Chapter 82 - #82: Welcome to the Hunter’s Dream

Chapter 82: Chapter #82: Welcome to the Hunter’s Dream

At nearly the exact same time across the platform, almost every single streamer reached the end of the opening sequence and encountered the Scourge Beast devouring the corpse.

And almost every single one of them did the exact same thing: they walked right up to the towering werewolf, threw two pathetic bare-handed punches, and waited to die.

Some streamers had meticulously searched every dark corner of the clinic first, frantically trying to find a hidden weapon stash.

Only after confirming that there was absolutely nothing to loot did they finally surrender to the chat’s advice, resigning themselves to the scripted death sequence.

Reaching this point, many veteran gamers couldn’t help but frown in mild disappointment.

There didn’t seem to be any actual mechanical point to this sequence.

Did the developers just want everyone to experience the sheer ferocity of the werewolves firsthand?

Did he genuinely have to force a mandatory death right out of the gate?

The beast was completely blocking the only exit door; if a player wanted to progress the story, they had to walk directly into the slaughter.

A few extremely stubborn players had actually tried to beat the beast down. They meticulously dodged its rapid, sweeping claw attacks, waiting for openings.

But bare-handed strikes dealt virtually zero damage. Slapping the massive beast didn’t even scratch its health bar.

The werewolf’s attack patterns were incredibly fast.

Even if a skilled player managed to perfectly dodge every single strike, fighting it unarmed was an exercise in pure futility.

If this was just a scripted plot kill to advance the story, any effort a player exerted here was completely meaningless.

"Look, I absolutely respect Nova’s dedication to torturing the player’s mental state, but forcing a mandatory death sequence five minutes in just feels kinda cheap," many prominent streamers complained, shaking their heads.

In their professional opinion, the opening clinic sequence was a rare design failure from the acclaimed studio.

Currently, it seemed the sole purpose of dying in the clinic was simply to transport the player to the game’s hub world: the Hunter’s Dream.

But this disappointment was just the naive assumption of players completely unfamiliar with Bloodborne’s true mechanics.

They would very soon discover that the ’impossible’ werewolf blocking the clinic door was not a boss, nor was it even an elite mob. It was literally just a basic, low-level trash enemy.

If they had known the mechanics, executing the beast unarmed was entirely possible; all it required was sneaking up behind it, landing a fully-charged heavy attack to the spine, and triggering a visceral critical strike.

However, no one could deny the breathtaking graphical fidelity of the game’s hub world.

When the comatose hunter slowly woke up from the blood-soaked floor, they found themselves transported to a misty, ethereal realm.

The Hunter’s Dream was surrounded by massive, chaotic ancient tree roots and centered around a beautifully dilapidated Victorian chapel.

The surrounding hillside was completely blanketed in weathered crosses and tilted tombstones.

While it was referred to as a church, the sheer volume of graves made the landscape look more like a forgotten mass grave.

Most strikingly, the moon hanging in the sky above the dream was astronomically large, occupying nearly half the skybox.

It dwarfed a standard full moon by a hundredfold, casting a pale, unnatural ray-traced glow over the entire sanctuary.

Lying discarded by the side of the cobblestone path was an abandoned, life-sized porcelain doll.

She was slumped against the low stone wall, her long silver hair spilling over her shoulders.

Despite her lifeless state, the texturing on her porcelain joints and tailored clothing was hauntingly, delicately beautiful.

The stone steps spiraled upward toward the illuminated church.

Resting on the steps, Silver once again encountered the horrific, skeletal creatures from his nightmare.

The pale, hollow-faced entities were barely knee-high. They crawled out from beneath the cobblestones, holding up various weapons for the hunter to choose from.

"Wait, so these creepy little fuckers are the messengers?" Silver let out a long, shaky exhale.

The visceral image of them swarming his body during the blood transfusion was permanently burned into his retinas.

Here, the player could accept a gift from the Messengers, choosing one primary and one secondary weapon.

After learning that these horrifying little creatures were actually just friendly NPCs offering loot, Silver felt marginally better.

They might look like sleep paralysis demons, but he could comfort himself with the fact that they were just giving him free gear.

Following the prompts on the stairs, the player was allowed to select one trick weapon and one firearm.

Perhaps heavily influenced by the iconic E3 cover art, nearly every single player immediately gravitated toward the exact same right-hand weapon: the Saw Cleaver.

This weapon was a brutal, mechanical masterpiece. In its collapsed state, it functioned as a serrated saw blade.

