Chapter 46: The Harvest

Without any delay or dizziness, the scene before his eyes instantly shifted back to the familiar bedroom he had lived in for seventeen years.

Li Sheng turned his head to look at the alarm clock on the desk. The clock hands matched the exact moment he entered the mission, meaning that from the perspective of the real world, he had never left at all.

"If a player dies in a scenario mission and is teleported out in a corpse state, then to others, that person would be fine one second and suddenly decapitated the next. The scene must be quite bizarre..."

Thinking this, the cold and detached expression on Li Sheng's face instantly broke, and he hurriedly pulled an odor neutralizer out of his inventory slot, spraying himself wildly all over.

The previous hacking and slashing had been too uninhibited, and he hadn't noticed that he was splattered all over with blood—quite filthy.

"If only the Killing Fields game came with a built-in cleaning function, so I could just shout, 'Main God! Full cleanup! Deduct the points from me!'"

Li Sheng muttered to himself in complaint, took off his dirty clothes, stored them in the inventory slot, found a clean outfit from the wardrobe to change into, and finally sat back down in front of the computer desk, opening the freshly generated mission log.

[Player Overall Performance: S+, Game Coins and Experience Points rewards increased to 60%]

[Reward Settlement in Progress]

Li Sheng's eyebrows raised slightly. Various missions in the Killing Fields game would evaluate players based on their final performance, ranging from C- to S+. The higher the evaluation, the better the final reward.

"The reason I was able to get an S+ evaluation, apart from the fact that I only used 30 minutes—which is half of the mission time limit—to get through the triple locked rooms, is another major reason: I cracked the truth behind the locked room game and directly found the designers of the locked rooms."

Li Sheng tapped his cheek with his finger, thinking deeply. "Reflecting on it afterward, the design of this novice mission was quite ingenious. The first stage, the seawater locked room, actually left the player with about twenty-some minutes.

Even without hearing the song 'Drunken Sailor,' by using brute force to smash through, expending a certain amount of time and physical strength, one could break through the wooden door of the captain's cabin and obtain the key items, the sextant and the marine chronometer.

Secondly, even if one didn't understand the sextant, one only needed to calculate the longitude of 759 through the hints of the marine chronometer, and then use the brute-force enumeration method to unlock the wheel combination lock—after all, the first two digits of latitude only have 90 possibilities."

"As for the second locked room, it seemed like failing to crack the password would crush someone into a meat patty, but it actually left a way out, which was to crawl into the stone fireplace and take a gamble."

"As for the third locked room, it was even simpler; whether the player chose to save Mike or not did not affect the final ending."

"Viewed this way, as a novice mission, the Killing Fields accommodated both puzzle-solving enthusiasts with a certain foundation and ordinary people capable of calm thinking. To some extent, it was quite... fair."

However, achieving a perfect clearance was naturally even better.

Novice players could quickly acquire the most crucial experience points by raising their mission ratings, leveling up, and gaining a free attribute point to enhance their physical baseline qualities.

After passing the novice stage, higher player ratings would also increase the probability of obtaining precious items from mission rewards.

If players wanted to coast by and only take the lowest evaluation every time, they would easily perish in increasingly difficult missions.

Must seize every opportunity to strengthen oneself in order to survive the death spiral.

[Mission Reward 1: Experience Points 100]

[Mission Reward 2: Game Coins 200]

Under the 1.6x bonus of the S evaluation, Li Sheng gained 160 experience points and 320 game coins this time.

After claiming the rewards, a prompt indicated that he had leveled up to Lv2, with the current experience bar at 60/200.

"According to the official exchange rate where one game currency can be exchanged for ten thousand RMB, just this single mission earned over three million. Being a player really is a lucrative profession."

Li Sheng smacked his lips and looked at the third reward.

[Mission Reward 3: Rare Quality Skill Scroll * 1]

In the virtual interface, a parchment scroll bound with hemp rope floated in the air, emitting a blue glow.

At the exciting moment of opening a treasure chest, Li Sheng rubbed his palms together like a fly, his expression nervous as he whispered, "Open!"

The hemp rope suddenly snapped, and the parchment scroll bloomed with a bright light.

[Skill Scroll Name: Mist Concealment Technique]

[Attribute: Learning Type (Single Use Only)]

[Type: Psionics]

[Usage Method: Active]

[Grade: Rare]

[Special Effect: Fog Concealment. Centered on oneself, continuously creates dense fog with a diameter of 20 meters. Within the fog range, the caster's voice, thermal reflection, sense of presence, etc., will be weakened]

[Consumption: 1 Psionic Power Point per second. For every 1 meter the dense fog expands, the Psionic Power Point consumption increases by 1 point per second]

[Cooldown Time: 30 seconds]

[Learning Condition: Perception attribute higher than or equal to 7 points]

[Remarks: During the casting period, the dense fog will follow the center of the caster. If the caster leaves or stops casting, the dense fog will dissipate at the rate of ordinary fog under environmental influences.]

[Remarks: Today, our frontline reporter was fortunate enough to interview Mr. Hozuki Zabuza, the Mist Ghoul, who once fought the Sixth Hokage of Konoha Village to a standstill with his bare hands, and suppressed the Seventh Hokage and the last descendant of the Uchiha clan—who shared his renown—with a single water clone. He can truly be said to have shaken the ninja world and dominated through the ages.]

"Uh..."

Li Sheng squinted, struggling to move his gaze away from those remarks full of complaints.

Skill scrolls in the Killing Fields game can be divided into [Consumable Type] and [Learning Type] according to their usage method.

As the name implies, the former has a limited number of uses and is triggered through tearing, chanting, sacrifice, etc. Once all uses are exhausted, it destroys itself.

The latter allows players to learn the skills recorded on the scroll, a process that usually consumes the scroll as well (only a few scrolls can be learned multiple times).

Generally speaking, the effects of consumable scrolls are stronger than those of learning scrolls.

As for the [Type] of skills, they are broadly divided into [Combat], [Shooting], [Psionics], [Machinery], [Lifestyle], [General], etc., with many subcategories under each major category.

For example, [Psionics] can be divided into spells, illusions, divine arts, witchcraft, curses...

[Lifestyle] can be divided into cooking, forging, medical treatment, fishing...

Certain skills that are difficult to classify are all placed under the [General] category.

In addition, because the supernatural power systems connected to the Killing Fields are far too numerous and complex, for the convenience of measurement, the concept of [Psionic Power Points] is uniformly used as an indicator of the supernatural energy possessed by players.

The calculation formula is: (50% Intelligence Points + 50% Perception Points) × 50 = Psionic Power Points.

This is merely the most basic source of psionic power points. Players can increase the upper limit and recovery speed of their psionic power through various methods (such as practicing internal cultivation, chakra, the Force, etc.).

With Li Sheng's current blank-slate status, the psionic power points he possessed amounted to 300 points.

"Leveling up to Lv2 gave one free attribute point, which just barely meets the condition for learning the Mist Concealment Technique, but there's no rush right now."

Li Sheng thought for a moment and didn't rush to consume this learning-type scroll. Instead, he opened the player forum again to look up information, preparing to officially log into the physical Killing Fields space.

The player black market inside had been operating for four and a half years, offering even greater opportunities. Perhaps he could use the 320 game coins on hand to buy something useful.