Little Pink Starfish

Originally, Iger had no intention of going out—he was well aware that someone wanted him dead, and that was no joke. However, Atwell had made some progress in the investigation, and as long as Iger remained in the manor, it was difficult for the enemy to make a move.

“So, I gave you this chance. Will you come?”

Pei Sen had thought this brat Iger had insisted on tagging along just to keep an eye on him, to see if he’d actually retrieve anything. But of course, it wasn’t that simple.

At the moment, though, Pei Sen couldn’t care less about that. His eyes were glued to the outside of the carriage, desperate to catch even a glimpse of a player.

Deep down, Pei Sen knew there was a chance he might not see any players at all.

After all, by now, he was sure this was a real world. Maybe the game he remembered had simply been modeled after this place?

It wasn’t impossible—in fact, it was very possible.

If that were true… Pei Sen could only smile bitterly at his fate.

“What’s wrong with you? You look unsettled,” came Iger’s cold voice. “Are you really lying to me?”

Pei Sen really didn’t feel like answering, but he had no choice but to half-heartedly play along with the young master’s suspicions.
“No, I just… being back in Casey City brings up some bad memories.”

Iger knew that Pei Sen had once been captured by the Quir Wolves of Casey City—Lady Mary had told him that much. Almost sold off… yeah, those probably weren’t pleasant memories.

The grand, luxurious carriage slowly approached Casey City. Of course, this was nothing like the carriage Vargo had used when bringing Pei Sen and the others before—this one was much larger and far more extravagant.

Six tall white horses pulled it forward. The carriage itself was so spacious that over a dozen people could sit comfortably. On the outside, handrails and footrests allowed two rows of male attendants to ride standing.

And this was what Lady Mary had called a “modest outing.”

In addition to Iger and Pei Sen, there were two maids in the carriage, as well as a lowly chore-boy named Vissy, who normally served under Vargo and didn’t even qualify to be near Iger. Now, he stood at the carriage door, not even allowed to sit, solely there to open the door for the young master.

Four other attendants clung to the sides of the carriage, standing and eating dust the whole way. Eighteen mounted guards escorted the carriage from front and back.

So this… was modest travel.

Pei Sen had once felt lucky to have gotten into the personal butler recruitment group. If he’d ended up as one of the regular servants, life might have been way rougher.

But now, even that feeling had faded—because it was almost 10 o’clock.

He was so nervous that his breathing was out of rhythm, and he didn’t even notice Iger’s puzzled, scrutinizing gaze.

Then, suddenly—he saw a group of people appear from a path outside Casey City’s gate. They were all dressed in the same plain, grayish short-sleeved tops and pants. At first, there were only a few, but the number grew quickly.

Even though the carriage was still some distance away, Pei Sen’s heart surged with emotion.

It was like chugging a whole glass of iced water on a hot summer day—his entire body relaxed.

“Stop the carriage!”

Of course, no one would listen to him. On this carriage, they only obeyed one person—Iger.

Iger glanced over at him, raised his hand slightly, and the carriage immediately slowed to a halt.

“Are you sure it’s here?”

“Yes, but a lot of people showed up… I’m not sure if the thing I buried is still there.” Pei Sen quickly added.

Iger looked expressionlessly at the group in the distance, frowning slightly. These people… weren’t from Casey City, that much was obvious.

Pei Sen reached for the carriage door, ready to get off—but Iger stopped him.

“This place isn’t safe. We’ll enter the city first.”

He didn’t recognize where those people had come from, and there were a lot of them. His gaze was sharp with caution.

Pei Sen wanted to say it was fine—that they wouldn’t hurt him—but then realized… he really couldn’t predict what players might do.

So the carriage moved forward again, slowly entering the city. It stopped at the far end of the street, beside a tall tower.

Having seen the players, Pei Sen felt much more at ease and followed Iger up the tower.

To his surprise, the tower had an amplifying magic array at the top—a small magic eye that allowed them to see the city in astonishing detail.

Even though Pei Sen had been a longtime player before transmigrating, he hadn’t known this existed.

Turns out, players couldn’t even enter this tower early in the game. Later on, once the place got involved in a war event, it was destroyed—along with the magic formations.

