Chapter 337: 337 Unraveling the Mysteries

“Who is this?” Mu Shang asked with some surprise when he saw Yang Jinxia beside Chen Xu.

Chen Xu hesitated a bit. How should he introduce Yang Jinxia’s identity?

Mu Shang looked at the two of them, as if he had remembered something, and a surprised expression appeared on his face. “Could it be, she’s your partner?”

Seeing that he had guessed right, Chen Xu saw no point in hiding it anymore and said, “That’s right.”

“Wow, I didn’t expect that. It’s my first time entering the battlefield and I’ve already encountered someone with a partner,” Mu Shang marveled.

Chen Xu, seeing his reaction, figured that having a partner must not be very common.

“My name is Mu Shang,” Mu Shang introduced himself.

“Yang Jinxia.”

Mu Shang said, “Let’s head to the newbie village first, collect some intelligence, and see what the main storyline of this world is.”

Naturally, Chen Xu and Yang Jinxia had no objections. This lousy game never provided any hints about the content, and they were both completely in the dark, so they decided to follow Mu Shang and get acquainted with the game first.

They left the valley, and in the distance, they could faintly see a village. They made their way towards it.

On the way, they encountered a deer; as soon as it appeared, Chen Xu hurled a stone at it and sent it back.

“Your perception is pretty high,” Mu Shang said, somewhat surprised.

Chen Xu said, “I have pretty good eyesight.” Actually, this was thanks to his second talent, “Sense of Crisis.” He had felt the deer before it even emerged.

Mu Shang’s eyes lit up and said, “If I got you a bow or a handgun, you’d be especially effective at grinding for monsters.”

Hearing him say that, Chen Xu felt a bit odd. This style seemed a bit off.

Before long, they arrived at the village.

They weren’t the first players to arrive; they could see quite a few people wandering around the village, obviously players.

“There are ten NPCs in this village, it seems that this game is pretty hot,” Mu Shang first observed, then whispered to Chen Xu and Yang Jinxia.

Chen Xu asked curiously, “What do you mean?”

“AI requires a lot of resources. If it were a game that wasn’t popular, they couldn’t afford so many NPCs,” Mu Shang explained briefly and then questioned, “Isn’t this common knowledge? Don’t you even know that?”

Chen Xu said a bit embarrassedly, “Yeah, I was too focused on playing games before.”

Mu Shang’s eyes widened, “Don’t you ever browse the forums?”

Chen Xu shook his head. He really hadn’t browsed the forums because before now, he had only been connected to the internet for a few seconds and didn’t even know where the forums were.

Mu Shang was somewhat speechless, not expecting to meet such an oddity.

He couldn’t help but enlighten Chen Xu, “Actually, the Dream World game is just a platform. All the games on it are developed independently at the developers’ own risk. If a game wants to be launched, it can only rent space and resources from this platform, and the most expensive part is the AI. If a game isn’t popular enough, designing a few more NPCs can bankrupt it.”

Having heard this, Chen Xu suddenly understood something that had puzzled him for a long time. “No wonder when I play single-player games, I rarely encounter NPCs, and it’s usually post-apocalyptic scenarios.”

“Haha.”

Mu Shang couldn’t help but laugh, “Actually, single-player games use very few resources for NPCs compared to the battlefield here, but the Dream World game is such a rip-off, always giving you these apocalyptic scenarios with hardly any NPCs in single-player games. That’s why not many people like to play them.”

That made sense.

Then, they started talking about the content of the game.

“You heard it just now: this place is ravaged by monsters, most of the people in the village have been killed by them, and only these ten are left, determined to seek revenge. That must be the main storyline.”

Mu Shang said, “You can exchange the corpses or heads of the monsters for Gold Coins as a reward. And if you kill several of the monsters involved in the massacre of the village, you can also receive the transmission of skills.”

However, before they went out into the wilds to hunt monsters, they completed several quests first and each got hold of a weapon. Only then did they venture out.

Chen Xu truly felt like he was experiencing deja vu from playing online games.

The difference was that playing this game allowed him to stay logged in for extended periods without logging out–even for several months.

