Ling PingAn opened his eyes to find himself in a vast, empty space.
He looked down at his hands.
His palms were as large as bamboo fans and were covered with thick callouses. These were definitely strong hands that had trained with a hammer that must have weighed a ton.
The muscles on his arms were all hard and beefy.
Touching them, he felt as if he were touching steel.
He heard the guide elf's voice in his ears again:
"Legend of Nightmare uses the most advanced virtual reality technology available today. It uses the latest advancements in the Federal Empire's research to connect human brain waves to the game itself. Thus, it becomes a game where you can freely move about and control anything."
Ling PingAn felt that there was something wrong about this somewhere.
But he couldn't put a finger on it.
Besides, whatever he was seeing now was proving that this guide elf's words were right.
The Federal Empire had really managed to develop some amazing forms of technology. They had successfully created virtual reality games.
But why had he never heard of this before?
"Maybe they're still testing it?" Ling PingAn thought to himself. Then he didn't think about it anymore.
All his thoughts right now were completely attracted to this game that was fantastic beyond his imagination.
He tried jumping and found that he could jump almost 20 feet high.
"What the h*ll…" Ling PingAn's jaw dropped at this. "This game character of mine seems even greater than a god."
The guide elf chose an appropriate time to continue speaking, "Dear Player, because you are the 1,001st player to register for this game, as a reward, for your character in the game, we will change all his attributes to gold attributes.
"Gold attributes will increase any attribute your character has by ten times.
"You can think of any attribute in your mind, and read its explanation."
Ling PingAn felt as if his jaw was going to find it hard to close again after hearing these words.
How was there such a thing?
This was like something he'd only read about in books becoming a reality.
Didn't the developers think about how the game might become terribly unbalanced between the players?
But…
That had nothing to do with him.
Which player would give up the chance to have everything good going for him?
Why else would those rich gamers be willing to throw up to even million at these games?
It was precisely so that they could become invincible in the game and lord it over everyone else.
Now, he didn't need to spend a single cent but he could enjoy the same privileges as those rich gamers, so why should he be bothered at all?
So he started thinking about his attributes.
The attributes menu then appeared in front of him.
Character name: MonkFahai
Height: 6 feet, 8 inches
Weight: 319 pounds
Strength: 18
Vigor: 8
Charisma: 2
Endurance: 12
There was a question mark behind each value. Ling PingAn clicked on the question marks curiously, and a text to explain each attribute appeared before him.
Strength: Each point of Strength will add one point of damage. Since your attributes are Gold Attributes, even without any weapons, you can cause a maximum of 18 x 10 = 180 points of damage.
Vigor: Each point of Vigor can add one point of magic damage when you use a technique. Since your attributes are Gold Attributes, even without any weapons, you can add a maximum of 8 x 10 = 80 points of damage.
Charisma: This affects the way characters preexisting in the Nightmare World and other special characters view you. Each point of Charisma can make the other characters like you better by one point. Your current points are two, but because yours are Gold Attributes, all the characters in the game's impressions and views of you stand at 20 points.
Endurance: Each point of endurance is equivalent to 10 hit points. Since you have Gold Attributes, your total hit points stand at 12 x 10 x 10 = 1,200 points.
Besides all this, there were three lines of small text that was distorted on the left side of the attributes menu.
If you looked very carefully, you could still read the text.
Passives: Blindness (invalid in some parts of the Nightmare World): Ignores all abnormalities and unable to see any supernatural effects.
Passives: Foolishness (blocked in some parts of the Nightmare World): Overlooks all abnormalities and uses common sense to understand anything that is out of the ordinary.
Passives: Awakening: &0@##16940*(# (Current Awakening progress is 2.11%.)
But Ling PingAn couldn't see any of these words.
He didn't even notice anything on the left of the attributes menu and just looked directly at the skills list on the right.
He looked through the four skills in the skills menu.
Ling PingAn immediately started frowning.
