Octopus Plushie

Octopus Plushie

Mu Sichen recalled the moment the octopus plushie had fallen and vaguely felt that the thing seemed to have dropped from his chest.

His experience in the Town of the Eye had made Mu Sichen cautious. He did not touch the octopus plushie directly. Instead, he first lowered his head and looked at his own chest.

The tattoo Qin Zhou had left on his chest was gone.

After returning to the dorm, Mu Sichen had not checked his chest right away, so he did not know whether the tattoo had disappeared before the plushie appeared, or whether he had simply not brought the tattoo back with him.

Logically speaking, the tattoo was power Qin Zhou had left behind. It should have remained in that strange world. It could not have come back with him, could it?

Mu Sichen knew his roommates very well. No one in their dorm owned an octopus plushie this cute and this eerie.

Mu Sichen tried closing his eyes for a moment. His left eye was normal. He had not brought Big Eye's power back with him.

By all rights, the left eye and the tattoo on his chest were both powers of god-class monsters. Since the left eye's power had not come back, the tattoo should not have come back with him either.

Mu Sichen carefully moved closer to the octopus plushie. The plushie was blue. Its eyes looked a little like the clear black-and-white big eyes in comics, watery and glossy. Its mouth was a circle, and he wondered if it could blow bubbles.

Gathering his courage, Mu Sichen stretched out a finger and poked the octopus on the head.

It was a little springy and bouncy. He had no idea what material it was made of.

It was not a stuffed toy, not plastic, and not the material used for certain realistic figurines.

Mu Sichen did not know much about figurines. He had simply never seen anything with a texture that genuinely felt like squid before.

Its elasticity was much better than squid, though. Squid was limp and floppy, while this plushie could actually stand on the floor with its eight legs.

Mu Sichen met those cute, glossy anime eyes and tentatively asked, "Are you Qin Zhou?"

The octopus plushie did not react at all.

That made Mu Sichen feel that asking had been a little stupid.

He stared at the plushie for a while. The plushie showed no sign of life.

Mu Sichen could not keep staring at the thing forever, but he also did not quite dare to move it, so he could only leave it where it was for the time being.

He turned on his computer and went to the official website for My Ideal Town, wanting to see if the site was still there.

The website was still there. The latest announcement was still recruiting closed-beta players, and people on the official forum were still discussing how crude the test game was.

Mu Sichen tried entering this on the forum: "There is something wrong with this game. Do not click the closed beta invitation link, and do not casually fill in your address."

After he clicked submit, however, the posted content became: "I received a closed beta invitation. The game is completely different from the test minigame. It is so much fun. Everyone should come try it."

Mu Sichen: "..."

He tried entering again: "If you accidentally log into the game, make sure you exit the game within ten minutes."

After he sent it, it once again became: "Oh my god, this game is amazing. I played all night and did not want to log out. Everyone has to make good use of the first ten minutes to explore the game."

Mu Sichen was so angry he almost smashed his computer.

He could not casually enter anything else. Otherwise, he would become an accomplice in the game's deception of players.

Unable to find any clues on the official website or forum, Mu Sichen was just about to close his computer when he saw an ID called Ripple Fairy make a post. It read, "I received a closed beta invitation. The game is completely different from the test minigame. It is so much fun. Everyone should come try it."

It was practically identical to the content Mu Sichen had just posted.

Combined with this person's ID, Mu Sichen had reason to suspect that this person was Chi Lian.

So Mu Sichen used the forum interface to send Ripple Fairy a private message: [Sha Big-Eyes.]

He was extremely cautious and did not say his real name. If the other party was Chi Lian, she would know who he was as soon as she saw the name Sha Big-Eyes. If it was only a coincidence that someone had posted the same thing, they would simply treat this private message as spam.

Ripple Fairy replied almost instantly: [Benefactor! Me me me, Chi Lian! My QQ ID is XXXXXX. Add me as a friend, Benefactor!]

Even after experiencing life and death in the game, Mu Sichen still did not really want to expose his real identity, so he used an alternate QQ account he rarely used to add Chi Lian as a friend.

