Chapter 8

So, on the fifth day after I joined the battle. It was when the red moon had just risen, and the location was still by a small campfire in the vast Bloodlands. The four of us sat around it, and Uncle Lai held the nth group criticism meeting about my combat style.

"Wu, you have a natural talent for battle and learn quickly. So far, you haven't been injured at all."

Uncle Lai's tone was gentle, as if he were praising me, but with the experience of the previous n criticism sessions, I was unmoved. It was like when a teacher calls the student at the bottom of the class into the office; the first sentence is often, "I know you've been working hard recently, and the teacher is very pleased..."

"But..."

Sure enough, I felt a chill, thinking that such a tactic was used to fool me. I wondered who he thought I was; back in the day, I had single-handedly finished a large jar of cheap, expired tea in the teacher's office over a semester, earning me the title of "active" student in the office.

"There are advantages and disadvantages to this," Uncle Lai said seriously, his expression not at all playful.

"The advantage is that you don't get hurt, but the disadvantage is that you don't get hurt!"

What was he talking about? Is it wrong not to get hurt?

"Wu... listen carefully to what I'm saying."

Uncle Lai looked at my puzzled face and shook his head with a smile.

"Can you guarantee that in future battles, you will always remain unscathed?"

I shook my head firmly. Come on, even a level 100 assassin can be surrounded and attacked. How could they possibly avoid all attacks? Of course, if you had a shield, it might be possible to pass through a thousand enemies unscathed, but that would require the courage to invest all your skill points into the shield...

"Then, have you thought about what your reaction would be when you do get hurt?" Uncle Lai guided me, hoping I would suddenly understand.

I thought deeply for a moment, and just as Uncle Lai thought I was about to have a great epiphany, I asked foolishly, "What reaction after getting hurt?"

"Yes, if you get hurt at a critical moment, what would you do? Would you immediately cover your wound and retreat from the battlefield, or roll on the ground in pain, waiting for the monster to finish you off, or continue fighting without changing your expression?" Uncle Lai continued, suppressing the black lines on his face.

"Uh~~, I get it."

Uncle Lai's point was simply to make me get used to being hurt. In simple terms, if you want to hit others, you must first learn to take a hit.

Uncle Lai nodded in satisfaction and looked at me with a wolfish gaze, saying, "Since you understand, that's great. I'm doing this for your own good."

"Huh? Wh... What—?" I suddenly had a bad feeling.

The next day, the inhumane training began. Uncle Lai kindly lent me his precious white leather armor, which moved me to tears. When he kicked me into a group of Fallen Ones, I immediately started calculating the chances of keeping the armor for myself...

Fallen Ones are different from zombies. They have low defense, weak strength, and short lives. Their advantage lies in their agility and high attack speed. These monsters are the best for training one's Iron Shirt technique. Their role in this is so significant that even artifacts would feel inferior. Countless people have quickly grown stronger through them, stepping on their corpses to move forward. A poet once praised them:

Ah, Fallen Ones!

The mother of all classes!

With your sweat-stained (blood-stained) hoe (small knife),

You have nurtured generation after generation of warriors.

You have sacrificed your life, merging with them.

See? Your milk has made them grow.

Gently, you leave, just as you gently came.

Praise you, Fallen Ones, the adorable monsters of this world,

The mother of all classes...

Of course, the poet was soon hung from a tree by angry players, but the poem had already spread, becoming a thorn in the side of all players...

When I understood the rules of combat, I realized that getting hurt in this world wasn't as terrifying as I thought.

First, there are no critical hits that target vital points, as there are in games.

To understand this, let's use an example.

Suppose you are wearing armor with a defense of 10. These 10 defense points are distributed across your body, but not evenly. For instance, your arms and abdomen might have less than 1 point of defense, while your eyes and throat might have 2-3 points. So, whether you attack the arm or the eye, the damage is roughly the same. Any difference is due to the weapon's attributes, such as large or small attacks.

When I put on Uncle Lai's leather armor, I immediately noticed a warm current spreading through my body, unevenly distributed, with thicker currents at vital points.

Since there are no critical hits, would there be negative effects, like blinding someone by stabbing their eye? Although I didn't dare to test it, I think there are rules preventing such things. For example, no matter how strong you are or how much damage you deal, as long as your opponent is not dead, you cannot destroy their vital points.

Otherwise, the three people watching from behind me might have some prefixes, like the one-armed Barbarian, the blind and lame Paladin...

Uh~~, those prefixes are definitely not my true feelings, don't misinterpret them...

From another perspective, if it were easy to blind or cripple opponents, many skills would become useless. For example, a Necromancer's Dim Vision, which only significantly reduces the enemy's vision, would be pointless if a single stab to the eye could blind them.

In short, the rules of this world are quite bizarre, a typical case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, making it hard to accept.

It's like if I were to explain the functions of a laptop to Uncle Lai, detailing the integrated chips and complex programs, even if they understood, they might not immediately accept it.

Although it's meaningless, I still want to complain about the crude rules of this world. Even a random online game novel has more rigorous settings, at least with the concept of critical hits.

However, from another angle, these crude rules are actually beneficial for someone like me.

So far, the only motivation that keeps me going in this world is not to become a powerful ruler with multiple wives, but to have a stable home. As a Druid, finding a virtuous wife shouldn't be too difficult. Then, I can occasionally go out to fight monsters, act as a brave warrior driving away evil forces, and sell the loot to support my family. My wife would be gentle and good at managing the household. That's all I want.

In short, after understanding this reality, my last bit of fear about combat disappeared. Although being cut still hurts, at least I don't have to worry about being crippled and rejected, living a life of loneliness...

Finally, after a few days of training, I could remain calm even after being cut n times, even if the cuts were aimed at my vital points. In other words, I had been assimilated into the mindset of the Darklands, where there are no vital points.

When I could calmly move among the Fallen Ones, trading injuries and using their strength against them (though the two idioms are not related), Uncle Lai came over, patted my shoulder, praised me, and then took off my leather armor, throwing me back into the Fallen Ones' camp, calling it "intensive training."

During the subsequent intensive training, I mentally replaced the faces of the Fallen Ones with Uncle Lai's, which unexpectedly increased my efficiency in killing them, making Uncle Lai marvel at his own teaching skills.

This battle continued for three days. I carefully counted and found that I had been in this world for exactly half a month, assuming the units of time in the Darklands are the same as ours.

This morning, I woke up very early, even before the red moon had set, because Uncle Lai told me we would return to the Rogue Encampment at noon. My excitement was indescribable. Those who haven't played Diablo can never understand the significance of the Rogue Encampment to us players. It's the base of operations, the hall of hands.

Moreover, from what Uncle Lai revealed, there were at least hundreds of thousands of people living there. This made me even more excited and once again despise Blizzard's lazy design of the Rogue Encampment, which consists of a few NPCs, some chickens, and a few cows, all enclosed by wooden fences. They really need to put more effort into it; this laziness is almost beyond comprehension...

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