Chapter 35

After completing his purchases, Ma Le still had over four thousand credit points left. He thought for a moment and then headed to the初级 training ground of Miracle City.

The training ground, as the name suggests, is a place for adventurers to train. Ma Le had only heard of such a place and always assumed it would be something like a gym or sports stadium in the real world. However, upon arriving, he found that the so-called training ground was just an ordinary apartment building. Ma Le paid 100 credit points at the reception desk on the first floor and received a key card that read "Chen 113."

Ma Le, holding the number, asked the receptionist what it meant. She told him it was the room number, Room 113 on the Chen floor. Chen refers to the fifth floor, and the building has a total of twelve floors, named after the twelve earthly branches. Ma Le thought to himself that not only did it look like an apartment, but the check-in process was also like a hotel... But how could one floor fit over a hundred rooms?

With a head full of questions, Ma Le arrived at the fifth floor, the Chen floor. As he turned the corner, he was startled. The entire floor had no interior walls, and the spacious hall was filled with doors! There were no walls or windows, just solitary doors standing there, over a hundred in total, each with a number.

Ma Le was still in a daze when suddenly a door opened, and an adventurer, drenched in sweat, walked out. The adventurer glanced at Ma Le but said nothing and turned into the corridor and left.

Ma Le ran to the door the adventurer had come out of and looked behind it, but there was nothing there, just a door. Where did that guy come from? Ma Le looked at the number on his key card, found his door, and opened it, tentatively stepping inside. After a flash of white light, Ma Le found himself in a vast white space.

"White again?" Ma Le muttered. In the center of the spacious room was a floating tablet, just like in the edge space. Ma Le approached the tablet and started operating it, discovering that this was a sub-space of Miracle City, similar to a personal space. Here, adventurers could simulate various environments to aid their training using the tablet and the Miracle Emblem.

The training here is mainly for improving the proficiency of various skills, divided into two types. One is practical training, which requires physical effort and continuous practice to improve proficiency, which is relatively difficult and generally needed for combat skills. The other is experience training, which is relatively easier and does not require practice; just inputting the relevant knowledge and experience into the brain is enough. Generally, languages and various academic subjects fall into this category.

Regardless of the type of training, credit points are required, calculated by time, 200 points per hour, with a minimum of one hour each time. Additionally, the time flow in the training space is one-fifth of the outside world, and the fee is calculated based on the outside time. In other words, each training session in the training space costs 200 points and lasts five hours.

Ma Le calculated the time. When he entered Miracle City, he was informed that he could stay for a maximum of 24 hours each time. No matter how long he spent in the mission world, it would only count as one hour. After entering Miracle City, Ma Le chatted for a while in the slum bar and spent half a day shopping in the main city. In total, he had about twelve hours left. Since adventurers can only leave from their personal space, Ma Le needed to reserve time to return to the slums, so he could only use the training room for a maximum of eleven hours.

Thus, Ma Le began training in some practical skills. The training fee was only calculated by time, and the specific increase in proficiency depended on individual talent. In these eleven hours, Ma Le first learned Russian, French, Spanish, and Japanese. In the Prototype world, he had fully experienced the pain of not understanding the language. As for English, he had absorbed and practiced it in the Prototype world, and his proficiency had already exceeded 70. Since the primary training ground could only increase proficiency to 100, there was no need to spend money on it.

Ma Le had a good talent for languages, and he could generally increase his proficiency by about 40 points in one training session. Therefore, he only spent seven hours on these four languages. He improved three languages to over 80 points in two sessions, and only Japanese improved once to over 70 points. As for the rest, Ma Le hadn't uninstalled his fast video player yet...

The next four sessions were mainly for combat skills training. Ma Le first tried small firearms, but after five hours of hard training, his firearms proficiency only increased by a pitiful 8 points. Although practical training was more difficult than experience training, it shouldn't have been this bad. The only explanation was that Ma Le indeed had low talent in shooting, and the 120 points in crossbow proficiency were forcibly added... In the last three sessions, Ma Le used two sessions to increase his unarmed combat proficiency from nearly 60 points to 100 points. In the remaining session, he thought for a moment and chose experience training, increasing his biology proficiency from 20 points to 55 points. After all, with the absorption ability, knowing more about biology was beneficial.

After using up 11 hours, Ma Le left the room, both physically and mentally exhausted. Fifty-five hours of continuous training and learning were too much even for his superhuman physical and mental strength. He returned the key, left Miracle City, and used his last bit of strength to run back to the slums, found his shack, and chose to return to reality. A flash of white light, and Ma Le disappeared on the spot.

After a moment of dizziness, Ma Le finally returned to the long-missed real world. Including the seven days in Prototype and the nearly three days in Miracle City with the extended training, Ma Le had been away for about ten days.

