Li Cheng opened his eyes, looked around the familiar living room, and saw the iced black tea on the table with condensation still on the surface, the phrase spontaneously popped into his mind.
"Originally it was four yuan, now they dare to raise the price to five, truly going against the Heavenly Gang."
He was now dressed not in a prison uniform but in the tactical vest + bulletproof vest he’d worn when he entered the mission,
Muttering to himself, he took a sip of the iced black tea, turned on the TV, slightly turned up the volume, then sat back on the sofa to check the mission log.
[Player overall performance: S+, game currency and experience points gained increased to 160%]
This time, the [Narrative Cage] gave a total of four mission rewards, the first being 600 experience points. After a 1.6 multiplier, that became 960 points.
Earlier, his level was Lv8, with an experience bar at 200/800, now it’s Lv9, 760/900. He leveled up once and gained one free attribute point.
The fourth reward was a vial of Micro Life Potion, an absolute hard currency, capable of curing a series of hard-to-treat diseases including cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and can regenerate flesh and reattach limbs.
Even mid to high-level players would stock a few bottles in their backpack. The average purchase price on the shady street black market is between 1000 and 1500 game currency per bottle.
"The healing gel that I’m carrying and can still use 6 times only targets external injuries, it can’t immediately heal injuries nor solve problems like being poisoned or diseased. So this life potion is quite useful."
The third reward was the Electronic Pet Egg, which simply by its name, is somewhat of a headache inducer.
These days, the term electronic pet on the internet refers to those bizarre beings that post inexplicable content online all day in an attempt to attract attention from others, such as public intellectuals, slick operators, nutjobs, fitness fanatics who’ve gone too deep, etc.
Tracing further back, electronic pets were a series of handheld game consoles released by Bandai Japan in 1996, also known as "Tamagotchi."
They were palm-sized with generally only three or four buttons. Through these buttons, you could feed, bathe, provide medical care, and play with a virtual electronic pet.
In the early years of this century, it was introduced to China, became quite popular, and often seized by teachers from elementary and middle school students who brought their electronic pet eggs to school.
Uh... broadly speaking, the Office software from versions 97-2003, which generates a virtual character with big eyes and a paper clip on the desktop when you start it up, could also be considered an electronic pet. It’s a tear of its time, just like the Tamagotchi.
With the Multi-threaded Brain Domain Method, which allows him to surf the web at several to dozens of times the speed of ordinary people, Li Cheng was very familiar with the pet egg’s operations (not that it was difficult), pressing the power button, a miniaturized, pixelated version of Hui Feng immediately appeared on the small screen of the pet egg.
She lay on the sofa, huffing and puffing in deep sleep. Next to her was a pixel-styled data panel.
[Race: Liquid Metal Mechanical Life]
[Age: 6 months 3 days]
[Happiness Value: 98]
"...Quite detailed," Li Cheng wiped the non-existent cold sweat from his forehead as he looked at the figure of 843 kilograms for a 6-month-old.
It seems that the Pet Egg recognizes Gray Rain as an independent entity, not just an extension of Isaac, hence her age is only six months old. Regarding her weight... it’s quite reasonable since she is made from dense liquid metal.
"Does this count as... a successful kidnapping?"
He turned the Pet Egg around and examined it, feeling a bit unreal.
For individuals and guild organizations that struggle to survive in the killing field, kidnapping boss characters from script worlds has always been a challenge with high cost-effectiveness.
Not to mention the powerhouses in "Dragon Ball" or "Thunderclap Puppet Play" that can destroy heavens and earth, even lower to mid-level martial power script characters can offer immense assistance.
For example, the "Thousand Throats Beast" guild, it is said that their rise to power was because their guild leader "Mistletoe" accidentally captured an Alien Queen years ago.
The "Demon Scientist Alliance" next door went even bolder—they would conduct sacrificial rituals in script worlds to summon demons from Hell.
Before the demons could even start a massacre after crawling out of the Blood Array, they would swarm over, beat the demon up, then collar and shackle it, enslaving it forever or even trading it outside.
(In the realm of the occult, demons and devils are different beings, with the former belonging to the chaotic evil faction, generally possessing strong physiques and bloodlust. The latter belong to the order evil faction, delighting in playing with mortals with soul contracts full of lies and traps, and then harvesting their souls.)
As for the high-ranking officers of the Special Affairs Bureau, rumors have it that they are particularly fond of kidnapping boss characters from script worlds so frequently that they even have a dedicated "Earth’s Alien Immigrant Administration" within the bureau,
which interfaces with characters from script worlds, offering them general education classes and helping them with provisional residency permits, social insurance, and bank accounts.
Some "Otherworlders" who have made outstanding contributions to the Special Affairs Bureau could even be awarded the "Permanent Residence Qualification Certificate" with five stars embedded.
However, kidnapping bosses also entails risks that are directly proportional to the rewards—the more powerful the being from the script world, the higher the cost needed to bring them back to the real world.
Just "Electronic Pet Egg," its special effect explicitly states that "[a certain amount of game currency is required when leaving the script world.]"
Before entering the Script Task, Li Cheng had 5050 game currency, plus 700 points from this task settlement (with a multiplier of 1.6), giving him a total of 6170 points.
Now, he was left with only 358 game currency.
"That’s about 5812 spent. And that’s considering Gray Rain has forgotten most of Isaac’s memories, doesn’t remember the starship design blueprints, nor carries any equipment or items."
Li Cheng mumbled to himself, hesitating before pressing the button on the Pet Egg.
He didn’t regret bringing Gray Rain out—without her help, the difficulty of this mission would have increased exponentially, like needing to use "Final Redemption" just to blast open the prison door,
or in the final boss room, if Gray Rain hadn’t been by his side at that time, it would’ve likely turned into a high-difficulty battle, instead of Isaac himself pressing the button to release Li Cheng and Gray Rain.
Similarly, without Li Cheng, Gray Rain’s fate would have been as a prisoner considered illegal existence, likely to be executed by the Crystal Wall System Residence Committee or continue to be locked up.
The Pet Egg vibrated on its own, emitting a white light, Gray Rain materialized bathed in light, her hair floating without wind.
She was still wearing the prison uniform, barefoot, with her delicate feet stepping on the coffee table, pressure = force/area, the IKEA wooden coffee table did not withstand the nearly one-ton War Trample and cracked under the pressure, and the iced tea placed on the table spilled all over.
Amidst the awkward laughter from the variety show on the television, the two of them stared at each other, forgetting what to say for a moment.
Shoot, I forgot about the weight issue...
"Wait a minute," Li Cheng slapped his forehead, hurriedly went to the bedroom to find his laptop, opened the player forum, and flipped to a high-quality post saved by him, uploaded by an anonymous user with a dragon head mask avatar. The source of this content ɪs novｅlfire.net
The post’s title was "A Detailed Revised Edition on Aspects of Modern Life After the Descent of a Beautiful Otherworld Girl V3.0."