Just after turning sixteen, Leif White rose onto her toes, grabbed the high branch, and with one hard pull hauled herself up into the tree.
Her long brown hair fell all the way to her knees; right now it was annoyingly blocking her view.
The shepherd girl frowned and used the thin leather cord looped around her wrist to tie her hair back, then strained her eyes, trying to see as far as she could into the distance.
“This is impossible…”
This was already the tallest tree outside Ede Village. Leif rubbed her eyes, but what lay before her was still nothing but layered shades of green.
“Don’t tell me everything outside Ede Village is just grass?”
Grass that, even if a sheep took a bite out of it, would be completely restored the very next second—down to the exact shape of every leaf.
The more she thought about it, the more horrifying it felt.
“What kind of world is this?”
She had been in this world for sixteen years, and only now was she realizing something was wrong.
Her slow realization was all thanks to Grandma Samantha, the one who had taken her in. Ever since the childless old woman had picked her up in the snow, she had protected her very well—maybe a little too well.
She hadn’t even let Leif take a single step beyond Ede Village.
Aside from the weekly visits from the cleric who came to tell stories to the children, Leif had never had any chance to come into contact with the world outside the village in all these sixteen years.
Grandma Samantha had passed away a year ago. At the time, she had held Leif’s hand, tears in her eyes, and said her days were numbered. Before she died, she had three things she wanted to hand over to Leif.
The old woman had been thrifty her whole life and hadn’t saved much. All she could afford to buy Leif was a little lamb.
The other two things were what had been left with Leif when she’d been found as a baby: a machete, and a stainless-steel thermos.
Only after she’d finished arranging the funeral did Leif finally have time to look carefully at those two relics.
—She had crossed over from another world sixteen years ago, but she still recognized that thermos at a glance. Back in that world, Leif White hadn’t been called Leif White at all. Her name had been Bai Gangan.
Her passionate, impulsive parents had given her that bizarre name because they’d originally wanted to have five children, but were too lazy to come up with proper names. They’d decided to just call them Xinxin (Heart), Gangan (Liver), Pipi (Spleen), Feifei (Lung), and Shenshen (Kidney) in order.
Bai Gangan had been the second child. The rest had never happened.
Right before she crossed over, she had been livestreaming a game, grinding like crazy. It was already way past her usual bedtime. She was almost at the final stage—she even remembered the level’s title: “Castle of the Demon Dragon.” To quit there would have felt unbearably frustrating.
The final boss was the ghost of the demon dragon she’d killed in the first level—far stronger and more evil than its original body. According to the players who had attempted the fight, that ghost dragon had ninety-nine layers of health bars and an insanely fast regeneration rate. No one had ever managed to clear that level.
The scrolling chat was already full of:
“666, is the streamer going for the first clear?”
“First clear gets a rocket!”
“I’ll send a yacht!”
The RGB lights on her keyboard were flashing. Staring at the chat, her fighting spirit, which had already been at seven out of ten, surged straight up to twelve.
“Going on…”
She had already been feeling physically off, but still lifted her fingers, raising and dropping her in-game blade, clearing out all the mobs guarding the castle.
There were five minutes left before the ghost dragon spawned.
She glanced at her buzzing phone. A push notification jumped out at her.
“Shocking! Student at XXX University dies suddenly—cause turns out to be staying up late gaming!”
Normally, there were tons of headlines like this, but only that one made her heart thump. Maybe because, at that moment, she had a bad premonition.
She pushed her chair back a little, bent down, and quickly took out a jar of goji berries from her drawer. She pinched out five and dropped them into her thermos.
Instantly, she felt like she’d grown an extra liver. Counting the two “livers” in her name, her mind felt a lot more at ease.
A sudden-death event that rare would never happen to her.
The chat spammed in unison:
“The streamer really knows how to take care of her health.”
She watched the five-minute countdown slowly tick down to ten seconds, nine, eight…
Her fingertips were already resting on the keys, perfectly in position. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, her expression firm, just waiting for the dragon to fully appear.
The slap in the face came in an instant.
Turns out, if you grind hard enough, you really can drop dead. Even if your name is Bai Gangan.
Heaven must have wanted to teach her a lesson, which was why it had thrown her into this world—a world with literally no entertainment after dark. She went to bed early and woke up early. If she didn’t work, she didn’t eat, so she built up her body. She barely ever saw meat all year round, and there was no milk tea, fried chicken, ice-cold cola, or fries, so she ended up eating more vegetables and whole grains.
People who burn themselves out pulling all-nighters get thrown into the “health-cultivator hell” after death. Maybe it was the same logic as people who gossip too much going to tongue-pulling hell.
Leif had recognized the thermos, and she’d recognized that big machete too. It was the very same weapon she’d used in the game.
For the year after Grandma Samantha passed away, Leif had obediently stayed in the village.
But a few days ago, she’d noticed something strange.
Lily—the little lamb Grandma Samantha had given her—kept running outside the village.
Leif had followed, only to discover that no matter how long Lily grazed on that patch of ground outside the village, not a single blade of grass went missing.
It was exactly like those resource nodes in games—no matter how many times you harvested them, they’d always respawn quickly.
And today she’d discovered something else: Ede Village was like it had appeared out of thin air, while everything beyond it was just empty grassland, devoid of people.
According to the cleric’s stories, the outside world had beautiful princesses, handsome princes, brave knights, and evil monsters.
Had all of that been a lie?
Was this place actually… inside a game?
“Good morning, my lovely lady.”
The young man who appeared out of nowhere spoke with a slightly foreign accent. He wore a fine silk outfit and tall leather boots. His fingers curled slightly as he tapped the brim of his hat. His accent, clothes, and manners were all completely different from the local villagers.
“Please forgive my rudeness. I am Reynard McIntosh.”