But with a flick of the wrist, it transformed into a massive, extended cleaver that utilized sheer centrifugal force to rip through flesh and inflict massive blood loss.

The entire blade was mottled with dried gore, and the white bandages wrapped around the hilt were stained dark with dirt and dried blood.

For the left-hand weapon, Silver selected the Hunter Pistol.

The absolute second the Saw Cleaver snapped into his character’s grip, the visceral, oppressive darkness of the opening cinematic finally made sense.

A deep, undeniable desire to go out and slaughter began to rise in his chest.

"Nova’s psychological manipulation is actually unbelievable," Silver marveled, rotating the camera to inspect the rusted, high-resolution weapon in his hand.

"The cover art, the trailers, the environmental storytelling... everything is subtly conditioning you, making it physically impossible to suppress the urge to hunt."

If his first encounter with the Scourge Beast had ended in a humiliating, unarmed failure, the weight of the Saw Cleaver completely erased that memory.

Now, he was desperate for a rematch.

’If I run into that overgrown mutt again, I’m going to carve it into pieces.’

Walking past the graves and into the chapel, the interior was dimly lit by a few flickering candles.

Sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by piles of dusty books, was an old man in a wooden wheelchair.

[Ah-hah, you must be the new hunter.] The man lowered his head, a dry, raspy chuckle escaping his throat. [Welcome to the Hunter’s Dream. This will be your home, for now.]

[Just go out and kill a few beasts. It’s for your own good. It’s just what hunters do! You’ll get used to it...]

The NPC, Gehrman, offered a warm, unsettling smile, actively encouraging the player to embrace the slaughter.

Reading through the fragmented lore notes scattered around the room, the core objective of the game became clear: if the player wanted to escape the nightmare, they had to uncover the source of the plague and defeat the nightmare’s host. Otherwise, the terrifying Night of the Hunt would repeat itself for eternity.

Silver spent several minutes meticulously wandering around the Hunter’s Dream, investigating every corner and interacting with every single object.

"This place genuinely has such a strange, tragic beauty to it," Silver murmured, looking out over the dense fog blanketing the lower hills.

[

Aidanas: The atmosphere is incredible, but looking at that massive moon actually gives me an intense feeling of primal dread.

3idikm: Huge moon + giant saw blade = completely unhinged aesthetic. I love it.

Negima15: It genuinely feels like some kind of cosmic, Lovecraftian god is about to descend on the city.

LIRIK: The environmental horror is 10/10. Imagine if Nova ever made a pure survival horror game...

]

Fully equipped, Silver finally interacted with the central headstone and teleported out of the Hunter’s Dream, arriving in the first proper zone: Central Yharnam.

Near the very first lantern checkpoint, a faint, sickly light glowed behind a barred window.

Approaching the glass, the player could interact with a coughing, xenophobic local locked inside his home.

[Yharnamites... don’t share much with outsiders,] the sickly man wheezed through the glass.

[This town is cursed...]

[Whatever your reasons might be, you should plan a swift exit.]

At the end of the dialogue, the man offered one final, ominous warning: the residents of Yharnam firmly believed that outsiders were the ones who had brought the plague upon their city, and they had a very unique way of expressing their hospitality.

And tonight, the Yharnamites were officially out on the hunt.

Silver pushed open the iron gates and walked down the cobblestone road leading deeper into the city. As he moved, he panned the camera around, marveling at the towering gothic spires, the intricate gargoyle reliefs, and the oppressive, Victorian architecture framing the skyline.

The advanced rendering engine made the gloomy labyrinth of black iron and rusted red blood feel suffocatingly real.

Before he could even make it down the first street, a mob of diseased Yharnamites wielding torches, pitchforks, and rusty cleavers spotted him.

They immediately turned and charged, their eyes glowing with a cold, hollow killing intent.

Yharnam was world-famous for its miraculous blood ministration—a medical procedure rumored to cure any known disease. But contrary to those grand medical rumors, a terrifying, beastly plague was currently ravaging the streets.

The infected residents refused to share their burden with outsiders.

They genuinely believed that the foreigners were the ones responsible for turning their grand city into an apocalyptic slaughterhouse.

Watching the mob of feral, heavily-armed locals sprinting directly toward him, Silver instinctively hammered the backstep button on his controller, retreating slightly up the stairs.

He swallowed hard. "Okay then. The locals really are incredibly hospitable—"

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