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Chapter 7: Multiplayer Training Mode (III)

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The sight in the second room was even more eerie than the first. The four walls, the floor and the ceiling all had faces drawn on them; the room was completely empty, and the faces on the wall were densely packed. Yet, in the middle of this empty room, on the floor, laid a solitary safe.

“This mystery’s intention is thoroughly exposed.” Feng Bujue walked directly to the safe, and carefully examined it after squatting down, “Hmm…… It is training mode after all, it’s probably factored into consideration that the player might be frightened to the point where he can’t calm down to think things over.” His words seemed to suggest he doesn’t like the difficulty too low……

Wang Tanzhi also followed him in. At that moment he only thought about how realistic each of the faces on the walls were, so much so that he couldn’t find any two that were identical. It really felt as if in this room, there were over a hundred eyes just staring at him. It felt absolutely horrifying.

“Jue Bro, how about we carry the safe out before we study it?” Wang Tanzhi said.

“I’ll be done in at most three minutes.” Feng Bujue quickly stood up again, took out the set of six face sketches, lifted them close, and began to view the many faces on the wall, “Approaching the safe will prompt the system to let me enter a six digit numerical passcode that allows me to open it.” His gaze quickly locked onto something, “Hn…… it’s there.” He walked over to one of the walls and crooked his head to the left, “The numerous faces drawn in this room are merely here in order to distract the player’s line of sight.” He pointed to the wall, ”Look, a continuous row of six faces, lined up in a slant. In addition, they are just like the sketches on the six pages; the profiles are identical.” He compared those hard to look at and terrifying faces one by one. Left to right, top to bottom. As each face appeared in order, he matched it to the corresponding page number from the sketches. Quietly he read, “4, 1, 6, 4, 5, 2”

Feng Bujue returned back to the side of the safe and began to input the passcode, “If we only roughly examined the first room, and didn’t carefully search it, then we wouldn’t have found the sketch clues. Following that, when we were to open the second room, we would’ve been unable to crack the safe’s passcode.” He turned his head around again to glimpse at the six pages of faces, “Actually, the solution is arranged in just the right place so that when you open the door, it is in the most brightly lit position on the wall. But without the sketches from the previous room, even if the order was known, you would not find the passcode.”

At this time, the safe really opened. There were two things inside: a key and a card.

“I miscalculated.” Feng Bujue immediately said after looking at the two item’s attributes.

“What’s wrong?” Wang Tanzhi seemed to have been affected by his unruffledness. Currently, he had already calmed down a lot; his Terror Value returned to about 3% again.

“The key should be used pretty soon, but this……” Feng Bujue passed the card to Wang Tanzhi.

【Name: Explosion Boxing】

【Skill Card Attribute: Activate skill, after two uses will disappear】

【Skill Type: Fighting】

【Effect: Creates an explosion after hitting the target, causes fire-type attribute damage】

【Consumption: 50 Stamina Value】

【Learning Prerequisite: Fighting Proficiency F】

【Remark: BOOM!】

“I originally thought the reward would be equipment, in the end, it’s a skill.” Feng Bujue said.

“Uh…… let’s not talk about whether it’s equipment or a skill first. How’d you know there’d be a reward Jue Bro?” asked Wang Tanzhi.

“Isn’t it obvious? Even though this mode, besides experience points, doesn’t give any additional rewards, to ensure the player’s interest the scenario still provides two methods to clear it.” Feng Bujue explained, “Right now we’re walking the ‘mystery solving’ route, not the violent ‘rush and kill the enemy’ route.” He held the key in his hand and led Wang Tanzhi out of the second room.

“To not fail on the ‘solve mystery’ route, the player only has to conquer his fear, cool-headedly face the enemy, fight efficiently, and he can right away level up the Grade of his Proficiencies. As the character’s level increases, the number of Fighting Skills and Styles will grow. It’s even possible for them to obtain Skill Points in the middle of battle.

Our approach in this game puts more emphasis on improving the overall efficiency in-game rather than simply improving combat capability. Solving the mystery could lower the clearance difficulty, lessen the amount of fighting, and better grasp the circûmstances in the scenario. This sort of person would lag somewhat in their Proficiency Grades, so the system would naturally have to compensate them in some way. Generally speaking, it’ll be in the form of more Skill Points.”

Listening to this Wang Tanzhi understood, and continued after his words, “Since Training Mode has no obtainable Skill Points…… the players that choose to solve the mystery would just directly obtain materials from within the scenario as a type of bonus.”

“Correct.” Feng Bujue tested the third door and like he predicted, the door was locked. He immediately opened it using the key he held; sure enough, it fit perfectly. Once the door opened the key faded away.

The third room was very clean. Located in the area near the wall was a desk, and placed on the tabletop was a single notebook.

“Right, what grades are your Proficiencies at?” Feng BuJue asked as he picked up the notebook.

“My Fighting and Standard are both F, how about you Jue Bro?”

“I only activated Standard.“ Feng Bujue had already opened the notebook and looked up, “Under what circûmstance did your Fighting Proficiency trigger?”

“I was attacked by some monkey-looking things during the Tutorial. After killing them, the system just alerted me that was I was F Grade for Fighting Skills.” Wang Tanzhi recalled, “However, ‘Standard’ Proficiency appeared after the Tutorial ended.”

“So it was like that, looks like we’ll have to discuss this later, after all, six Proficiencies are activated.” muttered Feng Bujue.

He immediately turned towards Wang Tanzhi and said, “When you gained the skill, the Skill Hotbar also appeared in your menu, right? Since the prerequisite has been met, you should quickly take and equip that Skill Card from just now, maybe it’ll be useful in a while.”