They needed to communicate, but they did not necessarily need to meet. Maintaining this kind of online-only contact was fine.

After he added her, Chi Lian immediately sent a message: [Benefactor! Captain Mu! One of the players in our game group chat died suddenly!]

Mu Sichen's heart jolted, and he immediately asked: [What happened?]

Chi Lian: [I have a gaming friends group. Everyone shares walkthroughs and stuff from time to time. This time, I received the closed-beta invitation at the same time as another person in the group. After I logged out, I went to the group chat to find him right away, but he never replied. Just now, one of his friends in the group said he had gone to look for him and found his corpse in his bedroom. He had only just died. It looked like sudden death from playing games all night.]

This message sent a chill down Mu Sichen's spine.

Those four players purified by the Feather-Eyed Apostle had probably died just as silently in the real world too.

They had been lucky enough to log out. The other players, however, could not come back.

[I understand,] Mu Sichen replied simply.

Chi Lian had not shared this news because she wanted Mu Sichen to comfort her. She continued sending messages: [Captain, what do we do three days from now?]

Mu Sichen: [What do you mean, three days from now?]

Chi Lian: [You still have not checked your phone?]

After Mu Sichen returned, he had first checked his own condition, then been startled by the octopus plushie, and then immediately turned on his computer. It was true that he had not had time to check his phone yet.

He opened his phone and saw that an app named "Game Pod" had appeared conspicuously inside an inconspicuous folder.

The vanished game pod had appeared on his phone.

Mu Sichen took a deep breath and did his best to stay calm before opening the Game Pod app. There was a countdown on it: 71:45:52.

It was a 72-hour countdown.

So the vacation the System had given them was this short.

Mu Sichen tapped the countdown, and a line of text popped up in the app.

[Please log into the game within 72 hours and carry out the next mission. The maximum interval is 72 hours. If the player wishes to enter the game now, that is also allowed.]

Below that was a dialog box asking whether to enter the game.

Mu Sichen decisively chose "No."

He only had a three-day vacation. Unless he rested until the very last minute, there was no way he was going back to that hellhole.

As Mu Sichen lowered his head to look at his phone, he suddenly felt a gaze fixed on him from behind.

He turned back to look. There was no one behind him, only the octopus plushie.

After enduring far too many gazes in the Town of the Eye, Mu Sichen was not careless enough to think this was merely an illusion.

He put down his phone and came over to the octopus plushie. After glancing at the distance between the octopus and the seams in the floor tiles, he said with certainty, "You moved."

The octopus plushie remained motionless.

Mu Sichen pointed it out to the plushie. "The tiles in our dorm are 80 by 80 centimeters. Just now, you were about 20 centimeters away from this tile line. Now there are only 10 centimeters left. You moved that far and thought I was blind?"

He had left the octopus plushie on the floor and ignored it, but of course it was not because he had forgotten the plushie existed. He had deliberately gone a long time without paying attention to it, waiting until the plushie thought he really would not notice it before suddenly observing its condition.

Sure enough, the plushie had moved on its own.

"You are the tattoo Qin Zhou left on me," Mu Sichen said with certainty. "So are you Qin Zhou's avatar? Why were you able to come back with me? Even Big Eye's power did not come back."

The fact that Qin Zhou had followed him back made Mu Sichen deeply uneasy.

The game could be strange. The System could harbor ulterior motives. He could be killed by a god-class monster in that world. But all of that happened in the game and in another world, not in reality.

Compared with crossing into a dangerous world, what frightened Mu Sichen more was bringing something back from that world.

The real world was safe. He could sleep until morning, turn his back to his roommates, and look directly at any person or thing.

This was his soul's harbor. He did not want anything to threaten the real world.

The fact that the octopus plushie had followed him back filled Mu Sichen with fear.

The octopus plushie still did not react.

Mu Sichen reached out and poked it, then asked, "Can you not talk?"

