“You have quit the scenario. For twenty minutes, you are banned from queueing up in any mode. Due to your abandonment of the game, you are not going to gain any rewards.”
Those two lines were written on the screen of the log-in lobby.
After the Anomaly disappeared, Galileo and Copernicus naturally sensed it. They led Invincible Champion and Ye Zhi happily back to the top of the mountain. They initially wanted to praise Feng Bujue for his brilliant strategy of using the main character’s plot armor against the Anomaly.
The result told them that the Anomaly was not defeated, but Feng Bujue himself had disappeared. Zen Dream, who had observed the whole process from afar, confirmed this. The two GMs were baffled. They did not know how to write the report to their superior. This had never happened before, and it could end up being a serious issue.
In any case, they did not communicate that much, and the players left the scenario consecutively. After all, the GMs had the confidentiality clause to adhere to. If there was a need, they could find Feng Bujue in private to chat, and there was no need for them to say anything before members of a big guild like Regulation.
About twenty minutes after quitting the scenario, Zen Dream’s group, who were still online, heard a strange system announcement.
“The scenario that you were previously in was closed due to an unknown error.”
That was a tale for later. For now, Feng Bujue was feeling extremely annoyed as he inspected his status.
———
Title: Plot Explorer, 13,436/18,000. Skill Points: 2,637 Game Coins: 326,800
Mastery: General Ability D, Workmanship D, Sleuthing E, Fighting D, Marksmanship D, Medic F, Sorcery E, Summoning N/A
Inventory 5/10: Mario’s Wrench, Flashlight, Bench, SCP-500 (19/20), Anti-gravity Gun
Equipment: Jazz Shoes, Death Poker, Echo Armor
Storage 3/10: Puzzle Card: Monkey, Puzzle Card: Sunglasses, Persephone’s Magic Vacuum
Skill: Hasty Repair, Body Enhancement Spell, A Strategic Victory
After two hours of gaming, it was one thing that his Exp and Game Coins did not increase, but this time, he had lost both equipment and skills. It was such a big loss. The two health potions could be ignored—he could pretend that he had drank them out of thirst—but the four pieces of equipment…
The equip requirement for Eyes of Hostility was that the wearer must be below level twenty, and it could not be traded after being equipped. After another two levels, it could be sold to the system shop, so it did not cost Feng Bujue that much. But other than that, all the other items like Casey Jones’ Mask, which provided the magical buff that added to his fighting mastery, disappeared just like that. After Feng Bujue’s battle to the death with the super powerful K3-Red Iron, his actual fighting mastery had already levelled up to D. If he still had the mask, with its effect of ’when equipped, the wearer’s fighting mastery will be viewed as one level higher than normal but will not work beyond level C’, Feng Bujue’s fighting mastery would have been seen as C. That was such a large leap; it would be higher than Passing Rain already!
Also, that was not to mention Robots-Must-Die. He had only used it in one scenario. The number of souls it had obtained was in the single digits, and it had been purchased using his Skill Points!
Pistol M1911A1 was Feng Bujue’s only gun-type weapon, and there were still some magazines of bullet in his pocket, which had all been purchased with Game Coins. Bullets were sold at the official shops, and selling them back would be a huge loss. He would not even get one tenth the buying price. To sell it at the Auction House… tagging them at seventy percent the buying price might not even get any buyers. After all, the bullets had to correspond to their respective guns. Furthermore, there were so many miscellaneous items like this on sale, and people might not have the time to go through the many pages at the Auction House. That was not yet counting the transaction fee.
He could only console himself… So what if he lost the mask; at least his fighting mastery already increased to D already. So what if he lost Robots-Must-Die; he had obtained 237 Skill Points using it already, which was some compensation. So what if he lost the pistol; the bullets did not cost much anyway, and now he still had anti-gravity gun, albeit it could only fire one object at a time, and he would be viewed as a madman if he ever pulled this out in most scenarios. Still, it was a long-ranged weapon. Furthermore, if the scenario had a Nokia shop, with this weapon, he could take down a Gundam robot, right?
Lastly, it was not that he did not get any rewards from this scenario. At least his Sorcery weapon had upgraded. Now that Death Poker had four special effects, it would not be long before it got a fifth and sixth special effect. On top of that, it was proven that SCP-500 was strong enough to reconstruct broken limbs, so all in all, it was not a total loss, right?
Feng Bujue was still convincing himself when a message appeared on the screen. He thought that it was the GMs trying to contact him, but when he lifted his head, he saw that it was a communication request from Brother Long. After accepting it, Long Aomin’s voice rang in the chat channel. “Hey, Brother Feng, long time no see.”
“Haha… It hasn’t been that long, only a few days,” Feng Bujue replied with a smile.
“You’re right. After you play this game for too long, your concept of time gets messed up.” Long Aomin laughed. “I just finished a scenario and saw that you are currently free. How about it? Would you like to group up?”
“Er… Actually, I just abandoned a game, so I can’t join a queue at the moment,” Feng Bujue said.
“Huh? How? You abandoned a game?” Long Aomin was confused. “Did you run into extremely weak teammates?”
“It is a long story. It’s too tiring to go through it now,” Feng Bujue replied. His answer did not really clarify anything, but it was clear enough that he was not in the mood to discuss it. Long Aomin laughed a few times and very understandably dropped the subject.
Feng Bujue used the chance to change the topic. “By the way, Brother Long, you still remember Passing Rain and Laughing Soul, right?”
“I do. They’re the female warriors from the Haunted House scenario, yes? They have friended me,” Long Aomin said.
“They’ve opened a guild with me and Xiao Tan,” Feng Bujue explained. “Brother Feng, if you are available…”
“Ah, I’m sorry, I already have a guild.” Before Feng Bujue finished, Long Aomin knew what he was going to ask, so as he rejected it, he explained, “My guild is filled with my unit colleagues, so I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to join you.”
“Oh, it’s fine. We can still group up together, right?” Feng Bujue said. He did not think that it was wrong. Most people would pull along their real-life friends to play a game, and in the future, playing games together was a common bonding method between colleagues.
But… Long Aomin’s guild was rather unique. He said that his members were all his unit colleagues, and that was true, but they were not colleagues from his police station.
Long Aomin had recently been moved to the internet security unit, and his guild was obviously… a scouting unit for the law enforcement. Due to his previous injury, Long Aomin was spared from field operations, but keeping him as a pen-pusher was a waste of his talent, so… he was moved to this post, which was more suitable for him.