Chapter 7

The scene in the second room was even more bizarre than the first. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all painted with human faces, and the room was empty except for the densely packed faces on the walls. In the center of the empty room, a solitary safe stood on the ground.

"This puzzle is a bit too straightforward," Feng Jue walked straight to the safe, crouched down, and began to examine it carefully. "Hmm... After all, this is a training mode, and they might have considered that players might not be able to think calmly when they're scared." His words seemed to suggest that he found the difficulty too low...

Wang Tanzhi also followed in, and at that moment, he felt that the faces painted on the walls were so lifelike that he couldn't find any two that were identical. It felt as if there were hundreds of eyes staring at him, which was quite unsettling.

"Bro Jue, should we take the box out and study it outside?" Wang Tanzhi suggested.

"Three minutes at most," Feng Jue quickly stood up again, took out the six face sketches, and held them up to compare with the faces on the wall. "When I got close to the safe, the system prompted me to enter a six-digit numerical password to open it." His gaze soon stopped. "Hmm... there it is." He walked to a wall and tilted his head to the left. "There are a lot of faces painted in this room to distract the player's attention." He pointed to the wall. "Look, six faces in a row, diagonally, and they match the six faces in the sketches, in the same order." He compared the terrifying faces, from left to right, from top to bottom, following the order of the six faces on the wall, and the numbers in the corners of the sketches, and softly recited, "Four, one, six, three, five, two."

Feng Jue returned to the safe and began to enter the password. "If you only opened the door and did a rough observation in the first room without searching carefully, you wouldn't have found the clue in the sketches. So when you opened the second room, you wouldn't have been able to solve the safe's password." He glanced back at the six faces. "The answer was actually in the brightest area when the door opened, but without the sketches, even if you knew the six-digit password was in this room, you wouldn't have found the numbers."

At that moment, the safe really opened, and inside were two items: a key and a card.

"Underestimated it," Feng Jue immediately said after checking the attributes of the two items.

"What's wrong?" Wang Tanzhi, influenced by Feng Jue's calmness, had calmed down a lot, and his fear level had returned to around 3%.

"The key will probably be used soon, but this..." Feng Jue handed the card to Wang Tanzhi.

【Name: Explosive Punch】

【Skill Card Attribute: Active Skill, disappears after two uses】

【Skill Category: Combat】

【Effect: Causes an explosion upon hitting the target, dealing fire damage】

【Cost: 50 Stamina】

【Learning Condition: Combat Proficiency F】

【Note: BOOM!】

"I thought the reward would be equipment, but it turned out to be a skill," Feng Jue said.

"Uh... Putting aside the issue of equipment or skills, how did you know there would be a reward?" Wang Tanzhi asked.

"Isn't it obvious? Although this mode doesn't give any additional rewards besides experience points, to ensure the game's playability, the script still provides two ways for players to complete it," Feng Jue explained. "We are currently on the puzzle-solving route, not the brute-force route." He held the key and led Wang Tanzhi out of the second room.

"Players who choose the non-puzzle-solving route, as long as they overcome their fear, stay calm, and fight efficiently, can gain proficiency level increases. As their character level increases and their combat skills and methods become more diverse, they can also gain technique points in battles."

"Our way of playing focuses more on improving overall game efficiency rather than just combat efficiency. Solving puzzles can reduce the difficulty of completing the script, reduce the proportion of combat, and give us more control over the script's situation. However, players who play this way will fall behind in proficiency levels, so the system naturally compensates in other ways, usually with more technique points."

Wang Tanzhi understood and continued, "But in the training mode, there are no technique points to be gained... So if players choose to solve puzzles, they will receive items directly in the script as compensation."

"Correct." Feng Jue tried the door to the third room, and as he expected, it was locked. He immediately used the key, and it fit perfectly. The door opened, and the key disappeared.

The third room was very clean, with a desk against the wall, and a notebook on the desk.

"By the way, how many proficiency levels have you opened?" Feng Jue asked as he picked up the notebook.

"My combat and general proficiency are both F. What about you, Bro Jue?"

"I only opened general." Feng Jue flipped through the notebook. "Under what circumstances did you open your combat proficiency?"

