Chapter 2 Headless Knight vs. Vampire Princess

"My resentment knows no bounds! I will have revenge upon this world!"

With this desperate roar, a headless giant clad in tattered demonic armor burst violently from the cracked earth. Eerie blue hellfire coalesced beneath him into a skeletal warhorse. Dazzling magical runes gushed out like a tide, instantly engulfing the entire battlefield.

"Watch out! It's the hidden BOSS, the 'Headless Cinder Knight'! His level exceeds the instance recommendation!" the elven male mage in the party shouted a warning.

Before his voice faded, a female knight in revealing armor had already charged forward with her shield raised, barely tanking the Cinder Knight's devastating opening magical barrage with her own body. Immediately after, the dwarven magitek cannon roared. The sorcerer's cursing black mist spread silently. The orc shaman's healing holy light landed precisely on the female knight. This was a top-tier team with flawless coordination.

After paying the painful price of two fallen teammates, they finally cut down the nearly berserk "Headless Cinder Knight."

"I am not reconciled... I... will definitely return!"

After leaving a string of flashy death effects, the Cinder Knight exploded violently. The party members immediately erupted in cheers of post-disaster survival, excitedly checking the dropped items on the ground.

The din of battle instantly faded, replaced by a soft white light and tranquility.

Luenk returned to the employee-exclusive private lounge. This was already his third time playing the "Headless Cinder Knight" today. The nine thousand dollars newly credited to his account left him unfazed.

The large-scale otherworld game he had joined had mostly free instance plots, with AI-generated enemies. Only a few special instances required players to spend vast sums of money or an immense amount of time grinding for rare materials to unlock the "Live Actor Boss" mode. Although many live actors were mediocre, it was still an excellent gimmick. Moreover, the rewards for clearing live-actor instances were indeed generous – rare items, materials for crafting artifacts, everything imaginable.

And Luenk, by virtue of his "unique" physiological condition, had become the most sought-after Boss actor in the new "Age of the Dead" expansion. He could have allowed the company to heavily publicize his "genuine" headless knight identity. The income generated from such hype would have been astonishing... But he couldn't. The only consequence of doing so would be to inflate the price of his head, currently up for auction, to an astronomical figure.

He had been working at this high intensity for a week, appearing five or six times a day, earning fifteen thousand dollars daily. He had calculated that this would increase his money-making speed tenfold... Even so, it would take a hundred years to redeem his head.

"Dead... why do I still have to work?" Luenk felt that not having a head had destroyed his (after)life. He not only failed to build more interpersonal connections but was also trapped in endless repetitive labor every day. This wasn't eternal life. This was clearly another kind of hell.

He dragged his feet out of the employee-exclusive private lounge. This lounge itself was already more spacious than the 150-square-meter apartment he had lived in before he died. And the three-story house he had been given for free in this "New Century Space" was even more vast and empty. The enormous living space was the root of this world's alienation – whether it was the lounge assigned by the company or the residence distributed by the system, both felt as cold and desolate as a tomb to him. The vast living space also meant a lack of neighborly interaction. He usually only went out to "work" under the AI's scheduling guidance.

And today, for the first time, he saw a colleague outside his room. A girl who looked very young, perhaps even a teenager, was looking at him curiously.

"Hi!" The girl tilted her head. "Work's over, so why are you still wearing your game's special effect skin?"

"I am the uncrowned king of the dark world, seeking the head stolen by a despicable deity." Luenk lowered his voice. "Little girl, one more word, and your head might become my king's next trophy—though, it's probably only fit for kicking around like a ball."

"You haven't developed some kind of virtual world mental illness from too much acting, have you?" the girl said, shocked. "Although everyone in the New Century Space is supposed to be at their optimal hormonal and brain state, there's still a possibility of mental illness. Do you want me to call an AI psychological expert for you?"

"You sure talk a lot." Luenk let out a sigh from the void. "Speaking of which, aren't you also out with special effects? And this little girl effect, too. It's much more controversial than my headless situation, isn't it?"

"This isn't a special effect!" The girl puffed her cheeks, pointing at herself. "I was born... uh, I looked like this when I died."

"What?" Luenk was genuinely surprised. As far as he knew, the image reconstruction in the "New Century Space" could at most restore a person to their adult prime, never to a minor form. "Then you're truly... exceptionally gifted. If you were a streamer or model before you died, you'd probably have been a massive internet sensation."

"It's not 'exceptionally gifted'," the girl brushed her bangs aside, revealing clear eyes. "I looked like this when I died. You can call me Banana, that was my online name before I died, and it's my new name in this world. Or you can call me by my Boss role-playing name, the Silent Vampire Princess." She paused, looking curiously at Luenk. "So, what about you? Are you planning to always play the headless knight?"

"So... you passed away very young?" A complex emotion, a mix of surprise and a fleeting sense of pity, tinged Luenk's voice. He waved his hand. "This look of mine, it's not a special effect either. I was like this when I arrived in this world."

"What? Are you kidding a child?!" Banana immediately puffed up her cheeks like a kitten whose tail had been stepped on.

(Twenty minutes later)

"So... you mean... because a long, long time ago, you got drunk and accidentally sold your virtual head... that's why you actually don't have a head now?" Banana said, covering her mouth. This was something she had never heard of.

"Yes, I'm just that unlucky." Luenk "sighed" deeply, a sensation like a gust of compressed air expelling from his empty neck cavity, carrying a tone of resigned desolation.

