Chapter 2

The call connected, and Winnie’s voice softened at once.

“Evan, are you done with your instance? My classmates are all here. Hurry over.”

My heart skipped when I heard the name.

My boyfriend’s name was Evan Shaw too.

But I quickly shook off the thought.

For one thing, this horror game was not some fun little adventure. Anyone dragged in here was just unlucky.

If you got hurt or died in the game, your body in the real world would suffer serious damage too.

I was the exception.

I was cursed by birth and born with a violent aura.

My temper had always been explosive, like I was wired wrong from the start.

Luckily, the game had found me. Every month, I could come in, fight entities, blow off steam, and keep living a normal life.

So even though I did well in the game, I never wanted my boyfriend to know this place existed.

Once the game latched onto you, you could never leave unless you cleared it.

And even if you did clear it, seeing so many entities would mess with your head. In the end, most people wound up in a psychiatric hospital.

Besides, I touched the protection charm against my chest.

My boyfriend was usually so attentive it was almost ridiculous. If I got a tiny cut on my hand, he would go to a church and pray for me.

How could someone like that betray me?

Winnie hung up, her voice full of smug satisfaction.

“My boyfriend will be here soon. You have no idea. I could hear the entities screaming while he was beating them up over the phone.

“Too bad none of you have a control panel. Otherwise, you’d see my boyfriend’s name shining in gold at number one on the player leaderboard.”

The people around her immediately started flattering her.

“Winnie, I’m so jealous. How did you find such a powerful boyfriend?”

“I feel safe now. Can we take pictures in here? My phone seems frozen. Being able to take a trip through a horror game would be such a flex.”

Once someone entered the game, everything from the real world stopped working.

Winnie’s phone was a comm device provided by the game. Aside from making calls, it could not do anything.

Everyone kept praising Winnie until she looked ready to float off the ground.

But I was looking at the control panel in my mind.

The name sitting at the top of the leaderboard was clearly mine.

Confused, I scrolled down.

I went through more than a hundred names and still did not see Evan.

Finally, I opened the B-rank instance list and found his name there.

Then I scrolled down to the bottom of the C-rank instance list and saw Winnie.

There were four ranks in total for horror game instances. The hardest was S, and the easiest was C.

I almost laughed.

So these two, who only played low-rank instances, had the nerve to stand here bragging like this?

I looked at Winnie.

“Do you even know which instance lobby you’re in?

“S-rank!

“Are you sure your B-rank boyfriend and your C-rank self can take dozens of people through this alive?”

If C-rank was the beginner zone, then S-rank was hell mode. The death rate was extremely high.

Jumping two or three ranks was basically suicide.

Not to mention, these people had been forcibly dragged in. They did not even have control panels.

The game could only read Winnie’s player profile, so it counted the strength of a dozen people under her name.

That miscalculation made the game think she was strong.

That was why everyone had been sent into an S-rank instance.