A month later, Chen Xu had almost reached his limit in monster hunting and began to seriously doubt the game’s appeal.

Mainly because their team was too powerful. As soon as they stepped into the wild, the beasts hadn’t even appeared before Chen Xu spotted them. Those fast enough, couldn’t escape his arrows either.

As for those slow, thick-skinned ones, it was Mu Shang’s turn, clad in leather armor. With a swipe of his mountain-splitting Sabre, even the thick-skinned wild boar would lose half its life. With Chen Xu shooting covert arrows alongside, the creature was finished off in a matter of moments.

And Yang Jinxia’s role? She just had to cheer with “666.”

After a month, they had wiped out the monsters in the surrounding area, earning a large sum of Gold Coins and acquiring several skills, while conveniently upgrading their equipment.

Next, the trio headed to a nearby market town–essentially a larger map.

This game differed from the online games Chen Xu remembered in that killing monsters didn’t yield experience or levels. To boost one’s power, one had to either spend Gold Coins to purchase various Spirit Pills to enhance base attributes or learn a variety of skills.

What’s more frustrating, according to Mu Shang, was that the attributes and skills laboriously built up in the game didn’t carry over once you left the game. In another game, you had to start over from scratch.

Because different games were operated by different developers, the data was certainly not transferable.

Of course, one’s personal level wasn’t impossible to improve; one could buy universal equipment with Game Coin or use diamonds to purchase skills or talents.

These could be brought into any game.

Whether it was Game Coin or diamonds, both could be topped up directly.

The subtext was clear: Want to get stronger? Just top up with real money.

Chen Xu thought his combination of two talents was already buggy enough. However, he then encountered a genuine cheat–the sight of a player going toe-to-toe barehanded with a four-meter-tall fire-breathing ape and killing it with his bare fists.

According to Mu Shang, that player had at least five talents: immense strength, impervious skin, anticipating the enemy, flame immunity, toxin resistance.

More importantly, this was a novice battlefield where newbies who had not played many games gathered. It was impossible for these talents to be accumulated through gameplay alone. In other words, it was all about spending money. Without tens of millions of credit points, these talents couldn’t be obtained.

After understanding the purchasing power of a credit point, Chen Xu found such practices incomprehensible.

Mu Shang explained, “Of course, it’s for the rankings. If you can create some records or achievements in the game, you earn medals. Isn’t it prestigious to show them off?”

Chen Xu thought it nearly impossible for ordinary players to get on the rankings with such pay-to-win players around. So, what was the point of them working so hard in this game?

“Of course, it’s to earn credit points,” Mu Shang said. “Gold Coins can be sold to those tycoons who want to establish power; they can’t do it without money. In many popular games, there are ordinary players who make a substantial income just by selling Gold Coins.”

This was good news for Chen Xu. Since then, he had consciously started earning Gold Coins to sell. The credit points he earned could be used to top up Game Coin.

Game Coin was very important; reviewing replays, inviting companions to join you in battle games, purchasing certain items–all required it. Now that he had a channel to obtain it, he was naturally pleased.

Chen Xu kept track of time and, when it was almost three months, sold everything he had, equipment included. Then he and Yang Jinxia exited the game.

In reality, almost two hours had passed, and the plane was likely to land soon. That could cause a signal interruption. If that happened, his character would certainly die in the game.

A death in-game, though resurrectable, meant losing everything you had–Gold Coins and all. It would be a pity to lose what he had taken so long to accumulate.

All the Gold Coins were exchanged for five hundred credit points. According to Mu Shang, that was a very high income. If he could maintain this efficiency, he would definitely be among the top Gold Coin farmers.

Five hundred credit points could be converted into five hundred Game Coin.

After exiting the game, Chen Xu didn’t rush to top up but instead clicked on his personal page, where he saw a personal game development option.

Next to it, a prompt indicated that activating this feature required ten thousand credit points.

Sure enough, Mu Shang hadn’t lied: every player could develop their own game, provided they were willing to spend money.

PS: I have to take a bus tomorrow, so there’s only one chapter today.