Startled, Leif braced a hand against the branch over her head and looked past the stranger. The place that had been nothing but grass just moments ago was no longer just grass—there was now a road, wheel and hoof ruts on it, a line of trees, and a small, rising hill.
She looked in another direction. The same change had appeared there too.
All of it had changed with the arrival of this stranger.
She was certain what she’d seen earlier wasn’t an illusion.
So what was going on?
“Baa… baa…” Lily bleated shrilly.
Leif snapped back to herself.
The nobleman who had been so polite just a second ago now had a vicious look on his face as he lunged after the sheep, grabbing a fistful of Lily’s wool.
“What are you doing, sir?”
Leif hurriedly climbed down from the tree. Lily had already struggled free.
Lily had always been a bad-tempered sheep. Taking advantage of Mr. McIntosh’s brief carelessness, she bit his hand and kicked him squarely on the backside—just like she’d done the first time she’d met Leif.
“Oh, Mr. McIntosh, I’m terribly sorry.”
Leif covered her mouth with one hand and pulled the naughty lamb behind her with the other.
She couldn’t help feeling exasperated and amused. Maybe this was exactly why Lily’s brothers and sisters could sell for a full silver Gosha, and Lily could only fetch half.
The young man pitched forward and fell—landing, of all places, right at Leif’s feet.
The young noble raised his head just in time to hear the shepherd girl’s amused exclamation.
He jumped up, patted the dust from his clothes, and lifted his chin arrogantly, as if the one who had just face-planted in the dirt hadn’t been him. The way he looked at the little sheep was full of anger—and a touch of greed.
Leif couldn’t help finding it odd. This man was clearly not some starving pauper, so why was he going after a sheep?
“I’m willing to give you thirty gold Gosha for that sheep of yours.”
The young noble’s tone left no room for negotiation. He pulled a jingling pouch from his belt. Seeing the country girl in front of him still looking blank, he took out a gold coin and waved it impatiently in front of her eyes.
“Miss, I know you probably haven’t seen gold Gosha in your entire life, but this is real.”
The Gosha coin was the standard currency on the continent. It came in iron, copper, silver, and gold. Leif had only ever seen the first three. She had indeed never laid eyes on gold.
“One gold Gosha can be exchanged for sixty silver Gosha,” Mr. McIntosh said, enunciating each word as if afraid Leif wouldn’t understand. “Which is three hundred and sixty copper Gosha, or three thousand six hundred iron Gosha.”
Leif stroked Lily, who was trembling behind her. Her eyes were practically glued to that gold Gosha, but she still said firmly:
“I’m not selling.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, miss?”
The young noble’s face flushed red with anger, his eyes bulging like an enraged gamecock.
“You just said ‘no’ to a noble. Do you have any idea who you just refused?”
Seeing how quickly Mr. McIntosh had flown into a rage, Leif became even more sure this man was not right in the head.
She quietly took a few steps back, herding the lamb along with her.
His tone made it sound like her daring to say “no” to him was a crime on par with spitting in a cleric’s face.
Mr. McIntosh’s face went green.
“If not for the knight’s code that forbids me from using force against a lady, I would have already…”
Leif’s hand drifted to the hilt on her back.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see a knight’s sash on you, and I don’t see your horse either…”
From the moment this man had appeared, every word out of his mouth had made Leif uncomfortable.
Whether it was the thick disdain in his tone or that hostile glare in his eyes—both made Leif’s hand itch toward the scabbard on her back. She lifted her chin.
“I don’t believe any king would grant a knight’s title to someone as rude as you, even if you are a noble.”
Mr. McIntosh clearly hadn’t noticed that the thing strapped to this country girl’s back—the one that looked like an overlong loaf of bread—was actually a weapon. Nor had he noticed that said weapon was a hair’s breadth away from being raised to his throat.
He didn’t notice the insults either.
Because something else had caught his attention.
Leif heard a sharp whooshing sound behind her.
She turned her head and saw a streak of black smoke across the sky, as if something burning had fallen from above. A moment later came the heavy crash of something slamming into the ground.
“Thud.”
The earth trembled slightly.
When Leif looked back again, Mr. McIntosh was gone.
His interest in Lily was clearly no match for his curiosity about whatever had just fallen from the sky.
By the time Mr. McIntosh reappeared in front of Leif, he’d already drawn his greatsword. Greed sparkled in his eyes as he swung it down at something on the ground without a word.
It was a girl—lying on the grass, her body thin, pale, and fragile. There were numerous wounds on her, and blood was still seeping out in steady streams, as if she might die in the next second.
Leif had no time to think.
She drew her machete and sprinted forward. With a low lunge, she narrowly managed to place herself between the girl and the descending blade.
The greatsword crashed into the machete.
Screech—
Sss—
The screech of grinding metal was piercing.
Mr. McIntosh clearly hadn’t expected Leif to appear there. The sudden interruption startled him, and his greatsword was almost knocked aside by her machete.
Staring at this infuriatingly uncooperative country girl, the young noble’s chest heaved with rage. He no longer cared about any damned knight’s code.
“You again! Get out of my way!”
After his surprise faded, he put his full strength into the greatsword and bore down hard.
The brown-haired, black-eyed shepherd girl could barely maintain the balance between the two weapons. Her palms ached as if they were splitting open, her knees were starting to wobble, and fat beads of sweat rolled down her forehead—but she did not give an inch.
There was a faint sound behind her. Leif felt a hot breath suddenly gust against the back of her neck, making the hairs there stand on end, but she couldn’t see what was happening.
It had to be the wounded girl waking up.
“Move!”
The young noble’s eyes flickered, as if he’d just seen something terrifying. A trace of panic flashed across his face, and he added yet more force to his swing.
“If you don’t move, I’ll kill you!”
