Whose world-class drama are they criticizing?

Based on his years of experience tasting delicious food, besides the obvious guarding monsters in front of the treasure chest, there are also hidden surprises in the shadows.

Sure enough, the surprise came soon.

This little house is unremarkable, just a single-story farmhouse with rotten corn hanging from the eaves, a dusty stove, and an empty rice bin.

A charred female corpse lay beside the stove, seemingly killed by the blazing fire.

Ryan realized that the withered monsters wouldn't use blazing fire, so this was probably Kiri killing and robbing them.

Further inside was the bedroom, with a wooden table and a locked cabinet.

Time was of the essence; a wooden table or a display window would suffice.

The players quickly scanned the room and pinpointed the location of the treasure chest.

It's definitely in the shop window, without a doubt.

It's not that they have particularly good taste.

It's just that the wooden table wasn't locked, but the shop window was.

"The shop window is locked." Yuzu frowned. "Shouldn't we look for the key first?"

"Look what Ryan has done to you...."

The player with the ID 'Brother Long' was speechless. He picked up his sword and slashed at the lock. With a snap, the rotten lock broke.

This lock is an ordinary lock, and it's even rusty.

Sorry, Makka Pakka, the legendary investigator.

This treasure is mine now.

Brother Long's lips curled into a smile; he was going to grab the treasure and run.

The lock opened, and the players behind it were overjoyed. But as the display window slowly opened, revealing the contents, their elation gradually turned into existential doubt.

What's locked in the shop window isn't some kind of treasure.

It was a baby.

A bizarre baby with its entire body withered.

It was still alive; you could see the blood vessels wriggling beneath its pale skin, but those weren't blood vessels, but rather withered vines. And what was wriggling in its chest cavity wasn't a heart, but scarlet spores.

"You even abuse and imprison infants, do you have no humanity?"

Even the notoriously low-class Brother Long couldn't stand it anymore. Locking up a ghost infant as a trap in a treasure room—was this something a human would actually do?

The sick baby was awakened. It opened its eyes, looked at the strangers, and let out a strange and shrill cry.

Brother Long, who was closest to the baby, heard the crying and his accumulated disease bar instantly filled up, causing him to explode into pieces of flesh and blood.

The two players next to them, who were a little further away, also saw their disease accumulation bars instantly increase by more than half.

"Oh no! Retreat quickly, there's a mimic monster!"

Brother Hua Liu is too sinister and evil; he actually locked up a ghost baby to guard his treasure.

"This is for raising ghost children."

The players ran away cursing as they went, feeling insulted and filled with regret: "I should have chosen the table!"

"This stupid game doesn't follow the rules!"

The players scrambled away, but the shadows they brought with them remained.

As the baby's cries subsided, the shadowy figure writhed in the shadows, moving like a serpent to the wooden table.

A dark hand reached out from the shadows and groped towards the wooden table drawer.

You'll be able to laugh soon.

Faced with this situation, most people their age would be unable to hold back, but Ryan was able to do so with ease.

Let me unveil your veil.

What kind of treasure could have bewitched a paladin's heart?

Ryan pulled open the wooden table and saw what was hidden inside; his pupils dilated in disbelief.

"This is--?"

Chapter 65 Oathkeeper Paladins

"This stupid game doesn't follow the rules."

Ryan cursed angrily.

What was hidden in the wooden table far exceeded his expectations.

When the drawer was opened, Ryan gasped, because what was inside was...

There's nothing there!

There were no magical artifacts as expected, not even any treasures of the mortal level. A thin layer of dust covered the drawer, and a few yellowed slips of paper were placed in the corner.

Ryan wondered what kind of secret manual was hidden on the note, but after glancing at the beginning, he was greatly disappointed. The handwriting on the note was blurry and illegible, marked with a date; it was just someone's diary.

He felt the drawer again, but there were no hidden compartments; that was all.

The phrase "no reward at all" is also a kind of "unknown reward," and it hit Ryan like a boomerang.

Ryan was almost laughing in exasperation.

You even placed a mimic monster, but then you didn't put any treasure chests in it, huh?

Are you just here to eat stones?

At least other people put in one or two level 1 forging stones, but this guy didn't even put in any forging stones?

He originally thought he was invincible in the way of the horse, but he never expected that there is always someone stronger than him, and there is always someone better than an orphan.

This is really strange.

Ryan pondered to himself, "Reality isn't a game. If there's no treasure in the house, what does Kiri's murmured 'treasure, my treasure' mean?"

If there's no treasure, why has this paladin been confined to this hut for thirty years?

Ryan had considered the possibility that other adventurers had gotten there first.

In any case, we have to leave first.

Although they didn't get the treasure, their escape plan remained unchanged.

"Waaah...waaah..." The baby withering in the shop window cried louder, the eerie cry carrying the curse of withering. Just listening to it would increase the accumulation of withering, sending chills down one's spine.

