I Just Don’t Want To Die

Vol. Prologue: Start Chapter 1 - A Protagonist is Melancholic in the Wind

A Protagonist is Melancholic in the Wind ¹Specifically, “is disorderly like the wind that is blowing” From the poem “Autumn Evening, Tall Buildings” by Tang Yanqian, a poet from the Tang Dynasty. Refers to having a chaotic/depressed mood, so I translated it as melancholic. Source: Baidu

Looking straight at the broken abacus with missing beads and broken pillars on the worn-out wooden counter for a long time, he slowly began to turn over the basic information given by the system.

This was the first holographic online game with a classic wuxia background.

All the plot-related characters and all the humanoid passersby in this world were virtual personalities created by a developer with an intelligent computer, and it was said that the higher the status of the character, the more perfect their programming. The information given by the system to each plot-related character was similar to the information given to the player, though the biggest difference was that the data would remain unchanged, and stats could not be upgraded. Anyway, from the moment the NPCs opened their eyes, they knew these things very well.

Knowing this, the second you were self-aware, you had to figure out what role you were created to play.  That meant how you would live in the future. This was a very serious matter. If you were a beggar, you couldn’t perform actions a beggar wouldn’t. If you were a gangster who molested a good woman, then you had to do it repeatedly… 囧 You might even be beaten again and again until the player had completed the task. Perhaps later the girl who was molested would be very sympathetic when she saw you, but the girl would still continue to call for help and let people beat you up into a fool, because that was her role…

In order to exist in this fictional world, the only means of survival against being wiped out by the system was to honestly accept the system’s arrangements.

So all NPCs with normal IQs sweated nervously as they confirmed their information, and our protagonist himself was no exception.

Name: Mr. Liang.

Uh, that was bullshit, he was a passerby who didn’t even have a formal name?

Identity: Bookkeeper of the inn in South Maple Town.

He dully raised his eyes, and two skinny shopkeepers and one snorting shopkeeper both greeted him with their smiles, seemingly understanding their respective identities and adapting to it much faster than he did. Not at all like his own dissatisfaction with his identity, or strange expression. Thinking about it another way, having shelter from the wind and rain, a stable life, and a non-risky profession where one didn’t have to be continually eviscerated by the players, seemed really good.

It’s just that the room was dim, there were five or six Eight Immortals tables ²old fashioned table from ancient times, and half of them were crooked. This inn was really not your usual dilapidated inn. But then again, complaining wouldn’t help. Since they had self-awareness, it was likely that the game would be officially opened soon, and players would appear

One shopkeeper had begun scolding the other, and another shopkeeper began to work hard wiping down the table

Our protagonist, on the other hand, silently lowered his head and continued to pull the information down.

Grade:?

Huh, what did this mean, was the profession of bookkeeper discriminated against?

Life:?

Internal strength:?

…

Good heavens, after that was a full page of question marks.  He speculated whether or not the system had cut corners when setting him up, and finally found a worded attribute in the last line of data.

Status: In disguise. Means of revealing true identity is a hidden task, triggered by the player.

The cool breeze passed through the hall, the game had not yet officially opened, and the South Maple Town inn bookkeeper stood there for a long, long time. He finally realized what the term “melancholic in the wind” in his virtual memory database meant.

• 1Specifically, “is disorderly like the wind that is blowing” From the poem “Autumn Evening, Tall Buildings” by Tang Yanqian, a poet from the Tang Dynasty. Refers to having a chaotic/depressed mood, so I translated it as melancholic. Source: Baidu
• 2old fashioned table from ancient times