Chapter 6: The First Revival

[Beep! Beep! Beep!]

A shrill alarm blared from outside Sykes’s study.
The sound was so sharp and piercing that its lethality was doubled for the merfolk, whose hearing was exceptionally keen.

His hand trembled in fright, and an excessive amount of reagent spilled in.
The transparent liquid in the crystal cup turned completely turbid.

‘What’s going on?’
Sykes couldn’t be bothered with the experiment in his hand anymore.
He pushed open the door and swam downstairs.

“Ella…? What just happened?” he asked hesitantly, seeing the little sprite crouched in a corner, curled up into a mushroom-like ball.

Ella looked up, a rare look of bewilderment in her two bright red eyes.

[Master, two minutes ago, a player used the [Respawn] function. This is twenty-nine days earlier than projected.]
She frowned, seemingly unable to comprehend the situation before her.

“Respawn??”
This time, Sykes was truly shocked.
“What did they encounter? Did the demons crawl out from underground again?”

The merman hurriedly spread his spiritual power throughout his entire domain but didn’t sense any threatening elements within it.
He then counted the players in the domain: 1, 2, 3… 49?

Why was one missing?

Ella seemed to have noticed his confusion and described the reason in a flat voice.

[As this is the closed beta phase, only fifty portions of energy were prepared in the fountain. The player who died couldn’t form an energy outer membrane due to insufficient energy and is now stuck in the fountain.]

Sykes: “…”

“How did he die?”

Ella brought up the previous footage and projected it onto the magic mirror.

[According to Ella’s analysis, this player, named Hua Nord, died by—suicide.]

The merman was now truly speechless.
Because of this strange turn of events, he had no choice but to leave his mage tower and, under the astonished gazes of the players, reach into the water of the Rainbow Fountain—the resurrection point—to inject new energy into the depleted spring.

Then, from within, he pulled out a particularly familiar person.

Sykes quickly recognized the human he was holding.
Coincidentally, wasn’t this the guy who had first developed that strange crawling posture?

He expressionlessly dropped the person on the ground and turned to leave.

‘You’re the one who ruined the image, and you’re the one who committed suicide to respawn. Why are there such unruly people among humans?’

Sykes hadn’t gotten far before a group of players crawling on the ground blocked his path.

“Look! There’s a merman here!!”

“What’s the big deal, aren’t we all merfolk?”

“That one’s different!! It’s all sparkly!”

“Holy crap! Is that a player? Do people that good-looking actually exist in real life?”

“What are you talking about! Look at that aura! Those looks! That swimming speed! It’s definitely an NPC, no doubt about it!”

The merman looked at the twenty-odd crawling merfolk in front of him and had the strange illusion of seeing a meeting of sea lizards.

He was starting to feel his heart, head, and tail ache again.

Back to Hua Yibing’s side.

To be honest, Hua Yibing really hadn’t intended to die at first, but he couldn’t resist the temptation of the bullet comments and courageously became the first person to experience Sea Realm‘s respawn function.

At the time, he and Old Li had teamed up and were heading towards the coral grove in the west, preparing to carry back a few bundles of wood to repair their dilapidated hut.

Along the way, the two put aside their previous disagreements and chatted about their views on the game.
They unexpectedly hit it off so well that they almost couldn’t resist logging off to add each other as friends.
The two player-version merfolk crawled to their destination, laughing and talking.

From a distance, that coral forest looked like a swath of gray, but upon closer inspection, they found that it wasn’t gray at all, but a riot of colors!

Unlike the corals on Earth, the corals here were as tall as trees.
From the top down, the lower they were, the more branches they had.
And the branches had all sorts of colors, so many and so varied that it was dazzling to the eye.
Some even had small, cute, spherical seeds at their tips.

Hua Yibing steadied himself by holding the base of a coral wood, casually pulled off a thinner branch, and tried to snap it with force.
But he found that although it looked slender, it was actually incredibly tough.
He used all his strength, but couldn’t even break off the tip of a tender bud.

[Can you do it or not, Huahua? How can you not even break a branch?]

[A real man can’t say he can’t! (doge head) Streamer, prove yourself quickly.]

[The two people above, you do it if you can! This is clearly an issue with the coral’s properties, okay!]

[Person above, you know everything again.]

[Hahahaha, don’t argue. By the way, it’s a good thing Huahua teamed up with Old Li, otherwise even completing the quest would probably be a struggle.]

That’s right! Wasn’t that divine artifact still there!

Hua Yibing’s eyes lit up when he saw this bullet comment.
He turned to look for Old Li’s position, only to find that the honest man had already picked up that shiny golden machete and was hacking away at the coral with grunts and puffs.

“Brothers, see that!”
Young Hua proudly showed off to the bullet comments.
“As a European Emperor, I’m getting a free ride to victory!”

(TL Note: “European Emperor,” is internet slang for someone with extremely good luck, often in gacha games or loot drops.)

[66666 This move is called hugging a thigh, brothers, take notes.]

[Getting a free ride is fine, Huahua, as expected of you!]

“What do you mean, hugging a thigh!”
Hua Yibing angrily flicked his tail, making a gesture of whipping the camera twice.
“How can lowering the quest difficulty by making friends be called hugging a thigh?”

[This streamer is hitting the audience, calling the police.]

[Ah! That pale gold tail! Please whip it two more times, more, more~]

[Person above, you’re not right.]

[Stop it, you guys! Protect the stream room!]

“Speaking of which, does the quest have any requirements for the color of the coral wood?”
With the help of the tree-chopping artifact, Old Li quickly gathered ten complete pieces of wood.
He tied the wood into a bundle and threw it towards Hua Yibing.

