Free Web NovelChapter 139: Chapter 139: The Unbeatable Shen Ta
(Thanks to the book friend: Alliance Hierarch of Great Great Bear for the support~ the fifth Alliance Hierarch!!)
On his first mission with Bai Wu, when Wu Jiu saw Bai Wu’s wristwatch was in a state of absolute zero, he knew that Bai Wu was different from normal people.
If Bai Wu wasn’t deliberately acting, there shouldn’t be any sense of sadness detectable in his eyes, expression, or tone.
Yet at this moment, Wu Jiu felt that Bai Wu was somewhat different from usual, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how.
"We’re now going to the sixteenth floor, the place Jing Si and Jing Liu had been to. Is that place dangerous?"
Bai Wu looked at Tan Lei, who pondered before replying:
"Ever since the new isolation lab on the twenty-fourth floor was fixed up, Jing Si hasn’t been back to the sixteenth-floor lab. Firstly, there was no opportunity, and secondly, we observed that he seemed averse to the sixteenth floor. Most of the time, he would stay on the twenty-fourth floor as it has higher defense specifications, allowing him to vent some of his violent urges."
Averse? But you said the sixteenth floor was where he lived with Jing Liu. Why would he be averse to it?
The scientists at Denglin Technology would not possibly mistreat Jing Si, so what was Jing Si averse to?
"I don’t know... My mentor might know, but he’s trapped on the twentieth floor."
"Hmm, we will go to rescue them, but first, I want to check out the sixteenth floor."
The sixteenth floor was a place in Denglin Technology where Jing Si and Jing Liu had left behind many memories throughout the years.
The twenty-fourth floor, on the other hand, was a place used to suppress Jing Si after he became irritable.
Both floors housed labs, but they meant entirely different things to Jing Si. Bai Wu guessed that the sixteenth floor might hold answers to why the world had become gamified.
He urgently wanted to know who the region’s master, the holder of the shards was—was it Jing Liu, Mr. Tao, or... Jing Si?
The journey from the seventh to the sixteenth floor was not smooth for Bai Wu and his two companions.
Along the way, they encountered more than a dozen powerful monsters, with high speed, attack power, defense, and vitality.
Upon leaving the thirteenth floor, they even faced a situation where they were ambushed by four high-level Evil Fallen.
Bai Wu and Wu Jiu, one in front and one behind, shielded Tan Lei like a dual-sided shield. Even with the two fighting together, they were in a difficult position in the stairwell, especially since Bai Wu’s strength was no match for the Evil Fallen.
In the end, Bai Wu used a flame nozzle and waited for Wu Jiu, who had taken care of the monsters on one side, to come and back him up, but the battle cost each of them five points of health.
The Evil Fallen in Denglin Technology’s headquarters started at level five, and if they encountered a swarm of Evil Fallen, it was impossible to cope.
Fortunately, in this game, difficulty and reward were directly proportional. The powerful Evil Fallen allowed them to accumulate seventy gold coins.
The durability of their first round of weapons was used up, and Bai Wu had no choice but to use the repair tool.
They already felt that the difficulty inside the building was far greater than outside.
And their equipment had already suffered considerable wear and tear.
The rescue target was on the twentieth floor, and the ultimate boss might be on the twenty-fourth floor. Whether they could make it there was still unknown.
After reaching the sixteenth floor, a door blocked the corridor leading deeper inside. Wu Jiu sensed some malice from the game.
Because the door was locked, and it even had a prompt — [Contains a large amount of gold coins].
With such a note but no access, it was undoubtedly frustrating.
"Do you know the password?" Bai Wu asked Tan Lei.
Tan Lei nodded and said, "I’ll try..."
The lock on the door was electronic and required a six-digit password. If this were a real-life scenario, Bai Wu could deduce the six digits by observation, although he would have to look for other clues for their exact order.
But this was a pixel-art world where details of the password keypad were fundamentally impossible to examine.
Tan Lei had tried three times in succession and ultimately failed. The electronic lock even indicated that if she entered the wrong password twice more, the building would trigger an alarm.
This made Tan Lei afraid to try again:
"I shouldn’t have remembered it wrong... but perhaps the man changed the password."
The man was Jing Si.
Wu Jiu looked towards Bai Wu and said:
"Shall we continue upward?"
Bai Wu did not continue upward; instead, he pulled out the Master Key. Even though it was a password lock, the moment the Master Key aimed at the door, the display on the lock showed "Password Correct".