Now, Iger sat on a sofa carried up by the mage’s servants, and together with Pei Sen, they watched the newcomers through the magic eye.

Casey City was tiny—honestly, more like a village. In the game, it was the most well-known beginner town. In this world, it was just a backwater outpost of the Esmia Empire, far from the capital.

Because it was such a small place, the sudden appearance of a large group of strangers was immediately noticeable.

Pei Sen looked near the gates and finally spotted someone he hadn’t seen before—someone with a small white tag above their head reading “Game Guide.” The font was tiny, and none of the townspeople seemed to notice him at all.

Pei Sen understood—early on, there were service-type NPCs like this, only visible to players. Basically, ghost-like figures only they could see.

Only then did he shift his gaze to the players themselves.

As expected, each one had a semi-transparent, light silver ID floating above their heads. Not too flashy, and crucially—only visible to other players. NPCs couldn’t see it.

“If I remember right, the ability to hide your ID didn’t appear until two or three years after launch. They shouldn’t be able to do that yet,” Pei Sen thought.

Pei Sen’s own panel was from the post-release, long-running version of Bix Magic Cube—complete with features like ID hiding, level-up effects toggle, and the full Mage class tree.

These new players? They only had one option—Swordsman. It would be a long time before Mages even entered the scene.

Beside him, Iger frowned.

“What’s with these people? Their behavior is so… bizarre.”

Pei Sen almost burst out laughing as he watched the players—some standing around blankly, others wandering like zombies with unfocused eyes. No need to guess—they were all frantically taking screenshots for the forum.

And this was just the beginning. The character customization feature hadn’t even launched yet.

When it did, without the ability to import facial data, the in-game custom faces ended up so bizarre that half the playerbase looked hilariously distorted.

Right now, everyone’s appearance was just a slightly idealized version of their real face, so they looked fairly normal.

But then he saw someone practically licking a wall, another lying on the ground staring at it like a maniac, and yet another intensely scrutinizing a 70-year-old local woman until she looked pale and terrified…

Calling it “bizarre” felt like an understatement.

Pei Sen opened the forum—and found it exploding with activity. Now it truly felt like the forum he remembered.

“Weren’t there only 200 beta testers in the first batch? How is the forum already this chaotic?”

Turns out, most of the activity came from people who didn’t get in. The rest were all begging to be chosen for the second wave of beta testing.

The second round would be released in a month. At first, people had thought this was just a scam. Now that the game was very real, tons of people were kicking themselves for not taking it seriously.

“Shocked. The realism is off the charts—supposedly 95%? I’d say it’s more like 100%.”
“I’ve played all the so-called VR games. Nothing compares. This is just too real.”
“Most games still have that animated vibe, even ones that claim to be realistic. But this… if this were a VFX film, you’d burn through a budget per second.”
“No words. [Images] [Images] [Images] See for yourself.”
“Indistinguishable from reality. Smashes every special effects movie ever made.”
“Look at the detail on this city wall! [Image] Unreal.”
“To the guy talking about VFX movies—sorry, this destroys them. If it weren’t for the game UI, I’d think I transmigrated.”
“Exactly. It feels too real.”

Screenshots and video clips turned today’s forum into an explosion of hype. Pei Sen couldn’t see reactions from outside the forum, but he did notice links being reposted on various platforms.

Game clips uploaded to video-sharing sites had people guessing it was footage from some upcoming film—no one believed this was a game.

Forum threads with screenshots were being reposted everywhere, pulling more and more users into the Bix Magic Cubeofficial forum.

In just half an hour after the server launch, Pei Sen witnessed a tidal wave of traffic flooding the site.

Tons of people begged for beta codes, and once they learned that codes from the first wave couldn’t be transferred anymore, the spamming shifted to desperate pleas to be selected in the second round.

The second beta was still a month away, and people were already bemoaning the wait, saying they’d have to survive the next 30 days by living vicariously through the current players’ posts.

Pei Sen scrolled through the hilarious posts—many already trending, with fiery-hot comment sections sending even more traffic into the forum.

“If this had been some no-name site, it would’ve crashed a hundred times already.”

But the Bix Magic Cube forums remained fast, stable, and lag-free.

In-game, players were split between taking endless screenshots and actually starting to play.

Soon enough, the streets of Casey City began to descend into visible chaos.