Chapter 112: Found You

There are five days left until the arrival of Jianxing and the lecture tour team, and seven days until the next entry into a dungeon.

Taking advantage of this time, Wu Chang prepared to consolidate the power he had gained.

Three dungeons in less than half a month; compared to before entering the Abyss Game, his various attributes had more than doubled.

The massive increase in attributes made him feel like a stranger to his own body.

He did not know how fast he could run, how much strength he had, or how quick his reactions were now.

In previous dungeon clears, he had mostly relied on dungeon mechanics and skill stats, never having been pushed to a desperate situation.

But one must always be prepared for the unexpected.

If he were truly in a desperate situation and could not even control his own body one hundred percent, he would be unable to seize even a glimmer of hope.

Although, given his personality, he had never intended to engage in head-on combat, this point remained a hidden danger.

However, the problem he encountered was one that basically every player in the Abyss Game would face.

The solution was simple: rent a private training room in the Crimson Courtyard.

For the price of just 10 Rotten Silver Coins per hour, you could rent a private training room that belonged only to you, where no one could spy on you.

It contained various equipment and came with usage tutorials; whatever training effect you wanted, you could find the corresponding method.

If you were willing to add 20 Rotten Silver Coins per hour to unlock an intelligent private coach, the training room could even formulate an exclusive training plan based on the user's attributes and current level of body control.

If that still didn't feel like enough and you were willing to pay double the price to purchase SVIP customer privileges, the intelligent private coach would transform into a gold-medal training expert, monitoring the user's status around the clock and providing adjustment suggestions in real-time.

What Wu Chang needed now was time, so he signed up for SVIP directly to maximize efficiency.

In two days, over 20 hours, after spending 1000 Rotten Silver Coins, he had thoroughly mastered his current body.

How much force to use in a punch; his running pace in minutes and seconds; how high to throw a coin and catch it—all were under his control.

He had never understood himself so well.

The attributes added to the panel by the Abyss Game were like a simple, crude enhancement of his flesh, representing only the lower limit.

By absorbing them through scientific and efficient methods, one could unleash the upper limit of this power.

Through two days of training, he absorbed and consolidated the power within his flesh; under the guidance of the gold-medal training expert, his strength, agility, and stamina all increased by an additional two points, which could be called an unexpected bonus.

Now, he was like a well-honed student athlete; sliding to tackle the Tiger Vanguard would be a piece of cake.

According to the initial estimates of the training room, if he had practiced blindly without guidance, it would have taken at least a month to fully master his own abilities, let alone reach his current level.

After this training, Wu Chang's greatest realization was that paying to win really could make you stronger.

From the existence of the training room, one could see that the Abyss Game was not friendly to civilian players.

The model of the Abyss Game tended to concentrate the resources collected by a large number of low-end players to support the players at the top or the very peak of the pyramid.

How did that saying go? In free-to-play games, zero-spenders and low-spenders are also part of the gaming experience for the whales.

It was an unpleasant truth, but a fact nonetheless.

If one followed this logic and thought carefully.

After the world dungeon, the Abyss Game suddenly wanted to absorb 5 million new players; could there be a possibility that the resource output of the current bottom-tier players was no longer enough to supply the needs of the players at the top of the pyramid?

Was that why the Abyss Game was so impatient to absorb a large number of "cattle and horses" to improve the gaming experience for top players? Regardless of what the truth was, the progress of the Abyss Game would likely accelerate significantly in the near future.

If you couldn't keep up, you were destined to be eliminated.

Besides soaking in the training room, he also practiced various fighting techniques with Zhao Yan.

Five days of training also yielded him a rich harvest.

With the same physical fitness, a punch thrown by a professional fighter is far heavier than one thrown by a bodybuilder or a powerlifter.

This involved areas such as force-generation methods, muscle memory, and neural coordination.

Panel attributes only determined how much force you had; fighting techniques and various skills represented how much of that force you could actually use. For example, Liu Shan and Liu Wei in the "Peaceful Years" dungeon did not have high attributes, yet they could unleash power far exceeding their attributes through exquisite martial arts.