Tan Lei was shocked:
"How did you do that?"
"Just a trivial little trick," Bai Wu replied.
Wu Jiu was impressed. Although he had grown accustomed to Bai Wu seemingly playing with a script, seeing it in action still surprised him subconsciously.
In fact, it truly was a trivial game trick because whenever game designers created a key, they certainly designed a corresponding lock.
This was a fully enclosed laboratory, and although they didn’t know the specifications of the twenty-fourth-floor lab, to Bai Wu, the entrance to the entire sixteenth floor looked exactly like a chamber from a science fiction novel meant to contain some kind of alien creature.
What appeared before them was a long corridor.
The glare of gold coins did not blind them; they didn’t even see a single coin.
Bai Wu wasn’t in a hurry. Following the corridor, he quickly found the bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, and even the study and game room.
He paused in the study, where, despite many books, all were in an unreadable state. He then headed to the bedroom.
Jing Liu was the woman Tan Lei spoke of, and Jing Si was the man, and the man and woman’s bedrooms were not separate.
"This is a bed?"
Bai Wu turned to Tan Lei, who said:
"When I got here, it was already like this. At that time, they insisted on sleeping inside an egg, so we had to customize shell-shaped beds for the siblings."
Jing Si and Jing Liu’s bed looked like an egg.
Sleeping on this unusual bed was like being a chick waiting to hatch. This peculiar requirement led Bai Wu to speculate that Jing Si and Jing Liu’s original living environment must have been a dangerous place.
At the very least, they needed an "eggshell" for protection, or they would be vulnerable to some kind of harm.
There wasn’t much to say about the living room and dining room. According to Tan Lei’s memory, the woman loved sweets.
As for the man, he was indifferent and even believed that if scientists wanted to survive for a long time, they should get used to unpalatable but nutritious porridge-like food.
Naturally, Tan Lei and the others did not realize the foresight of this statement, but Bai Wu felt that... perhaps Jing Si also had some kind of prophetic ability?
Having found no clues to gold coins in several rooms, Bai Wu finally arrived at the game room.
Among the stacks of pixelated mosaic boxes, he saw many cartridges and discs.
The game room, as the name implies, was the place where the siblings played games.
Bai Wu looked around; there were quite a few games, mostly very old ones...
So old that their art style was probably not much different from the pixelated mosaic environment that he and the captain were currently in.
[Side Mission — "Core Issue" accepted. Failure of this mission will not affect the main storyline. Reward for mission completion is unknown.]
Suddenly, a mission appeared. Wu Jiu looked towards Bai Wu, who seemed as if he hadn’t seen the prompt at all, continuing to pick out game cartridges.
"Since it’s called ’Core Issue,’ it means that there is something very special about one of these games. As for the mission reward, there’s no need to wonder; the hint has already been given at the entrance: it’s Gold Coins," Wu Jiu mused.
"But with so many games, which one is the correct answer? It’s certain that the answer to why this world has become gamified must be within these games."
With pixelated graphics making it impossible to observe details, Bai Wu could only search for the answer based on game titles and intuition.
He didn’t take long in this process; within two minutes, he located a cartridge labeled "Shen Ta."
Somehow, this game reminded Bai Wu of "Magic Tower" he had played when he was younger.
He inserted the cartridge into the game console.
[Do you want to start the game — Shen Ta?]
A game within a game is a common design, like some who appear to be demon hunters on the surface but are in fact Gwent masters behind the scenes.
The huge television screen quickly filled with color. Bai Wu found it speechless that the graphics of this game were clearer than his own reality.
It felt like watching TV inside a game, where the TV image is more refined than the game itself.
As Bai Wu expected, the game’s introduction explained that Shen Ta had fifty floors, and the player, taking on the role of a hero, had to climb up floor by floor, using various items to become stronger and eventually defeat the Great Demon King on the fiftieth floor.
This game was familiar to Bai Wu; as a child, his father had let him play a fifty-floor version of Magic Tower.
The game required players to calculate various data, and he still remembered the strategy guide to this day.
The most basic version detailed which floor to acquire the sword on, which to find the shield, which door to open first, and which to open later. Although it looked like a monster-killing game, in reality, the best solution to the game was fixed.
After playing once, Bai Wu could remember the best route to complete the game and how much health the hero would have left over.
Due to its simplicity — Bai Wu soon started playing an enhanced version modified by his father — the monsters would actively attack the player.
