Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 369: A Ray-diant’s Guide On How To Survive The Spirit Realm! (ft. Vince Cleverly!)

Five more days had passed. And tonight was going to be our last night in the Noctveil Wilds. Hopefully.

As I had predicted, the beasts had spilled over into the Valley Of The Forgotten, claiming it now that its former ruler was killed by me.

Which... was not good.

Yesterday, our cabin was attacked by a high-level Lesser-grade creature. It was some sort of reptile, its thorny neck around six meters long and its humanoid head full of needle-like teeth.

It was also capable of shooting the sharp bone protrusions on its long neck like projectiles, so it took us a little effort to hunt it down.

One piece of good news that came out of that ordeal was that Lily was now a B-rank as well, joining Michael, Ray, Juliana, Alexia, and me in the ranks.

She had already been absorbing the majority of Essence from those giant crabs Ray and Vince were slaying.

Most of them were low-level Lesser-grade too (although so much easier to kill out of water than any other Lesser Spirit Beast), so she had already nearly topped up her core.

That long-neck creature gave the final push she needed for her ascension, which came at the best possible time.

Still, by the end of it, we decided we had to sail away now before a Greater-grade beast showed up to have us all for its dinner.

So, currently, we were in the middle of making some final necessary preparations.

Oh, by we, I mean only Kang, Alexia, and Juliana.

I was slacking off, as usual.

Michael was trying to talk to Lily, so everyone was giving them some privacy.

Ray and Vince, meanwhile, were busy in tomfoolery.

Ray stood in front of a floating drone, smoothing down his lush brown hair with his one good hand. Vince stood beside him, looking like he was both regretting agreeing to this but also strangely excited to face the camera.

”Welcome, my dear, Ray-diants! I’m your host Ray,” the one-armed boy chirped, flashing a grin that was far too bright for a man currently stranded in a Death Zone.

”And I’m his smarter half,” Vince added cheerfully.

”Today, we’ll teach you how to survive in the Spirit Realm!” Ray announced, punching the air in a show of excitement. ”Spirit Realm is a dimension parallel to Earth, infested with nightmarish creatures like... the Mist Monster! So what would you do if you came across it? Let’s find out!”

”Step one,” Vince beamed. ”Scream! Scream as loud as you can! It asserts dominance. If you aren’t vibrating the local tectonic plates, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

”Step two!” Ray continued. ”Throw your friend at it. Sacrifice builds character! Editor, insert Julia throwing Lady Alexia’s clip here!”

Vince frowned and looked at him. ”Wait, you still have that? I thought most of the items in your pouch were blown up along with it?”

Ray grinned and tapped the side of his forehead. ”Yeah, but I was smart enough to hand a drone, a power bank, and all my memory cards to Lady Alexia before the fight even started. Why? Because I knew something bad was going to happen. I felt it in the vibes.”

”Woah!” Vince was so impressed you could’ve seen stars in his eyes. ”Forget Lily, you should be the one we should be calling our seer!”

”Heh,” Ray smirked, then clapped the stump of his other hand. ”Okay, let’s get back to the topic. Step three!”

”If you have it,” Vince nodded along, ”you gotta flaunt it!”

•••

Michael’s talk with Lily... did not go well.

No, ’did not go well’ was a massive understatement judging by the way he was bawling his eyes out nearby.

Ray and Vince tried to carry on with their video. But the sound of him crying was too loud and too annoying. So they tried to cheer him up.

But somewhere down the line, the process of cheering him up devolved into mocking his upright behaviour.

So now they were doing Michael’s mimicry parody instead of consoling him. The camera was still recording.

Vince lowered his voice into a gravelly, pseudo-intellectual baritone, moving his hands like how Michael does it. ”We have to consider the philosophical implications of our decisions in the spirit realm, Ray. Are we the hunters, or are we merely the prey of our own internal shortcomings?”

Ray tried to force his face into a brooding frown, though he just ended up looking like he had a migraine. ”Every action... echoes into eternity. The weight of this blade is nothing compared to the weight of my own existential dread.”

Then they both sat there in silence, arms crossed, staring intensely into the white sand like searching for the meaning of life. Occasionally, they would pass some deeply philosophical comments and try not to burst into laughter, breaking character.

