Chapter 3

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

“Hi.”

Her graceful actions and undeniably gorgeous figure were fully captured by Lu Jin’s eyes.

Despite the scene before him, Lu Jin’s gaze was focused on the metal earrings that were partially covered by Xia Qingyao’s long hair.

That pair of dull, golden earrings seemed like an unremarkable accessory. It was just a small embellishment that brought out the beauty of Xia Qingyao’s maturity and intelligence.

But Lu Jin knew very well that the pair of earrings was not just an accessory. It was an extra-cerebral inferential device that was designed 400 years ago for Fantasy World. It was a theoretical technology that the Fantasy Light Group had revealed publicly back then.

Who would have thought that now, the Fantasy Light Group had already actualized that theoretical technology.

Unlike the AR glasses, which mostly had to be controlled by players, the extra-cerebral inferential device did not require manual control. Instead, the AR component is directly controlled by the bioelectronic signals in the brain. Any thought in the brain could be rapidly performed, more than 10 times faster.

In battles of Fantasy World and the creation process of items, it was literally like magic!

“Lianyue has already made it very clear in the video. I believe that you should have come to your senses by now, Mr Lu Jin.” Xia Qingyao gestured at Qin Lianyue, the female secretary beside her. Looking at Lu Jin with a serious expression, Xia Qingyao said, “We’re here today to sign the final document. If there are no issues, you’ll just need to sign the document. Once you’ve signed it, the contract cannot be amended. You’ll also become my one and only fiancé.”

As Xia Qingyao finished speaking, Lu Jin suddenly saw that a stack of documents had appeared in his AR glasses. Without even giving his permission, these documents were directly displayed before him.

“Is this the technological prowess of the Fantasy Light Group?”

Lu Jin was secretly amazed as he looked at the extra-cerebral inferential device on Xia Qingyao’s ear.

Inferring from the younger Lu Jin’s memory, the world had changed drastically. It could be said that people all over the world were now living and working in Fantasy World. Their lives and work had been completely virtualized and systematized. One could consider them humans of the new era, and their standards in all aspects had far surpassed those of the humans who lived 400 years ago.

The simplest example was physical training. Through scanning and testing, the AR system could directly reveal specific body data and growth rates, which allowed players who trained their body to know if they had grown. Even if the growth was just a small change, the system was able to detect it. It allowed the players to train their body with greater precision, thereby maximizing the growth from their training.

For example, taking an ordinary person’s muscle strength to be 100, through training, it could grow to 101 in a day. Using another method, on the other hand, it could grow to 102 in a day.

When the two training methods were clearly compared, it was easy to see which was better. That way, the players could choose the training method that was more effective.

Also, in terms of culinary practices, the doneness of food could be determined using the scan feature of the system.

Whether it was training, cooking, or anything else, as long as there was growth, players could gain corresponding EXP. Also, in terms of the level of enhancement of the system, once the EXP bar has reached a certain level, the enhancement level of the system would increase. In addition, the collection of data would allow the AR system to upgrade and optimize itself, which would enable it to cater to the growing needs of the players. That would form a two-way upgrade mechanism, where both the player and the system software would go through self-upgrade and self-evolution respectively.

It had become real – the players’ level was their power.

Due to that, in the current world, a person’s level was everything!

If a person was to look for a job and had not reached Level 10 in a certain domain, he would probably not be able to find a job. For example, if he was a housekeeper, he would only have qualified for the job if he had reached Level 10 in housekeeping. For a chef in a restaurant, if he had not reached Level 10 as a chef, no one would even want him as an apprentice.

According to the initial settings of Fantasy World 400 years ago, the maximum level of each domain was 30.

However, as 400 years have passed, the maximum level had already surpassed the initial maximum level of 30, echoing the evolution of Fantasy World.

As far as the late young Lu Jin had known, 200 years ago, the maximum level was at 40.