After hesitating, he lit up one of them.
Then the guiding elf started to guide him in a brief period of training in this open space.
In this way, he became familiar with how to use this skill.
After that, he could hardly wait as he followed the guiding elf and stood within a bright circle that was in the middle of the open space.
Once he stepped into the bright circle, Ling PingAn felt everything around him slowly become a blur.
After a few moments, his body appeared in a dense forest late at night.
He looked around him and saw that other players started appearing like he had.
At the same time, a prompt appeared in front of him: Dear Player, you are about to enter the latest official copy of Legend of Nightmare: The Dream of Pestilence.
Current game mode: Peace.
You may encounter some terrifying and bloody scenes in the course of the game.
You may say Settings to yourself, and choose to close any bloody or terrifying scenes.
A gentle reminder from the Legend of Nightmare team: Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Ling PingAn scratched his head and burst out laughing. "Who are you trying to scare?
"Do you think I grew up being scared of all these things?"
Since he had been a little child, Ling PingAn had never believed in any of these ghosts or demons.
They were just superstitions to him.
He'd realized this very early on.
When he was 11, one of his classmates had told him in a very mysterious tone that the abandoned classrooms at the back of the school were haunted.
He'd said that there was a fierce and terrifying ghost that lived there that had already taken the lives of several people.
Ling PingAn had immediately chided this classmate for spreading these superstitious ideas and proceeded to teach his classmate about the philosophy of materialism.
There was no such thing as ghosts in the world.
In order to prove this, Ling PingAn had gone into those so-called haunted classrooms that very night.
He'd stayed in there for an entire night.
Never mind ghosts, he hadn't even seen a rat!
After that, Ling PingAn smugly told all his classmates that they must believe in science.
Later on, when he was in college, one of his roommates would always pray and worship some Fox Spirit really fervently.
After Ling PingAn discovered this, he advised his friend not to fall for such tricks, but that friend was beyond saving and had been completely brainwashed. He even shouted at Ling PingAn in front of everybody else, "You'll get retribution for blaspheming the Fox Spirit! The Fox Spirit is going to make you bleed from every orifice in your body and curse you with a weird illness in three days!"
And after that?
Ling PingAn had continued to live happily and well until this very day.
As for that classmate, apparently he'd transferred schools just a few days later.
Perhaps he couldn't stand staying in the school anymore after getting this slap in the face despite declaring such harsh words in front of everyone else.
And so Ling PingAn loved watching horror movies ever since he'd been a boy.
The more horrifying the better.
And he liked to watch these movies in a crowded theater. When other people in the theater were shuddering in fear, he would just laugh loudly.
It was the same now.
He laughed loudly, "I don't give a hoot about that!"
"If the scenes you come up with aren't bloody or terrifying enough, I'll lodge a complaint!"
Before he could finish saying this, Ling PingAn could feel that his feet had touched the soft ground covered with dead leaves. His heavy body made the dead leaves and dead twigs crackle as they gave way under his weight. The wind felt a little cold as it blew on his face.
He froze for a moment.
Then he started to jump up and down with great joy.
"It's serious virtual reality!
"That's amazing!"
With that, he abandoned all the teammates that had just appeared. He leaped up and landed on the top of a tree and started moving off at high speed into the distance.
If it was possible, he didn't want any teammates at all!
As for the game flow of this Legend of Nightmare...
Have you ever seen a Grand Theft Auto player actually play according to the official rules of the game?
Every player was best at pushing the limits. They were rule-breaking machines.
Many people had even caused bugs to appear in the game.
Ling PingAn was no different.
A pretentious gamer would get through a game by working together with teammates.
A real gamer could make the game developers and operators cry all by himself!
On top of that, Ling PingAn's character had been given an official cheat by the game itself.
With this added advantage, he couldn't be bothered to try to conquer the game with a bunch of people he didn't even know.
What if there was an elementary school student among them?