Seeing that it was behaving like an obedient plushie, Mu Sichen simply stretched his finger toward those big eyes. Just as his finger was about to poke into its eye, the octopus plushie's eyes suddenly closed.

"You can move, but you cannot talk?" Mu Sichen guessed.

Seeing that it could no longer hide, the octopus plushie extended one tentacle and patted the floor, as if trying to signal something to Mu Sichen.

Mu Sichen remembered how he and Qin Zhou communicated, so he picked up the plushie and pressed the patting tentacle to the spot between his brows.

"You did not fulfill your promise." A somewhat majestic voice entered Mu Sichen's mind, clashing sharply with the plushie's adorable appearance.

Mu Sichen remembered. The premise for Qin Zhou lending him power had been that Mu Sichen would gain more Followers, and that he would use Qin Zhou's power to destroy the "Pillar."

Mu Sichen had indeed poached several Followers for Qin Zhou, but very quickly, he had turned those Followers back into Big Eye's Followers, and in doing so had unlocked the double-dipping perpetual-motion strategy.

As for the "Pillar," not only had Mu Sichen failed to help Qin Zhou, he had seized the "Pillar" for himself.

Thinking about it this way, what he had done really was not very honorable.

"I was in the wrong," Mu Sichen said. "But at the time, the "Pillar" was basically the only antidote in front of me while I was on the verge of death. I had to take that medicine to survive. And it was not just me. Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo needed that medicine too."

He explained his actions at the time to Qin Zhou, but he was not exactly speaking from the moral high ground.

The power in his left eye had been stolen from Big Eye by using the Self Sticker. It belonged to power obtained through the System, so it had not come back with him. Instead, like the "Undermine" skill and the pickaxe, it had been stored with the System.

But Qin Zhou's tattoo was a transaction between him and Qin Zhou. The System had not been involved. He had failed to fulfill his promise, and Qin Zhou's Totem had still been on his body, so Qin Zhou had followed him back.

People really could not break their word, especially not to god-class monsters from an otherworld.

"I will compensate you," Mu Sichen said solemnly. "Whatever else you need, I will do everything I can to get it for you. You saw it too. After this battle, my power has grown stronger. I can help you more than before."

The octopus plushie raised one not-very-long tentacle. It could not quite reach Mu Sichen.

Mu Sichen took the initiative and brought his head over in front of the plushie. Only then did the tentacle barely touch the spot between his brows.

"The Pillar itself is not important. The point is to destroy the Town of the Eye's domain barrier. There are still two Pillars. You must destroy at least one." Qin Zhou's voice entered his mind directly.

Mu Sichen was definitely going to return to the game. Based on the System's previous mission requirements, he guessed that the next two "Pillars" would definitely be the System's mission targets. That happened to align with Qin Zhou's demand.

But what was he supposed to do if the System kept making him seize Pillars?

"Do I use your power to destroy the Pillar, or do I seize the "Pillar" like I did this time?" Mu Sichen asked.

After asking, he very self-consciously touched the tentacle with his brow.

After all, he was the party who had breached the contract. His attitude had to be better. He had to ask for Qin Zhou's forgiveness so he could send this plushie back to the otherworld as soon as possible. No matter what, it absolutely could not remain in the real world.

Qin Zhou's thought came through: "The Pillar is not what matters. What matters is destroying the barrier and the 'Eye of the Sky.'"

Mu Sichen remembered that Shen Jiyue had once said finding the Pillars was only for the sake of destroying the Town of the Eye's domain. Without the domain, Big Eye would lose Its protection, and Qin Zhou could directly teach Big Eye a lesson.

"So we only need to destroy one more Pillar?" Mu Sichen asked. "There are three 'Pillars' in total. As long as two are destroyed, the domain barrier will become unstable, right?"

He pressed his brow to the tentacle. This time, Qin Zhou did not speak. Clearly, he no longer wanted to pay attention to him.

He was a god-class monster, after all. Chatting with a person like this all the time would be beneath his dignity.

