The scene before Ian's eyes had long since become familiar to him.
This nightmare... no, perhaps it was more accurate to say that this strange state he fell into every night had started some time before he awakened the system panel cheat.
"Just what kind of place is this?"
Crystalline frost quickly formed on Ian's eyelashes. He raised a hand and caught the snow drifting endlessly down from the sky. The vast white curtain of snowfall swallowed the skyline of the ruined city before him.
The snow was too heavy.
Only things very close to him could be seen clearly. Strangely enough, Ian did not feel cold in this environment. It was as if he was here, yet somehow detached from the entire world around him.
Mixed in with the howling wind was the sharp crack of splitting ice. The silent city carried the deathly stillness of an apocalypse painted onto canvas. Perhaps this world really was one that had already fallen to the end of days.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Ian walked across the frozen ground. He had no idea what he was supposed to do in this world. The many experiments he had already carried out had all proven one thing: he could not bring anything back from here.
Perhaps the only benefit this city could offer him was artistic inspiration for becoming a famous painter of decadent ruin. A broken overpass jutted diagonally into the snow like the dissected steel skeleton of some giant corpse.
Rusting car wrecks lay half-buried in the ice. The bus stops had collapsed, their glass canopies shattered long ago. Many of the buildings smothered under the deep snow had caved in as well.
Broken electrical wires swayed everywhere in the wind. This place was like a ruin abandoned by the gods. Hearing even a single insect chirp here was an impossible fantasy.
"Hey! Come out!"
Ian shouted at the sky out of boredom, but no trash came raining down in response. Apparently, nine years of compulsory education had still not become the secret guide to clearing strange worlds.
"Looks like I still have to do things the old-fashioned way."
Ian had strict standards for himself even in this world. Part of the reason he had leveled his [Student] class up to Lv. 7 so quickly was thanks to this dream world. Here, Ian effectively had seven extra hours each night for time management.
He was studying even in his dreams.
Of course he deserved his excellent grades and rapid leveling.
And sure enough, Ian had already started wandering through the icy ruins of this snowbound world, trying to find a bookstore that had not yet been completely buried. Most of them contained quite a few adult magazines and periodicals.
His two brothers had to hide that sort of material in the neighbor's doghouse, but Ian never had to worry about being caught by his parents. On top of that, he could even gain experience through this kind of appreciation. Learning about the adult world was still a form of learning, was it not? His [Student] class had an extremely flexible standard for what counted as earning experience.
"You can't have weak spots in any field. That's what a true top student of the new era looks like!"
Ian was very satisfied with his own planning as he walked down one snow-covered street after another.
As he kept stepping on the ice, the soles of his boots made a grating sound that set teeth on edge. Naturally, he slipped and fell plenty of times in this kind of environment, but after getting back up and dusting himself off, he did not feel any pain at all.
It was like a lucid dream.
Just one that was unusually continuous and incredibly strange.
Before long, Ian found his destination: a bookstore buried under the snow. With enough hard work, all he had to do was dig for half an hour with his own hands and he could crawl inside.
There was no one in the bookstore. Not even any dead customers. Thankfully, although the books on the shelves were all rather fragile, the ones inside the glass display cases could still be carefully flipped through.
[You read seriously and gained some aesthetic techniques. [Student] Class EXP +1]
[You read seriously and gained some aesthetic techniques. [Student] Class EXP +1]
...
Time passed second by second in fulfilling study.
By chance, Ian also found a revolver that still worked beside a collector's edition magazine. Without hesitation, he pointed it at his temple and repeatedly pulled the trigger.
Bang, bang, bang.
The bullets touched his flesh and sent out ripples, but they could not harm him in the slightest. Ian had already figured out the special nature of this dream, and this act also brought him additional experience.
[You attempted to learn how to catch bullets barehanded. Although this practical learning attempt failed, you still gained some reckless survival techniques. [Student] Class EXP +3]
[You attempted to learn how to catch bullets barehanded. Although this practical learning attempt failed, you still gained some reckless survival techniques. [Student] Class EXP +3]
...
The six system notifications were not Ian's limit.
They were the revolver's limit.
Unfortunately, he could not find any more bullets nearby. Otherwise, Ian would definitely have thanked nature for its generous gift. Eighteen full points of experience. That would take ages to earn from reading alone. The facts proved that only by going hard could you truly get ahead.
"Still not satisfied."
Ian even gave himself a line of narration.
As mentioned before, the experience judgment for his [Student] class was extremely flexible. That was also why Ian felt his system panel looked like a game that had never been properly finished.
It was not so much that it had too many bugs.
It was more that there were not many restrictions.
"See you tomorrow night, miss who doesn't like wearing underwear."
Ian put down the personal photo book in his hand. Estimating that it was almost time for him to leave, he dragged a table over to the front entrance of the bookstore.
There was no coffee and no cake, of course, but the bookstore naturally had plenty of pictures of both. Ian clipped out several images and placed them on the little table in front of him.
When a person got bored enough, they started becoming a little absurd. But Ian felt this was just a sense of ritual. Without some kind of activity to pass the time, he would suffocate from the monotony every night.
This dead, silent world...
Was it not just another form of a stifling little dark room?
Outside the dog-hole Ian had dug through the snow, the flakes drifted softly and everything was deathly quiet. Only now and then would an icicle snap off a signboard and plunge into the snow with a sharp crack.
Boom!
Well, that sound was definitely not sharp.
But it was loud.
So loud that even the ground trembled with a dull, thunder-like vibration.
It scared the hell out of Ian, who had long grown used to silence.
The sudden noise was violent and heavy. It was absolutely not the sound of an icicle falling. It was more like an entire mountain collapsing and smashing into the ground.
"What the hell, did something really fall from the sky?"
Snapping back to his senses, Ian hurried to his feet and skillfully crawled out through the dog-hole he had dug at the entrance.
Out on the street, the raging wind still screamed through the air, carrying ice shards with it.
Then...
In Ian's widened eyes, full of disbelief, was reflected the shape of something as massive as a hill.
That was the culprit that had fallen from the sky and made that heavy impact.
A giant, green figure that, like this world itself, had been completely frozen in ice and snow.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[+500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[Thank You For Your Support!]