Forces of Temptation

Eternal Day

Jiang Fang stood there for a long time before smiling and shaking his head at the reflection of himself in the window.
Why did he want to think so much?
It was good to achieve his goal.
Now that he had fulfilled his childhood wish, he should concentrate on his employer.
Soon after, the rich second generation sent a summary post of how to gain rare materials on the forum.
After a cursory glance, Jiang Fang determined that these so-called rare materials were among the first he had obtained.
Several of these techniques were also wrong.
Still, Jiang Fang never had a habit of correcting other people’s mistakes.
He clicked to exit with a smile, only to catch sight of a certain player’s attack strategy guide for Eternal Day.
He clicked in and browsed it carefully, only to frown.
Should it be passed this way?
He never felt that what Nan Zhou needed was ‘liberation.’
What he needed was freedom and companionship.
By the time he came to his senses and looked at the explanation that had filled half the screen, Jiang Fang felt amused.
This was a game instance.
A game always needed a clear goal.
The goal of ‘killing a boss’ was naturally clearer than the illusory concept of ‘freedom and companionship.’
His own explanation was nothing more than the ego of an old comic reader.
Jiang Fang tapped the keyboard and deleted his explanation word by word.
Click, click.
Looking at the cursor gradually moving back and approaching the starting point, Jiang Fang’s fingers tapped more slowly.
10 minutes later.
Jiang Fang stood outside the French window of the library of Eternal Day.
Nan Zhou was lying on the table with a magazine under his head as a pillow. His hands were pressed under the magazine.
He had taken off his shoes and his white socks gleamed slightly in the sunlight.
He showed the beautiful and flexible curve of his waist without vigilance. He didn’t shy away at all about being seen.
Jiang Fang was pursing his lips at the lack of defense when Nan Zhou moved his body slightly.
One corner of his white shirt lifted up, revealing signs of electrical damage.
Nan Zhou’s skin was glowing white so the red wounds were particularly distinctive and eye-catching.
Jiang Fang couldn’t help caressing the glass.
Tap, tap.
It's like a slight knock on the door.
Nan Zhou didn’t move.
It wasn’t known if he was tired or concentrating on reading.
Jiang Fang lowered his hand and turned away.
He didn’t know how to use the social skills he learned from casinos, depot, ice rinks and schools on the virtual friend he grew up with normally.
He turned to the apple tree in front of Nan Zhou’s window.
Jiang Fang smiled slightly when he saw the leafy fruit tree and red apples on the bent branches.
It wasn’t forced by the system to update?
He actually gave this gift.
If this was the case, Jiang Fang had a new idea.
As far as he knew, there was a monster in the Homeland Island instance.
This was a real-life tower defense and farming game. The purpose was to guard against a wave of monster attacks and destruction of crops before finally winning the battle to defend the farmland.
The boss on the 36th level was a small monster based on a sugar glider.
It looked small, cute and harmless. It was also first class at selling meng.
Yet once it attacked, its head would expand to more than 800 times its size. It would open its mouth and bite off a player’s head.
When stealing food, players could only attack and repel using the lowest level weapon, a green weapon.
Weapons higher than the green level didn’t do any harm to them at all.
They would only eat more happily.
However, after ordinary attacks accumulated to a certain extent, it would suddenly change. It would open its big mouth, chase the player and bite, treating the player’s skull as a melon seed.
Once the player managed to escape from the ring of danger and switch from a bad to good weapon, it would often return to a normal shape and brazenly steal fruit, treating the advanced weapons attacks as air.
Thus, it was particularly difficult.
Jiang Fang had beaten this instance six or seven times.
Finally, among the group of sugar gliders that had become remnants, Jiang Fang chose the most beautiful and attractive one.
This little guy had bright fur, neat teeth and round eyes. His appearance was the best out of the boss so far.
It was badly injured and was still a young mouse. The health bar was cut to only one line. It was lying on the ground and humming. It looked very pathetic.
Jiang Fang picked it up by its little tail, opened the warehouse and threw it in.
The warehouse couldn’t read the data and scrambled the code.
Before the system could clear this bug, Jiang Fang immediately teleported to Eternal Day.
He didn’t hold out much hope for the gift.
In any case, it would be automatically refreshed by the system.
Even if it was erased by the system, it wasn’t a loss to practice clearing the instance a few more times.
Fortunately, the sugar glider hadn’t disappeared from the item bar by the time he came to Eternal Day.
Jiang Fang sat under the tree and took out the semi-conscious little guy.
He drew a small red sash from his scabbard, tied a neat gentleman’s bow around its neck and dressed it up as a gift.
He looked back at the apple tree behind him.
