“The scenario has been completed. Calculating the reward.
“Obtained EXP: 5,500. Game Coins: 55,000.
“Obtained Equipment: Dagger
“Completed/Accepted Quests: 2/2
“Completed Special/ Hidden Quests: 0. Unlocked World-building: The Replaced Zaroff
“Time of Terror Points Increase: 0. High Terror Points: 0%. Average Terror Points: 0%.
“Your Terror Rating is: Embodiment of Valor. Extra reward obtained, can be selected later.
“Obtained Skill Points: 420
“Additional Reward from Skill Points Gained: EXP: 4,200, Game Coins: 42,000
“Scenario Cleared Reward: 80% of EXP gained, 4,400
“Calculation complete. Please continue.”
After that, two system announcements followed.
“Your title has been updated to ‘Plot Explorer’.
“Your level has increased to fifteen. Maximum Stamina Points increased to 1,500/1,500.
“New Game Mode unlocked, observable via queueable options.”
The rewards this time were enormous, but Feng Bujue thought that he deserved. After all, he had defeated the impossibly strong Rainsford. Therefore, it was only fair that the rewards matched that impossible feat.
From the system announcement, he realized that unlocking the world-building only nabbed him two hundred Skill Points, so this meant that his actions rewarded him with 220 Skill Points. Perhaps that one kick on the boss earned him more than one hundred Skill Points. After going over the rating review, Feng Bujue went to the storage to put on Casey Jones’ Mask. When he did, the system said, “You can choose to show or hide the equipped mask.”
Feng Bujue chose to hide it. With the fighting mastery that was improved by the mask, he looked at his status.
———
Title: Plot Explorer; EXP: 1,000/15,000; Skill Points: 1,080; Game Coins: 339,000
Mastery Level: General Ability D, Workmanship E, Sleuthing E, Fighting D, Marksmanship D, Medic F, Sorcery F, ?
Inventory 5/10: Mario’s Wrench, Eye of Hostility, M191A1 Pistol, Echo Armor, Dagger
Equipment: Jazz Shoes, Casey Jones’ Mask
Storage: 0; Puzzle Cards: Monkey
Skills: Hasty Repair, Below-the-belt Shin Kick, Body Enhancement Spell, Strategic Victory
———
Strategic Victory was the skill provided by his new title. Unlike Brain Concussion, this was an active skill.
———
Skill Name: Strategic Victory
Skill Type: Active
Effect: Discover the status of the current scenario’s final boss, if one exists, directly. Observable data includes height, weight, race, skills, weaknesses, and so on. This skill can be used repeatably, and the cooldown time is one seconds. If the status of the boss changes for some reason, the skill must be refreshed to see the updated status.
Remark: Knowing your enemy is winning half the battle.
———
This skill was immensely useful for players who preferred strategizing over brute force. Furthermore, it did not cost anything. Passive skills aside, most title skills that did not exhaust any resources came with a lot of limitations. For example, One Blade’s Decapitating Slash could be activated without exhausting anything, but the cooldown time was more than two hours. Therefore, it was normally reserved for the final boss, but the issue was that the player might not even survive until that far into the scenario.
While skills with exhaustion like Brother Long’s Lighting Bash and Xiao Tan’s Fleeing Strike, they were skills that needed to exhaust thirty percent of the user’s maximum Stamina Points to activate. Therefore, their cooldown time was comparatively shorter. The former was one hour, and the latter had no cooldown. In terms of effects, the latter naturally was weaker. It was mostly used for fleeing and would cause little to no damage.
Feng Bujue’s new skill, Strategic Victory, not only did not cost anything, it had practically zero cooldown time. Thus, it was fair that it was not a combat skill. Normally, this skill would only be used once in a scenario where they encountered the boss. For someone with a good memory, seeing the same set of data again made no sense.
It was worth noting that even among non-title given skills, there were some that did not exhaust anything either. Actually, the closest example was Body Enhancement Spell. Even though the skill would continuously deplete one’s Life Points during activation, it did not require anything to activate, not even one Life Point or Mana Point. This kind of skill did not have something called activation success rate. Even if the player’s mastery level of that skill’s school was F, the success rate would be one hundred percent.
For example, if a player’s skill that did not cost anything was to blow up light bulbs with a snap of his fingers, even if the system limited him to have twenty percent success rate, all he needed to do was to snap his fingers a few more times. After all, it was no skin off his back. Such a theory was replicated on the Body Enhancement Spell. If the skill had the chance to fail, then Feng Bujue only needed to reactivate it until he succeeded. The cooldown timer only came into action after a skill was activated, so for failed activation, there was no cooldown. Hence, for these kinds of skills that had no cost, setting a skill activation success rate made no sense.
