[loading personal data... Player: Alex Lawson, please tell us your Hunter name.]
Alex stared at the blue screen in front of him with wide eyes. He looked around, and everything except the notification was white. It felt like he was in a white chamber filled with bright light.
Alex focused on the notification. He had already thought long and hard about his in-game name. This was something that all the viewers would use to identify him. He wanted to keep it simple, so he said, "Viper."
Ding!
[Are you sure about "Viper" as your Hunter name?]
"Yes."
[Hunter Apprentice Viper, welcome to your first trial.]
[
Trial Scenario: Dog Hunting.
Scenario Description:
→ Event: Rabid dogs are on the loose all around the city.
→ Objective: Kill one rabid dog.
→ Failure: Hunter's death or failure to kill one dog.
Caution: An animal rescue squad is on the way to capture these dogs. Take action quickly.
Total number of hunters: 10
Game Time: Hunters can exit the game after they kill the first dog. Or when all the rabid dogs are captured or killed.
(Restrictions:
* Apprentice Hunters cannot directly attack each other.
* No use of hot weapons is allowed (e.g., guns, grenades, etc.). )]
As soon as he read the entire task, he found himself back at the table, but everything around him was different. There were no cars on the roads, and there were barely any people. The once chaotic market had transformed into an abandoned marketplace.
He looked at the shop where he had been eating, and instead of a food shop, he found an old antique shop in its place.
The surrounding smell had also dampened as the wind moved along empty streets, carrying dust particles over the roads.
He closed his eyes and could hear distant horns, like there were a bunch of vehicles moving far away from this area. He also heard multiple barking sounds that put him on edge. Not rushing in that direction, he focused back on the task scenario.
The task itself was straightforward: he just needed to kill a single dog, and that was it. But the problem was that there was no mention of the breed of dogs that were affected by rabies.
From what he knew, rabies caused dogs to lose their sense of pain and become more like hard-to-kill zombies.
If it was just a bunch of local street dogs, then it was a time-based task. But if any of them were mid-sized, well-fed dogs, the situation could escalate quickly.
Then there was also the animal rescue squad. The only good thing was the restriction that wouldn't allow him or the other hunters to attack one another.
Alex stood up and checked himself. As he thought, even his phone had disappeared.
His clothes had changed to a thin round-neck white T-shirt and blue pants. He looked into a nearby mirror. Although his hair was still black with his black eyes, his face morphed into that of a sleek gangster with a bunch of blade marks on his face.
He smiled at this disguise. Even though he did not set his appearance in advance, he liked this random face. As he stared into the mirror, a bunch of gray text appeared in front of his eyes.
[Initializing data collection…]
For a moment, he thought this was part of the game, but then he noticed the difference in text color and appearance.
All the game notifications had popped up in front of his face.
Even though it was an illusion, they always appeared directly in front of his face, and they weren't on top of his vision, as he could still see around the game notification.
These gray texts, on the other hand, were all within his eyes, and no matter where he turned, he could still see them clearly, as if some etched them into his corneas.
Alex realized it must be because of the nanooperation he had performed on himself.
Alex looked wide-eyed in the mirror as he noticed that, although he could see these texts, there was nothing in his reflection. His eyes were plain black, with a ring of white around the pupils.
He stopped looking in the mirror, afraid of arousing suspicion, and focused on the empty, dirty desk as if he were thinking about something. It didn't take him long to realize that these texts were on the inner part of his corneas, so no one could see them from the outside.
He genuinely appreciated his past self for thinking through this ability so carefully. Soon, the text changed in his eyes.
[Data storage in place. The formation of a basic database is in place. The collection of pictures is in place.
>Please think of the "database" to know more about the data collection.
>Please think of "pictures" to set picture-taking rates and view the images.
>Basic analysis and comparison in place. Please think of "analysis" to compare images.
>Please check the basic video feed.
...
All intermediate and advanced abilities require further integration… ]
Alex looked at the gray text with interest. Just as it said, he thought of the word "database," and a massive empty page appeared in front of him with four small files in the top corner.
A new text popped up in front of him.
[Database. You can create the storage base according to your needs. (Note: You can only store pictures.)]
He looked at the files and found that the first one at the top was with the title [First Trial Storage].
He smiled at that and opened the file with a simple thought. Even though he was using this for the first time, it felt familiar, like the file interface on his computer.
Inside the First Trial file, he saw a massive tree of folders that divided the stored data into many categories, from living animals to inanimate objects, buildings, and more.
He opened the "object" file and saw dozens of pictures of the dusty table he was sitting at. He tried thinking about the Trial One scenario and saw multiple pictures of the road around him and the old antique shop.
It was clear that his eyes were taking pictures of surrounding things, sorting them, and storing them separately. He finally got some idea of what this operation was all about.
He checked the other options, and sure enough, right now, his eyes were functioning as cameras, passively taking five pictures per second. He could also decrease this rate but couldn't increase it, as that would put too much strain on his eyes.
Beyond that, he found he could also set a maximum limit on the number of background images, which he set to 20. So as long as he didn't mark an event as important, the picture-taking would stop until something new appeared in front of him.
He also found a space that would help him analyze the images more deeply by changing the parts of the images or comparing one image to another. There were even smart functions for training models based on one image and doing cool stuff with it.
The last function was a detailed recording feature, an active ability that would start recording his surroundings for around 10 minutes every 12 hours. None of it was a superpower, but Alex could barely contain his smile.
How could he contain his excitement after all of this? This was what he used to do as a data analyst. He didn't need to spend hours uncovering the power; this was his bread and butter. He understood the determination of his past self; that bastard wanted to challenge everyone with the same ability they had forced him to discard.
Alex stood up and rubbed his eyes. It was time for Viper to take the stage.