Chapter 1 Two Hobgoblins

Two hobgoblins staggered to their feet from the tribe's campsite; they were the two surviving scouts who had run back from the depths of the forest earlier—now they were still wrapped in bloodstained bandages, which were brought by the rescued humans.

"Wu... squeak..." The hobgoblins made strange, low grunts. They stepped over their sleeping companions and swayed drunkenly toward the open space. In the dim light, the eyes of these subspecies demons glowed with a striking red light.

The red light had a muddy color, as if indicating that its owner's mind was in a state of confusion.

After leaving the campsite, they didn't stop, but first took a few steps toward the large bonfire. The flickering firelight stretched the hobgoblins' thin figures very long. The shadows were pitch black, as if hiding something even darker. The shadows extended against the firelight all the way to the open space between the campsites, where clusters of black smoke slowly rose, with fine tendrils seemingly spreading from the smoke.

The two hobgoblins seemed quite afraid of the large bonfire. They hesitated after taking a few steps forward, then made a series of even more incomprehensible sounds and turned to walk toward the human tents.

It was at this moment that the voice of the "alpha wolf" rang out behind them: "Where are you going?"

The two hobgoblins immediately froze in place, but neither answered nor turned around. They stood there motionless as if suddenly frozen.

Lily blinked, and a faint stream of light flashed in her golden eyes. She reached out and patted one of the hobgoblins on the shoulder: "I asked..."

Before her hand could touch the hobgoblin's body, a dark shadow suddenly pounced at her face!

Lily saw clearly that the shadow was clearly emerging from the hobgoblin's shadow, as if a three-dimensional form suddenly涌 from a two-dimensional plane. In the pitch-black shadow, a mass of indescribable and bizarre things suddenly stood up. This bizarre thing looked like a large, shapeless mass, trembling, twisting, and making hissing strange noises. Around it, countless translucent dark tentacles could be seen, making one's skin crawl at a glance. However, she only had time to see the shape of the shadow, and her body had no time to dodge. In an instant, the shadow had pounced in front of her, and then she felt darkness before her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself standing in a familiar place.

The living room at home.

A sense of incongruity instantly struck. Lily realized in that split second that she was probably caught in an illusion, but her subconscious alarm was too late to resist. The sense of incongruity disappeared in an instant. She forgot her journey in the Black Forest, and she also forgot the entire beast horde with her. She even forgot her entire experience with Hao Ren going to the Dream Plane to find the rift, but somehow ended up on a floating island—this straightforward husky spirit almost instantly felt that the scene before her was justified. She sprawled carelessly on the sofa in the living room and shouted, "Landlord!! I'm back!!"

No one responded to her call.

"Landlord?" Lily blinked in confusion and got up. She looked at the familiar living room and the familiar furnishings in the living room: there were two cracks in the coffee table, which she had broken herself; there were small tooth marks on the table, which were left when Dou Dou improved her food; the water dispenser in the corner had not been reassembled after Elizabeth had disassembled it; and Yitzhak's People's Daily that he had only half-read was still thrown on the armrest of the sofa. All these things were the same as in her memory, so she didn't feel anything unusual at all. "Bat? May? Old Wang?"

She walked around the living room and searched in various rooms, only to find that the house was empty.

"Where is everyone..." Lily muttered as she returned to the living room. She looked up at the window and found that it was foggy outside, and she couldn't see the situation on the street at all. "Did everyone go out in this weather?"

The husky girl nestled on the sofa and waited for a while, feeling that it would probably be a while before anyone came back, but she didn't feel any unease at all. Instead, she hummed an out-of-tune little song while studying the fluff on her tail. After a while, the corner of her eye suddenly caught sight of the refrigerator in the corner of the living room, and a happy expression suddenly appeared on her face.

She trotted to the refrigerator, pulled the refrigerator door open, and secretly looked to both sides like a thief, before quickly taking out a bowl of something from the innermost compartment of the refrigerator: it was the leftover ribs from last time.

"Landlord, you're not home, right?" The husky girl shouted guiltily in the direction of Hao Ren's room, then poked her head into the kitchen. "Bat, you're not home either, right?"