The return location was still the small room Ma Le rented. The room was in a mess, with a large hole in the wall. The laptop seemed to have been burned at high temperatures, twisted and deformed, and completely ruined. Ma Le looked out the window; it was still night. The time in Miracle City was synchronized with the real world, so it should have been exactly 24 hours.

Ma Le intended to fall asleep, but suddenly felt a pang of hunger. He had been in high-intensity training for over 50 hours without eating or drinking. Although he had absorbed Elizabeth's Chrysanthemum Monster, his energy was almost depleted. Ma Le, fighting off his drowsiness, opened the door to go out and buy some food. However, when he pushed the door, he found that the lock was broken, as if someone had forcibly broken it from the outside.

"Someone broke into my place while I was gone?" Ma Le scratched his head and shouted in the hallway, "Xiao Jie? Aunt Liu? Are you there?" He called out several times, but there was no response, as if no one was home. The other tenants were probably out socializing again?

Ma Le shook his head. There was nothing valuable in the house anyway, and he was about to return home, so why bother? With that thought, Ma Le opened the outer door, went downstairs, and found a snack shop, ordering a plate of fried rice, two stir-fried dishes, and a bottle of beer.

He was the only customer in the snack shop, and the owner was watching TV, broadcasting local evening news, mostly about traffic accidents and disputes between homeowners and property management. Ma Le ate while watching, and suddenly, a news item caught his attention:

"Regarding the incident reported yesterday where an employee assaulted his boss due to dissatisfaction with wage deductions, there has been further development today. The police attempted to arrest the employee, surnamed Ma, at his residence last night but were unsuccessful. As for Mr. Wang, who was sent to the city hospital, we have just received news that he died from multiple severe injuries caused by broken ribs piercing his internal organs. The police have now issued a warrant for the arrest of the employee. The employee is named Ma Le, male, 25 years old, about 1.88 meters tall, strong build, short hair, no beard, and highly aggressive. We urge the public to report any sightings of this person to the police. We also hope that if Ma Le sees this news, he will turn himself in..."

The snack shop owner finished watching the news and laughed, "Anything can happen these days. Who would have thought an employee would beat his boss to death over unpaid wages? That employee must have a heavy hand, right, buddy!" The last sentence was directed at Ma Le, but when the owner turned around, he found that the customer was gone, leaving the meal money on the table.

Ma Le walked down the street at night, hardly believing that his few punches had killed Boss Wang. He hadn't intended to kill anyone; although he hated Boss Wang at the time, he just wanted to teach him a lesson. Who would have thought... Suddenly becoming a murderer, Ma Le was at a loss. Although he had killed people in the mission world, that was just a simulation. This was reality, his permanent home, and he couldn't escape real life. If he became a fugitive, his future life would be full of difficulties, and he couldn't even go home to see his parents. What should he do?

Suddenly, Ma Le remembered that the news said Boss Wang had just died. That meant he had just passed away. Ma Le took out a vial of Black Light Enhancement Liquid from his storage space and muttered, "Maybe there's still a chance!" He clenched his fist and, using the cover of night, rushed to the city hospital.

To be safe, Ma Le first transformed into Anderson's appearance to sneak into the hospital. He pretended to be a family member and lured the on-duty doctor to a secluded area, knocked him out, took off the white coat, and hid the unconscious doctor in a storage room. Then, he confidently entered the morgue.

With his superhuman agility, Ma Le easily avoided the guard's sight and indeed found Boss Wang's body in the morgue.

Ma Le checked Boss Wang's pulse and breathing, both of which were gone, indicating he was dead. However, when Ma Le scanned him with the Miracle Emblem, he found that Boss Wang's life points were still showing, albeit faintly, sometimes 0 and sometimes 1. This highlighted the advantage of adventurers, whose life characteristics were more stable after modification. As long as they weren't completely dead, they would still show life points and had a chance to recover. However, Boss Wang was an ordinary person with a complex and unstable condition, lacking the strong recovery ability of adventurers. After being clinically declared dead, there was almost no chance of recovery, and the 1 would eventually turn to 0.

Ma Le took out the Black Light Enhancement Liquid, feeling a bit reluctant. He had spent hours in Miracle Square and hadn't seen any items that could be brought back to the real world, showing how rare this attribute was! Moreover, this potion could enhance attributes, and reaching ten points in three attributes was a huge leap for ordinary people. If this potion were auctioned publicly, it would fetch a sky-high price! But now, he had to use such a precious item to save a scoundrel who had withheld his wages. He could imagine how conflicted he felt!

However, in the end, Ma Le still injected Boss Wang. First, killing someone would make life in the real world very inconvenient; second, Boss Wang had only withheld a few thousand yuan, which didn't warrant death, and he had a family to support. If he were left to die, how would his family survive? Ma Le felt responsible for the excessive force and decided to atone for his sin...

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**End of Chapter**