Chapter 1 The Night Has Come

Night had already fallen.

There was nothing particularly special about the night in *Hiyori* Universe.

Everything around him maintained its usual "gag manga" art style, and even the moon in the sky wasn't perfectly round.

"Hey, I'm over here."

As Wang Tanzhi rounded a street corner, he heard a familiar voice calling out to him.

He looked in the direction of the voice and saw a human (cat) figure under a street lamp diagonally across the intersection.

"Hoo..." Xiao Tan breathed a sigh of relief, glanced around, and then walked over.

As Xiao Tan approached, Feng Bujue lowered his voice and said, "You're pretty punctual."

"Actually, I didn't deliberately calculate the time..." Xiao Tan replied. "From four o'clock in the afternoon until twenty minutes ago... I completed four side quests one after another. After finishing the fourth quest, I looked at the map and hurried over... and the timing was just right."

"Ah... I probably know all that." Feng Bujue continued, "When you receive a side quest, it will also be displayed in my game menu."

"Then you should also know... how much my [bleep] hurts right now..." Xiao Tan recited expressionlessly.

"Heh heh... I'm not so sure about that." Feng Bujue said, "Based on the content of the quest itself, it's hard to guess..."

"Then let me briefly explain." Xiao Tan continued, "First of all, the first side quest... I witnessed a 'duel' between Basho-san and Sora-kun."

"Yeah... I know those two." Jue-ge nodded. "Tsundere, silly, and cute *uke* and a *kuudere* with a dark side, right?"

"Although I don't really like these ACG-flavored labels, I have to say your characterizations are accurate..." Xiao Tan replied, his eyes narrowed.

"Thank you." Jue-ge replied with a smile.

Xiao Tan licked his lips and, after two seconds, said again, "Then, in the second side quest... I was taken by an uncle who claimed to be the 'product development department manager' to a strange conference room, and together with a bunch of strangely dressed people, I studied the 'stickers' developed by their company."

"It's a scam, isn't it?" Feng Bujue interjected.

"Whether it's a scam or not has nothing to do with me. Anyway, I don't buy their products. I'm just there as a randomly selected consumer to give them some advice." Xiao Tan replied. "But... I never expected that later, the model for the stickers... namely, a little kid who looked very patriotic... would run in without permission. According to the manager, he seemed to be 'the son of Daishi-kun, who was fired last month' or something... A few minutes later, their conflict escalated into a violent incident. The manager was crippled by the kid with a low sweep kick and finally left on crutches..."

"Heh heh... he was quite dedicated..." Feng Bujue said with a dry laugh.

"Next, I encountered the third side quest." Xiao Tan shrugged and continued, "This is probably the most inexplicable quest I've ever encountered..."

"Yeah, I was just about to ask you about that." Feng Bujue said, "What exactly is the plot of 'Prevent her from reaching her destination before midnight through wrong guidance'?"

Jue-ge was quite familiar with the plot of *Hiyori*, so when he saw keywords like "Basho", "Sora", or "stickers" in the quest log, he could immediately deduce who Xiao Tan had encountered. Only this third side quest triggered by Xiao Tan, judging from the quest content, was difficult to relate to any of the stories in *Hiyori*.

"I'm not too sure either." Xiao Tan said, "That woman claimed to be a 'sweet and sour, strawberry-flavored, beautiful *da jiejie* from a famous university, s1'. She said she was working part-time as a tutor at night to earn money. But she seems to be a very bad with directions, saying... 'I feel like, atmosphere-wise, spiritually, I've already found the customer's address', but in reality..."

"Okay... you don't need to go on." Feng Bujue interrupted him. "This is a sad story."

"Eh? What's wrong?" Xiao Tan replied. "I think the NPC I encountered in this quest was the least silly I've seen so far. Apart from the bad-with-direction attribute, she's basically a normal person; seeing that it was almost midnight and she hadn't found the customer's house, she said it was too late and went back first. Until she left my sight, there was nothing unusual about her." He thoughtfully added, "Speaking of which... I really do feel a little guilty... I led her around in circles for a few hours, preventing her from going to the customer's house. That counts as disrupting her work, right?"

"No, you did a good deed." Feng Bujue said, "You not only protected her safety, but also saved two people whose hearts were full of distracting thoughts. You have accumulated immeasurable merit... Amitabha~"

Xiao Tan didn't understand what Jue-ge was saying, but he didn't think much of it. He just assumed the other party was joking and he didn't get the joke.

"Okay... then the fourth side quest." After a few seconds, Wang Tanzhi continued, "As you saw in the quest log... it was a combat quest."

"Yeah." Feng Bujue said, "You received it at 0:20 after midnight, right... 'Survive the battle against the werewolf'..."

"That's right." Xiao Tan replied, "At the same time as the quest notification, a guy dressed as a high school student transformed in front of me."

"Hmm..." Jue-ge continued, "You've been avoiding his pursuit for the past hour?"

"No... when he transformed, I happened to be standing in a dead-end alley." Xiao Tan replied, "There was no way to escape..."

"Huh?" Feng Bujue was stunned, but the next second, he seemed to understand something, and a smile appeared on his face, "Oh... you encountered that... werewolf whose combat power is just about on par with an elementary school student, right?"

"You actually remember such a [bleep]-worthy setting so well..." Xiao Tan's answer proved that Jue-ge was correct.

"What's so strange about that? I even remember that werewolf's name is Fujita." Feng Bujue raised his eyebrows in response.

"Okay..." Xiao Tan spread his hands. "Anyway, using the body of Hayatarou, a fourth-grade student from the Animal Elementary School, I fought that nearly two-meter-tall, fierce-looking, and strong werewolf for more than ten minutes, and then... I won."

"After he lost, did he bury his face between his knees and sit on the ground in depression for an hour?" Feng Bujue immediately asked.

"Yes... the system didn't prompt me that the quest was completed until an hour later." At this point, Xiao Tan had summarized his nearly ten-hour journey in the *Hiyori* world. "Therefore, I only just arrived here."

"Hmm..." Feng Bujue nodded, thought for two seconds, and said, "By the way, what kind of item is the doll you got from Basho-san? This is the only one of the four side quests that gave an item reward, so it should be a good item, right?"