Ren Suo powered up his computer, waited for over a minute, and finally saw the message from 360 security saying "This startup took 10 seconds, your startup speed has beaten 99% of computers nationwide!" before he leisurely opened a Word document.
Another ten or so seconds passed and the 2003 version of Word finally launched.
From this, you can get a pretty good idea of Ren Suo's computer's performance: describing it as a faded beauty wouldn't be much of an issue. However, he only used it to watch videos and write essays, which were enough for his daily needs.
But ever since he started playing with the Mini-World Game Console and enjoyed its responsive high performance, he found his old machine less and less appealing by the day – with electronics, there's little 'nostalgic value', since while their performance doesn't change much, their appearance, complete with more and prettier lights, certainly does.
In Word, he wrote:
"Over My Dead Body: Chapter One"
"Infiltration: Chapter One"
"Slaughter Dungeon"
He paused, hesitated for a moment, and then added:
The top reward for "Over My Dead Body: Chapter One" was 80 Merit Points with a difficulty of two stars, and its exclusive reward was the "Strong Heart Technique".
The top reward for "Infiltration: Chapter One" was 100 Merit Points with a difficulty of two stars, and its exclusive reward was "Heart of Deceit".
The top reward for "Slaughter Dungeon" was 60 Merit Points with a difficulty of one star, and because it was a free game with a one-star difficulty, there was no exclusive reward.
Due to his existing Merit Points, the system not only displayed the top rewards (which weren't shown for last month's free games) but also popped up a hint: completing any chapter of a free game would reduce the total acquisition price of the game.
Players could find out the total price of the games through the search function in the World Store.
For example, Ren Suo had played the "Bloody Banquet" chapter of "Assassin", so it would be discounted when he searched for it, but he didn't know how much – he wasn't willing to spend 10 Merit Points just to satisfy his curiosity.
"Over My Dead Body: Chapter One" was a management game, its synopsis read, "Experience the true management of a family! Amid disasters and calamities, ghosts and monsters, not only do players need to preserve their clan in chaotic times, but they also have to outwit various powers to break the family curse."
"Infiltration: Chapter One" was a text adventure game, described as, "With a heart both boiling hot and ice-cold, do you enter the endless hell of lies for a brighter future for your country, filled with hope yet undaunted by the prospect of death, or do you become a drifter swayed by personal honor and disgrace?"
"Slaughter Dungeon" was a card adventure dungeon-crawling game, stating, "The Abyss lurking in the dungeon has corrupted the world. For your own sake, you must traverse despairing cities, dark caves, and terrifying dungeons to battle the heart of the Abyss."
Ren Suo took his hands off the keyboard and fell into deep thought as he looked at the document.
These three games were this month's free offerings, and they all seemed pretty good.
However, he could only choose one of the three.
There was a way to play more free games, the system hinted that if the player's Level increased, it would increase both the number of free games they could select each month and the number of free games available. But at the moment Ren Suo had no idea how to level up, so he had to get used to the console and make a painful choice.
After all, there were no game discounts right now; if he didn't play the free games, he'd have nothing to play – with the few Merit Points he had, he definitely couldn't afford games after searching.
"What to do?" Ren Suo was quite hesitant.
If he ignored the content of the games and judged solely on rewards, without a doubt "Infiltration" had the best cost-effectiveness: short-term benefits were Merit Points and long-term benefits were game discounts, though its exclusive reward "Heart of Deceit" seemed useless.
"Over My Dead Body" was second in terms of cost-effectiveness, slightly inferior to "Infiltration," but its exclusive reward "Strong Heart Technique" seemed interesting, too bad Ren Suo didn't know the specific details of this skill.
"Slaughter Dungeon" had the lowest cost-effectiveness, with both short-term and long-term benefits being unsatisfactory, plus it had no exclusive reward – it could be said it was only to be chosen if there were no other options, much like when he had only "Assassin's Bloody Banquet" to choose from.
However, if he considered the content of the games, it was not such a simple decision.
"Assassin's Bloody Banquet," game difficulty one star; "If You Are Strong, Climb Ten Thousand Meters," game difficulty one star.
These two games unquestionably belonged to the simplest category of games, but were they easy? The former required a bit of brainpower to get through, the latter kept Ren Suo up for several nights.
You should know, although Ren Suo hadn't bought a game console before, he did go to Internet cafes to game. While not quite a gaming deity, he was definitely not unskilled. He simply moderated his gaming for the sake of his future but his level was pretty much top-tier for his age, with classmates clambering to ride his coattails in FPS and MOBA games.
Even for someone with decent gaming talent like him, a one-star game nearly proved a challenge, so how hard could a two-star game be?
After much thought, Ren Suo decided to set aside the choice of games for the time being; he had been traveling by car all day and was tired, so it was probably better to rest first.
CTRL+A, Delete.
Ren Suo impulsively deleted everything he had just typed out, then took a shower, reheated his cooled beef brisket Zhajiangmian, brought it back to the computer desk, and opened up the Gilirili video website, preparing to watch videos while eating… a late-night snack?
However, when he opened the website, he ended up spitting out the scorching Zhajiangmian he had just put in his mouth, spraying his keyboard and screen with a hot, sticky, brown paste.
All that was displayed on the banner at the top of the site, which usually showed seasonal information and major site promotions, was a simple black-on-white message:
If You Are Strong, Climb Ten Thousand Meters!
Cleaning up the mess, Ren Suo took a deep breath and clicked through, only to find an… Holy crap!? A large-scale continuous documentary!?
The entire video was split into 55 parts, with each part, except for the last two, being 120 minutes long, totaling nearly four and a half days of content!
Each part had its own title, such as the first three being "April 3rd 00:00~02:00", "April 3rd 02:00~04:00", "April 3rd 04:00~06:00", all categorized by time, extending all the way to part 54 "April 8th 10:00~11:43".
The final part was titled "Highlights", which seemed to be an edited and revised version, but it was also 200 minutes long, nearly three hours!
April 3rd…? Wait, wasn't that the first day of his training camp?
But that was also the second day he uploaded his game review!