Chapter 758 - 758: My Life is More Important

After a quick glance around the bathroom, Ash steered the protagonist he could now control outside.

The cramped, dirty restroom, lit by dim lights, felt a bit oppressive.

He was afraid a ghost might pop out of the toilet at any second. After all, in horror games and movies, bathrooms are always accident hotspots.

Stepping out of the bathroom and seeing the scenery, Ash was a little taken aback.

It wasn't shock, but a bit of confusion.

"Is this really a horror game?"

Looking around confirmed he was in the outskirts of a small town.

In the distance, he could see forests and a lake. Strangely, it was daytime in the game, unlike the dark settings of games like Outlast and Resident Evil.

The only thing that felt off was that the low walls and roads looked worn by time, and the whole town was eerily quiet.

But that had nothing to do with horror!

If he hadn't known Silent Hill was a horror game, Ash would have thought he was playing some kind of casual vacation game.

He looked around. Roadblocks, trash cans, and a car with its door open. It looked like the protagonist's car, but nothing special.

After taking a couple of steps, the game cut to an unskippable cutscene.

The protagonist slowly walked towards a low wall as a female voice seemed to speak in his ear, clearly someone from the protagonist's memories.

"I saw this town in my endless dreams—Silent Hill."

"You promised you'd bring me back."

"But you didn't."

"Now, I'm all alone."

"At our old spot..."

"I'll be waiting for you."

As this flashback ended, the background music in the game changed.

The guitar notes, sometimes high, sometimes low, like a hurried drizzle, sounded cheerful yet strangely urgent.

This suddenly gave the game atmosphere a mysterious, exciting feel.

"I received a letter. The name 'Mary' was written on the envelope."

"That's my wife's name..."

"How absurd. It must be fake... I kept telling myself that."

"Because someone who is dead... wouldn't write letters."

"Three years ago, Mary died. She died from a terrible illness."

"But why am I here looking for her?"

"Our old spot... What does that mean?"

"Does she mean the park by the lake?"

"We spent a whole day there, just the two of us... staring at the water."

"Is Mary... really here?"

"She's really alive... Is she still waiting for me?"

After the protagonist James's inner monologue, Ash regained control of the character.

Just then, layers of white fog appeared in the distance.

It was completely different from real-life smog. Real smog was gloomy.

But this game's white fog was bright, a vast expanse of white that hid everything behind it.

The graffiti in the toilet, the slightly creepy music, the letter from his dead wife, and the male protagonist arriving after receiving it, the Silent Hill town shrouded in white mist in the distance.

Now Ash felt he could take back his earlier assessment. He was a little scared.

Ash swallowed hard and looked at the comments in the live stream, feeling a bit better.

Although there was no jump scare yet, it was different from the previous game, Yan Huo. Even though this didn't seem to be a sequel to PT, he knew from PT that there were monsters in this game that could kill the protagonist, just like the ghost that turned around and attacked in the previous game, PT.

This potential threat immediately ramped up the tension, making him fear something scary could pop out anywhere.

After the cutscene ended, Ash could control the character freely.

He noticed some aspects of Silent Hill.

For instance, he encountered the familiar "air wall."

Well, not exactly an air wall, but it limited his movement, allowing him to go only one way.

If he tried to go in other directions, the protagonist, James, would quietly mutter, "Mary... maybe she really is in Silent Hill. I can't leave yet."

Aside from that, Ash noticed there was almost no UI on the screen.

This was something seen in games like Uncharted and Detroit: Become Human, maximizing player immersion.

In those games, that design was awesome, but in Silent Hill...

Well, it made things more intense.

Ash looked around the scene and found a map of Silent Hill inside the open car door.

This was clearly James's car, presumably the one he drove to Silent Hill.

Then he came here and used the abandoned public restroom.

But this map, he felt, was more of a comfort than truly useful.

It wasn't very helpful.

Although it marked various locations in Silent Hill, as a physical paper map, players still had to explore it themselves.

"This town looks really big. To reach Boss Lucas's 10,000 slots, it's going to be tough."

"Of course, that has nothing to do with us. Our goal is to beat the main story. Anything else is irrelevant!"

Ash put the map away and declared his goal in the live stream.

He ignored comments in the chat like "Is that all?" and "Ash, where's your ambition?" that were trying to stir him up.

Whoever wants to challenge that can go ahead. He certainly wouldn't.

The only path forward was down the mountain road.

Ash took a deep breath and started walking down the road, but that's when things got serious.

When he was just standing there, Ash didn't feel much.

But as he started walking, Ash immediately felt a difference.

"Guys... do you notice the fog seems to be getting thicker!"

"And besides the faint background music, there's no sound at all!"

Ash controlled James, walking a few steps and then stopping.

Unlike at the entrance to the restroom, after walking down the path, Ash keenly noticed the fog was getting thicker.

Visibility ahead had become very limited.

And most importantly, besides the mysteriously stirring background music, the only sounds were his footsteps on the ground and James's breathing.

His own breathing wasn't the issue, but paired with the extreme silence, it was jarringly loud.

No gross scenes, no scary monsters, not even darkness.

The game screen was even bright, yet Ash felt incredibly oppressed.

At first, Ash was a little scared, wondering if a monster would suddenly appear.

But after walking for a while, nothing happened.

However, that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. In fact, the environment made him even more on edge.

Because as he moved forward, the fog got thicker.

When he reached the path, Ash's vision was limited to about one or two meters around him. Beyond that, he could only see the white fog.

There was absolutely no sound in the game scene. Even the faint background music had disappeared.

The only sounds were his footsteps and his breathing.

Deathly silence.

It was too quiet. No insect chirps, no bird calls, no sign of any living creatures, not even the sound of wind, just the endless white fog.

Now, he even wished for a scary monster to appear, but there was only the vast fog.

What Silent Hill created was purely psychological horror.

It gradually challenged your mental fortitude, eventually crushing your defenses with fear.

Ash now fully felt this oppressive feeling.

Brave words before playing, heart palpitating afterward – that was the perfect description of his current mood.

Looking at the comments in the live stream, which were also scrolling to alleviate the viewing experience because of the dead silence, Ash hesitated for a moment before making a decision.

He glanced at the still unknown length of the country road and then at the live stream comments. Ash coughed slightly. "Well, everyone knows, Silent Hill and many other horror games have puzzle elements that require high intelligence from the player."

"But, my IQ is like the Troll Warlord's intelligence growth in Dota. It might not be enough for this kind of game."

"So, what I mean is... how about we stop here for today? We can come back and play this game later when I'm a bit smarter, okay? Honestly, you can't ask someone with a deficient IQ to have such high expectations."

Ignoring the countless question marks in the live stream, Ash silently closed the game.

If he could, wouldn't he want to breeze through the horror game world like it was his backyard?

But the bloody experience taught him that there's a gap between ideals and reality.

Rather than proving himself wrong with his own words, he felt his own life was more important.

(End of this chapter)

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