CH 10.2

The screen outside the supermarket building played a new song by a girl group, with the girls dancing in a youthful manner, attracting passers-by to stop by. Occasionally, a popular news item would be broadcast between dances, such as “High School Detective Returns and Solves a Strange Case” or “Kaito Kid Appears in Tokyo with Unknown Intentions” and so on, which was very interesting in contrast.

The air was a bit hazy, so Gin throat wasn’t feeling great. After coughing a couple of times, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a mask, and put it on. He crossed the road with his hands in his pockets.

It was already dark so he wanted to go home and get some rest.

A rabbit poked its head out of the pocket on his chest and looked up at him, trying to get his attention. “Where are you going?” it asked.

“Home” Gin pushed it back in.

“Home? Where’s your home?” The rabbit persisted.

“It’s not my home, it’s a completely safe place that only I know about, in Namimori.” The early autumn air was a bit chilly, so Gin hugged his coat closer and held the rabbit to warm his hands. “There’s a sparrowhawk there, with sharp claws and a bad temper. No one can spread their influence there. I can stay there during my time in the mortal world.”

The rabbit flicked its ears and looked interested. “A sparrowhawk… I’m starting to look forward to it… oh!”

“Don’t provoke it.” Gin said sternly, pinching the rabbit’s ear. “Don’t cause any trouble for me.”

“Okay, okay, I understand!” The rabbit vigorously nodded its head while scratching its ear, but it looked insincere.

“…”

Gin thought for a moment and said, “There’s a famous dish in China…”

“…That’s enough Gin.” The rabbit interrupted.

The two bickered all the way until they boarded the train. Gin sitting in the seat closed to the door, put the rabbit back in his pocket, and took out his phone.

Because he was using a new identity, his phone was also new, so he had lost all his usual software accounts and had to register again.

Fortunately, he didn’t have much need for social networking, and only needed two apps. One was the SE forum, and the other was the puzzle game “I’m at the End of the World.”

The latter was the only named pastime in his life, while the former was an important channel for him to look up strategies.

After registering his accounts, clicking on the game section, following the official account, strategy accounts, and a few famous live streamers for “I’m at the End of the World” Gin breathed a sigh of relief. He was about to check the forum to see if any new puzzle games had been released when he froze seeing the category section.

“Chronicle… Restorer?”

This was currently the most popular game, scoring 9.8 points in the first round of testing. After careful selection, all recent posts related to it were on the hotly discussed list.

He clicked on the live stream section and found the top video was the ” First Restorer” CG. The top post was a combat video of the game’s only task, with 30,000 comments and over a million likes, so popular it was almost burning.

Curious, Gin clicked on the combat video, but the first second of the video made him drop his phone.

It was a scene of him fighting against an ancient god’s remnant in the Abyss of Blades.

“…”

Picking up his phone, Gin took several deep breaths and silently put on his Bluetooth earphones before picking up the rabbit.

“I think we need to talk.” he said in a flat tone, pinching the back of the rabbit’s neck. “You know, there’s a famous dish in China.”

The rabbit remained silent.

Meanwhile, while Gin as busy having a heart-to-heart with the rabbit, Hideyoshi Akai was repairing his task panel.

System prompt: Your task panel is 99% damaged, please repair it as soon as possible. Click here for repair instructions…

Hideyoshi Akai clicked on the link in the prompt, and the page automatically redirected him to the Daily Quest module of the newly opened life system.

There were three daily quests: one for upgrading materials, one for star-upgrading materials, and one for increasing favorability ratings. Since the favorability system was unique to him, other players only had two daily quests.

However, the focus of this game was not on daily quests, but on the instance maps. Although only the “Bizzare Universe” instance map was currently open, it was incredibly vast. Not only was the main quest “Sullivia past” frighteningly long, but there were also countless side quests. The amount of time needed to complete them was terrifying, and countless players felt both happy and pained. Even the strategy posts on the forums hadn’t been updated, as new side quests would pop up every now and then, making the game highly replayable.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

There were actually two tasks for repairing the task panel. One was to increase the favorability rating of the “First Generation Restorer” to the maximum level, which meant that he had to farm favorability materials until he had enough to max out his favorability.

But the difficulty of this task was…

Hideyoshi Akai exited the daily quests and switched to the card interface, clicking on the “First Restorer” who was meditating cross-legged. The page then jumped to the character panel.

His “First Restorer” was fully upgraded and fully leveled, with a string of golden data on the right-hand side that could easily dominate the entire server in PVP battles. The left-hand side was the gift-giving interface, with the level bar at level one and zero favorability. In the middle was the gift-giving interface, and at the bottom were the voice, history, and gift-returning sections of the favorability system.

All of them were grayed out.

The gift-giving section was filled with gifts that Hideyoshi Akai had spent two hours farming, but when he selected one and clicked “send,” the screen immediately displayed “Favorability rating increased–0.”

He tried all 32 types of gifts, but none of them increased his favorability rating. Some even decreased it, causing his favorability to drop into negative territory and kicking him out of the “First Restorer” character panel.

This was the third time it had happened.

Hideyoshi Akai buried his head in his hands, speechless.

Negative favorability will gradually return to zero as time passes, probably around two hours, he wasn’t worried about it. However, with so many gifts, he couldn’t improve his favorability, should he call customer service? And how can he fix the panel?

Hideyoshi Akai angrily opened the customer service interface and sent a long message.

Perhaps because he was the only one in the entire server to have completed the mission, the customer service quickly replied to him.

Dear player, we have received your feedback, and we provide the following solutions:

One, before the favorability of the “First Restorer” reaches level two, the gifts will not increase the favorability.

Note: The initial favorability experience of level two needs to be obtained by exploring the main map and triggering random events.

Two, open the chat store. The exclusive panel repair gift package (limited to one hundred days) has been launched. It can be obtained once for free every day, and the number of paid purchases is unlimited. One purchase can repair one percent of the progress.

Note: The main map will not be available to players until the panel repair is complete.

So it turned out he need to spend money to repair it?

Seeing that his financial ability could solve this problem, Hideyoshi Akai breathed a sigh of relief and immediately clicked into the store, finding the exclusive gift package mentioned by customer service.

It can be obtained for free once a day and then purchased again at the cost of ten US dollars.

“Not expensive.”

Hideyoshi Akai received the free gift package, and then bought ninety-nine more in one go, directly filling the repair value.

“Now I can do the missions.” He stretched his waist, stretched his stiff hands and feet due to sitting for too long, and scanned the ten thousand energy gift package he just bought. He added all of them, “I hope the trigger rate of the special event isn’t too low.”

….

Two hours later, after being angered by the low drop rate of special events, Shuichi Akai dejectedly exited the main map and returned to the store page to buy ten more energy gift packages.

With ten thousand energy, he completed one-tenth of the main storyline and who-knows-how-much of the branch storyline, triggering only ten special events and gaining one hundred favorability.

He still needed nine hundred favorability points to reach level two.

The difficulty of this task is probably similar to that of the Journey to the West.

This game…was really addictive!