Chapter 62: Chapter 62: The Meaning of The Nameless_l

Staring blankly at his own death screen, Huang Ping began to recall what had just happened.

“I bravely charged at three Tubo cavalry with my leather shield in front of me, I conjectured that these low-level NPCs should have been knocked away by my shield bash, then I could’ve taken the opportunity to finish them off with my blade.

But the result was… I got instantly killed?

Those cavalrymen all had big beards, but they were definitely all young men, because they had no sense of martial virtue!

Disbelieving, Huang Ping restarted the game from the save point. This time, he chose to move stealthily, waiting for the chance to launch a surprise attack. His spear successfully pierced a cavalryman in the waist, assisted by the game¹ s auto – aim.

He wanted to press his advantage, but the other two cavalry charged over, their curved swords turned into divine weapons by the speed of their steeds, severly decapitating him.

“Defeat”.

The red text constantly shifted in Huang Ping’s vision, sometimes morphing

into “noob,” and at other times “weak.”

Dying twice in the tutorial left Huang Ping speechless.

If you want to make a Soul Series type of game that tortures people, just say it outright. There’s no need to sneakily hide it.

Though the Soul Series can barely be considered related to war themes, their relevance is about the same as saying the Soul Series is about romance and character development.

After all, both have pretty girls, right?

Exhaling deeply, Huang Ping was about to commiserate with Monkey about the difficulty of the game when he noticed that Monkey was playing a scene he had never seen before.

Sandstorm filling the sky, unbearable heat, the protagonist wandered alone in

the desert.

His water bottle was empty, and the character in the game was more prone to dehydration in the desert environment, hovering on the brink of death.

But Monkey was fearless. The moment he crossed a patch of shadow on the ground, he sharply bent his bow and shot an arrow. A bird in the sky fell at the sound, becoming Monkey’s spoils of war.

Hooking the bird on his back, Monkey verified the direction the bird came from and slowly walked toward that direction. He eventually found a water source just before dying of thirst.

Watching Monkey’s screen, Huang Ping asked in confusion, “Aren’t our starting points different?”

“No idea. I was born in a Tubo slave town. Right at the start, I encountered Tubo cavalry looting. What about you?

“Same.”

“Then there shouldn’t be random starting locations; everyone’s initial position is the same. The difficulty level of this game is quite reasonable. It’s quite nice

to play.”

Huang Ping originally wanted to ask how he managed to defeat the three starting cavalry, but seeing Monkey playing so effortlessly, he felt a bit embarrassed to ask.

If he didn’t ask, he could still bluff his way through. Asking would only prove that he indeed was a noob.

Knowing he wasn’t cut out for such punishing games, Huang Ping simply moved a chair over, sat next to Monkey, and began to watch his gameplay.

Unlike Fang Cheng’s previous works, this game had no cultivation techniques or tree-punching drills. It had only two words: realism.

Through observing Monkey’s gameplay, Huang Ping finally started to understand more about the game mechanics.

The game had a time system. Players could arrange for their characters to train or allocate time to travel and move to different locations. During this period, if no randomevents occurred, the game time would fast-forward until the scheduled event was completed.

Besides that, the game had an extremely detailed attribute system, as well as a battle system that was ruthlessly realistic.

Things like health bars didn’t exist; a slash to the head meant instant death, no matter how high one’s attributes were.

Nightfall would reduce visibility, and prolonged imbalanced diet could even lead to night blindness, rendering one almost completely unable to move at night.

Ill-fitting shoes would cause blisters, which would reduce movement speed

and could eventually lead to deformities.

Just watching Monkey play made Huang Ping feel dazzled.

But because it was very realistic, it wasn’t too difficult to understand, you just needed to treat everything as real.

As the role was that of an ordinary person, the game’s perspective unfolded entirely from the standpoint of a soldier.

In the game, the Tang Dynasty had already declined, with Tubo splitting the Tang Dynasty in half. The Protectorate of Anxi, located in the Western Regions, had become an isolated land, perilously under the assault of Tubo.

The protagonist was a nobody born in occupied lands, yet he had yearned for the Tang Dynasty ever since his birth and by a twist of fate received training from an injured soldier of the Tang.

When he came of age, he killed three Tubo cavalrymen who came to plunder his town and subsequently lived in exile. Knowing that the Protectorate was still resisting Tubo, he resolved to join the Protectorate and then embarked on battle after battle.

Before joining the Protectorate, the protagonist’s experiences could only be described as hellish.

He moved through the desert like a lone wolf, finding his own food and maintaining his own water sources. Drinking unclean water could lead to parasites, which might then result in a miserable death from vomiting and diarrhea.

Modern inconsequential injuries became fatal. Injuries slowed movement and made it difficult to obtain food, which meant that one had to be extremely careful in every hunt and battle. A small cut could lead to tetanus infection and sudden death.

However, the more tedious the details, the more exhilarating the combat became when it finally occurred.

Especially watching Monkey fight, one could really experience that feeling of tension and thrill, where every slash drew blood, and every move was lethal. Different from the typical “Souls” games, “The Nameless” was more like an incredibly realistic soldier combat game.

The enemy Al was unbelievably realistic as well. They would feign surrender, flee, and if they sensed defeat, they might even adopt a mutually destructive fighting style, forcing the player to make difficult decisions.

A moment of carelessness, even with victory in sight, could lead to dying on the battlefield; every fight was particularly thrilling.

Unlike the precariousness of being a lone wolf, once one successfully entered the Protectorate, it was a different feeling altogether.

The population of the Protectorate was older, so the young Nameless who came here was treated almost like a beloved mascot.

Old soldiers in their thirties would pester the protagonist every day, telling their stories;

Some old soldiers would repeatedly speak of the prosperity and splendor of the Tang Dynasty’s Chang’an, even though they had never been there;

Players would see the red willow tree at the entrance of the camp, its branches already laden with the hair of soldiers who had gone out.

It was at this moment that Huang Ping finally understood what his mission as a guide had been.

He was a messenger.

Every so often, the Protectorate of Anxi would send messengers to Chang’an to tell the Emperor of Chang’an that the Protectorate had not fallen and that they were still resisting Tubo.

Our soldiers are insufficient, our weapons are old, we have no horses, food must be self-sustained, but still, we remain here, never surrendering.

In this land 7000 li away from Chang’an, there are still those whose hearts turn to Chang’an, who are defending this territory for the Tang Dynasty.

But the Protectorate of Anxi and Chang’an have been separated for a long time now.

The roads have disappeared beneath the sand, Tubo and other foreign tribes ravage the compulsory paths, and the journey to Chang’an is essentially a death march.

Yet, every so often, there are those who volunteer to serve as messengers to Chang’an. Even if they are to die, they wish to die on the road to Chang’an. After learning about these things from other old soldiers, Huang Ping fell silent.

At this moment, he seemed to understand why Fang Cheng had made the environment so realistic and why the protagonist had to endure so many hardships.

Only by experiencing it can one truly empathize. Even separated by the screen, he could feel the plight of the soldiers.

If he were to actually experience it in person, he likely wouldn’t last even a day. But these soldiers, they bore hardships that others had never known, and still, they remained stationed here.

Their names had faded away; they were the Nameless, illustrating the backbone of the Tang Dynasty in the sands, holding upright the spine of their nation in history.

This, then, was the meaning of being The Nameless.