"Pfft—HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Banana held it in for a few seconds, then burst into earth-shattering laughter, doubling over, tears streaming down her face. "Oh my god, how can you be so unlucky. I can't... it's too... too funny, too interesting!"

"..." Luenk was speechless. Why was this kid so annoying? He had reluctantly shared his embarrassing secret, only to be laughed at by her? What was that about?

"I said, are you done laughing? If you're done, move aside. I'm going home." His voice was tinged with displeasure.

"Don't be mad, don't be mad!" Banana finally managed to stop laughing, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes, though an irrepressible smile still lingered on her face. "I wasn't laughing at you... okay, maybe a little, but mostly... I'm just so happy! I finally, finally met someone else who's living just as awkwardly, just as... out of place in this 'perfect new world' as I am!" She grinned, revealing a small canine tooth.

"What do you mean?" Luenk was puzzled.

"I committed suicide, or rather, I didn't want to live in that world anymore, so I came here," Banana also began to talk about her past.

"Those girls are so hateful," Banana said, biting her lip. "What did I ever do to them? They bullied me every day, even spread rumors about me everywhere, and used anonymous accounts to curse at me, a bunch of bitches."

"So you committed suicide because you couldn't stand the bullying?" Luenk asked.

"No, it was because I wanted to get revenge on them. I wrote a suicide note specifically cursing them out. I wanted them to be unable to stay at school," Banana bit her lip until it was bright red; it was a good thing this New Century Space didn't allow for bleeding.

"And then, it just hurt so much," Banana hugged her knees, her voice trembling. "I jumped from a two-hundred-story building, but I ended up falling onto a glass platform on the one-hundred-ninetieth floor. At that moment, I felt like my whole body had shattered, like when you accidentally drop a cookie, it looks fine, but when you pick it up, it crumbles and pieces fall off. And I was that cookie."

"AAAAAH, what a total loss!" Banana cried out, sounding very aggrieved. "To think that all my pain only got those bitches scolded for a few months, and then they could just transfer to a school where no one knew them and start over. I feel so ripped off! Especially since I don't even know how long people online would keep scolding them, or if there's anyone who'd keep chasing them relentlessly."

"I think very few. Generally, those kinds of people aren't pursuing justice, they're just looking for some fun," Luenk said.

"Yeah, and because I didn't die, right? Though at the time it was pretty much like being dead. I felt like I was in a very dark, quiet place. I wasn't scared, though. It was more like a liberating kind of floating, like the place where you die or are born. Then a voice asked me if I wanted to keep living or go to the place of the dead. Honestly, in that situation, who would want to keep living? So I said, let me die, and then I ended up here," Banana said helplessly. "That was probably the doctor asking me through a brain-computer interface. If I had chosen 'live,' they probably would have reconstructed my body. Honestly, for me back then, it was all rotten."

Luenk looked at the blonde girl before him. She looked to be only thirteen or fourteen; she must have been a middle school student back then. Her voice had retained the innocence and crispness of that age.

"But what choice did I have?" Banana spread her hands, gesturing like an Italian facing someone putting yellow mustard on their pasta.

"The government always talks about guaranteeing everyone's right to 'live forever,' but they've taken away our right to 'choose to die.' This is a violation of human rights!" Banana waved her fist, as if ready to rush out and join some anti-utopian protest at any moment.

"So what about now?" Luenk asked. "If you were back on top of that two-hundred-story building right now, no glass platform this time, just a straight drop into a pile of human paste, brains splattered on the wall, a complete and utter death. Would you do it?"

"That's a nasty question," Banana hugged her knees tightly. She paused for a moment, then answered, "Of course I don't want to die now. Although everyone else here always looks at me with pity, like I'm some lost kid who wandered into a nursing home and can't find her way home to those hundred-year-old folks, I can't chat with them about anything. Except when I'm playing some vampire princess in this game world, then I can be a bit more at ease. Other times, I don't want to befriend them at all. Of course, I'm not that eager to become a pile of human paste anymore either."

"Haha, such a cute girl like you turning into a pile of rotten meat would certainly be a pity," Luenk said with a laugh.

But Banana immediately retorted, "Aren't I just a bunch of data now? You and I, we don't even have a speck of flesh left. Biologically, we're dead! And besides," Banana suddenly grinned, "Uncle, you're way unluckier than me. You came to the virtual world and didn't even have a head, hahaha!"

"You little brat, you're really annoying," Luenk said angrily. Then he stood up, facing the girl who was laughing like a bright June chrysanthemum, and said, "Let me show you the terrifying consequences of offending a headless knight. Feel the fires of hell!"

"Kukuku..." Banana instinctively tried to unfold a fan, only to realize she wasn't wearing her vampire princess outfit from the game, so the fan that could conjure magic was naturally absent. She had to lightly touch her lips with her fingertips, letting out a series of suppressed, eerie laughs. "Mere dregs like you, worthy of this princess—the great scion of the bloodline, the noble Silent Vampire Princess—to even deign to look at you? How rude! I was going to gouge out your eyes... oh, wait, you don't even have a head, kukuku!"

"I'm definitely going to teach you a lesson, a very unforgettable one," Luenk smiled grimly.

[Oracle of Raine World Strategy Tip: Hidden Boss of the Catacombs in the City of the Dead—The Sealed Headless Knight. Special Mechanic: If taunted during battle about 'having no head,' the Boss will enter a berserk state, significantly increasing attack power, aggression, and attack frequency. Dropped items remain unchanged. Not recommended for non-challenge players.]

(Later, the arena duel between Luenk and Banana ended with Banana's victory. After all, Banana's gaming experience spanned over a decade.)