Volume 2, Chapter 2 – Unorthodox NPC Unlocked

Ruins Town was absolutely not a town with simple, honest local customs.

Even the auntie sweeping the street, or the grandpa sitting lazily at the shop entrance yawning.

The auntie could fight, and your grandpa really was your grandpa.

Zhou Jieyu understood that point thoroughly.

At the same time, through the conversations that followed, she also learned some more detailed information about No. 1886.

It was an imperial border planet that had remained in turmoil year-round, a world where bandits ran rampant in the wilderness. Towns with fierce local customs like Ruins Town were far from rare.

Even after learning quite a bit, she still had to survive.

Naturally, the opening phase for players would not be made that difficult. Besides, she still had her eye on the map in the old man’s shop. In the end, Zhou Jieyu accepted the old man’s employment and started doing odd jobs for Your Grandpa’s Weapon Shop.

There were a great many quests in Ruins Town. Aside from repeatable quests, there were also many hidden quests and unique quests, and players had to figure those out on their own.

As a game with extremely high realism, leveling up in Night of the Stars was not so simple.

…

In the somewhat dim workshop, Anran was crouched on the floor with a small miner’s lamp tied to her head. Using the bright patch of light it cast over a narrow area, she was carefully searching through things.

Clink, clink.

Her hand accidentally bumped into something, producing a crisp sound on the floor. Anran turned her head, and joy immediately appeared on her face. She picked up a piece of black metal from beneath a machine and casually slipped it into the pouch hanging at her waist.

That pouch was already close to one-third full.

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One more.

Anran quickly found another piece of metal. The floor of this workshop was full of “treasure.”

Since she had not been paid yet, Anran still could not bear to spend money on buying materials. If she wanted to make equipment, she could only rely on “picking through trash.”

Creak…

Just then, the door behind her was suddenly pushed open. Anran turned around warily, and the miner’s lamp on her head shone right onto Colin’s face.

Colin raised a hand to cover his eyes and asked in confusion, “What are you doing?”

“Ah, um…”

Anran glanced left and right and discovered that she was still holding a chunk of metal scrap. She hurriedly tossed it onto the ground.

“Picking through trash.”

That was it. She had been caught. What a miserable life.

Colin swept his gaze over it and immediately saw what Anran had thrown away. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“There’s still a lot piled up behind the workshop that hasn’t been cleared out. It only gets cleaned once every weekend. If you want it, just go take it from there.” After saying that, Colin turned and left.

“…”

Anran stood up. Colin looked like a sleazy middle-aged uncle, but in reality he was a warmhearted good person.

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She increasingly felt that Night of the Stars was not just some cold, lifeless game. The NPCs here all had their own joys and sorrows, and even their own thoughts. Just like that female Resistance member she had met in the detention center, whose hatred for the Empire had felt so real.

Setting aside the more game-like elements, such as players’ guns having crosshairs, Night of the Stars was, to Anran, a living, breathing world.

Her being here was proof of that!

Anran walked to the back of the workshop and soon fished out a fist-sized chunk of metal. Together with what she already had in her pouch, it was more than enough to forge an Alloy Dagger.

Smelting the metal and operating the equipment, with the passive skill Basic Mechanical Mastery on hand, Anran quickly completed the entire process, from metal casting, to blade forging, to making the hilt, to sharpening the dagger’s edge. Compared with forging a blade in the real world, it was much simpler in the game.

“Ding! You have successfully crafted [Alloy Dagger] and gained 30 experience points.”

[Alloy Dagger: Quality White, Attack Power 5-9, total length 30 cm, blade length 19 cm.]

The wavy curve on the back of the blade near the hilt made this slightly rough Alloy Dagger look more attractive.

“It’s only a white-tier item.” Anran was a little dissatisfied. She was still rusty. Fortunately, she had not used up all the materials she had just collected.

So Anran began a new round of crafting.

“Ding! You have successfully crafted [Alloy Dagger] and gained 60 experience points.”

This time she finally got a green-tier item. Its appearance was no different from that white-tier dagger, but its Attack Power had risen to 7-11.

In Night of the Stars, equipment durability was a hidden stat and was not shown in the equipment description. Whether an item would break or not still had to be judged through experience, a setting that was very close to reality.

The two crafting attempts had earned her 90 experience points in total. Adding that to the experience she had gained over the last two days from repairing customers’ various tools, Anran now had over 800 freely allocable experience points again, just a little short of raising Mechanic to Lv3.

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Several precision components were sitting in the corner. These were things the boss, Colin, had made recently while burying himself in the workshop, though there was no telling what they were for.

But one look at those parts made them seem very advanced. They surely were not anything simple.

Still, whenever Anran thought of the fact that the book Colin read most often was Practical Techniques of Bionic Machinery, her expression inevitably grew a little strange.

She lowered her head to check the time. June 6, 11:57.

Huh? Wasn’t the open beta about to start? The players were coming.

What would happen when the clock struck twelve?

The thought instantly piqued Anran’s interest. She put down what she was doing and quietly waited for twelve o’clock to arrive.

Ten, nine, eight… three, two, one!

The countdown ended, and the game panel suddenly sounded off with a prompt.

“Night of the Stars open beta has officially begun!”

“Task System Unlocked!”

“Trade System Unlocked!”

“Favorability System Unlocked!”

“Profession Mentor System Unlocked!”

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“Forum System Unlocked!”

“Ranking System Unlocked!”

“Map System Unlocked!”

…

The barrage of voice prompts and text notifications left Anran almost overwhelmed. It took her a full minute to read through all the system names. These prompts had basically unlocked every NPC function for her, which meant Anran had become an all-purpose NPC.

Tasks, a mobile shop, a profession mentor, and, because of the game’s background setting, Anran was not merely a functional NPC but also a story NPC. After all, she was a future BOSS. Her past and present were tied to the progression of the main storyline of Night of the Stars and were of crucial importance.

Of course, that was not all Anran was paying attention to. She discovered that she had actually unlocked some systems that only players were supposed to have.

The rankings, the map, and the forum. With those functions available, she could even predict player movements to a certain degree and create a lot of opportunities for herself.

At that thought, Anran immediately grew excited.

Her chances of barely surviving had just gotten bigger again.

Unlike players, who could respawn without limit, she only had one life. If she died, there was no telling what would happen.

The only thing Anran was puzzled about now was why she was different from the other NPCs. Could it be because she was the X factor of having transmigrated into this world?

That was not important for the time being.