SV smiled and waved his hand, "So anyway, have you finished your divination?"
Before waiting for her to respond, he continued, "What did you see? You're going to let that woman hypnotize me? Have you found the mastermind yet?"
Yun Jierou brought a hand to her forehead. "Enough!"
The command silenced him immediately and had his voice sealed again. SV raised a nonexistent eyebrow as he folded his arms and beckoned her with his head as if to say, "the field is yours."
Yun Jierou looked at his defiant expression for a moment before sighing, "cease your efforts. This Yun will not have you killed."
SV gave her a sneer but remained unperturbed.
She continued, "to answer your question, This Yun did not see anything. But we do know who the mastermind is. And no, This Yun will not have Yinuo hypnotize you. Is that enough to satisfy you?"
SV cocked his head, nonplussed for a moment. Did she just concede? For what? Wjat changed? What was wrong with this woman? Couldn't she decide on her stance?
So fickle.
He nodded before pointing to his mouth.
She remained silent for a moment before sighing.
SV blinked and cleared his throat to check his voice was working before looking at her deeply, "what happened for you to be willing to talk now? Actually, how long has it been since our last meeting?"
"A day, a full day and a whit has passed since our last meeting," Yun Jierou said.
Considering that he had spent an hour outside, an hour outside meant a day here. He noted that down.
Yun Jierou continued, "during that time, This Yun's fate of death has changed to an encounter with a narrow escape."
She gazed at him thoughtfully. "This Yun sensed the change in her fate but could not trace its source. She knew it must be you who played a role. May This Yun ask what have you been busy with this past day?"
SV thought for a moment. What had he done? Honestly nothing. Apart from crushing the BOSS's body, he didn't seem to have done anything. Is that what changed her fate?
Anyway, she was finally convinced that he was on her side. That was good news; it made things much simpler.
He decided to drop a bombshell, "do you know that this is a dream?"
Yun Jierou was silenced by the revelation, her brows knitting together. The entire room seemed to enter a pensive mood.
"Could you explain what you mean by that?" Yun Jierou probed.
"Literally, this place, this town, the people, you guys, everyone's inside a dream," SV said.
"You're bluffing," the 'who do you think you are' woman suddenly interjected.
Yun Jierou proceeded, "we do not mean to disbelieve you, but do you have a way to prove it?"
SV chuckled as he looked at the woman, "it's actually very simple. Your real bodies are lying outside. Just kill me and I'll exit the dream. Then I'll go look at the color of her underwear. Is that proof enough?"
The room immediately fell into oppressive silence.
The woman's expression turned red with anger, Yun Jieoru's expression turning slightly cold. The others had frowns on their faces as their postures straightened slightly.
"Young Lady, please allow me," the woman said through gritted teeth.
"This Yun understands Kexin. Yinuo, go ahead." Yun Jierou said, her gaze looking at him with cold detachment.
Yinuo nodded and approached SV, "you have such a foul mouth, sweetie."
SV grinned and simply adjusted his sitting posture, his arms more firmly in place, looking unrepentant.
Anyway, the quest reward wouldn't fall on his main account, so it didn't matter to him much. He just didn't like how this Kexin woman kept provoking him.
Yinuo approached SV and cupped his cheeks, bringing his face closer to her so that their eyes met. SV could have closed his eyes, but obviously, there was no way she wouldn't have something against such a low-level method, so he simply directly looked into her eyes, saying provocatively, "sweetie, you're quite open, aren't you? How much for a night?"
SV immediately felt dazed, his senses befuddled with a sense of ecstasy. When he came to, he found himself in the death screen, his position in the middle of the lake where a new corpse of his was floating. SV raised a nonexistent eyebrow, finding it strange. Did they kill him? Wasn't he supposed to be controlled? Was it a player protection mechanism?
He opened his panel, first checking his talent.
======
[Superhuman Strength]
[Lv: 1]
[Rank: B]
[Description: STR is doubled.]
[Cooldown: None]
======
SV stroked his beard. He checked that, indeed, at level zero, his STR was twenty. Not a bad talent, but not outstanding either. He had encountered so many checks, but not one of them required an STR check. It was obvious that STR builds weren't very useful in this game, at least based on his current understanding.
He then checked his logs to see if something had happened. The first few were the same as when he first entered the dream, and he had indeed generated the quest. Then followed some checks and divinations before an interesting piece flashed in his eyes.
[You have been bewitched.]
[WLL check has been initiated. 8<602. Check failed. Bewitchment successful.]
[You have died.]
This was clearly bewitchment, so what went wrong? Was there a time gap between the two logs?
He checked the quest to see the quest's remaining duration.
[Duration: 04:48:53]
No time had passed at all, so it wasn't that he died after they had extracted information from him. It was very likely that this was a player protection mechanism. SV's opinion about this shitty game moved a few notches higher.
