Volume 2, Chapter 3 – Colin’s Commission

Since there were no players around her, those NPC functions were useless for now, but player functions could be used anytime, anywhere.

Anran first opened the game map. Aside from the places she had personally been to, the entire panel was pitch-black. It seemed the map had to be uncovered by herself.

Next, Anran opened the rankings. Since the players had only just entered the game, the rankings were similarly empty, with nothing on them at all.

That left only the forum.

The official forum of any popular game would always be bustling, and the official forum for Night of the Stars was no exception.

The plain forum homepage had many different sections pinned to it:

[Imperial Summit Council], [Alliance Plaza], [Night of the Stars Chit-Chat Zone], [Cosplay], [Galactic Map Handbook], and more.

Since players had not joined factions yet, the chit-chat section was obviously the hottest board, and Anran clicked into it without hesitation.

Sure enough, even though the open beta had started less than ten minutes ago, the forum was already packed.

[Coordinates: Kiya Nebula, Donor Star, W8-145, S43-13. Any pretty girls want to team up and play together?]

[**. This is miserable. I worked like a dog in real life and finally saved enough to buy the cheapest game helmet, and then the moment I got into the game I still ended up hauling bricks to make money.]

[This game is way too real, way too awesome. As long as you survive the early stage, it’s pretty friendly for casual players too!]

[I found out I’ve landed somewhere incredible. There are robots everywhere here, and the robots are actually split into male and female. Terrifying.]

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“…”

At a glance, all the posts were basically useless, so Anran kept scrolling. At last, she found one that was somewhat interesting.

[I just ran an experiment. Wearing the beginner set and free-falling from a ten-meter-high building, for players with 40 HP, the average time to death is around 1.5 seconds. If the height is increased to twenty meters, the time to death is 0.6 seconds.]

1st floor: “Bro, doesn’t that hurt?”

2nd floor: “mad scientist! laughing-crying.jpg”

3rd floor: “emmm… there was a guy just now who stabbed himself with a knife and did a pretty similar experiment.”

4th floor: “With 5 Endurance, stabbing the chest with a knife that has 5 Attack Power causes a fatal wound and drains 20 HP per second. Time to death: 2.5 seconds. Too bad my knife got snatched away, otherwise I could’ve researched more. The jumping-off-a-building experiment is very informative. Logging it down first.”

5th floor: “Damn, the guy who stabbed himself has appeared?”

6th floor: “Lighting a stick of incense first. Observing this madman.”

7th floor: “This is probably what you call a hardcore player.”

8th floor: “I’m on No. 1886. I witnessed this epoch-making experiment on the scene, and I believe I have witnessed the birth of a great scientist.”

Pfft.

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So that player had also spawned on No. 1886.

There was not much useful information yet, but just seeing this bunch of ridiculous players spouting nonsense on the forum still made Anran laugh out loud.

What a lovable bunch of players. Just thinking about them made her feel a little nostalgic. But now that their identities had changed, if the game really forced her to grow into a BOSS, sooner or later they were bound to end up on opposite sides.

[Ruins Town], [Xindu County], [Cloudmist Mountain].

Anran memorized those three names. They were all beginner villages located in the same region as Twinmoon City.

Twinmoon City could be considered a traditional main city. Beginner players could never spawn there. Although Anran was eager to make contact with players and test out the newly unlocked NPC functions, she knew she could not rush things.

From the forum, she had learned that beginner players were all poor as hell. It would probably take them quite a while to scrape together enough fare to come to Twinmoon City.

So during this gap, she would have to go all out to improve her strength, and also come up with some way to get enough benefits from the players.

Right now, no players knew that she was the future BOSS of Version 2.0. Using that to get close to them and then fleece them for a profit sounded like a pretty good idea.

Heh heh heh…

“Anran, what are you laughing at? We’ve got business. Hurry out and get to work. You’re not allowed to clock off until you finish the order!” The door was pushed open again, and this time Colin did not look at Anran kindly at all.

Living under someone else’s roof, she had no choice but to bow her head. Anran quickly put on a serious face, nodded, then turned and went out to work.

Working let her build up experience and make money, so it was not bad.

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An afternoon passed. After repairing the few small electrical appliances the customers had brought in, Anran discovered that her freely allocable experience had finally reached one thousand.

She immediately leveled her Apprentice Mechanic up to Lv3, gaining 1 point of Endurance and 1 point of Intelligence.

She still had 6 free attribute points left, so Anran put 2 of them into Strength, 1 into Agility, and kept the remaining 3 in reserve.

The stat allocation system in Night of the Stars was not as rigid as in ordinary games. Since you could master several professions at the same time, and each profession gave attribute points when leveled, attribute points were not especially precious in the later stages as long as you were willing to put in the time.

A Mechanic who fought by controlling machines could, as long as they could endure the loneliness, raise their Strength to the same level as a warrior’s.

In other words, as long as you were willing to invest the time, had fairly good skill, and a little luck on top of that (note: once you reached a certain stage, profession leveling came with prerequisite quests, and learning new professions would also become more and more difficult), everyone could become a happy all-round pentagon warrior.

Among the six core stats, only Charm could not be increased through attribute points.

Under normal circumstances, Charm could only be raised through certain special equipment or titles. Of course, makeup and cosmetic surgery worked too.

…

As evening drew near, Anran tidied up the desk and was just about to get off work and head home when Colin, who had spent the whole afternoon in the workshop, suddenly stuck his head out from inside.

“Wait a second.”

“What is it?” Hearing him, Anran stopped in her tracks. When she turned around, Colin’s appearance nearly gave her a scare.

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Originally, although he had a small mustache, Colin’s overall image had still been quite clean. It was just that his dim eyes made him look a little listless.

But now, there was a smear of black on one side of his face and yellow on the other, with greasy oil stuck in his hair, as if he had just crawled out of an unwashed cooking pot.

“I need your help with something. I’m making something here, and I can’t quite handle all the operations by myself.”

Those precision devices Colin had been working on?

Anran was slightly startled.

“Ding! Hidden chain quest [Colin’s Mechanical Engineering] triggered. Do you wish to accept?”

Accept?

Did that even need asking? A hidden quest, of course she was accepting!

“I’ll do it!” Anran immediately raised her hand.

As for why she could accept quests too, was that really such an important matter?

Making things could earn experience, but it obviously was not as fast as doing quests.

“Good.” Colin nodded. “I won’t let you help for nothing.”