Players had to analyze the behavior of the monsters, avoid those they couldn’t beat, and master the timing of going to the next level, all while ensuring they had a way to retreat.
Shen Ta was not as brutal; Bai Wu found that as he advanced a few floors, Shen Ta was just the regular fifty-floor version of Magic Tower, almost unchanged.
His intuition told him this was the game.
This building was like a tower; he and Dwarf came here to challenge the Great Demon King as heroes, needing to continuously collect various items to become stronger, and then face the monsters, deliberating on how to advance and fight.
In some areas, if the key wasn’t found, there was no way to clear the level, and some NPCs had to be saved as they could provide help to the hero.
Memories of the game surfaced; Bai Wu played it too well, so it seemed his hands never stopped, not requiring any thought.
In no time, Bai Wu acquired the Holy Sword, Holy Shield, and defeated the false Demon King, also obtaining the key to the fiftieth floor.
The entire game entered the final fierce battle, where Bai Wu’s hero challenged the Demon King.
As expected, the Demon King was defeated by the hero.
But the game didn’t end, and the side mission "Core Issue" had not been completed. freewebnovёl.ƈom
After the Demon King was defeated, a door to the fifty-first floor appeared.
Bai Wu carefully reviewed the details, making sure he had taken all the items that could strengthen him before entering the door leading to the fifty-first floor.
The layout of the fifty-first floor was simple, with nothing but a blank space. It was like a snowy landscape.
In that void, four individuals dressed in what appeared to be black wizard robes blocked the hero’s path to the next level.
Bai Wu checked the data and frowned.
According to the data, the four figures in black wizard robes blocking the path were far stronger than the Heroes.
Bai Wu began to doubt his own memory, so he retraced his steps and checked every floor again—no items had been missed.
Now, he had collected all the items from the first fifty floors of the Magic Tower, making him the strongest presence within the first fifty floors of the entire Magic Tower.
But what puzzled him was the significant gap that still remained between him and the four blockers.
"Perhaps they are not enemies? Approaching them might trigger a conversation?" Tan Lei suddenly spoke up.
Bai Wu returned to the fifty-first floor, and at the moment, Tan Lei’s suggestion was the only one left to consider.
So he tried to have the Hero he controlled approach the blockers.
——[Side-quest "Crisis" failed, 100 Gold Coins awarded.]
On the television screen with an even clearer picture than Bai Wu’s, there was only one line of text—Game Over.
Game over.
The challenge to conquer the Shen Ta by the Heroes ended in failure. The side-quest also announced its failure.
Although this side-quest was different from the previous rescue mission in that failure would not affect the main storyline, Bai Wu still felt... uneasy.
On his journey thus far, he had ensured that every decision he made was the best solution.
Seeing a wine bottle, he could deduce that monsters would likely block the path; spotting a key meant there was assuredly a door that couldn’t be opened without it; encountering an NPC meant they would certainly provide quest clues...
Up until now, Bai Wu had felt that, although the game had its odd elements, everything was going according to plan.
But why was there a game like the Shen Ta that defied logic? The players did everything they could, only to ultimately fail to clear the game, getting instantly killed by a force so mighty it seemed like a boss from another game.
"It shouldn’t be like this... I’m certain I haven’t missed anything, and why would the game award me Gold Coins even though I failed?"
Bai Wu prepared to use the console again, but the next variable was something neither he nor Wu Jiu had anticipated.
The task "Crisis" seemed to be an activation switch for a final quest.
From entering the pitch-black entrance and appearing on the nineteenth floor of the branch building, this game had seemed limitless.
Bai Wu also planned to slowly explore the twentieth, twenty-fourth, and twenty-seventh floors of the headquarters building.
But now, a new challenge laid before him—
[Final Main Quest—Rescue the scientist on the twentieth floor. Time limit: 25 minutes.]
[Final Main Quest—Defeat Jing Si in the laboratory on the twenty-fourth floor. Time limit: 25 minutes.]
[Note: Completing either of the tasks will allow you to leave the area.]
minutes remaining, to either kill the evil boss or rescue the scientist...
Wu Jiu suddenly tensed up, his inquiring gaze fixed on Bai Wu.
Caught in contemplation about the Shen Ta, Bai Wu pondered what exactly the game was trying to express. He had been confused until the final main quest unexpectedly popped up...
And then, Bai Wu suddenly understood:
"I see, so Jing Si is truly the master of this area."
(The next Chapter should finish this side quest, expect an update before 10 p.m. tonight.)