Hua Yibing opened the quest log and carefully read the quest requirements again.
“Probably not, but we should try to chop the same color series, otherwise the repaired house will look so ugly.”

Old Li thought about the scene of a house with a red patch on the left and a green patch on the right, and nodded in agreement.

After Old Li had finished chopping wood for both of them and was preparing to pack up and head back, Hua Yibing suddenly made a request.

“Um, Old Li, can I borrow your machete?”
The pink-haired youth scratched his head in embarrassment.

Old Li raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask much, simply tossing the machete over.

Hua Yibing hurriedly caught it and explained briefly, “I just went to pick a coral fruit and didn’t feel any pain when my hand was pricked by the thorns on it. Sea Realm‘s pain sensitivity seems to be really low, so I wanted to try its other function…”

Connecting his words, Old Li suddenly thought of something and asked in surprise, “You don’t mean you want to…”

Before he could finish his sentence, the pink-haired merman on the other side had already cleanly slit his own throat with the machete.

Old Li: “…commit suicide, do you.”

The expected bloody scene of fish blood splattering everywhere did not appear.
The entire fish on the other side just flashed with light and then disappeared into the air—no, the seawater—as specks of starlight.

‘This death method is designed quite reasonably. Although it doesn’t look as realistic, it takes into account the experience of most people.’
Old Li made another note in his mental review notebook.

As for Hua Yibing after his suicide, just as Sykes knew, he was stuck inside the resurrection point due to insufficient energy, and could only hopelessly accept the ridicule from the frantically scrolling bullet comments—

[The first streamer to get stuck in a resurrection point for being too fat.]

[Red red fire fire hahahahahaha.]

[I laughed so hard that the dogs within a three-kilometer radius don’t dare to bark at me.]

Young Hua’s dejected ahoge drooped, and he pinched his small belly aggrievedly.
‘Have I been eating too much fried chicken recently? Am I really getting a little fat?’

This led to a situation where, when he was lifted out of the resurrection point by the neck by a sparkling merman, not only did he not feel offended, he even felt like he was seeing—Kamisama!!

(TL Note:(Kǎ Mì Sà Mǎ) is a Chinese transliteration of the Japanese term (Kamisama), which means “God.”)

“Nobody move!!”
Hua Yibing shouted after coming back to his senses, pushing aside the players blocking his way and crawling towards Sykes with a ‘swoosh, swoosh, swoosh’.
“Lord Merman!! Wait for me! Is there anything I can help you with!!”

Sykes did not need any help.

Right now, Sykes just wanted to turn and leave, to leave this group of foolish subjects behind him.

But he failed.
His long, elegant, white fishtail was currently being held in the arms of that shameless pink-haired sea lizard, who was muttering things like “this must be a top-tier NPC.”

“Ella.”
Sykes suppressed the disgust in his heart and called for his reliable little butler.

[Yes, Master. I understand.]

Then, all the players present received a system notification—

[Novice Quest (3): As a proper merman, how can you not know the noble Lord? Please work hard to gain the Lord’s favor and become a true citizen of the Sea of Death! Player’s current progress: Favorability 0/Favorability 10]

[Quest Reward: Legal Citizen of the Sea of Death status x1]

[Your gathering is too noisy. The Lord’s favorability towards you -1.]

For the audacious Hua Yibing who was hugging the merman’s leg, Ella specially sent out a separate notification—

[The Lord dislikes subjects who are disrespectful. The Lord’s favorability towards you -5.]

This measure proved to be completely effective, because the next second after the notification appeared, the crawling fish who had been blocking the way just now retreated to a safe distance with incredible speed, including the one who had been hugging his fishtail.
This made Sykes feel much more comfortable.

“My subjects, I hope that the next time I see you, I will see you swimming with ease.”
The silver-haired merman realized the key to restraining the players.
He pushed up the monocle on his right eye and spoke slowly and methodically.

[Congratulations player for triggering a special quest: The Lord’s Appreciation! Learn to swim gracefully like a true merman!]

[Quest Reward: Lord’s Favorability +10 (limited to the first three)]

Whoosh.

The players exploded.

The bullet comments in the stream rooms also exploded.

That night, the largest gaming forum in Huaxia exploded.

Post after post with the Sea Realm tag quickly shot up to the hot topics, almost reaching the point of flooding the board.
This greatly surprised many users who habitually browsed the forum, almost making them think that Sea Realm had paid for promotion or hired a water army.

(TL Note: “Water army,” is a term for people hired to post online comments to sway public opinion, often by flooding forums or social media.)

Wang Yang was a university student at a certain university in Huaxia.
On weekdays, his professional courses were so numerous that he could only sneak a little bit of leisure time after school.

Today, he returned to his dorm and lay on his bed, habitually opening the gaming forum he often browsed, only to be nearly blinded by the monotonous Sea Realm posts.

‘What’s going on? Has the forum finally been conquered by a water army today?’

Although he thought this, Wang Yang still sorted the posts by popularity and started reading from the top.

The top post was published by a user with the ID “Old Li’s Gaming Diary,” titled “The Ten-Thousand-Word Long Review Owed to Sea Realm.”

Wang Yang had always followed this UP Master’s game reviews and had also eaten the melon of his past drama with the game Sea Realm.

(TL Note: “Eating melon,” is a popular Chinese internet slang that means to watch drama unfold from the sidelines, like a spectator eating melon seeds. It refers to being an onlooker to gossip or a scandal.)

So, with great interest, he clicked open this long post.