Honestly, he could've just swallowed his irritation. That Kexin woman had the right to be doubtful of his claims and had the right to be angry when he was disrespectful towards her lady. But this was a frickin' game. What was the point of playing games if he couldn't even act on his impulses? It was fine if NPCs didn't respect the players, but disrespect meant being on the hitlist. That was a player's mentality.
Not to mention that he had gone out of his way to help these ingrates. They had a BOSS to hack, but they were concerned with a nobody like him.
No matter. It was obvious the group was going to die. Which meant that his main account could get a few high-level corpses to use as meat shields.
He chuckled to himself, feeling slightly better, only slightly.
But first, he had to get his main account out of the lake.
He quit the game and relogged into his main account. Seeing the familiar darkness at the bottom of the lake, he looked at where his previous corpse, which had drowned, was.
The option to slowly rise and save his death spot by possessing the lake wasn't viable, so he had to try and possess his corpse. Obviously, he'd encounter the same problem as when he tried to possess the formation, but at least he'd respawn directly on top of his corpse so he could retry safely to some degree.
Of course, a sudden pressure from the lake was to be expected, but his momentum had been ignited by the NPC group, so right now, he couldn't care less about consequences.
He clicked revive.
In his dazed state, he felt a sudden pressure on his chest that prompted him to open his mouth. Suddenly, a mouthful of water entered his mouth, and he was about to drown. Thankfully, he was fully focused this time and he had expected—yet was not entirely accustomed to—this sensation, so he could barely make two coherent moves.
One, he moved his hand and placed it on top of the corpse lying on the bed lake where he had respawned. Two, he pressed his ring and middle fingers against his palm.
Immediately, he turned to dust. He felt himself being attracted to the lake, but he tried to readjust towards the corpse. Unfortunately, he still failed.
The second time went in a similar fashion, and so did the next three attempts.
By the sixth time, his dust could touch his corpse but didn't manage to get in. It wasn't until the thirteenth time that he finally managed to possess his corpse.
He immediately swam ashore, finding his other corpse and the bodies of others there.
He dispossessed his corpse, letting it rest beside his other corpse. Add to that his corpse, which was drowning on the surface of the lake; he had three corpses in total in this top-open cavern.
SV felt that it was really unnecessary for the game to keep player corpses intact. It was just occupying space.
No matter.
He popped a pill and brought his level back to level 10. He then noticed the final notification that appeared.
[You have reached the first threshold.]
He frowned. He immediately checked the leaderboard and saw that he was still ranked ninth. The top players haven't changed either. This didn't make sense. There were so many players, but not one of them chose to directly rush to level 11? It was impossible for everyone to be a perfectionist. Heck, there should obviously be quite a few of them vying for the top position.
Previously, he thought of Yun Jierou's advice about foundation and didn't think much of it, but now that he really thought about it, he felt that he was tricked by her again.
Why did she not want him to advance? Why had these guys not advanced yet? Or is it that they tried but failed?
SV thought for a moment before checking the quest timer.
[Duration: 04:27:44]
So much time was still remaining. Since he had nothing to do anyway, he decided to try this class change. If he could complete it before the time ran out, he'd try to see if he could possess the formation.
He clicked on his level in the profile panel.
[Do you proceed with the trial?]
He clicked yes.
[Attributes scanned: Sum 106. B Tier.]
[Talents scanned: 1 S-rank. S Tier.]
[Overall Tier: S]
[Trial is being generated.]
SV looked at the B tier in attributes and was speechless. Damn, he thought he was at least A tier. But damn, talent was so frickin' OP. It directly propelled his overall tier to the S tier.
Looking at his overall rating, he was even more sure that Yun Jierou didn't want him to finish the trial. Why would he need to work on his foundation when his overall tier was already S? She was already privy to his profile details, so how could she not know what his Tier would be?
Was there a ranking higher than S? Honestly, he didn't know, but he felt that even if there was, it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Just then, the message changed.
[Your trial has been generated.]
[Please select your class.]
Oh, it let him choose. He thought it'd be like the character generation: zero options, then a happy wish message.
He looked at the options.
[Warrior(Medium)]
[Dark Knight(Hard)]
[Rogue(Medium)]
...
He narrowed his eyes. The list was quite long, but what stood out to him was the tag between parentheses. Obviously, this was the difficulty of the trial. He narrowed his eyes, and he directly filtered out the medium-difficulty ones. Since he wanted to play, he'd naturally aim high.
As he was browsing the list, a conspicuous class came into his view.
[Possessor(Impossible)]
SV raised a nonexistent eyebrow, interest apparent in his eyes. Impossible? Oh dear, it was practically begging to be clicked on. Not to mention that from the name, it was tailor-made for his talent. He immediately clicked on it.
[Class Possessor has been selected. Do you confirm?]
He clicked on yes.
[Class selected.]
[Beginning trial.]
Immediately, a dizzy spell landed on SV, making him lament that these guys really lacked creativity, using the same shitty transmission method over and over again.
He passed out.