Father Gu also said this is just a casual, stress-relieving little game for the content drought. It's probably just for killing time."

"Since we're already here, let's just play a couple of rounds and see how this crying kid is supposed to relieve stress."

Manipulating the controller with a "God's eye view" of the sandbox, PD controlled the tearful Isaac in the Basement and pushed open the first wooden door.

The room was empty, with only a few huge black flies buzzing around.

"What's the attack method?" PD pressed the fire button on the controller.

"Pew! Pew!" Isaac's eyes widened, and two huge tears, like solid bullets, shot out of his eye sockets and hit the flies.

The fly died, dropping half a red heart.

"Using tears as bullets? That's a pretty bizarre setting."

PD curled his lip. Although he found it somewhat speechless, the dual-stick control feel—controlling movement and shooting separately—was unexpectedly smooth and fluid.

With the enhancement of the VR sandbox perspective, the trajectory and impact of the tear bullets felt extremely solid.

He controlled Isaac to delve deeper.

Along the way, he encountered headless corpses that spat blood, strange mollusk monsters that left pools of acid on the ground, and even hidden stones that needed to be blown up with bombs.

It had to be said that although the art style was crude and even had some crude toilet humor, as a "monster-slaying, level-clearing" little game, it did have a strangely addictive quality.

Soon, PD controlled Isaac to the end of the first floor of the Basement and pushed open the Boss room door with the skull symbol.

"Yo, here comes the starter village Boss."

PD perked up.

In the center of the room, an extremely huge mass of flesh with a gaping bloody mouth and jagged teeth—[Monstro]—crashed to the ground.

"Roar!" The big guy let out a roar and suddenly leaped into the air.

"Holy crap, it's that big and it can leap?!"

PD was startled and quickly maneuvered Isaac to dodge to the side.

But the moment the big guy landed, it not only caused an area-of-effect tremor but also frantically spat out a large number of red blood bullets in all directions!

"I dodge! I dodge!"

In this pure action-shooting game with no "one-key full-screen clear" and no "high-ground heavy-armor blocking," the poor micro-management skills of Blue Star players were instantly exposed.

PD scrambled to position himself in the narrow room, but facing the dense bullet hell and the big guy's continuous leaping slams, Isaac's already pitiful health of three red hearts quickly bottomed out.

"Bang!" The big guy performed an extremely accurate body slam, sitting heavily on Isaac.

Isaac let out a shrill scream, "Ugh," his small, thin body twitched on the ground, and then he collapsed completely in a pool of blood.

In the center of the screen, a blood-stained "last will" slowly emerged.

"Ah, I was careless, I was careless."

PD was not discouraged. In the gaming perception of this parallel world, dying once was simply all too normal.

"It's just a starter village Boss. Once I respawn, I'll go to the mall and buy a revive coin, or get some high-tier equipment, and just steamroll it."

PD habitually looked for buttons like "Use Diamonds to Revive," "Return to Town to Upgrade," or "Load Save" on the screen.

However, there were none.

Not only was there no revive button, there wasn't even an option to "Retry this Level"!

There was only one single option:

[Restart].

"Huh? Can't revive?"

PD frowned and pressed [Restart].

The screen flashed, and Isaac appeared once again in that familiar, initial empty room with the operation instructions.

"Fine, if I can't revive, I'll just run through the first floor again. Anyway, I already figured out the map's layout. Left turn ahead is the item room, right turn and straight ahead is the Boss room."

While bragging to the viewers in the livestream, PD confidently pushed open the wooden door on the left, ready to get that coat hanger item that increased fire rate from earlier.

However, the moment the door was pushed open.

The smile on PD's face instantly froze.

Behind the door was not the item room with the gold chest he remembered.

Instead, it was an extremely dangerous trap room full of floor spikes and flies!

"What the hell? Did I go the wrong way? Gotta run, gotta run!" PD was so scared he wanted to turn around and retreat to the initial room.

"Clang!"

However, accompanied by a metallic clashing sound, the wooden door behind him was actually sealed tight by several thick iron bars!

"Holy crap! How is the door locked?! This is literally trapping a rat in a hole?!"

Under the buzzing charge of the red flies, PD scurried around the room in a panic, frantically pressing the fire button.

Accompanied by several violent explosions, he finally managed to clear the room, but he himself was blasted down to only one and a half red hearts.

"Click."

Only after all the monsters were dead did the iron bars retract, and the door unlocked.

A shaken PD quickly retreated to the initial room and, with lingering fear, pushed open the door on the right.

As it turned out, the right side wasn't the mob room from his memory either, but had turned into a long corridor filled with jars!

"What the hell is going on?! How did the map change?!" PD was dumbfounded.

He clicked on the mini-map in the top right corner and was shocked to find that not only had the room positions changed, but the entire structure, route, and even the location of the Boss room on the first floor of the Basement were all completely different from the last run!

"It's not just the map that changed..." In the livestream, a sharp-eyed viewer discovered something even more terrifying:

"P-Zong! The coins and bombs you got from killing monsters earlier are all gone! Your max health has also reverted to the initial three hearts!"

PD looked closely, and sure enough!

All the gold coins, bombs, and items he had worked so hard to get in the previous round, even the stat boosts, had been completely cleared by the system!

The current Isaac was just like at the very beginning of the first run—a defenseless, blank-slate kid!

An absurd and desperate chill rushed straight up PD's spine to his head.

"After dying... not only can you not revive or load a save."

"Even all the equipment and the map from before are fucking randomly reset, and everything starts from zero?!"

As soon as these words came out, all ten million-plus viewers in the livestream gasped in unison.

In this parallel world deeply brainwashed by traditional online game tropes like "pay-to-win to get stronger," "slay monsters to level up," and "buy revive coins to continue."

The two cruelest core mechanisms of Roguelike games—[Permadeath] and [Procedural Generation]—for the first time, like a cold iron hammer, ruthlessly shattered every player's common sense!