-"A 351-day countdown to the Closed Beta? Infinite Class? This is actually real?! But this environment..."
Chen Luo muttered under his breath, his hands trembling slightly as his fingers brushed against the cold, hard rubble beneath him. He struggled to sit up. The faint, throbbing headache brought on by falling through the endless void gradually subsided, replaced by an overwhelming sense of shock.
Looking around, what met his eyes was a brutally realistic wasteland. Reinforced concrete skyscrapers stood half-collapsed and tilting at precarious angles, with bizarre, alien vines coiling around rusted rebar. Though these structures had been heavily devastated by the fires of war, broken micro-electronic circuit boards and fragments of smart, high-tech devices were still faintly visible among the wreckage. Clearly, the technological level of this world before its fall far surpassed the era he knew.
The spot where he had awakened happened to be a relatively open clearing within an abandoned industrial park. Fortunately, this clearing was walled in by surrounding ruins and mountain-like heaps of monster carcasses. It formed a natural barrier that completely blocked any outside line of sight. For a veteran professional power-leveler who excelled at finding map blind spots, this was an absolutely perfect starting cover point.
-[Ding! System detects player logging into this world for the first time. The 'Starter Gift Pack' has been distributed. Content includes: Military Dagger x1, Starter Iron Pickaxe x1, Starter Iron Shovel x1, Military Hand Axe x1, Full Leather Armor Set x1, Torch x15, Bread x15, and 20 Free Attribute Points.]
The mechanical, cold voice echoed in his ears, snapping Chen Luo out of his thoughts. He froze right on the spot. Having spent 11 years grinding away in Infinite Class and leveling up countless accounts for wealthy clients, he had never heard of the developers ever being this generous. The original game was notorious for its hardcore exploitation; novices usually spawned with nothing but a pair of boxers and a rotten wooden sword.
-"A starter gift pack? It looks like the system that comes with being a transmigrator does offer some special treatment."
Chen Luo mumbled. With a mere thought, a familiar, semi-transparent grid inventory interface instantly materialized before his eyes. In the hotbar at the very bottom, the various survival tools he had just received were already automatically equipped. On his personal 3D character projection, a dark brown, thick, and slightly coarse set of leather armor had tightly fitted itself over his somewhat lean frame. The warmth of the leather against his skin and the faint scent of preservative oil served as a stark reminder: this was not a virtual game, but a real, flesh-and-blood body.
-"System, open Attribute Panel!"
-[Player command detected. Opening Attribute Panel, please review.]
-------- Attribute Panel --------
Name: Chen Luo
Age: 17
Class: Unemployed Vagabond (Unclassed)
Core Indicators:
Attack Damage (Physical): 15 (+5 [Equipped: Military Dagger])
Magic Damage: 0
HP (Health Points): 20 (+10 [Equipped: Full Leather Armor Set])
Mana (Energy): 150
Crit Rate: 0%
Armor (Physical): 0 (+6 [Equipped: Full Leather Armor Set])
Magic Armor: 0 (+3 [Equipped: Full Leather Armor Set])
Auto Regen HP: 0.5/second
Auto Regen Mana: 5/second
Base Attributes:
Strength: 15
Stamina: 25
Free Attribute Points: 20 points
Looking at his attribute panel, Chen Luo curled his lips in a helpless grimace. Aside from the decent starting Mana value inherent to the Vagabond class and the 20 free attribute points he had just been gifted, his other stats were pitifully weak. The early game was always a total nightmare; any low-level monster could easily send him to his grave if he grew even slightly careless. However, for Chen Luo, knowing exactly how to calculate and maximize such barren data was an instinct deeply carved into his bones. He decided to temporarily hold onto the 20 free attribute points for emergencies.
-"But... a 351-day countdown to the Closed Beta? Could this actually be the period before the first, extremely small-scale closed beta in the game's history?"
At that thought, Chen Luo’s heart skipped a beat.