In training with Zhao Yan, Wu Chang, through his high inspiration and powerful control over his own muscles, was always able to grasp the essentials quickly.

In just five days, his attribute panel actually gained a new skill: Fighting Basics (E).

The improvement in his force-generation method also made his Mamba Iron Elbow more formidable, beginning to combine both control and damage.

Zhao Yan saw his progress and praised him as a good seed for fighting, repeatedly urging him to change his way of clearing dungeons—to stop being a coward and that head-on, flesh-to-flesh combat was the true romance of a man.

To this, Wu Chang replied that romance was a load of crap.

"Wait until I enter a dungeon, stack my power to three digits, and go flesh-to-flesh with you—then you'll know that staying alive and winning is the true romance of a man."

He knew his own business best; Wu Chang did not get lost in Zhao Yan's praise, as he understood his own positioning very well.

Mastering his body and learning fighting techniques were just filling in his shortcomings—the icing on the cake.

Being a coward and a "sixth man" (lurker) was the foundation of his survival.

Spatial magic saved him the cost of upgrading his personal space, and the superhero bodysuit meant he no longer had to worry about purchasing armor.

The "Quiet Town" strategy had gone too smoothly; he hadn't even had time to use the medicines he had prepared, and with a powerful healer like Ailin by his side, he had also saved on medical expenses.

Looking at the balance of 29,000 Rotten Silver Coins in his account, he went to the trading area to buy two skill scrolls he had been eyeing for a long time but hadn't been willing to purchase.

"Skill Name: Social Anxiety"

"Skill Level: D"

"Skill Description: Due to a fear of socializing and an inability to converse well with others, you can actively lower your presence, to the point where people around you subconsciously ignore your existence. The degree of presence thinning is affected by the Inspiration attribute."

"Skill Note: When you find that when eating together, the waiter forgets to bring a set of utensils for you, you will know that your ability has succeeded."

The D-rank Social Anxiety was worth 3,000 Rotten Silver Coins.

As a non-combat skill with an Inspiration attribute bonus, it was very niche and not highly regarded.

But for Wu Chang, it was undoubtedly a god-tier skill.

He had tried using Social Anxiety in reality; under the blessing of his high Inspiration, let alone missing a set of utensils, even when his roommates went out to take a group photo, his figure would be obscured by inexplicable glare in the resulting picture.

"Skill Name: Advanced Stealth"

"Skill Level: C"

"Skill Description: A must-have skill for advanced assassins. In a stealth state, you will hide your figure, aura, breathing, and heat, remaining undetected by the naked eye and electronic instruments. Launching an attack will break the stealth state. Duration: 60 seconds. Cooldown: 10 minutes. Stealth effect is affected by Agility, Stamina, and Inspiration attributes."

"Skill Note: Stealth is a serious combat skill; please do not use it in strange areas."

The C-rank skill Advanced Stealth, while not a direct combat skill, was highly sought after due to its life-saving and escape properties, costing him 12,000 Rotten Silver Coins.

Advanced Stealth combined with Social Anxiety allowed him to achieve a near-invisibility effect; it was absolutely a god-tier skill for the cowardly, a must-have for a "sixth man."

However, there was one problem he couldn't figure out: what did the "strange areas" mentioned in the Advanced Stealth skill note mean? Wu Chang had no clue and wondered if anyone who understood could explain it to him.

Five days passed in a flash, and in the blink of an eye, the day mentioned by Zhao Yan arrived.

The lecture tour team led by Professor Shi Ning arrived in Wanghai City; at the same time, a bald egg shrouded in a black robe followed the scent and arrived as well.

Under the black robe, the portraits on the bald egg's skin constantly changed, causing his flesh to twist and deform, like a lump of randomly kneaded plasticine.

The thing inside him sensed the target and was becoming impossible to suppress.

His eyes looked toward Wanghai University, revealing a chilling smile.

Found you, Jianxing.

(End of chapter)