“Hmm… I’ve already reached level fifteen.” Feng Bujue stretched lazily. “Since I’m already at this level, it appears like there is no need for me to rush to gather EXP anymore. Hmm, since the economy is still lucrative, how about I roll for some equipment to sell at the auction house.”
The economy was rather chaotic since it was the first day of the open beta; no one would know what the situation might be when they logged in next.
Feng Bujue walked to the glass tube and heard the familiar system announcing, “Please select your additional reward: one, an equipment matching your current level; two, 50,000 Game Coins; three, six thousand EXP.”
He chose the first reward and looked at the gathering light with anticipation. Currently, Feng Bujue was level fifteen, so since it was going to be equipment that matched his level, he believed that it would not be something like ‘Rock’ again. Those kinds of items were only winnable by extremely unlucky players under level five. However, this time, history repeated itself, and his anticipation was once again demolished by his karma.
———
Item Name: Kid’s Baseball Bat
Item Type: Weapon
Quality: Normal
Offense Points: None
Element: None
Special Effect: None
Remark: To ensure the safety of little baseball players, we have come up with this safety bat. The outside shell is a thick layer of plastic while the inside is filled with air. Even if it makes contact with someone’s head, it will not cause any injuries.
———
“How in the world is it a ‘weapon’ if the Offense Points are zero?” Feng Bujue gripped the white bat and waved it twice. “A weapon for a level fifteen player is something like this?”
The item was so bad that he felt like if he kept it around, it was only going to take valuable inventory space, so he decided to sell this back to the system shop. Inside the elevator, after the door closed, Feng Bujue set Zone 10 as his fixed Market Zone. He took this downtime to check his mailbox and was surprised to find two unread messages.
The first came from Passing Rain, and the content was short. “Apologies for disconnecting earlier. Will reconnect later tonight.”
She had actually logged in after dinner because she was worried, but at the time, Feng Bujue had still been in-game, and it was then that she had left him this message.
“She’s quite a serious person,” Feng Bujue commented to himself.
The second message came from the system. The title read, “Your auctioned item has been sold.”
The content was as such. “Your auctioned item ‘Kenny’s Hoodie’ was directly purchased by player ‘Anonymous’ for 140,000 Game Coins. Please clic.k the message’s attachment to collect the Game Coins.”
Feng Bujue clicked on the attachment, and his current Game Coins rose to 479,000. He could be considered rich. After taking out 100,000 to open a guild, he still had about 380,000 left. That should be enough to buy some apparel to increase his status. Other than that, Feng Bujue noticed that he had been running out of bullets for the M191A1 pistol, so he needed to purchase some ammo. If possible, he also wanted to buy some potions to counteract the exhaustion from whenever he activated the Body Enhancement Spell.
“Hmm? Wait a minute…” Feng Bujue squinted and made a strange expression. “What was I planning to do before starting the scenario?”
After a pause, he nodded. “Oh right… It’s time for dinner…”
…
Sitting up from the gaming hub, he glanced at the clock. It was 6:40 pm. Even though it would not take too long to cook noodles, when he finished, it would be around 7 pm.
Feng Bujue straightened himself up and stretched to unleash the pressure in his spine. Sitting inside the gaming hub for too long was not good for his health. The posture was quite tiring. He glanced at the corner of his living room. Arthas’ bowl of cat food was empty, and there was some black substance inside the litter box.
“Huh? So fast?” he exclaimed in shock. He turned to look around and saw Arthas sleeping on the sofa. Feng Bujue laughed. “My God… he’s a genius! He learned where to poop in one day, and I thought I would have to repeat the lesson a few more times.”
The man was in a good mood. Holding the edges of the gaming hub with his arms, he jumped out from it, and then one of his feet stepped right into a pile of cat sh*t.
“What the… a distraction and a trap?” Feng Bujue groaned. “You are one hell of a strategist!”
“Meow…” Arthas on the sofa yawned. The cat wiggled its tail and turned its head away from Feng Bujue, like the man did not deserve its attention. After Feng Bujue cleaned his room and finally sat before the computer with his bowl of noodles, it was already 7:15 pm.
He found a bottle of sauce that he had no idea when he purchased inside the fridge. The expiry date on the cover was too blurry to read, but… as long as the surface was not conspicuously moldy, the man had the courage to put it down his throat. After consecutive days of soup noodles without any sides, when the time came, even if all he had was a bottle of vinegar, he would toss that into the noodles without hesitation.
He turned on the computer and logged into the social media out of habit. To his surprise, his editor had messaged him. This was a rarity. When Feng Bujue opened the email, his chopsticks fell to the ground.
The email only had one sentence. “Bujue, are you interested in appearing on a television show?”