Chapter Ninety-Five: The Third Avatar (Third Update, a bonus chapter for Alliance Leader Tu A)

At last, it had begun: the third incarnation.

Seated at the edge of his bed, Ji Yu drew a slow breath and fixed his gaze on the countdown on the game panel suspended in his sight.

00:01:13

He waited in silence, motionless in every respect, until the game prompt appeared.

[Beep. Congratulations, player. You have earned the right to play the third incarnation. Would you like to enter the game now and select an incarnation?]

[Yes / No]

At the sight of it, Ji Yu did not hesitate.

[Player has confirmed participation. Third-incarnation selection begins.]

[Selecting incarnation...]

[Selection scope determined: the player’s home planet, lesser lifeforms and things...]

[Random selection complete. Player is entering the game.]

The familiar sensation of weightlessness returned.

Ji Yu’s vision once again rose into the outer reaches of Blue Star.

Looking upon the world before him, he felt many emotions at once.

He was proud of Blue Star’s beauty, yet at the same time he felt a heavy sorrow for it.

Because this time, once his vision reached space, something had changed in what he could see.

He could clearly make out dozens of black blotches scattered across the side of Blue Star facing him.

They were not large, yet they were impossible to miss.

Each of them was a realm zone formed under the corruption of the Purple Moon. Though the Purple Moon was not visible at the moment and it was still daylight, the game had granted Ji Yu a vision that let him plainly see these polluted regions.

These places had become facts of the world; they simply existed upon Blue Star, like wounds upon its skin.

Some of the realm zones were large, some small.

Yet the greatest of them belonged to the northwestern region where the Lion Federation stood.

There, the breadth of that realm zone far exceeded the others, and Ji Yu could even see many indistinct specks moving within it.

At the same time, he saw numerous ripples.

Those were explosions caused by heavy weaponry, the shocks fierce and continuous, surging outward in waves like rolling air currents.

Only by seeing this with his own eyes did Ji Yu realize that the Lion Federation’s situation was already terribly dire.

There, the struggle between the Lion Federation and the realm creatures had almost reached a fever pitch, and might even have been going on for a very long time.

For the Lion Federation to conceal such a grim reality from its people and still preserve the peace of its northwestern cities was no small feat.

"It seems that while I was striving on my own, many others were already shedding their blood."

Ji Yu felt a weight in his heart, but also a deep stirring of emotion.

And under that feeling, his vision began to descend.

But this descent was not the same as before, when he had fallen straight down. Instead, it was angled like a meteor, streaking toward the opposite side of Blue Star.

The West Alliance?

Ji Yu roughly understood where the game had chosen his incarnation.

On the Western Continent, in the West Alliance nation of the Frans Federation.

At the foot of the Altunis Mountains, near the edge of a small town.

A young Asian girl of six or seven was crouching beside a shallow stream, holding a bottle full of mealworms.

The stream was narrow, less than two meters across, and very shallow; the distance between the water and the bed of rounded stones was barely more than ten centimeters.

"Little Dragon, come on. I brought you something tasty. Hurry up and come out."

The little girl held a long, slender bamboo skewer with a mealworm threaded onto it.

She lowered the skewer into the water and aimed it at a tiny hollow beneath the streambed stones.

The skewer trembled faintly in the water, and with the girl’s coaxing, a very adorable creature soon poked its head out.

It was only thirty centimeters long, with translucent white skin.

Its limbs were short, and on the sides of its head were slightly raised red gill folds.

A cave salamander.

This was a species unique to the ecological region of the Altunis Mountains in the West Alliance, and it bore a striking resemblance to the totem dragon revered by the Lion Federation during its feudal age.

But compared with the majesty and grandeur of a divine dragon, the cave salamander had only one thing to its name: cuteness, and more cuteness.

Just peeking out a little, the tiny salamander saw the mealworm and immediately bit down on it.

After nibbling up the worm with such an endearing, infantile air, it was not satisfied. Instead, it thrust its whole body out of the cave and faced the little girl.

This salamander was not afraid of her. Rather, it seemed to have grown dependent on her after being fed by her for a long time, and was easily lured out.

Seeing it, the little girl grew even happier.

This time she did not thread another mealworm onto the skewer. Instead, she reached straight into the bottle, took one out with her hand, and tossed it onto the surface of the water where the salamander was.

The cave salamander swallowed the mealworm in a single bite and then worked its mouth as if chewing.

Looking at the adorable creature, the little girl even dipped her hand into the water and gently touched its body with her fingers.

"Little Dragon, be good, okay? Don’t go running off. If you do, I won’t be able to come find you to play anymore, and you won’t get to eat these tasty mealworms."

The little girl smiled sweetly, and the dimples in her round, chubby cheeks made her look even more lovely.

The little girl was very lonely.

This was because she lived in a very remote town, and it was a ranch besides.

It was a dairy farm rented by her father, where he raised cows.

Here, aside from school, she spent most of her time alone once she returned home.

And because she was Asian, she faced discrimination even at school.

At school, she was often bullied by girls her own age, and so over the years the little girl had become deeply withdrawn.

Only when she came to the stream to feed the cave salamander did that isolation ease a little.

The tiny salamander could not comprehend human beings, nor could it form very clear thoughts. It simply regarded the little girl as a source of food.

"Little Dragon, I really want to leave this place. I miss Mom, but Dad won’t let me. I’m so sad."

While softly stroking the salamander, the little girl began talking to herself.

"At school, the other children always bully me. They call me stupid. They call me ugly."

"I’m really so sad."

As she spoke, tears even began to gather in her eyes.

Even while crying, however, she still kept feeding it mealworms.

The little salamander felt nothing at all about her tears, and they did not affect its feeding in the slightest.

It merely ate in silence, one mouthful after another.

"If only I could... could leave here."

"I, I will definitely leave here someday."

The girl’s voice shook with fragility, but her tone slowly grew firmer.

"When I’m a little older, I’ll run away from home, go back and find Mom, and then I’ll take you with me too."

"Little Dragon, will you come with me?"

"You will, won’t you?"

The girl looked at the little salamander with hopeful eyes, then hurriedly wiped the tears from her face with her small hand.

Thus, she kept talking to herself while feeding the cave salamander, until more than ten minutes had passed.

"All right, Little Dragon, you’ve finished all the food for today. I’d better head back now, or Dad will yell at me again."

"I’ll come see you again tomorrow. Hurry back into your hole, and don’t let the big birds catch you."

Using her tender little hands, the girl nudged the salamander toward the stone opening.

The tiny creature seemed to understand, and as soon as she pushed it to the entrance, it slowly wriggled back inside on its own.

Watching it disappear into the cave, the girl still looked reluctant to leave, but in the end she stood up and soon made her way back across the ranch beyond the stream.

Poking its head out, the little salamander watched the girl’s figure grow smaller and smaller in the distance, then blew a tiny bubble.

Perhaps it would never be able to empathize with the girl in its entire life, for it was, after all, only a cave salamander.

But that state of affairs was about to change with Ji Yu’s arrival.