"I was attacked by some monkey-like creatures in the tutorial. After killing them, the system notified me that I had F-level combat proficiency," Wang Tanzhi recalled. "But the general proficiency level only appeared after the tutorial ended."

"I see. It seems we need to find a way to open all six proficiencies first," Feng Jue mused.

He then turned to Wang Tanzhi and said, "When you got the skill, did the skill slot appear in your menu? Since you meet the conditions, quickly equip the skill card you just got; it might come in handy soon."

Feng Jue himself had also picked up a skill card for the first time. When he checked its attributes, the system prompted him that his skill slot had been opened.

In the Horror Park, a character's skill slot has twelve slots, and adjustments can only be made before the script starts. Regardless of how many skills a character has, they can only equip twelve at the start of a script. Once a skill card is equipped, whether used or not, it will be bound to the character and cannot be traded. So if a player wants to sell a skill card, they must put it in their inventory and not equip it in the skill slot. Once equipped, the card will disappear, and the skill will be converted into a set of data in the player's menu.

There is another rule: skill cards as items can only be taken out of the script, not brought in, to prevent players from entering with a full set of skills and a bunch of backup cards in their inventory.

There is one exception: if a player picks up a new skill card in the script, meets the learning conditions, and their skill slot is full, they can replace an equipped skill with the new card. The replaced skill can only be re-equipped in the login space.

"Why does the skill disappear after two uses?" Wang Tanzhi asked, clearly not having read the game manual.

Feng Jue, while flipping through the notebook, replied, "The key is the skill card attribute... Skills are divided into active and passive. Active skills have three types: 'Permanent Mastery,' 'Time-Limited,' and 'Usage-Based.' Passive skills only have 'Permanent Mastery' and 'Time-Limited.' Your card is 'Usage-Based,' so it will disappear after two uses."

"That's pretty frustrating..." Wang Tanzhi said, but he still equipped the skill as Feng Jue suggested.

"No, it's very reasonable," Feng Jue said. "With your current stamina, you can only throw two punches at full health. If you use it only when you have the opportunity and conditions, you won't need a third punch in this script, or you might not even need to use it at all." He paused. "Besides, if it were a permanent or time-limited version, the learning conditions and usage costs would likely be much higher, probably requiring a higher combat proficiency level and more stamina. Otherwise, skills would be too cheap. For example, if a level 50 shooting proficiency player could easily get a permanent combat skill that only costs 50 stamina, they could use it for a hundred consecutive shots, which wouldn't be fair."

Wang Tanzhi also found this reasonable. "Yeah... That's true. If I got a skill that I could learn with F-level combat proficiency but it cost 101 stamina, that would be a problem with the game design."

"Oh, I should also remind you that with F-level proficiency, the success rate for using active skills is only 20%. So... for low-level characters, whether they can activate a skill depends on luck," Feng Jue said.

"That's still frustrating!"

"That's why I was hoping to find equipment. I checked the official website; the internal test started this morning, and by the afternoon, strategies were already out. Some players who are already level 10 or higher say that the most significant boost for low-level characters is equipment, but 'Excellent' or higher low-level equipment is extremely rare." Feng Jue, multitasking, was almost done reading the notebook. "I guess it's because the game quickly transitions to level 10 and above, and if players have good equipment at low levels, they can efficiently brute-force through without solving puzzles. So the game almost doesn't provide powerful low-level equipment." He closed the notebook. "Also, after level 10, low-level 'Excellent' equipment becomes less useful and more of a burden, especially since the trading system isn't open yet, and keeping it just takes up inventory space."

Feng Jue suddenly said, "Oops, I underestimated it..."

"What's wrong?" Wang Tanzhi tensed up, picked up the fruit knife, and looked back at the corridor, but saw nothing new except the blood handprint on the opposite wall.

"Actually... in the future, when there are tasks like opening boxes, you should do it. I just need to tell you the password or method," Feng Jue said.

"Whatever, I thought you were going to say something important," Wang Tanzhi said. "Luck is just a probability thing; it doesn't mean you'll always get junk."

"I really want to go outside and find a rock to knock you out."

"Okay... I'm sorry."

Feng Jue put the notebook in his inventory and said, "Let's go. I'll tell you the story of this script as we walk..."