The chief surgeon had already changed out of his surgical scrubs and put on a white coat, with an ID badge on the outside that read—“Brian Howard, Director of the Medical Office.”

Dr. Howard inserted an IV into Blake White’s hand, closed the glass lid of the recovery pod, and said to her, “Get some rest. Your wound is expected to heal within twelve hours. If you feel unwell, press the green call button on your right hand side. I have another surgery to attend to, so I’ll be going now.”

Blake White nodded silently.

The doctors and nurses left the room where Blake White was.

Blake White lay in the recovery pod, watching the built-in monitor display various data.

The machines beeped incessantly, the ECG fluctuated continuously, and her heart rate stayed between 80 and 110. Her blood pressure was low, indicating mild anemia.

All her physical data was displayed there.

"Crimson Soil" leans toward a cyberpunk worldview, so the technology in this world is much more advanced than in Blake White’s real world. The high-tech recovery pod was something that Earth’s current technology couldn’t produce.

Blake White had suffered such severe injuries, yet the doctor told her the wound would heal in twelve hours—this level of medical technology was also unattainable on Earth.

The tagline for "Crimson Soil" is “A truly existing second world.”

Entering the game is equivalent to opening the door to a second world.

There’s no exaggeration in this tagline—Blake White really did transmigrate. She wondered if the other ten thousand players who participated in the closed beta with her had also transmigrated into this world, gaining identities and new lives different from those in the real world.

Blake White was highly adaptable to all kinds of environments. Like a weed, she was tough and could take good care of herself even without her parents. Now she was in a completely new environment, unfamiliar to her, but Blake White optimistically believed that although her in-game identity was extremely complicated and dangerous, she still had a relatively stable start.

Because her current identity was that of a patient—a rookie security guard injured by criminals while on field duty during her internship.

During her recovery, she was safe and could temporarily stay away from trouble. And since her injury was on her head, pretending to have amnesia was a cliché, but it worked.

This gave Blake White plenty of buffer time.

The question of why she transmigrated was far too profound—Blake White had no way to get to the bottom of it.

What lay before her was a very urgent problem: how to survive.

Those six pieces of advice were deeply imprinted in Blake White’s mind.

“First, treat the game world as the real world.”

“Second, do not reveal your identity as a player to anyone.”

“Third, do not disclose any game content to anyone.”

“Fourth, you only have one life; death is irreversible.”

“Fifth, if you choose to start the game, you have only two paths: ‘clear the game’ or ‘character death.’”

“Sixth, everything comes at a price.”

The fourth and fifth points could be considered together—their main emphasis was the consequence of “death.” You only have one life; this was likely not a joke.

If the game world is the second world, then the reality the players come from could be called the first world. If you die in the second world, would you also die in the first world?

The price of death was something no one could bear—Blake White felt the pressure—the pressure to survive.

Blake White had twelve hours to recover.

After twelve hours, she would have to leave the recovery pod and face the people of the second world head-on.

Given her complicated identity, she might need to frequently interact with a rebel organization called “Mechanical Dawn,” work hard to climb the ranks in the Investigation Department to gain everyone’s trust, and become a qualified double agent, secretly passing information to the organization...

Blake White had some buffer time, but she had also drawn a king’s hand at the start.

Every step would require extreme caution, as if walking on thin ice—one misstep and she could trigger a bad ending.

She wondered if any other players were as unlucky as she was.

The recovery pod was operating, blue beams of light sweeping over her body again and again, restorative agents flowing into her veins. Blake White felt a tingling, itchy sensation on her scalp as her wound healed rapidly.

“C-check the panel?” Blake White tried saying in her mind.

The game system responded to Blake White, and the light screen unfolded again, familiar text appearing.

She skipped the basic identity settings she’d already read several times and checked another section.

[Basic Attributes]

Name: Blake White

Profession: Depriver

Extraordinary Ability: [Not Acquired]

Innate Talents: [Performance Persona] You are highly skilled at acting and can fool most people.

[Tenacious Vitality] You are as resilient as a cockroach.

[Danger Avoidance] You can keenly sense and avoid nearby dangers.

[Rapid Learning] You learn any skill with half the effort for double the result.

Profession: Depriver? What exactly does Depriver mean?

The system prompted at the right time: “Depriver—a profession that gains power by hunting down those with special abilities and taking their extraordinary powers.”