Make Azeroth breathtaking

"The logout button works. I just clicked it, no problem. Shall we log off and call it a day?"

"Log off now? Don't forget that with our immersive gameplay, you have to wait twelve hours to log back in after logging off! We've only allowed less than a third of our playtime to pass before you want to log off?"

"What else can we do if we don't go down? This place doesn't look like a 'developed area'—wait a minute?"

Looking at the meteor-like object trailing a fiery red tail as it fell in the distance, the group exchanged glances and made a decision.

"Go and see?"

59. The Strange Mother Nest

What is this?

"Ancient gods?"

"Why do I feel like it's the mother nest?"

"Stop talking, I'm having a megalophobia attack... This thing makes me sick, how about you guys?"

"It's alright. I've lowered the realism to 5%, and it looks like something out of a comedy movie."

Is it a texture?

"I don't know, or rather, does World of Warcraft even have textures now?"

On a small hill, Old D and his teammates stood beside their mounts, dumbfounded—if World of Warcraft had indeed implemented this expression for immersed gamers like them—staring at a massive, writhing lump of flesh in the distance. They frantically discussed its nature in the party chat. One player thought it might be some kind of texture, since textures weren't uncommon in the game. However, Old D and the others felt that, given the current state of World of Warcraft, textures might actually be rare finds...

"Why don't we go take a look? We don't have anything else to do right now anyway."

"Okay, okay, let me see... We can play for another four hours, that's enough!"

"Let's go!"

After several minutes of fruitless discussion, the group gave up and chose the simplest solution. After estimating the distance and time, they jumped onto their mounts, started the engines, and prepared to charge into the castle of flesh and blood in one go.

only...

What was that sound?

Just as Old D took the lead in making his mount take off, an unusual sound entered his ears without warning. At first, the sound just sounded like some kind of noise, but after a few seconds, some regular words and phrases were vaguely discernible. After about half a minute, Old D realized that this was not noise, but someone trying to 'communicate' with him.

"Did you hear anything, besides the wind?"

After repeatedly confirming that there was indeed a message in these words, Old D typed a message in the team chat channel to see if his teammates had also heard the sound. The response he received made him frown slightly.

"Absolutely not."

"No way, I heard it very clearly from my end."

Are you sure you didn't mishear?

"It's definitely not, it's clearly English, I can recognize a few words."

As Old D spoke, he scrolled through the chat history in the public chat, hoping to find any system messages related to the voice he had heard, but naturally, he found nothing.

"This is really strange."

At that moment, everyone realized one thing: the enormous, writhing living thing in the distance was definitely problematic. Theoretically, their optimal solution was to log off immediately, inform their superiors using other communication methods, and then wait for someone to handle the issue. But...

"Charge! This thing might trigger some hidden things!!"

Players' inherent nature successfully prevailed.

————————————Strange dividing line————————————————————

Wriggle, wriggle.

Remus felt himself wriggling.

A few minutes ago, he was still aware that he was a humanoid creature, but now, he only felt himself wriggling.

'Damn it, this feeling is absolutely awful!'

Although he understood that he was a person, that he had dissipated his physical body in reality through certain methods and rituals and entered a vast online world, he now had a strange feeling that he shouldn't be a person, but rather a giant 'mother nest'!

However, to Remus's relief, although his body had become incredibly bloated due to mutation, his abilities had not only not decreased but had actually increased significantly compared to before. Some inexplicable forces were surging wildly in his mind—or rather, in his thought processes—allowing him to inexplicably acquire some strange knowledge—knowledge that he had never encountered or known before.

'Like this...like this...and like this?'

Driven by curiosity, Remus quickly began to use this strange knowledge and embarked on his research adventure. Soon, he mastered the most basic application of this knowledge and successfully sent out some random messages. Then, guided by this knowledge, he quickly spawned a batch of Zerg—not the Zerg force assigned to him by Amon, but his own Zerg!

"Excellent!"

After easily modifying these alien insects into the shape he desired, Remus became even more enthusiastic. Just as he was happily continuing to mold the 'toys' in his hands like clay dolls, something incongruous surged through his mind like an electric current.

"Ah, let me see... um?"

With a gentle thought, the surrounding scene was presented to Remus clearly and objectively. After filtering out some unnecessary information, all that remained in Remus's eyes was the Old D Team rushing towards him.

"Player?"

Although he realized that Old D and his group were players loyal to Azeroth, Remus initially wanted to give them a formal greeting. However, just as he was thinking about how to contact these players, a strange thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

"I'm the 'creator' now! Why not treat them like toys and turn them into my game experience?"

————————————————Old D's Flight Divider————————————————

"Wow--"

Old D's priest teammate sat atop his flying golem, staring at the massive aggregate of flesh and blood that seemed so close yet was at least three kilometers away, and couldn't help but utter a very priestly sigh. Beside him, Old D, in a moment of folly, increased the realism to 100%, only to pull it back down in less than a second.

"How about it."

"I probably won't eat meat for the next few days."

Seeing the dive synchronization rate fluctuate wildly on the projection screen in front of him, Old D vowed never to touch it again.