That moment ago was also Feng Bujue’s first time picking up a Skill Card. When he viewed the Attributes, the system simply notified him that his Skill Hotbar had opened.

Within Thriller Paradise the character’s Skill Hotbar has twelve slots altogether for Skills, which can only be adjusted before the scenario starts. That is to say no matter how many kinds of skills the character obtains in the future, when entering a scenario the maximum that he can equip is twelve. Moreover, skill cards that have already been equipped, regardless of whether it’s ever been used or not, all shall be permanently bound with the character and become untradeable. So if a player obtains a Skill Card and wants to sell it off, they should put it inside their messenger bag and should absolutely not equip it to their Skill Hotbar. If they equip the card the item will just disappear and the skill will transform into a set of data in the player’s menu.

Another game mechanic is that when Skill Cards are treated as items they can only be taken out from a scenario, not taken in. The purpose of this is to prevent someone from equipping twelve skills beforehand and entering while bringing in a pile of spare cards in their bag.

There’s only one exception; precisely, when a player picks up a new Skill Card in the middle of a scenario, fulfills the learning prerequisite, and his Skill Hotbar is not already full. At this moment he can change the newly obtained card from an item to an equipable skill. Furthermore, that exchanged skill needs to return to the login space before it can be re-equipped.

Note: This just means the skill equipped during the scenario will auto-unequip when you return the to the login space and you’ll have to remember to re-equip if you want to use it later.

“If it’s appeared, then it’s appeared. But why does this skill state that after two uses it’ll disappear?” Wang Tanzhi puzzled.

Asking this sort of question obviously shows he didn’t read the game explanations.

Feng Bujue explained while eagerly flipping through the notebook in his hands, “The Skill Card’s Attributes are key…… Skills are separated into active and passive. The active type cards are either ‘Permanent’, ‘Time Constricted’, or ‘Consumable’. There are only two types of passives, ‘Permanent’ and ‘Time Constricted.’” He thought for a few seconds, “Yours is classified as a ‘Consumable’. After two uses the skill will cease to exist.”

“Feels like a con……” Even though Wang Tanzhi said this, he did as Feng Bujue suggested and equipped the skill.

“No, it’s very reasonable.” Feng Bujue said, “According to your current Stamina Value, even when it’s maxed out, you can only consecutively use the skill to hit twice. Even if you could, under this circûmstance for at least this scenario, there’s no way you’ll need to use the third fist. It’s possible you won’t even need to use the first fist.” He paused a moment, “What’s more, if it were the Permanent or Time Constricted versions, the learning prerequisite and the consumption, I’m afraid, wouldn’t be this low. It was very possible it would need an even higher Fighting Proficiency Grade and consume even more stamina. Otherwise, this variant of the skill would be too broken, just like if you had a Level 50 player just randomly equip a permanent fighting technique. If that Fighting F only consumed 50 Stamina Value, then he could consecutively use it 100 times, whenever he wanted. How could this be allowed?”

As Wang Tanzhi listened he thought it made sense, “Hn…… That’s true. If right now you gave me a skill, with the prerequisite of Fighting Proficiency F, but with a Stamina consumption of 101, then that means this game’s design has issues.”

“Oh, I should still remind you, in the system, Proficiency Grade F should only have a 20% success rate when equipping. Therefore…… for low-leveled characters that have obtained skills, whether or not they can activate will have to depend on their luck. “ Feng Bujue stated.

“Isn’t this a con then!?”

“That’s why I was wholeheartedly expecting to find equipment, hah. I went online to go look, this morning the closed beta just started and this afternoon the raiders all came out. On the discussion forums, there were already several Level 10 fellows that said the things that power up a low-level character the best are equipment. But having ‘Superior quality’ and higher ranked qualities for low-level equipment is extremely uncommon.” As Feng Bujue wholeheartedly blabbered, he had already quickly finished reading the notebook, “I reckon it’s because it doesn’t take long to reach level 10 and higher in this game. In addition, if a low leveled player had very good equipment as support, he wouldn’t need to solve the mystery and could just quite efficiently clear the scenario with brute force. So it seems the game wouldn’t offer that sort of powerful, low leveled equipment.” He closed the notebook and continued, “Another thing, after Level 10, low leveled superior quality equipment will just become a useless gesture. At present, the Exchange isn’t even open, so it can only be put in the messenger bag.”

As Feng Bujue talked and talked, suddenly he said, “Ah crap, I miscalculated……”

“What happened?” Wang Tanzhi tensed as he hurriedly picked up the fruit knife, and at once turned around and anxiously looked at the corridor framed by the doorway. But apart from the bloody handprints on the corridor’s opposite wall, he didn’t see any new abnormality.

“Speaking of which…… from now on whenever a chest needs to be opened, I should let you open it. I just need to inform you of the passcode or the method.” Feng Bujue said.

“Che~and I was wondering what you were going to say.” Wang Tanzhi said, “Appearances and such are all fleeting; it’s only probability that’s all. Don’t tell me you’re so positive you’ll open up crap?”^[1]

“I really want to go out to the corridor, pick up a rock, and beat you to death.”

“Alright…… I was wrong.”

Feng Bujue took the notebook and placed it into his messenger bag and said, “Come on, while we walk I’ll tell you the story of this scenario once and for all.”

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Footnotes:

[1]Wang Tanzhi is suggesting that Feng Bujue’s bad luck, like his looks, is only temporary. And then makes fun of Feng Bujue for thinking he’ll keep having bad luck with rewards.

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