Among the veteran player community, there had always been an urban legend about two highly classified, data-wiping closed betas that took place before the game's official public launch in the year 2100. Back then, the developers had only issued exactly 100 testing accounts to a tiny handful of experts and deeply entrenched factions. The tests lasted for an extremely short period before all data was completely wiped clean. If this timeline was real, it meant that for nearly the next year, he would solely monopolize all the resources, main storylines, and hidden secret realms of this world without a single player to compete against!
-"351 days... This isn't a survival challenge; this is an unmined, endless gold mine!" The distinctive excitement of a professional power-leveler flashed in Chen Luo's eyes. "However, if I want to dig for gold, I have to survive first. Priority number one: clean up this scene."
He drew the Military Dagger from his inventory. When the cold metallic touch and heavy weight realistically transferred to his palm, his heart rate quickened by a few beats. He walked toward the scattered monster corpses around him.
These corpses belonged to the Fierce Star Boar—a low-level monster shaped like a wild boar but covered in sharp, black bone spikes. Most of their heads had been shattered by devastating energy blasts, and a thick, foul-smelling black fluid was currently oozing from their wounds. Suppressing a strong wave of nausea, Chen Luo crouched down. Relying on the rich experience he had accumulated from grinding collection quests in his past life, he skillfully guided his dagger to glide and slice precisely between the joints and muscle fibers of the boars.
-[Ding! Congratulations to player for acquiring the skill 「Deboning & Butchering」. When successfully harvesting edible monster/animal carcasses, the amount of meat obtained increases by 1%.]
-[Ding! Congratulations to player for acquiring the skill 「Dismemberment」. Extra material rewards obtained from deceased targets increase by 3%.]
After painstakingly chopping the carcasses of over 15 Fierce Star Boars into pieces, two consecutive system notifications rang out, directly gifting him two incredibly solid life skills. Looking at the bloody black boar meat and a few coarse bone spikes in his inventory, Chen Luo didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
When other people transmigrated with systems, they were gifted divine weapons or mythical pets, allowing them to summon wind and rain with omnipotent power. When it came to him, not only did he have to act as a butcher to slaughter pigs and sheep himself, but the system also kept handing him low-level life skills and crude tools. This system was indeed a bit "abnormal." But he knew very well that in this brutal wilderness, food and raw materials meant survival.
-[Ding! Quest issued. Common Quest: 「Survive the First Night」. Good luck, player!]
-Quest Note: Safely survive the first night without dying. Rewards will be calculated upon completion.
Hearing this quest, Chen Luo couldn't help but sigh, feeling a touch of helplessness. This quest really came right on time, but it was also accompanied by immense danger.
In the lore of Infinite Class, daytime monsters were relatively passive because most of them feared intense sunlight, which caused mild damage to their flesh. Thus, they usually hid deep inside dark, abandoned buildings or underground caves. However, once night fell, the darkness would activate the Monster Cores buried deep underground.
These cores operated like greedy pumps, frantically siphoning the free dark energy of the world. When the aura of a living human drew near, the speed and quantity at which they generated monsters at night would multiply exponentially. For the NPCs and Professionals of this world, the night was a living hell; even high-level powerhouses dared not wander the streets casually after dark.
However, Chen Luo was no ignorant rookie. He understood the underlying mechanics of these monsters perfectly: although they possessed excellent vision and hearing in the dark, their core method of locking onto prey was actually by sensing the target's "aura" and "breath" (namely, carbon dioxide and body heat). NPCs usually hid in completely sealed, airtight rooms, holding their breath to the limit or slathering themselves with herbs that masked body odor to evade monster patrols.
But Chen Luo knew a method far more efficient and effortless than that. It was a terrain bug unique to this industrial park map—one that only a power-leveler like him, who specialized in finding glitches, knew inside out.
He looked up at the setting sun as it slowly sank beneath the mountains of ruins in the distance, dyeing the entire sky a sorrowful, blood red. Chen Luo quickly stowed his dagger and materials, tightened his leather armor, and sprinted agilely toward a concealed, abandoned mine entrance tucked away behind the industrial park. As the first low howl of a beast echoed through the gathering dusk, his figure had already completely vanished into the pitch-black depths underground.