That was because there was a person who had reached Level 39 in the domain of item-crafting, surpassing the maximum level, 200 years ago. That person was also the greatest craftsman in centuries.

No one knew what the maximum level was now.

Two hundred years ago, the global climate had changed abruptly. Apart from a few regions, the entire world was shrouded in mist. That mist was extremely mysterious as it could block all electronic transmission signals. Moreover, visibility in the mist was barely 10 meters. It caused traffic to be completely obstructed, and in an instant, it broke the connections between all the cities in the world.

But that was not the most important thing.

The thing that rendered everyone helpless was the problem with the mist. It was unsure why, but as long as people stayed in the mist for an extended period of time, their lifespan or vitality would be compromised. Even though they had used various methods to isolate the mist, the effectiveness had been very limited.

Therefore, all the major cities in the world had their own governing bodies. The City of Light, which young Lu Jin was in, was governed by three major groups.

Those three groups were the Sun and Moon Group, the Daytime Group and the Fantasy Light Group.

Xia Qingyao was the newly appointed CEO of the Fantasy Light Group. She was the youngest CEO in the group’s history.

Humans were not completely helpless regarding the mist.

The AR Five-Senses Enhancement and Virtualization technology of Fantasy World transformed the low visibility mist into an imaginary world where the visibility exceeded 100 meters.

Furthermore, after activating the AR system, people’s immunity against the mist’s vitality-destroying force seemed to have been greatly enhanced. That paved the way for interaction between the major cities.

Despite the wonders of Fantasy World, the journey was riddled with monsters and computerized dungeons.

In the settings of Fantasy World, if a player was defeated, it was equivalent to the destruction of his AR system. Before the system has gone through either a tedious process of regeneration or an automatic reparation, there would be no way to re-activate it. Even if it was replaced immediately by a new AR device, the player’s level would remain at zero if his player data was not downloaded into the new AR system.

In the past 200 years, people have tried to crack the mystery behind Fantasy World. Some had also tried to extract the Five-Senses Enhancement Program for personal use so that people would not have to live within the limits of Fantasy World. However, all their attempts had failed. They did not even know how to shut down Fantasy World because it was simply activated by importing the instrument to its system’s program. There was no mainframe at all. It was as if the instrument was completely independent…

Defeating monsters in Fantasy World was not without its benefits.

As long as those monsters were defeated, they might leave memory fragments and various materials behind. Those memory fragments had many purposes. Not only could they be used to repair AR systems, but they could also be used to fully upgrade and enhance AR systems. It would not be just another routine upgrade based on the player’s increase in level.

And because of this…

A vocation that was unimaginable in the past has emerged!

The Adventurers!

Some could be guardians of vehicles that shuttled between cities; some could be explorers who would search for new residential areas; some could be scavengers who hunted monsters and resold materials and memory fragments.

The main reason why the newly appointed President of the Fantasy Light Group, Xia Qingyao, had chosen Lu Jin to be her fiancé was because he was purely a commoner who knew nothing about the current situation.

As Fantasy World had been engineered into an ARMMO game, the physical fitness of all players were taken into account for all battles.

In the OL world, the players’ physical fitness was categorized into four main stats: Strength, Agility, Endurance and Neural Reaction.

Strength: The robustness of a person’s muscles.

Agility: The flexibility and speed of a person.

Endurance: The stamina and adaptability of a person.

Neural Reaction: The speed of neural response in a person’s brain.

Currently, after the players have been examined by the Adventurers Association’s scan and detection instrument, they could obtain the most accurate evaluation of their maximum fitness potential.

The four basic stats were rated in the following seven ranks, in ascending order of potential: ‘F’, ‘E’, ‘D’, ‘C’, ‘B’, ‘A’, ‘S’.

As long as a player had two out of the four basic stats that were ranked ‘A’, they could be considered a rare prodigy.

The younger Lu Jin, on the other hand, had received an evaluation that surpassed that of a prodigy.

He was the most gifted person in the entire population of the City of Light in the past decade or so.