Between them, Michael sat on the sand, actually sobbing into his palms. The contrast was... exquisite.

Juliana walked by, carrying a bundle of vine-ropes. She stopped, looked at the trio for a couple of seconds, and scowled.

”If you three got time to waste, then move your asses and help me with setting up the oars!” she spat, then walked away with a judgmental stare.

Now before they could defend themselves and tell her they were making ’art,’ not ’wasting time’ — Alexia emerged from the ship’s hull, dusting sand off her sundress.

Seeing her in that attire, Ray’s brooding facade shattered in a heartbeat. He scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over Michael in the process.

”LADY ALEXIA!” he shouted, his voice jumping three octaves. ”Hi! Hello! Do you need help sitting? Standing? Breathing? You do look out of breath! I have an excellent lung-support technique I’ve been practicing! I just need to put my mouth over yours to use it...”

Alexia stared at him with a vacant expression and coughed once. ”...I’m fine, Ray. Please stay five meters away from me at all times.”

Ray watched her walk away, then whirled back to Vince with a sigh of defeat. ”Michael would’ve had a better line.”

Vince looked at the boy in question and sighed back in response. ”Michael is currently a puddle, Ray. We’re all we’ve got.”

•••

Preparations were completed. The ship, which I had named Shell-raiser even though no one acknowledged it — was ready.

But since the last stretch of the journey ahead was undoubtedly going to take a heavy toll on us both mentally and physically, we agreed to rest one more day to psychologically ready ourselves.

The only problem, however, was that... we had no shelter. Like I said, a beast attacked our cabin yesterday, so now we were effectively homeless on our last night in a Death Zone.

Oh, well. It wasn’t like anyone could’ve done anything about it, so we settled on sleeping outside.

Ray and Kang took the first watch. Vince argued for a card game that he had created out of tree barks but lost when Juliana physically kicked the deck into the fire.

Michael sat beside me as I poked half-heartedly at the piece of meat I was planning on eating before bed.

Lily tried to bandage my scars since some of them weren’t fully closed yet. But I waved her off.

”You’re going to get infected,” she muttered.

I scoffed. ”I’ve already fought a literal fallen god. An infection sounds like a vacation at this point.”

”Don’t tempt fate,” Alexia murmured... then she immediately fell asleep.

What the fuck?! How did she fall asleep so fast??!

”She’s right,” Michael added, nudging me with his shoulder. ”You’ve already used up several lifetimes of dumb luck.”

I glared at him. ”I prefer the term ’heroic perseverance.’”

”Delusional works too.”

I snorted.

•••

The next day, we had to leave in a hurry. Kang had spotted a pack of vile beasts making their way toward the shore, their silhouettes far too big and far too wide.

He had reported it just in time.

We pushed the longship — the Shell-raiser, a name that I was still trying to make happen — into the shimmering waters of the Lake of Grief.

It glided with surprising grace, the prismatic crab scales across the hull turned invisible as they dipped below the surface. So from underwater, no monster would be able to spot us.

We all quickly boarded the ship. Everyone took their designated positions on deck, except for me. Because I had to go under the deck.

Rows upon rows of oars were sticking outside from the interior of the hull.

Each one had been carefully wedged into place by Juliana and Alexia the night before, their shafts running through narrow slits along the sides of the ship so the blades could dip into the water while the rowers sat inside, hidden beneath the deck.

It was not a particularly elegant design.

But it worked.

Which, given the circumstances, was the only thing that mattered.

The only issue was... we had no rowers.

Yeah...

I mean, there were barely seven of us. And we had to equip more than eighty oars since we needed to travel fast.

To counter that issue, we had filled the ship’s whole basement with a lot of sand from the beach.

Now what would sand accomplish, you may ask?

Ray had the same stupid question.

I ducked under the low wooden beams and activated my innate power. As if on cue, multiple writhing hands shot up from the white sand to form a synchronized army.

Each one grabbed an oar shaft and began rowing, the sand shifting unnaturally to mimic the motions of a well-trained crew.

And just like that, we had finally escaped the Noctveil Wilds.