He still couldn’t understand why the Eternal Day instance was so different from others.
There didn’t seem to be the concept of ‘reset’ like there was in other instances.
The apple tree and the injuries on Nan Zhou hadn’t disappeared.
Jiang Fang placed the small sugar glider on the branch and tied it up firmly.
He forced his way out of the instance and chose to enter Eternal Day again.
The sugar glider really hadn’t disappeared.
It hung on the branch in his vision and burst into tears. It raised its eyes and weakly moved its paws in an attempt to beg for mercy.
Jiang Fang crossed his arms and watched it with interest.
He had to seriously consider the danger level if its ability to bite off a person’s head when unhappy hadn’t been erased.
He wrote a small sign and hung it from the neck of the sugar glider with a thin thread.
“This thing is dangerous. Please pay attention to your safety.”
Seeing that begging for mercy didn’t work, this little guy became angry and bared its teeth furiously at Jiang Fang.
Jiang Fang tapped on its nose with the tip of his pen.
It froze for a moment before struggling more angrily and screaming.
Based on Jiang Fang’s incomplete observation, after this gift was given, it fought Nan Zhou at least seven or eight times.
The problem was that Nan Zhou didn’t think of it as an attack.
The moment its head grew large and it tried to bite, Nan Zhou moved flexibly behind it and pressed on its head, gently grabbing the soft fur behind its big head.
Jiang Fang wanted to remind Nan Zhou many times that the sugar glider had no intention of playing with him.
It really wanted to kill Nan Zhou.
However, there was no one around Nan Zhou and he was playing happily with this little monster that would never disappear and leave. Thus, Jiang Fang decided not to do anything.
Jiang Fang’s employer was generous and had unique taste. He was willing to pay for anything so Jiang Fang bought dozens of costumes for his account.
His hair was adorned with snow-white gauze decorated with swallowtail butterflies and his outside was brightly colored with a maple-gold belt firmly tied around his waist.
He held a fan set in snow-white velvet and gently tapped it against his palm.
Jiang Fang sat in Nan Zhou’s room and his fingers gently stroked the blue sky and white pigeons on the window drawn by Nan Zhou.
Nan Zhou was playing with his little pet on the roof not far away.
The sugar glider was fighting with Nan Zhou unilaterally.
Everything in front of Jiang Fang caused him to be stunned for a while.
It was like ‘Nan Zhou’ was a real person.
In a place where the cartoonist’s pen couldn’t read, he drew on his window and liked furry little animals.
Yes... he also kept a diary.
Nan Zhou’s diary was beside Jiang Fang’s hand.
He repeatedly tapped on the cover of the diary with the fan. He had the urge to look at it but just chuckled.
Giving a gift to a virtual character was already outrageous.
What was the point of looking at a virtual character’s diary?
He didn’t want to know that this was the illusion designed by the system and provided to him.
It was true and false.
Outside the system, he could give Nan Zhou a tree, a pet and fantasize about simulated data. This was already extraordinarily and one-sided whimsical.
***
Now the little pet he gave was lying on Nan Zhou’s shoulder.
Nan Zhou was closer to the sugar glider than to himself.
Jiang Fang suppressed the soreness in his heart. The moment he turned his head, he saw Nanji Star on Nan Zhou’s chest, trying to enter Nan Zhou’s clothes.
Jiang Fang, “......”
Nanji Star, who was lifted by his short legs upside down and forcibly pulled out of Nan Zhou’s collar, turned around and struggled to protest.
Jiang Fang placed the little thing on the ground and gently smiled. “Little animals shouldn’t get too close to the body. It is dirty.”
Nan Zhou didn’t care. “He has always been like this. He is very sticky to me.”
Li Yinhang saw that he was willing to talk about his pet and found a breakthrough in the conversation. “Teacher Nan, since when have you raised Nanji Star?”
Nan Zhou replied, “Eight or nine months ago.”
“How much did you buy him for?”
“I picked him up.
“Picked him up?”
“Yes. He was caught by me when stealing an apple from my tree. He was slightly injured so I bandaged him and he became mine.”
Jiang Fang, “......”
Jiang Fang spoke hesitantly. “Didn’t you se...”
Nan Zhou cocked his head. “What?”
Jiang Fang smiled. “It’s nothing.”
No wonder.
He was afraid that his rope couldn’t control the monster.
After Jiang Fang left, the sugar glider bit off the rope and vented by eating the reminder card. Then he went to steal Nan Zhou’s apple. Nan Zhou regarded him as a friend from then on.
Seeing Nanji Star jumping around and pouncing at the dragonfly with a heartless look, Li Yinhang gave a long sigh.
