Ye Tianxie couldn’t help worrying that if he kept talking with this odd little girl he might just lose his mind, so he shifted his attention to the doomed Wild Wolves not far off and stepped into their territory once more. With the Hour of Eternal Fate in hand, its outlandish shape meant the first thing anyone noticed when they looked his way wasn’t him at all, but the strange weapon in his grip. It wasn’t a sword, wasn’t a saber, wasn’t a blunt weapon — jet-black all over, its winding, twisting shape irregular past all description, with seven holes each giving off a different color… One thing was certain: wherever it went, in whoever’s hand, it would become the focus of every eye.
The length of the Hour of Eternal Fate plus the length of Ye Tianxie’s arm together gave his attacks a reach extending two meters in front of him. Right now Ye Tianxie had no need whatsoever to draw a single wolf’s aggro to avoid luring in more; he charged headlong and without reserve straight into the dense wolf pack. The instant he entered their aggro range, pair after pair of blood-glinting eyes locked onto him, their owners rushing at him amid bursts of howling.
The Hour of Eternal Fate swept down at an angle, tracing a jet-black arc parallel to the ground, and the three wolves running out front were struck all at once — -85, -87, -85 — three brilliant-red damage numbers floating up together. With Ye Tianxie’s attack power now just shy of breaking a hundred, dealing with this pack of wolves no longer carried the pressure it had before. His strike slowed the three wolves’ forward charge a little, and Ye Tianxie instantly stepped back, swinging twice in succession, so that the three wolves that had just closed in front of him toppled to the ground all at once.
“Oh la la! Master’s so amazing, knock all these little monsters down, knock ’em down!”
Guoguo’s voice threw Ye Tianxie’s focus into disarray, and he was nearly surrounded by the five wolves that had lunged in. He shuffled his position in a fluster, but still got raked twice by wolf claws; three consecutive strikes killed off all of these wolves he’d deliberately gathered in front of him, and at last the wonderful level-up chime sounded in his ears.
“Ding… Your level has risen to Level 1. HP +10, MP +10. You have gained 5 free attribute points.” Dumping all 5 of the free attribute points from the level-up into Strength, Ye Tianxie’s attack power promptly broke a hundred, and wolves that had needed three strikes to finish could now occasionally be ended in two.
Leveling in Fate was harder than anything before it — in his Level 0 state he’d had to punch above his level and kill nine Wild Wolves just to make the leap from zero to one. And the leap from Level 1 to Level 2 was a full ten times harder still… Zero to one required 100 experience, but one to two took a full 1,000. A jump on that scale had never once existed in the history of virtual gaming.
Two more wolves toppled before him at the same time. Glancing at the wolf corpses already starting to pile up around him, Ye Tianxie picked up the few coins that had dropped on the ground — added together, a mere five copper. With the ten Luck granted by Blessing of Fate, the wolves’ drop rate had clearly improved, but even so, the system was infuriatingly stingy. Apart from a few lonely coins, it hadn’t dropped so much as a single recovery potion.
Stepping out of the wolves’ territory, Ye Tianxie had already decided to head back to the novice village for now to learn Gathering, so he could complete that quest he’d found so interesting. Holding the strangely shaped, demonically black Hour of Eternal Fate, Ye Tianxie still had a dreamlike sense of unreality. He experimented with mentally recalling the Hour of Eternal Fate the way he’d stow ordinary equipment, and at once the massive weapon vanished before his eyes — yet it didn’t return to his backpack. Instead it reverted to its ornament form and returned to his chest, hanging bizarrely from the black cord around his neck.
There would always be certain incomprehensible mysteries in the world. Gripping this Hour of Eternal Fate, now in its trinket form, in his palm — whatever secret it hid, he had no way of knowing for now. But one thing was certain: what its appearance signified… was that even without a class, his starting point was a great cut above every other player’s.
Fair, or unfair?
“Yee-yaa! Master, where are you going?” Seeing Ye Tianxie head south, Guoguo immediately floated up behind him and followed. She hovered at roughly the height of his shoulder. There were no wings behind her, no waving of arms or legs, and yet she drifted along like a wisp of cotton held up by the wind, treading empty air.
“Back.” Ye Tianxie answered, weighed down with thoughts, that whole bizarre business from before flashing through his mind again and again.
