Chapter 2 More Weirdness

The scene in the second room was even more bizarre than the first. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered in human faces. The room was completely empty, but the walls were densely packed with faces. In the very center of this empty room, a safe stood all alone on the floor.

"This puzzle is a bit too straightforward," Feng Bujue said as he walked directly to the safe. He crouched down and examined it carefully. "Well... it is a training mode after all, and they probably considered the fact that players can't think clearly when they're scared." His words implied that he thought the difficulty was too low...

Wang Tanzhi followed him in. He felt that the faces painted on the walls were lifelike, and he couldn't find any two that were alike. It was as if hundreds of eyes were staring at him in this room, making his hair stand on end.

"Jue-ge, should we move the safe out of here before we study it?" Wang Tanzhi asked.

"Three minutes at most." Feng Bujue quickly stood up again, took out the six sketches of faces, held them close, and began to look at the faces on the walls. "Getting close to the safe will trigger a system prompt, asking me to enter a six-digit password to open it." His gaze soon stopped. "Hmm... there." He walked to a wall and tilted his head to the left. "This room is covered in a large number of faces, just to distract the player." He pointed to the wall. "Look, six consecutive faces, arranged diagonally in a line, and they are exactly the six drawn in the sketches, with matching appearances." He compared each of the terrifying faces that were difficult to look at directly, from left to right, from top to bottom, according to the order of the six faces on the wall, matching them with the numbers on the corners of the sketch paper, and softly recited, "Four, one, six, three, five, two."

As Feng Bujue spoke, he returned to the safe and began to enter the password. "If you only open the door and take a cursory look when exploring the first room, without searching carefully, you won't find the clues in the sketches. Then, when you open the second room, you won't be able to solve the safe's password." He glanced back at the six faces. "Actually, the answer is right in the area where the light is brightest when the door is opened, but without the hint from the sketches, even if you know that the six-digit password must be found in this room, you won't be able to get those numbers."

At that moment, the safe actually opened, revealing two items inside: a key and a card.

"Miscalculated," Feng Bujue said immediately after seeing the properties of the two items.

"What's wrong?" Wang Tanzhi seemed to have been infected by his composure, and had calmed down a lot. His fear value had returned to around 3%.

"The key should be used soon, but this..." Feng Bujue handed the card to Wang Tanzhi.

[Name: Exploding God Fist]

[Skill Card Attribute: Active Skill, Disappears After Two Uses]

[Skill Category: Combat]

[Effect: Creates an explosion upon hitting the target, dealing fire damage]

[Consumption: Stamina 50]

[Learning Condition: Combat Specialization F]

[Note: Boom!]

"I thought the reward would be equipment, but it's a skill," Feng Bujue said.

"Uh... let's not talk about equipment or skills for now, how did you know there would be a reward?" Wang Tanzhi asked.

"Isn't it obvious? Although this mode doesn't give any extra rewards other than experience, to ensure game-playability, the script still provides two methods for players to clear it." Feng Bujue explained, "We are currently following the puzzle-solving route, not a violent rush." He took the key in his hand and led Wang Tanzhi out of the second room.

"Players who take the non-puzzle route, as long as they overcome their fear, calmly face the enemy, and fight efficiently, can gain an increase in their specialization level. As their character level increases, and their combat skills and methods increase, they can also gain Technique Value in combat.

Our way of playing focuses more on improving overall game efficiency, rather than simply improving combat efficiency. By solving puzzles, you can reduce the difficulty of clearing the game, reduce the proportion of combat, and gain more understanding of the script. But people who play like this will lag behind in specialization level, so the system will naturally provide other compensations, which, generally speaking, should be more Technique Value."

Wang Tanzhi understood when he heard this, and continued his words, "But the training mode doesn't have any Technique Value to get... so players who choose to solve puzzles will directly obtain items in the script as a kind of compensation."

"Correct." Feng Bujue tried the door to the third room, and as he expected, the door was locked. He immediately used the key in his hand to open it. As expected, it matched, and the key disappeared after the door was opened.

The third room was very clean. Against the wall, there was a desk with a notebook on it.

"By the way, how many of your specializations are unlocked?" Feng Bujue asked as he picked up the notebook.

"My combat and general are both F, what about you, Jue-ge?"

"I only unlocked general." Feng Bujue had already opened the notebook and started reading. "Under what circumstances did you unlock your combat specialization?"

"I was attacked by some monkey-like things in the tutorial. After killing them, the system prompted me that I had an F-level combat specialization." Wang Tanzhi recalled, "But the 'general' specialization level only appeared after the tutorial ended."

"I see. It seems I have to find a chance to unlock all six specializations first." Feng Bujue pondered.

