Chapter 4: Save ScummingThree days passed. Three days of mud, blood, and the rhythmic thwack of an axe against ironwood. Lin Wu's hands had calloused over into hard, yellow pads. The blisters were a distant memory, replaced by a dull, constant ache that had become his new baseline for "normal."
The notification had appeared on the second day, after his total swing count passed the one-thousand mark for the second time. The jump from Novice to Adept had required ten times the effort for a marginal increase in bonuses. The damage buff had risen from fifteen percent to twenty-two. The wood-ignoring chance had crept up to eight percent. Diminishing returns, Lin Wu noted clinically. Standard exponential leveling curve. The first level is a taste. The rest is a meal you have to choke down. But the axe was just a tool. A side project. His real focus was on the lump of black metal that now sat on his bedside table like a grotesque paperweight. The Null Crown Fragment.
The number hadn't moved since that first night of axe grinding. He had swung the axe another two thousand times. He had run laps around the farm until his lungs burned. He had lifted stones. He had done everything short of cultivating Qi, and the sync percentage remained stubbornly frozen. The System wants something specific, he reasoned, sitting cross-legged on his cot in the gray pre-dawn light. It's a quest flag. I need to trigger the event. He pulled up the fragment's description again.
The first option was written in a dull, crimson font. The second was a serene gold. It was the System's equivalent of asking, "Easy mode or hard mode?" Death. It wants me to die. The thought should have been terrifying. A week ago, in the original Lin Wu's mind, it had been a release. Now, it was a puzzle box. He had died once already—the hanging. That death had triggered the initial soul transfer and the broken rope. But he had not been conscious for the transition. He had not seen the "temporal waypoint" the skill description mentioned. He needed to know how the save system worked. Where was the checkpoint? How far back did it roll? What was the cooldown? And most importantly, what was the cost? He couldn't test this with a life-or-death battle. Too many variables. He needed a controlled environment. A guaranteed, quick, relatively painless death. His eyes drifted to the corner of the room, where a small, clay jar sat on a shelf. Rat Poison. His father kept it for the grain stores. It was a crude paste made from crushed Bitter Moonflower roots. Nasty stuff. Fast-acting. Induced vomiting, seizures, and cardiac arrest within minutes. Pain level: High. But death is guaranteed within five minutes. That's a clean test window. Lin Wu stood up, walked to the shelf, and took down the jar. His hands were steady. In the Combat Battle Royale lobbies, you practiced grenade jumps and fall-damage skips all the time. You died a thousand stupid, pointless deaths just to shave half a second off a speedrun. This was no different. He paused, looking at his reflection in the small, cracked mirror. The face was still Lin Wu's—thin, hollow-cheeked, with a fading purple bruise around the neck. But the eyes were his own. Sharp. Calculating. Hungry. "Alright, devs," he muttered. "Let's see your checkpoint system." He dipped a finger into the bitter-smelling paste and swallowed. The effect was immediate and violent. His stomach clenched like a fist. A wave of heat washed over him, followed by a bone-deep chill. His vision swam, and the world tilted sideways. He collapsed to the dirt floor, his body convulsing.
The numbers were cold comfort. The pain was real. It was a white-hot fire in his veins, a twisting knife in his gut. He bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming and alerting his father. The taste of copper filled his mouth. Three minutes. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. The glitched System text flickered and distorted, like a monitor on the fritz.
And then, nothing. He gasped. He was standing. He was holding the clay jar of rat poison. The paste was still inside. His finger was clean. He looked at the mirror. The face staring back was the same, but the bruise on his neck was fresher. Darker. The way it had looked the morning after the hanging.
Two percent. Lin Wu set the jar down carefully. His hands were trembling, but not from fear. From excitement. The checkpoint is my waking moment. Probably tied to sleep cycles or conscious awareness thresholds. And the cost is sync percentage. Two percent per death. He did the math quickly. He had started at seventeen percent after the hanging. He had grinded up to eighteen. One death had dropped him back to sixteen. That meant he had a net positive gain of one percent after three days of brutal labor and one suicide. So I can't just die infinitely to brute-force problems. The cost compounds. If I drop too low, I get 'soul ejection'—probably perma-death. It was a perfect balance mechanic. It prevented him from save-scumming every minor inconvenience. He had to grind forward to earn the right to go backward. He looked at the jar of poison again. He had died. He had felt the pain of his organs shutting down. And he was still here, standing, breathing, learning. A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. It was the smile of a speedrunner who had just discovered a frame-perfect glitch. Okay. Now I know the rules. Save points are hard to create. Death is expensive. But it's a tool. A resource. He heard a faint noise outside—the sound of boots squelching in the mud, and the nasal, arrogant voice of Chen Gou. "...I'm telling you, the boy has lost his mind. Chopping wood at dawn like a possessed demon. My father says grief has broken him. We should check on him. Make sure he hasn't hanged himself again." Laughter. Cruel, ignorant laughter. Lin Wu's smile didn't fade. If anything, it sharpened. Perfect timing. I need to test combat regression next. And I have a volunteer. He walked to the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the gray morning light to face Chen Gou and his two cronies. His hands were still trembling slightly from the poison's phantom pain. He looked like a half-starved, exhausted farm boy. But Chen Gou, for just a moment, faltered. There was something in Lin Wu's eyes that hadn't been there a week ago. It wasn't Qi. It wasn't power. It was the flat, unimpressed stare of a man who had just died to check a tooltip. "Morning, Chen Gou," Lin Wu said, his voice calm and even. "You're up early. Looking for a spar?" Chen Gou's confusion warred with his arrogance. Arrogance won. "A spar? With you? I'd break you in half, noob." "Probably," Lin Wu agreed amiably. "But let's find out." He reached down and picked up the rusted wood axe leaning against the doorframe. The blade was still chipped. The handle was still splintered. But in his grip, it felt less like a tool and more like a weapon.
Chen Gou cracked his knuckles, a surge of faint Qi causing the air around him to shimmer slightly. "Fine. But don't come crying to the village elder when you're eating through a straw for a month." Lin Wu didn't bother replying. He just raised the axe and settled into a stance that was entirely wrong for this world—too low, too balanced, born from a thousand hours of virtual combat against players with laser swords and plasma rifles. Attempt one, he thought. Let's see how a Qi Condensation cultivator fights. He charged. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chapter 11: The Mortal Who Broke the Rules DAY 30 OF 30 — THE DUEL Lin Wu woke before the sun, as he had every morning for a month. But today was different. Today, the grind ended. Today, the boss fight began. He lay still for a moment, cataloguing his body. The hairline fracture in his right forearm from the boar hunt had healed to a dull ache. His muscles were loose, warm from sleep. The Numbroot paste, applied the night before and sealed under cloth wraps, had left his hands and forearms comfortably distant—a buffer against the pain to come. STATUS REPORT HP: 100/100 Stamina: 100/100 Soul Sync: 29% ...
Comments
Post a Comment