Mu Sichen solemnly cupped the octopus plushie in both hands, set it on his desk, pressed his palms together, bowed to it, and said seriously, "I will definitely do it."

The octopus plushie closed its eyes, as if it no longer wanted to look at Mu Sichen.

Only then did Mu Sichen have time to check his phone.

[Captain, are you there, Captain? Captain, you did not enter the game again after looking at your phone, did you?!]

While he had been communicating with the octopus plushie, Chi Lian had seen that he had not replied for a long time and had sent dozens of messages like a barrage of urgent calls.

Mu Sichen hurriedly replied to Chi Lian and soothed her emotions, saying that next time, everyone would enter the game together, choosing five minutes before the countdown ended.

Only then did Chi Lian relax. She said she would absolutely cooperate with the captain and do whatever he told her to do.

Mu Sichen put down his phone and let out a long sigh.

He tried to make a plan for the operation three days later, only to realize that he knew far too little about the Town of the Eye and Big Eye. He had no clue about the next "Pillar" either, so there was no way to make a plan.

Forget it. He would deal with it when the time came. A vacation should be spent properly enjoying real life.

Unfortunately, he could not enjoy life either, because he was relatively poor.

He might as well make money.

Mu Sichen accepted a two-hour paid gaming companion order and carried a client through ranked matches. Two hours later, the sky had grown dark, and Mu Sichen was a little hungry too.

He dug a bag of instant noodles out of the cabinet and planned to make do with that for dinner.

He had just finished soaking the noodles when the dorm room door opened.

His roommate He Fei had returned.

"Why are you back?" Mu Sichen asked.

It was summer break now. All his roommates had gone home for the holiday, and Mu Sichen had only been able to stay at school during the break after applying for permission.

He Fei tossed aside his suitcase, sat down beside Mu Sichen, and said, "I went home for vacation. The first week, I was still pretty welcome. By the second week, the novelty had worn off and they started getting annoyed with me. Not studying, not doing chores, eating all day and lazing around... My dad said I was about to turn into a useless lump at home and told me to go out and work to experience life. I found an internship company near campus, so I figured I might as well come back and stay in the dorm. Saves money too."

"I see. An internship is pretty good too." Mu Sichen guiltily shifted his gaze away, thinking that fortunately the game pod had become an app, and time in the real world did not pass while they were in the otherworld. Otherwise, there would really be no way to explain the game to his roommate.

"Anyway, it beats staying at home and getting yelled at. Are you eating instant noodles? Smells good. Let me have a few bites. I just got off the train and have not eaten dinner yet." He Fei looked toward the lunchbox Mu Sichen had set on his desk.

"You can have the leftover broth. The noodles are not up for discussion." Mu Sichen swiftly pushed the lunchbox away, moving the instant noodles out of He Fei's reach.

When people in their dorm said "a few bites," that was not a tiny mouthful. He Fei could eat half a packet of noodles in one bite. In two bites, Mu Sichen's whole bowl would be gone.

"Don't be so stingy. I just..." He Fei's words suddenly stopped.

His gaze landed on the octopus plushie beside Mu Sichen's lunchbox.

The octopus plushie had its big eyes open and was looking at the two of them. The aroma of instant noodles kept drifting onto it.

He Fei walked up to the plushie, knelt on one knee in front of the desk, and looked at the plushie very carefully. His eyes gradually went dazed, and his expression filled with reverent adoration.

Seeing that something was wrong, Mu Sichen hurriedly slapped He Fei on the back of the head.

Only then did He Fei snap out of it. He said to Mu Sichen, "Where did you get this plushie? It is so..."

Mu Sichen thought he was going to say "so cute" or "so pretty."

Who would have thought that the first words out of He Fei's mouth would be: "So sacred."

Mu Sichen grabbed the octopus plushie, stuffed it into his own blanket, and said coldly, "Game recharge bonus."

--------------------

Author's Note:

Qin Zhou: Although Mu Sichen did not fulfill the promise between us, he let me sleep in his blanket!

Mu Sichen: I need to find a way to send this plague god back!