Chapter 1048: Tearing Villagers Apart to Grab Weapons
Old Qin refused to give up and kept moving forward.
"Impossible. I've already seen through Chen Mo's tricks. The weapon has to be somewhere ahead. There's no way he'd make me fight bare-handed."
But just as Old Qin turned a corner, a large axe came swinging down at him!
It was a crazed Yharnamite. His attire looked like that of an ordinary resident, but his right hand held a torch high while his left hand gripped a large axe tightly. Without a word to Old Qin, he swung the axe the moment they met.
"What's going on? Isn't this a basic enemy? Why am I seeing basic enemies but still no weapon?"
"Could it be... am I supposed to fight with my bare hands?"
Old Qin dodged left and right while analyzing the Yharnamite's attack patterns.
As an old veteran of *Dark Souls*, Old Qin quickly noticed that this monster's attack frequency was very low, with plenty of openings.
Old Qin decided to try fighting it. Maybe... this game really did start with needing to tear apart basic enemies with bare hands? Like how the prequel to *Dark Souls* started with a broken sword?
The large axe came whistling through the air with a sharp sound. Old Qin watched its trajectory, sidestepped to the side, and simultaneously kicked the villager in the knee.
The villager stumbled from the kick, but his torch also burned Old Qin.
Old Qin felt a searing pain in his chest and quickly retreated, only to find that his health bar had dropped by nearly one-fifth.
However, that kick of his had only dealt 5 damage.
The axe came swinging again. This time, Old Qin learned his lesson. He quickly dodged twice to get behind the monster and started throwing wild punches.
After landing four consecutive punches, Old Qin felt himself getting winded and quickly backstepped to create distance.
Taking a closer look, each punch dealt 3 damage, totaling 12 damage.
Adding in the kick from earlier, the monster's health bar had only dropped by about one-fifth.
"This doesn't make sense, right? The monster hits me once and I lose one-fifth of my health. I hit the monster five times and it loses one-fifth too. That's way too unbalanced!"
"Wait, I get it! Haha, it looks like an incredibly tough situation, but it can't stump an old veteran!"
Old Qin glanced at the UI at the edge of his vision, which showed his health had almost fully recovered.
When the monster had burned him with the torch earlier, the one-fifth health he lost had existed as "phantom health."
And his continuous attacks had restored that phantom health. This was one of the new mechanics Chen Mo had mentioned during the press conference for *Bloodborne*.
Commonly known as the gospel for greedy attackers.
"Alright, viewers, it's deduction time. In Souls-like games, when you analyze all the factors together, the conclusion—no matter how unreasonable it seems—will always be the truth!"
"There are no weapons outside, and while bare-handed attacks deal very low damage, they can restore health if timed right. That means we should tear this villager apart and then snatch the weapon from his hands!"
After discovering the correct way to play this game, Old Qin was instantly filled with fighting spirit.
After all, with his experience from *Dark Souls*, and since this basic enemy was very simple, Old Qin struggled for five minutes and finally took down the monster with a combination of punches and kicks.
After the monster died, the axe and torch in its hands both fell to the ground, but there was no white glow.
"White glow" was a tradition for items in the Souls series. When an item was in a pick-up state, it would appear on the ground as a blob of white light, and the player could pick it up to obtain the item.
But after this Yharnamite died, its axe didn't turn into a white glow and drop.
Old Qin didn't think much of it. He picked up the axe from the ground and weighed it in his hand.
No item description appeared, and no stat panel showed up. From every angle, this axe didn't seem like a usable item.
But when Old Qin held the axe in his hand, he could clearly feel its texture and weight—it was heavy. Although the blade wasn't sharp, it was still much better than fighting bare-handed.
"See? I told you. Games like this always find a way to hand you a weapon. But this installment is really innovative. You have to grab weapons from basic enemies. Realistic. Very realistic."
With the axe in hand, Old Qin's confidence soared.
Ahead, there were two more Yharnamites sleeping. Old Qin spent another three minutes using this dull axe to chop both monsters to death.
To be fair, this axe wasn't very effective. Its damage boost was very limited. But Old Qin had a high threshold for suffering, and compared to fighting bare-handed earlier, having an axe was already very reassuring.
The other two Yharnamites also had axes. Old Qin compared them and found little difference, so he picked one that looked slightly sharper and held onto it.
But strangely, this axe didn't appear in the inspectable item inventory. It was simply held in Old Qin's hand.
Old Qin didn't find this odd at all. In fact, he thought this design was very realistic.
"In *Dark Souls*, you can't pick up weapons dropped by monsters, which is really unreasonable. Like the Black Knight's halberd—he's clearly holding it, so why doesn't it drop when I kill him?"
"*Bloodborne* is truly a next-gen VR game. You can pick up and use any weapon from monsters. That's very realistic."
Old Qin found a lever nearby. Pulling it lowered a ladder. After climbing the ladder, he saw a lantern ahead.
"This should be the equivalent of a bonfire in the Souls series, right? A lantern in this case. But what use is it now? I can't level up. I'll keep exploring ahead."
Old Qin ignored the lantern.
He went to the large iron gate on the left but couldn't push it open, so he had to head into the narrow alley on the right.
"Seeing all this junk, I know there's definitely some malicious design from Serent. Look, there's a traitor charging out with a kitchen knife."
"It looks like there are more villagers. What the hell, they're carrying scythes and torches. Are they socialist successors or the FFF group?"
Old Qin encountered more enemies. They all looked like Yharnam residents, and they were all out of their minds. The moment they saw Old Qin, they charged at him like mad dogs.
From these enemies, Old Qin grabbed even more weapons.
Including a kitchen knife, a scythe, a torch, a wooden shield, and a pitchfork. Clearly, these guys were all villagers.
Faced with so many weapons, Old Qin was a bit overwhelmed. He picked them up one by one to test them and found that the axe still seemed the best.
The kitchen knife and scythe were faster, but their range was too short. The pitchfork had good range, but its attack power was average, and Old Qin found it very awkward to use.
The most infuriating part was that none of these weapons could be stored in the inventory, and no stat descriptions were visible.
"Strange. Does this game not have item descriptions for weapons? How mysterious."
"Uh, there's a shortcut I can open here."
"In the distance, there seems to be a big axe guy who looks tough. He probably seems strong, but actually... Holy crap!!"
Before Old Qin could finish his sentence, he saw the giant wielding the large axe leap into the air, jumping a full four or five meters, and bring the axe down directly at Old Qin's head!