NOVEL NEXT Chapter 28
Chapter 28: Designer, are you out of your mind?!
“Ah? Oh, sorry… I completely forgot about that…”
Speaking of which, Miss Vilyric isn’t a native of this world. The language barrier with Liliya and the others should have been an issue, and she wasn’t given any convenient “automatic translation” benefits upon her arrival; her ability to communicate so freely actually relied on gaming items for assistance.
After groping around a bit, Vilyric took out a rather square-looking, very old-fashioned pair of glasses—basically the “nerd” standard fare—and handed them to the princess.
“Here, try these on.”
“What is this, Miss Vilyric? Two transparent crystals embedded in a strange frame?”
Cough, what a plain yet vivid description…
“Just think of it as a magical item. This thing lets you understand the contents of the books. Oh, I don’t think Liliya has worn glasses before, so let me help you.”
Not thinking much of it, Vilyric demonstrated how to open the frame, then went around beside the blue-haired girl, slightly bent down, and brushed aside the princess’s smooth and delicate bangs to measure Liliya’s face against the glasses.
Despite their unimpressive appearance, these glasses are actually a holy-grade item more precious than a golden spirit tool. While they have no combat abilities or attributes, they allow the wearer to understand any text recorded on the medium. They are an essential tool in certain decoding exploration dungeons.
These glasses are harder to obtain than the items Vilyric and Xiao Guang use to translate languages, and she only had one on her. If it weren’t for the fact that holy-grade items are very hard to damage, she wouldn’t have so carelessly lent them to Liliya.
After automatically recognizing the user’s face shape and dimensions, the glasses shrank a bit, making them look much more delicate and cute than before. Then, Vilyric gently placed them on the princess’s nose.
“There, now you should be able to see clearly, huh? What’s wrong?”
Vilyric turned back to her seat only to find that the princess was still staring blankly, her face much redder than before.
While it looked cute, the fact that she was acting strangely after wearing the equipment startled Vilyric and brought up some painful memories.
What’s going on? Could it be that Liliya’s level is too low to handle a holy-grade item?
That shouldn’t be the case; this isn’t an item with usage level requirements. In “Fantasy World,” even a level 1 player just starting in the newbie village can use any grade of item unless specifically stated otherwise.
Just as Vilyric began to feel uneasy and was about to reach for the glasses, her employer suddenly snapped back to reality.
“Ah! No, I’m sorry, I just zoned out for a second…”
Liliya lowered her head, completely unable to meet Vilyric’s gaze, her beautiful face practically on fire.
Vilyric, not being a total dense idiot, quickly realized what was going on.
Is she shy?
Now that she thought about it, as they adjusted the frame, they had indeed gotten a bit too close, and Vilyric could smell a refreshing scent coming from the tip of the princess’s hair. If it were a male, it would have been easily misinterpreted as hitting on someone.
But to be fair, Vilyric hadn’t even thought of it that way because she was a girl. Shouldn’t this level of closeness be normal between girls?
Was it Liliya who was being strange, or was it me?
“Um… Liliya, are you feeling okay? This is actually my first time helping someone with this thing. If it’s too much, we can…”
Although she realized what was happening, Vilyric certainly wouldn’t bring up Liliya’s little shy thoughts; that would just be too awkward.
“Ah? Oh! I’m fine, I’m fine. Although it felt a bit dizzy when I first put them on, it returned to normal very quickly, so you don’t need to worry, Miss Vilyric.”
As expected of a princess, she skillfully brought the atmosphere back to normal in no time.
“Alright, then let’s quickly try out its effects.”
Liliya nodded obediently and started focusing on the books on the table. She gazed intently for a long time, her expression gradually becoming serious, then turning to shock.
After a while, the girl finally looked up, looking utterly stunned.
“The power system and explanations recorded here are incredibly complete, and they contrast sharply with everything I currently understand. Levels, skill points, attributes? Miss Vilyric, what are all these?”
Of course they’re different; after all, this is a skills introduction manual from “Fantasy World.”
While it’s basically just a professional preview for players to get familiar with, the skill tree in “Fantasy World” is so complex that there are at least tens of thousands of skills in total, which is why it’s such a thick book.
Moreover, hidden skills and equipment skills aren’t included in this book, as only the game company knows exactly how many there are.
That said, it’s not like the skills listed in the book can be learned just because players want to.
First, the skill points gained from leveling up are limited for each player. Secondly, aside from the basic skills, most advanced abilities within the various systems require meeting all sorts of peculiar conditions before they can be learned.
The simplest requirement is having your Strength / Agility / Intelligence meet certain thresholds; a bit more complicated, for example, is needing to max out a low-level skill or not being able to learn any skills from a certain tree while learning others, and you have to be of a certain race, etc., but that’s not too hard.
Up until now, everything sounds normal, but did you think that was the end of it? Wrong!
Things get really ridiculous after that; the requirements for skills above that get increasingly bizarre, to the point of messing with players’ psyches.
This includes, but isn’t limited to, needing to be in a specific environment to learn, consuming precious materials, requiring specific equipment, or even needing to be struck by lightning a certain number of times to unlock a particular achievement before you can learn a skill. It’s like they thought of everything you could possibly imagine, and then some.
Vilyric remembered that when she learned a certain level 10 magic spell, the prerequisite was to single-handedly take down at least a thousand Dark Elemental Lords?!
To know that only players who followed a similar support route to Vilyric, like priest-type characters, could access this level 90 skill. Although they can’t be said to have no offensive ability, with just those few pathetic attack skills, how would they ever scrape by to defeat a level 100 boss?
And to prevent players from “cheating,” the skill even had a special note saying that group play was prohibited and no pets or special items could be used to attack, plus during combat, if your damage was below 80% of the boss’s total HP, or you didn’t land the final blow, it wouldn’t count toward your stats.
It is possible to ask someone to buff you, but since Vilyric specializes in support, the repeated effects from skills wouldn’t stack, so how much of a boost would that even provide?
Vilyric spent more than half a year searching everywhere for Dark Elemental Lords to learn that spell, quickly using special items to pull them into a different space before whittling them down bit by bit, torturing both herself and the creatures.
After a thousand repetitions, she nearly developed a psychological shadow on herself as a priestess.
If that spell wasn’t ridiculously powerful, and if not mastering all Holy Light skills meant she couldn’t grasp the ultimate secrets of that field, Vilyric would have seriously considered just giving up entirely.
In summary, Vilyric didn’t have much confidence in Liliya learning the game’s skills, especially the advanced ones.
Even though she could solve the skill tree problem with special means, those prerequisites… woof!