He then turned back to Wang Tanzhi and said, "When you got the skill, the skill slots in your menu appeared too, right? Since you meet the conditions, hurry up and equip that skill card from earlier. It might be useful later."

Earlier, it was the first time Feng Bujue had picked up a skill card himself. When he looked at the properties, the system prompted him that the skill slots had been opened.

In Thriller Paradise, a character's skill slots have a total of twelve slots. Skills can only be adjusted before the script begins, meaning that no matter how many skills a character has in the future, they can equip up to twelve when entering a script. Moreover, skill cards that have already been equipped will be bound to the character, whether they have been used or not, and cannot be traded again. So if a player obtains a skill card and wants to sell it, they have to put it in their inventory. They must not equip it in the skill slots. Once equipped, the card's physical form will disappear, and the skill will be transformed into a set of data in the player's menu.

Another setting is that skill cards can only be taken out of a script as items, but cannot be brought in. This is to prevent someone from equipping twelve skills and then bringing a bunch of spare cards in their bag.

However, there are some exceptions. For example, if a player picks up a new skill card in a script, and also meets the learning conditions, but their skill slots are full. In this case, they can use the newly picked-up card to replace an already equipped skill, but the replaced skill needs to return to the login space to be re-equipped. There are also some special skill cards that exist in the form of items, such as stone tablets, boxes, etc., and these can also be brought in and out of scripts.

"It appeared, but why does this skill say it disappears after two uses?" Wang Tanzhi asked in confusion.

Asking this kind of question clearly showed that he hadn't read the game instructions.

Feng Bujue flipped through the notebook in his hand with relish, and replied, "The properties of the skill card are key... Skills are divided into active and passive. Active skills have three types of cards: 'permanently mastered', 'limited-time ownership', and 'consumed by uses'. Passive skills only have 'permanently mastered' and 'limited-time ownership'." He thought for a few seconds. "Yours belongs to the 'consumed by uses' type. After two uses, the skill will be gone."

"That feels pretty bad..." Wang Tanzhi said, but he still equipped the skill according to Feng Bujue's words.

"No, it's very reasonable." Feng Bujue said, "With your current stamina, you can only throw two punches at full status. If you only use it when there is an opportunity and conditions, you will definitely not need to throw a third punch in this script, and may not even need to throw one." He paused. "Besides, if it was a permanent or limited-time version, the learning conditions and consumption probably wouldn't be so low. It would probably require a higher combat specialization level and more stamina consumption. Otherwise, 'skills' would be too cheap. It's like a level 50 shooting specialization player casually equips a permanent fist technique. If that skill could be used with combat F and only consumes 50 stamina, then they could use a hundred consecutive shots whenever they want. That wouldn't work."

Wang Tanzhi felt that this made sense. "Well... that's true. If I was given a skill that could be learned with combat specialization F, but the stamina consumption was 101, then that would mean there's a problem with the game design."

"Oh, I also have to remind you that specialization level F means that the success rate of using an active skill in that system is only 20%. So... whether a low-level character can activate a skill depends on luck." Feng Bujue said.

"Isn't that still bad!"

"That's why I was so looking forward to finding equipment earlier. I went to the official website and saw that the internal beta only started this morning, but the strategies came out this afternoon. There are a few guys in the forum who are already above level ten and said that the biggest boost to a character at low levels is equipment, but low-level equipment above 'fine' level is extremely rare." Feng Bujue was multitasking, and had almost finished reading the notebook while chatting. "It's probably because this game can quickly transition to level ten and above, and if players have good equipment to support them at low levels, they can efficiently clear the game violently without solving puzzles, so the game almost doesn't provide that kind of powerful low-level equipment." He closed the notebook. "Also, after level ten, low-level fine equipment becomes something that's tasteless to eat but a pity to throw away. Now that the exchange hasn't opened yet, keeping it will only take up inventory space."

As Feng Bujue spoke, he suddenly said, "Ah, miscalculated..."

"What's wrong?" Wang Tanzhi became nervous, picked up his fruit knife, and turned around to look at the corridor outside the door, but other than the bloody handprints on the wall opposite the corridor, he didn't see anything new or unusual.

"Speaking of which... in the future, if there are things like opening boxes, I should let you open them. I just need to tell you the password or the method." Feng Bujue said.

"Tch~ I thought you were going to say something." Wang Tanzhi said, "Luck and stuff are just clouds, it's just probability. Do you definitely have to open garbage?"

"I really want to go outside the corridor and pick up a rock to smash you to death."

"Okay... I was wrong."

Feng Bujue put the notebook into his inventory and said, "Let's go. I'll tell you what kind of story this script is..."