Chapter 16: Mission Trigger.

“Wake up, Palin, we’ve arrived.”

Xiao Fen was woken by Sylvia in a daze. He slowly opened his eyes. His head was still a bit dizzy. He struggled to look around and realized he was now sitting inside the house.

Looking at the small metal window by the wall, Xiao Fen confirmed that he had returned to the original place.

“What happened just now?”

Xiao Fen felt weak all over, his muscles aching, as if he had just finished a 100,000-meter cross-country run. He looked at the gray mist outside and asked in a low voice, “I feel really terrible. Is there something wrong with that blood?”

Sylvia stared at Xiao Fen and answered, “It is bloodline erosion. If you can withstand this erosion and ultimately survive, congratulations, you will become a member of the Trialists.”

Xiao Fen frowned, shook his head, and said, “For me, this isn’t good news. At least tell me roughly, why would I become a Trialist?”

“Garm’s bloodline is very high-level. It will enter your body through your wound and erode your bloodline. The erosion of a high-level bloodline against a low-level one is very terrifying. Many people cannot withstand this erosion during the process and die from burst blood vessels. You can understand this as the Vampire’s embrace. Not everyone who is embraced can survive, but those who do survive will become Vampires.”

“So, my body feeling weak is also related to this bloodline erosion?”

Sylvia looked at Xiao Fen for a few seconds and said, “Bloodline erosion will consume a large amount of your body’s energy. Just now, it was because your blood sugar couldn’t withstand the consumption and suddenly dropped that you fainted. Compared to this, what surprises me more is that you were actually able to temporarily pass the first stage of bloodline erosion and survive until now. This situation cannot even be described as rare. You are not an Awakened; relatively speaking, your bloodline level is lower, so you should have been more easily killed by the high-level bloodline.”

Xiao Fen smiled slightly and said, “Sounds like I’m really lucky.”

Sylvia looked up at the room and said, “Alright, small talk ends here. We can talk about the specific Awakening issues later. You better activate the Radiance of Lux mission right now. I can feel that the Li Family people are not far from us and could discover us at any moment.”

Xiao Fen nodded again. He reached out and began to trace curves in the air again, accompanied by a low chant.

“DpictaiI, CtusI, lux!”

The curve before his eyes suddenly flashed, solidifying as if engraved in the air. Then, the holographic Projection screen emerged from the air again, with lines of text constantly appearing on it.

“Please select your requirement.”

Xiao Fen reached out and tapped the “Start Follow-up Mission” option.

“Traces of Lux completed. Verifying follow-up mission start conditions, please wait.”

“Follow-up mission start conditions met. Mission starting. Please input the key.”

“P221.NO12___?”

Xiao Fen paused, turned his head, and asked, “It wants a key input. What is the key for Radiance of Lux?”

Sylvia shook her head and said, “In Yggdrasil’s world, its prompts are only for the task holder. I don’t know the previous situation, and I certainly can’t support you now. Generally speaking, the key is mostly related to the content of the previous mission.”

Xiao Fen shook his head. Now he could only rely on himself.

“Okay, okay,” he thought, “Let’s see, what in Traces of Lux is related to numbers?”

“It wouldn’t be the house number, nor the block location. If the NO at the end represents ‘number’, then what does the P at the front represent?”

Xiao Fen carefully recalled the process of completing Traces of Lux. He didn’t remember anything in his mind that could be linked to numbers. Subconsciously wanting to look at the book left by Lux, his eyes suddenly lit up.

“If P is the abbreviation for page, then this question should be asking what the 12th word on page 221 of ‘Awakened and Otherworld’ is?”

Thinking of this, Xiao Fen felt reassured. The book pages in his memory flipped rapidly, and soon he had retrieved the answer he needed.

“Despair,” meaning despair in English.

That was the answer he needed.

Less than a second after inputting the answer, the holographic touch screen began to display new text.

“First key correct. Mission loading. Please input the second key.”

“P32, NO77____?”

“Désespoir,” still despair, this time in French.

“Second key correct. Mission has started. Please input the third key.”

Xiao Fen turned his head to glance at Sylvia. The Trialist in the maid outfit was looking at him just as nervously, seemingly confused as to why a mission was taking so long to trigger.

“P113, NO22____?”

“Desperatio,” still despair, in Latin.

“The third key is correct. The mission has entered an advanced state. Please input the fourth key.”

“P112, NO100____?”

“Disperazione,” this time it was probably still despair, but Xiao Fen no longer had the energy to guess which language it was.

“The fourth key is correct. The mission level has increased. Please input the fifth key.”

Xiao Fen looked at the text, shook his head slightly, turned his head, and asked Sylvia, “It keeps reminding me to input different keys. Should I continue?”

Sylvia was stunned for a moment and asked, “Apart from asking you to input keys, are there any extra prompts?”

“It just prompted me that the mission level has increased. Is there a problem?”

“Damn!”

Sylvia blurted out an English curse word in her anxiety. She said to Xiao Fen, “The keys correspond to different mission difficulties. You could have stopped inputting during the mission activation phase. I didn’t tell you; that was truly a mistake.”

After thinking for a moment, she added, “But only you could do this. If it were someone else, even a Trialist, they probably wouldn’t be able to completely recall all the accurate information. If this kind of key is wrong even once, it will terminate there. You are the only one I have seen who can input correctly in a row and increase the mission level.”

Xiao Fen gave a bitter smile and asked, “Then what do we do now?”

“Just input a random key to start the mission now. Don’t continue to increase the mission level. I am only Level 12, so I can’t complete a mission that is too difficult.”

Xiao Fen subconsciously input a new answer. Influenced by the inertia of his thinking, his answer was correct again this time.

“The fifth key is correct. The mission level has increased. Please input the sixth key.”

Sweat began to break out on Xiao Fen’s head. He randomly typed a few letters, glanced at the Projection touchscreen, and his face turned noticeably pale.

He slowly turned his head to look at Sylvia and asked, “What is the highest difficulty level of a mission you can complete?”

“If it were a squad, I could probably complete a mission of around A-rank difficulty. But right now, I might only be able to complete a C-rank mission. What do you want to know? Or, what level is the Radiance of Lux mission now?”

Xiao Fen turned his head back to look at the screen, smiling bitterly and speechlessly.

“The sixth key is incorrect. Mission level increase stopped. Radiance of Lux mission officially started. Mission Rank: S.”