“Back to where? Somewhere fun? Or to master’s home?”
“…”
“Master, you still haven’t bought me a lollipop to eat. I’m Guoguo, the cutest, best-behaved little loli — how can I not eat a lollipop?”
“…”
“Yee-yaa! Master, you’re so rude! A loli as cute as me is asking you questions, and you’re just ignoring me! Hey! Rotten master, are you even listening to me?!”
His train of thought thrown into utter chaos, Ye Tianxie finally reached the end of his patience. His steps halted, his hand shot out, and amid a startled shriek he snatched the little girl right out of the air and clutched her in his grip. A soft, downy warmth came through his hand at once, making it ease its grip a little in spite of himself. Face cold and fierce, he said, “No more talking!!”
Guoguo’s whole body was only thirty-some centimeters long, and Ye Tianxie’s single hand held her from waist to calf all at once. Her eyes went wide, her body went rigid — clearly scared witless — and slowly, her tiny lips flattened, and a shimmer of water welled up in her bright, glistening eyes… and then, with a “waaah,” she burst into loud sobs.
“Wa-aah!! You’re bullying me, you’re bullying me… you’re bullying me!!”
Amid the wailing that set Ye Tianxie’s eardrums twitching, tears poured down like a bursting flood, wetting the back of his hand in the blink of an eye. That grief-stricken crying sounded as though she’d suffered the greatest injustice in all the world — anyone hearing it would ache with pity. Her body was tiny, but her crying was startlingly loud, carrying a very long way out here in the open wilds.
Ye Tianxie’s scalp prickled all over, and a trace of panic crept into his expression. This throat-tearing wail carried not the slightest trace of pretense, and those streaming tears couldn’t possibly be fake; the sheer grief in that voice even gave Ye Tianxie the feeling he’d done the cruelest thing in all the world, the cold face he’d put on already crumbling to dust. He hurriedly let go, cupped her in his palm, bent his head down, and said in the gentlest voice he could manage, “There, there, it’s my fault, don’t cry, Guoguo…”
Guoguo’s body was so light it seemed to have no weight at all. Ye Tianxie really hadn’t imagined he’d ever see a day when he’d be fumbling this frantically to soothe a little girl. Not only did his comforting fail to work, Guoguo’s crying instead grew a great deal louder. “Boo-hoo… you bullied me! You bullied me!”
“Be good now, it was my fault, I promise I’ll never bully Guoguo again, all right?” Ye Tianxie forced out the gentlest smile he could, a look that hadn’t appeared on his face in a very long time, and so came out badly warped.
“Boo-hoo… liar, liar, how could you be so mean, I’m so cute and obedient, how could you bully me… wa-aah!” Guoguo went on wailing, her overflowing tears soon wetting his palm all over again. Ye Tianxie’s mouth twitched, and even his heart twitched along with it. For as long as he could remember, all the way back to childhood, he had always been the one she doted on… He had never once comforted anyone.
“If Guoguo stops crying, I promise I’ll never bully Guoguo again, and I’ll even really, really like Guoguo, the cutest, best-behaved little loli in all the world — all right?” Ye Tianxie racked his brains and forced himself to speak these words of comfort that made his whole body crawl with discomfort. The instant he finished, he could practically feel his entire self-image being overturned. He could only pray the world would fall quiet at once.
And as he’d hoped, the world did indeed fall quiet — so fast Ye Tianxie could hardly catch up with it. Guoguo’s face hung full of crystalline teardrops, her two eyes gaping wide and brimming with droplets that hadn’t yet had time to fall, refracting an uncommonly moving radiance — but the crying had stopped completely, and even that supremely wronged expression from a moment ago had vanished without a trace. Then, very seriously, she said, “Oh la! Master, is that really true?”
“…It’s true.” Steeling himself, Ye Tianxie ground the three words out through his teeth with difficulty. A gap this vast — a raging storm one second, a blazing sun the next — could not be more extreme. He now had endless suspicions about whether he’d fallen into this little thing’s trap.
“Wah! Wah!” Little Guoguo cheered, a leaping delight blossoming across that still tear-streaked face. “Master has to keep his word… mm! I want to eat a lollipop…”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
(End of Chapter 12)