“Why did we run into such a thing? In addition, this innocent little guy was brought in.”
Li Yinhang felt emotional about this little thing that seemed to know nothing and was so fragile that he seemed like he could be poked to death with a finger. “What does it know?”
“Yes.” Jiang Fang looked at Nan Zhou. “Why did this happen?”
Nan Zhou shrugged.
The thoughts of the two men returned to a year ago.
For them, it was a strange change.
A bizarre disaster that took place half a year ahead of the large-scale disappearances in the world.
For Nan Zhou, his original life became more difficult as the influx of players grew rapidly and the number of players increased.
At first, he observed that the time flow rate of Never Town increased rapidly.
There would be a full moon night almost every three days.
Later, on the night of the full moon, he would be forcibly controlled to stay on the street where he lived.
He couldn’t use his familiarity with Never Town to avoid players.
All the houses on the street were cordoned off.
He was forcibly exposed for a long time under the moonlight and the places where he could hide were greatly reduced.
Nan Zhou was glad to meet Nanji Star.
Nanji Star started playing with him naturally and wasn’t very obedient.
He became familiar with Nan Zhou and learned he couldn’t beat Nan Zhou, so he learned to act spoiled to get apples.
Sometime later, Nan Zhou encountered an attack he couldn’t resist so Nanji Star burst out and bit off the player’s head.
Nan Zhou saw the situation wasn’t good and hurriedly placed the little guy back in his pocket.
He had realized that the two weird changes in his world were caused by someone behind the scenes.
He was afraid that the person who had the ability to manipulate the world would snatch Nanji Star away from him.
Nan Zhou hugged his little pet and quietly worried for two days.
However, since that day, strange things had happened.
No players came back to this instance.
His world suddenly quieted down.
It was quiet enough to make people feel ominous.
***
For Jiang Fang, that day was quite a dull one.
In the morning, he was woken up by a call from his employer.
The employer on the other end of the phone was very dissatisfied. “I urged you last time. All achievements, all achievements! You have got all the others. Why is Eternal Day missing?”
Jiang Fang responded gently and politely, “This instance is too difficult. You know that.”
The employer was silent for a moment.
The abnormal difficulty of Eternal Day was the consensus of all Forces of Temptation players.
At the player’s repeated complaints, the officials decreased the difficulty of Eternal Day twice.
One change was to increase the update time of the debuff and the other was to modify the range of activities of the boss in the debuff state.
However, this was no use.
The boss seemed capable of mobilizing all the light demons in the town.
After being restricted, many light demons were willing to work for him.
Every time a player ambushed Nan Zhou, there would be at least seven or eight light demons secretly hiding behind the players.
This morning, a player posted that he was about to successfully kill the boss when a mouse suddenly popped out and bit his head off.
He asked the officials whether everything in the instance was fine.
At present, the officials hadn’t given a corresponding solution.
The employer knew these objective circumstances and had to urge, “It is hard but you have to think of a way. My friends have passed Eternal Day and are about to get the full achievement. Hurry up.”
Jiang Fang helplessly chuckled after hanging up the phone. He stepped into the game cabin and started his daily game time again.
As the game helmet gently closed around his brain, there was a slight tingling sensation from his temple that caused Jiang Fang to frown slightly.
Recently, similar situations would occur when logging in and out of Forces of Temptation.
On the forum, some players suspected that the device was leaking electricity.
Some players also reported that when logging out of the game recently, they got stuck and the exit wasn’t smooth enough.
They would have to click it several times before they successfully exited.
The officials stated that the game was being optimized and this situation fixed, so please stay calm.
Jiang Fang logged into the streets of Rust City and wondered if he should see Nan Zhou.
He didn’t know whether this sugar glider bug would be officially banned.
Before he had taken two steps, a sharp, needle-like pain struck Jiang Fang’s head.
Jiang Fang reacted very quickly. Under the severe pain, he didn’t forget to clock the logout button to immediately leave the game.
A few seconds passed.
In the midst of the residual pain and dizziness, his feet were still touching the cold and rusty concrete ground.
He gritted his teeth and gasped while clicking the logout button several times.
...There was still no response.
Before Jiang Fang realized what was happening, the costume on his body was removed like a layer was gradually separating from him.
Jiang Fang abruptly raised his head and looked around.
Several of the players around him had returned to their true appearance.
A beautiful, curvy beauty turned into an uncle with a bulging belly.
A handsome, heroic-looking man shrunk and turned into a blank-faced female university student.
Jiang Fang stared at the white clothes on his body and seemed to feel something. He raised his hand and touched the choker around his neck.
He hated his scar so when adjusting his appearance, he simply kept his facial features and removed the scar.
...What was going on?