Chapter 143: Famine

The days of early spring always seemed fleeting, and dusk arrived in the blink of an eye. Feng Xue gathered branches, dry kindling, and hay to ignite a campfire, waiting in silence for the return of daylight. During his explorations, he had discovered a fair amount of flint; with the aid of the dry, flammable weeds, a few sparks were all it took to coax a roaring fire into being.

After a full day of scouting, he had found no sign of mountainous terrain. In fact, the ground showed not the slightest undulation. Feng Xue could now conclude with near certainty that this world possessed no mountains at all. It sounded absurd, yet it was the reality of this realm.

The warmth of the fire granted Feng Xue a shred of security, and it was no mere illusion. Ever since the sky had begun to darken, a weight had pressed upon his chest, as if some nameless danger were creeping toward him. That suffocating sense of encroaching peril had nearly driven him to the brink of madness. It was only when he lit the campfire that this pressure, which felt as though it might shatter at any moment, came to an abrupt halt, vanishing as if it had never existed.

However, Feng Xue’s newly acquired extrasensory perception revealed a lingering problem: one of his "attributes" was slowly slipping away. It was not a physical stat like strength or speed, but rather the peculiar "numerical value" he had become aware of following the evolution of his Gourmet Demon. Though he could not yet name it precisely, this attribute seemed tethered to his sanity, willpower, and various psychological factors. As the value plummeted, a growing, frantic agitation took hold.

"Is it the night in this world that bears the property of draining this attribute, or is it an extra consumption caused by my awakening of it?" Feng Xue found it difficult to categorize this power, ultimately deciding to maintain a wait-and-see approach. Since this world was linked to such a power, there would surely be opportunities to uncover its true nature.

The wind whistled coldly, causing the flames of the campfire to dance. Feng Xue had to constantly feed dry wood into the fire to keep it burning. This meant that sleep was all but impossible. Sleep was vital; having endured a night of torment, Feng Xue confirmed this, for he discovered that after staying up, his nameless attribute depleted even faster.

"I must find a relatively safe place to set up camp," he thought, continuing his map-covering trek.

The scenery of this world remained unchanged. Forests and grasslands blanketed every place Feng Xue traversed—or perhaps, it was simply that the location where he had descended happened to be of this terrain. He arrived at this conclusion because he had not encountered a single other transmigrator, nor had he found any trace of their presence. If it wasn't a matter of good luck, then the map must be staggeringly vast—so vast that even after casting a thousand people into it, they remained entirely isolated from one another. Of course, there was another possibility: that for the first few days of entry, the transmigrators were protected by some measure that prevented them from crossing paths immediately. However, given the nature of this preliminary trial, that scenario seemed unlikely.

As time passed, Feng Xue’s understanding of the world grew more comprehensive, and he gradually deduced its name: *Don't Starve*. Yes, that very game where "you don't look at anything else, you just see how long you can survive." What truly confirmed his suspicion was a spider he encountered in the jungle.

He called it a spider for lack of a better term. Although it possessed the ability to weave webs and had eight legs, Feng Xue could not reconcile this creature—which was as large as his own head—with a common spider. The reason was not merely its combat power, which reached the peak of the extraordinary, but because the thing had a skull! Yes, a skull! When killed, this creature yielded a skull. Yet, its eight legs lacked any bones; they were a typical insectoid structure, with hydraulic muscles encased in a layer of chitin. Feng Xue almost mistook it for some ground-dwelling variation of a *feitouman*.

The appearance of the spider not only made Feng Xue realize the essence of this world but also revealed the true function of his "aura." He had discovered an identical aura emanating from the spider! As he approached it, his nameless attribute began to plummet rapidly, and his aura triggered subconsciously. Then, a miraculous thing happened: he could feel the same attribute within the spider beginning to wither. Simultaneously, the decline of his own attribute slowed, as if—as if he were absorbing the spider’s essence!

Feng Xue could finally confirm the true name of this attribute: SAN.

It could be understood as a Sanity or Mental Power value, though it carried distinct nuances. This attribute judged a creature's psychological well-being from a specific perspective; a drop in SAN often signaled the beginning of the collapse of one’s reason and willpower. If the SAN value reached zero, the creature would lose its mind entirely, falling into a state of madness and collapse—much like a human in *Evangelion* who suffered the full mental contamination of an Angel—trapped in an eternal nightmare. Furthermore, low SAN brought hallucinatory effects. These hallucinations were not merely tricks of the mind; for the victim, they were absolute reality. In other words, if such a hallucination attacked the person experiencing it, the person would suffer physical harm.

Upon confirming that his aura was a "Nightmare Aura" (one that reduced the target's SAN value), Feng Xue was ecstatic. The gloom brought by the *Don't Starve* world was swept away in an instant; had he checked his own SAN value then, he would surely have found it at its peak.

His excitement was not unfounded. The mechanic of SAN values was a perfect match for the illusionist path! Normally, for an illusion to take effect, it required far more checks than offensive magic or martial arts. If martial arts only required a Fortitude check after hitting to cause damage, and energy attacks required both a Fortitude check and an Energy Defense check (Magic Resistance) to function, then illusions required a gauntlet of checks: Willpower, Psychological, Energy Defense, Fortitude, Mental, and more. Failing any one of these meant the illusion’s effect would be severely diminished.

The SAN value factor, however, could simultaneously degrade an opponent's willpower, spirit, psychology, and reason, thereby drastically increasing the success rate of illusions. More than that, a lower SAN value could even amplify the power of the illusion, transforming a "deception" that originally only affected the mind into a terrifying "reality" capable of influencing the physical world.