Chapter 24: He Didn’t Want to Kill

Translator: Daoist6fubtiW

[The endless siege brought disasters that made people group together for survival but also scattered many smaller groups. When lonely survivors occasionally encountered each other by chance, they often ignored their differences and chose to cooperate during wartime.

Mann used to be a frontline soldier, but after witnessing a mass execution, he became a deserter. Emilia was a lawyer; before the war began, she lived with her father and sister in a luxurious villa.

She was the sole survivor of her family.

At least for now, they were content with each other’s company and decided to find a less severely damaged house to hide in.]

Brother Yin looked at this scene, utterly thunderstruck.

The game screen displayed the time, temperature, and days in the top left corner.

This house wasn’t very severely damaged?

Only two people were in the building, one named Mann, a former frontline soldier, and another named Emilia, a lawyer.

The building had a massive hole that was about two stories high, rendering it unable to even keep the wind out; the house was riddled with large and small holes everywhere.

There was no valuable furniture in the room; even the chairs were makeshift wooden planks.

This was considered not very severely damaged?

He had never thought a game would start this way.

After the initial tutorial, he realized that this game wasn’t about playing as heroes with weapons, saving everyone heroically like justice descending from the sky.

Here, we played as ordinary people, defenseless, without even food.

And this game had only one objective: to survive.

To survive until the end of the war!

“A survival game, huh? I’ve played way too many wilderness survival games; this is nothing,” Brother Yin shrugged it off.

He had played games of this genre before; he just hadn’t expected Black Star to create a game like this.

As the head of Yogame game platform, Teng Feng was deeply concerned about the release of these two games.

He was familiar with their own game, but he couldn’t quite understand the game produced by Sprout Studio.

It was said to be a war-themed game, coincidentally competing with their prepared game.

What a coincidence, he intentionally bumped the release date, absolutely not the theme.

The moment the game was released, he purchased the game called “This is My War”.

Everyone would feel surprised when entering the game, even Teng Feng was no exception.

Seeing game characters searching for food in the ruined building, he felt a bit puzzled.

Who said this was an FPS game? Can you call this an FPS?

Unlike the previous two games that required complex controls, this game was simple to operate, needing only a few basic buttons and not requiring fast reflexes.

Brother Yin recalled a sentence he had seen in books before,

“I asked a chaplain accompanying the army if killing during war is permissible. The chaplain said it’s fine as long as you don’t enjoy killing.”

He had only seen war in books and on television.

Later, he played some war games, but in those games, the protagonists were soldiers with guns, brave warriors breaking through enemy lines.

He had never been a civilian before.

In the first few days of the game, he went outside every night to collect food from abandoned, dilapidated buildings.

By now, his shelter had three people, one more survivor from outside.

On the fifth night, Brother Yin went out as usual to find food and tools. His face had lost its cheerful expression, and the atmosphere in the livestream room turned quiet.

The livestream room, once filled with thousands of viewers, now had only sporadic bullet comments.

On the fifth night, Brother Yin chose to go to the supermarket.

Usually, you could find some remnants of food in places like supermarkets, just a few cans or other items could be very helpful.

As he entered, he noticed someone talking behind a wall.

Brother Yin crouched down and approached. A man in military uniform was speaking; he stood by the door, his back turned to Brother Yin. In front of him, a girl crouched on the ground, searching for useful items in the debris.

“That’s a good name, fitting for such a beautiful face,” the soldier joked.

“Thank you,” the girl replied, still searching for supplies, looking somewhat bewildered.

“Looking for something?”

“I just want some food.”

“Food? Poor girl, I can give you some food.” The soldier’s chest puffed out, striding towards the girl.

Watching through the crack in the door, Brother Yin couldn’t take it anymore. He hadn’t expected that even while searching for things in the supermarket, he’d witness a girl being harassed.

Seeing the soldier approaching, he kicked the girl to the ground.

Without hesitation, Brother Yin entered the room, switched weapons, charged forward, backstab!

The frightened girl fled, and Brother Yin didn’t pursue her. He silently searched the soldier’s belongings, getting 20 rounds of AK bullets and a bottle of alcohol from him.

Gripping the supplies, he stayed silent.

From the start of the game until now, he had never killed anyone. But someone had attacked his shelter while he was out searching for supplies at night, stealing most of their belongings and injuring the person left behind in the house.

He had never seen a war game so realistic.

Soldiers in war bore the duty of killing enemies. The battles between soldiers on both sides weren’t a simple matter of right and wrong, but existed in a gray area of modern morality, often without distinct moral differences.

Would a person feel guilty upon awakening for the crimes committed in their dreams, a sense of remorse?

These questions also applied to the actions players took in the game world, even more acutely.

Players were conscious, had the ability to think rationally, and could fully control their actions without coercion or pressure—meaning their choices were made voluntarily while fully awake.

Yet, when he saw the girl about to be harassed, he couldn’t hold back.

The game environment was just too realistic, to the point that the characters’ emotions within the game were affected.

He himself was affected.

Initially, he didn’t want to kill.

He scavenged honestly, was yelled at by others pointing guns at him, so he hurried home. Occasionally, he would nervously steal things, causing the mood of those in the shelter to grow somber, full of various sadness.

Starvation, illness, complaints, crying, tantrums, and running away from home—days filled with poverty, hardship, arguments, and chaos.

Until today, when he finally took action, killed someone, it felt as if he had broken a vow.

He picked up an axe and started killing, and somehow, life seemed smoother.

But Brother Yin felt—heavily suffocated.