After confirming that no one would come to disturb her, she immediately ran to the kitchen with the ribs in her arms, "This time no one can control me. Who says you can only eat this at meal times..."

Lily happily began her plan to steal food in this illusion that was abnormal no matter how she thought about it, without showing the slightest worry about the situation in front of her. This attitude of "ignoring" seemed to finally anger the mastermind behind the trap. Just as Lily was holding a bowl of ribs and preparing to rush into the kitchen, the surrounding illusion suddenly collapsed.

All the light and shadow vanished in an instant, and Lily's eyes blurred. She stepped into the empty nothingness. She exclaimed "Wow" and took a closer look, only to find that the ribs in her hand were gone.

The husky girl scratched her face: "...Where's my food?"

No one answered her question. There was only endless dimness and swirling mist in all directions. After a moment, something else finally emerged from the mist. Lily widened her eyes and saw a treasure trove shining with golden light.

In a series of illusions, she saw herself walking into the treasure trove, taking out inexhaustible treasures, becoming the richest wang in the world, and even building a palace made of gold for herself...

A voice whispered in her ear: "This is a real treasure, my successor. You have gained my favor, you are qualified to receive this ancient inheritance, come with me, I will tell you how to open this..."

Lily stared at someone in the void and shouted: "Did you take away my meat?"

"...In front of the treasure you are about to open, that is just a tiny..."

Lily's eyes widened even more: "Don't interrupt, I'm asking you, where's my food?"

"...You must first open a..."

Lily continued to stare: "Is my food with you!"

The illusion of the treasure trove suddenly collapsed, and the gold and jewels returned to the swirling mist in an instant. The next moment, something new emerged from the mist. Lily saw a high and mighty throne. She was wearing a golden robe, wearing a golden crown, and holding a scepter of the emperor in her hand. Countless heroes and capable ministers were prostrating at her feet.

The voice rang again: "Supreme power! You will become the highest ruler in this world, your throne will be higher than..."

"So where are my ribs?"

"I mean you will become the emp..."

"Where are my ribs!"

The throne collapsed and was replaced by a glorious battlefield. The voice's tone was a little hysterical: "Power! Endless power! You will be invincible! The whole world cannot compare with..."

"I still want that bowl of ribs," Lily said with her hands on her hips, "Do you know how hard it is to find a day when both the landlord and Bat are not at home and there are leftovers in the refrigerator!"

"Eternal life! I can make you immortal!"

"I still want ribs."

"Knowledge! All the knowledge in this world, I possess knowledge you can't imagine!"

"I graduated from Peking University four times, are you trying to make me take the exam again—I just want ribs!"

"Past, future, present! I give you the power to foretell the future, I allow you to modify your destiny at will, I allow you..."

"Keep bragging, quantum collapse determines that fate has non-repeatability and non-operability, where exactly did you hide my ribs?"

"The authority of God! You can even become a god!"

"I know a god, she doesn't even have a bonus for the New Year—can we discuss this after I finish eating that bowl of ribs just now?"

This meaningless conversation continued for a while, and the void and chaos finally fell into complete silence. The mysterious voice seemed to be accumulating something in the silence, and finally burst out completely. Lily heard a thunderous voice coming from above her head: "Enough! You stupid and ignorant mortal! I will directly tear your soul apart!"

Lily looked up and saw something with tentacles all over its body, shaped like a bloated lump of meat, rushing out of the darkness. Countless eyes opened in the lump of meat, and each pair of eyes shone with vicious light. It screamed and waved its tentacles, and in an instant, it was already close at hand!

Lily was startled on the spot. She subconsciously took a step back and reached behind her. In this fleeting moment, a strong desire for a weapon for self-defense emerged in her mind.

This strong idea broke through the confinement of the spiritual world, and she felt that she had touched something hard.

Without thinking, she threw the thing at the monster in front of her.

With a loud "bang," as if a high-speed train had crashed into a mountain, the monster in the nightmare was directly knocked away by a gray cinder block.

The surrounding illusion also vanished at the same time.