The Sick Knight also charged to the front of the house. The legendary investigator had exhausted his magic and closed his eyes in despair, waiting for the Sick Knight to become his speed bump.

After the Sick Knight slaughtered the players one by one, Ryan appeared and ran away in front of everyone.

Stealing the treasure was just a side effect for Ryan; escaping was the real priority.

But the expected massacre did not occur.

"What do you mean?" Ryan blinked. "Have you lost your grudge?"

The second unexpected thing happened.

The Sick Knight rushed up to the Legendary Investigator, but instead of killing him, he charged straight into the house, brushing past the three fleeing players without even glancing at them.

While it's good that I wasn't killed, the psychological torment was immense.

Behind them, the eerie sound of a baby crying filled the air, yet the players dared not move, their hearts pounding wildly.

Ghost babies, crying, villages, viruses, monsters... a gathering of elites, all the elements of horror are on full display, not to mention that Eden's VR graphics are incredibly realistic.

I'm not playing a horror game, am I...? Yuzu, who's easily scared, is about to cry.

They dared not make any rash moves, for fear of provoking the irrational, withered knight, and then they could only stand there waiting for the monster's footsteps to fade into the distance.

The sun dragged the latter's body into a long, thin, ghostly shadow. The shadow first swept past them, past their terrified faces, then covered the desk, passed through the wooden bed, and finally stopped in front of the shop window.

The rustling sound of the broken armor colliding with the rotting plants also stopped.

The players then realized that the monster had stopped in front of the shop window.

Time passed slowly, and after a while, there was no sound from it. However, the cries of the ghost baby in my ears gradually weakened.

The legendary investigator took a deep breath, slowly twisting his neck, and mustered his courage to glance back—

Then he witnessed a scene he would never forget.

The yellowed window frames refracted the sunlight of late spring and early summer into a hazy glow, a scene so distant it seemed to have been captured on old film.

The hideous and eerie monster bent over, its expression hidden by its mask. Sunlight pierced through the former paladin's armor, casting a warm white glow upon it.

The monster opened its arms and cautiously, tiptoeing, clumsily embraced the equally ugly and bizarre infant.

The cabin became very quiet, and Ryan and the players could only hear... the whispers that the monster had murmured countless times.

The tone remained unchanged, just like before, with a strange melody, eerily resembling some kind of ballad.

No.

—That was originally a folk song.

In the Land of No Light at the ends of the world, in the town of Withered Disease where all things wither, the Knight of Withered Disease holds the infant of Withered Disease and softly sings:

"baby."

"my darling....."

Even though the knight only remembered the first two lines, it was still a ballad.

The baby, who was crying, gradually stopped crying after hearing the lullaby.

Its breathing gradually calmed down, and it finally drifted off to sleep.

A lullaby.

This is the ugly, withered knight, the greedy mayor of Withered Town, Kiri's idiotic older brother, the leader of the Straw Knights, a greedy man despised by all, and his last words before withering away.

He may have been holding a baby, or he may have tucked the baby into a safe display case.

Holding a straw sword and humming a lullaby, he guarded the town of Dry Disease, trapped in the White Night.

—And so he guarded it for thirty years.

From night to day, from prosperity to decay.

...

While the Sick Knight wasn't paying attention to them, Ryan and the players left the hut.

Ryan was a little numb; all the previous clues had come together.

He finally understood: the players surviving didn't mean they lost aggro.

Patients with the disease act on their pre-death instincts. When the Disease Knight heard the baby crying, he instinctively wanted to comfort and protect it, which is why he abandoned the player and did not kill it.

The withered baby was not a treasure chest locked in a shop window; to the withered knight, the baby was the treasure itself.

The baby was originally a normal human baby, but was later corrupted by the curse.

Recalling the female corpse seen on the stove, she was most likely the mother of this infant, infected with the withering disease, which is why Brother Kiri used 'Radiant Fire' to release her, not because he killed her to steal her treasure.

In the eyes of the knight whose rationality was distorted by the disease, these outsiders, such as Ryan, were the monsters he fought in his lifetime.

Over the past thirty years, countless adventurers and mercenaries have come to Blighttown upon hearing the legend of the 'treasure,' only to be killed by Brother Kiri, which has further increased the 'treasure's' credibility.

The adventurer who managed to escape spread rumors that he was bewitched by the treasure and formed the Straw Knights not to liberate Blighttown, but for the treasure of the Blight Princess.

Since then, the reputation of the straw family has plummeted and it has declined ever since.

numb.

Ryan was a bit confused. After all that, it turned out that the "treasure" the knight kept talking about really was a treasure, a treasure in the literal sense.

The once-in-a-lifetime, highly anticipated opportunity to escape has been missed.

"Is this baby the illegitimate child of a knight? Or the illegitimate child of some great lord?"

After escaping death, Yuzu couldn't help but gossip, "Otherwise, why would he stay by the child's side until his death? Judging from the knight's attire, he's probably a nobleman."

This baby must be of very high status and importance, otherwise why would a knight protect him?