What should I do!

Brian Clark was worried sick.

Author’s note:  Brian Clark: Help! My spouse lost his job and won’t look for a new one, just keeps playing games. How can I help him? Anxious, waiting online!

Chapter 6

“Sigh…” Laura Hayes, sitting behind Brian Clark, let out a long sigh.

Laura Hayes took out his phone and opened a task prompt that only he could see: Find the ultimate boss who has been hiding in the undeveloped world for fifteen years and kill him. The winner will become the next person to clear the game, able to bring all abilities and items gained during the clearance back to the real world, and have one wish granted.

This was a hidden mission the system had suddenly released a few days ago, also known as the shortcut mission.

According to the system’s harsh rules, clearing the game was nothing but a pipe dream. Some experts had calculated that to fully clear the game, one would have to go through over a hundred worlds, with the difficulty increasing to insane levels, and every world carried the risk of death. Even if someone did clear the game, they would probably no longer be human, but a machine without feelings.

In all of history, only one person had fully cleared the game fifteen years ago, and after clearing it, that person disappeared. Some say his power reached godlike levels, and he might have even killed the main god and become the new ruler of the planes.

Laura Hayes couldn’t understand this at all. Someone who had been tormented by the system for thousands of years—how could he choose to become the new main god and torment others who suffered like him?

At the time, a temporary teammate who had cleared the game more than ten times told Laura Hayes that someone who had lived for thousands of years and possessed power far beyond ordinary people would probably see regular people as ants. You couldn’t guess his thoughts with normal logic—he had already become a god, and a god’s attitude toward humans was probably only indifference and domination.

Originally, no one believed anyone could clear the game. Most of the players who had cleared some worlds, like Laura Hayes, just drifted along, following whoever they could, living day by day, staying in a world as long as possible—who knew if they’d survive the next one.

It wasn’t until fifteen years ago, when the first person cleared the game, that everyone gained hope.

So it really was possible to break free from the system forever, to really leave this endless, brutal survival game.

People started to actively try to clear the game, no longer just muddling through, but after all these years, a second person still hadn’t appeared.

When Laura Hayes had completely given up again, he suddenly unlocked a hidden mission. Completing it would make him a game clearer. Not just Laura Hayes, but quite a few people triggered the hidden mission. Rumor had it they formed an alliance to clear the game together.

But this mission was extremely dangerous. No one knew how strong the ultimate boss was, but this undeveloped world was infamous. For hundreds of years, not a single player had made it out of this world alive. No one knew just how dangerous it was—everyone just knew it was a world of certain death.

Laura Hayes was just a rookie player. Even though he got the hidden mission, he didn’t dare come to such a terrifying world to die. He just wanted to keep being a slacker, surviving one world at a time.

But he was just too unlucky. He got caught by the alliance, and their leader, who didn’t dare come to the undeveloped world himself, forced him to scout it out—if he refused, they’d kill him.

Either way, he’d die, so he might as well take a chance. What if he got lucky and cleared the game?

So Laura Hayes accepted the mission and was teleported to this world.

Before entering, Laura Hayes equipped all the armor he’d exchanged from the system, afraid he’d be killed as soon as he arrived.

When he woke up, he found himself lying in a pitch-black room, so scared he didn’t dare move. He lay there for a whole day before finally getting up to turn on the light, discovering he was in a basement.

Laura Hayes thought maybe this was an extreme survival “dark room” game. The door definitely couldn’t be opened—if he tried, there’d be a trap, and he’d die for sure.

He searched the room for clues, but the game was just too hard. He couldn’t find anything and could only wait to die.

For a full seven days, Laura Hayes was trapped in the basement. After eating all the instant noodles and bottled water in the room, he started to starve. On the seventh day, he lay on the bed, pulled up the system panel, and started picking out an item for a painless death—he didn’t want to starve to death.

At that moment, someone knocked on the basement door. Laura Hayes was so scared he hid under the covers, shaking all over.

After knocking for a while, the person came in. Laura Hayes bit the corner of the blanket and started redeeming a “resigned acceptance” item.

Just as he was about to click “Confirm Exchange,” the blanket was lifted, and the landlady stood in front of him, saying, “I sent you messages on WeChat and you didn’t reply, called you and you didn’t answer. You’re still a student—if you don’t have money for rent, I can give you two more days, but you can’t just disappear without a word!”

Laura Hayes: “……”

He trembled as he took a few hundred yuan out of his wallet and said, “If I pay you, you won’t kill me, right? Is this enough?”

The landlady looked at him in surprise. “Why would I kill you? Have you been playing games all night again? You still owe five hundred on the rent… ah, forget it, just pay me together next month.

“And also, the community is doing a census. Remember to hand in a copy of your household registration book.”

“Household registration book?” Laura Hayes stared blankly at the landlady.