"So, what do we do now? Land and look for an entrance, or just start firing and dig a hole?"

"Fire! Too lazy to decipher the code."

After briefly assessing the heavy firepower his group could still muster, Old D switched to a hybrid ARPG+FPS mode, pulled out a plasma hand cannon, and attached it to his flying golem, activating the golem's energy core to a low-overload state. The other players followed suit, taking out various assault weapons and preparing to fire. The priest player who had spoken first transformed his golem into a giant cannon mode, using levitation to stand on it, his expression one of pure glee.

"Five, four, three... wait, what's that?"

Just as Old D began the countdown and pressed the launch button, the top of the massive nest suddenly spewed out a cloud of pale green liquid and oval, fleshy-looking monsters. Sensing something was wrong, he turned the cannon without thinking and blasted the plasma ball at the falling objects in the last second.

"Sizzle—Bear!!"

———————————————Remus's dividing line——————————————————

"They actually found it... no, it's more like they didn't find it at all."

Despite the first wave of attacks being easily repelled and nearly a third of his Zerg swarm being burned, Remus showed no emotional fluctuations whatsoever—he felt that some things had drifted away from him, while others filled his heart, making him calm and more mechanical—unfortunately, Remus was completely unaware of the latter.

'First, we need to force these guys onto the ground...'

After quickly determining their optimal tactical solution, the top of Remus's lair expanded again, and countless grayish-white swarms, roughly the size of large drones, poured out, rapidly approaching Old D's group propelled by jets of gas. One of Old D's players, a StarCraft 1 veteran, immediately recognized what these creatures were!

"Damn it! A self-destructing mosquito? Quick! Run to the ground!!!"

"How do we run?! There seems to be a problem down here too!!"

"Never mind that... Wow, I'm infected! Wow, I'm crippled!"

"Dismount! Quick! Priest, use Slow Landing when you're about to hit the ground!!"

"...*(%*!")

In the blink of an eye, Old D's team was completely engulfed by clumps of high-energy plasma, and Remus sensed the disappearance of his target, feeling something filling his heart.

"They are immortal, search for them."

————————————The dividing line where Old D was defeated————————————————

"Forehead......"

As the plasma glow faded from his sight, Old D found himself back near his crashed spaceship, where his teammates were also nearby, looking at each other in bewilderment.

"Did we get hung up?"

"According to the battle log, yes."

"But shouldn't we be resurrected and sent to the rear?"

"This place isn't even on the map, so is this spaceship our default respawn point?"

"If that's the case, doesn't that mean we'll be stuck here no matter where we log off or log back on?"

"...Seems...okay? What do you think, Old D? Should we log off and notify the others? It looks like our team can't handle that Mother Nest."

"I don't think this number is a kill number. Shall we try again? If we still can't solve it, we'll call for backup."

"Okay, I'm a little unwilling to accept it either."

Faced with the situation of failing before even getting started, after a few seconds of dejection, everyone quickly and cheerfully discussed the next tactics in the chat channel. Old D took out a map and quickly drew a line on it.

"Fly first, land when you get there, activate the camouflage, find the entrance, and if you really can't find it, plant explosives on its walls to blast a passage out—I just don't believe—this thing can't be destroyed here!"

—————————————— Remus's dividing line ————————————————

Remus felt like he was dreaming, even though he was certain he was fully conscious.

In his dream, he saw his life as a living person. He saw the person he hated most as a child lingering in front of him, taking away his toys. He saw himself wandering the streets after being ruthlessly kicked out by his parents. He saw himself being pressed down on the cold street, with people laughing and clapping, then trampling on him and contemptuously insulting him. He saw the dark and hopeless life he thought he had found a job to barely make ends meet, only to become a slave... Anger, pain, and hatred washed over his so-called "reason" like a tidal wave, making his mind increasingly calm—and increasingly bizarre.

"You... are playing a game, while I... am struggling!"

Using the swarm of insects flying through the air, Remus easily spotted Old D's team flying towards him again. Amidst the churning hatred, the entire hive began to operate at an incomprehensible speed. Swarms of Zerg roared as they crawled out of their cocoons and howled as they rushed towards Old D's team. Old D and his men were like small waves, completely overwhelmed by the swarm in less than ten seconds.

"No, no, this thing is weird, something's not right!"

Beside the spaceship, Old D, who had once again returned from the brink of death, rubbed his temples, recalling what he had just felt. Just now, when he was being torn apart by a jumping bug, a string of curses suddenly appeared in his chat history, and his infiltration stability rate also fluctuated wildly in a strange way—but at that time, he had already lowered his senses to almost zero!

"You were also insulted in private messages?"

"Yeah, it looks like some chuunibyou teenager who got some power and is showing off triumphantly—could that thing be an Awakened One?"

"The Awakened Ones should have their personalities constructed based on the original model. Do the Zerg have this kind of temperament?"

"Let's log off and tell the others that we can't solve this problem."

"Well, that's the only way."

After another round of discussion, Old D had no choice but to abandon the plan to launch another attack. Admittedly, they had countless chances to try and fail, but that thing was just too strange. His intuition told him that ordinary methods really couldn't solve it!