DEG - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Pretending to be an NPC
Her head throbbed, her mouth was dry, and every muscle in her body ached. The slightest movement sent a crackling sound through her joints.
"What are you dawdling for? Get up there and draw your lot."
The person behind her spoke with an unfriendly tone, and before their words had even faded, they shoved her in the back.
Jiang Xun stumbled forward, nearly falling to the ground. Her consciousness finally returned.
She must have been running a fever. She struggled to open her burning eyelids and, in a single glance, scanned the entire area. Only after confirming her surroundings were safe did she belatedly realize she was in a completely unfamiliar place.
It was an Arena capable of seating ten thousand spectators.
In front of her was an LCD screen used for drawing opponents. After her face was scanned and verified, it began to automatically match her with an enemy.
Jiang Xun's brow twitched. Since when had the Arena's technology become so backward?
You still had to queue up to draw an opponent?
She had only hesitated for a moment when a dispute broke out behind her.
"What's your hurry! Can't you wait a few more seconds?"
"I've already been waiting for dozens of seconds!"
"Haven't you noticed something's wrong with this NPC's condition?"
Before Jiang Xun could start the draw, a woman squeezed through the crowd. In a deliberately sweet voice, she asked with a smile, "Little sister, are you not feeling well?"
Jiang Xun: ...?
She blinked her feverish eyelids a couple of times, her gaze landing on the woman's forehead.
There was a line of white text: 【Berry Milkshake】
Such a strange, yet familiar, point of view.
She hesitated, slowly shaking her head before turning to look at the man who had pushed her.
Above his head, there was also a line of white text.
【I Am Number One in the World】
Ah.
It seemed she was in a game.
Her fever-addled brain finally began to work.
It allowed her to remember that she was supposed to be dead.
She had perished along with the Insect Mother.
But what was this situation?
Had she been transported into a game after dying?
Berry Milkshake looked at Jiang Xun's pale lips and flushed cheeks and subconsciously reached out to feel her forehead.
"You're not running a fever, are you?"
"Coming to the Arena while sick... could this be part of a quest?"
Hearing the word "quest," I Am Number One in the World was instantly on alert. He also pushed forward, rubbing his hands together with a wide grin. "Hey, sis, I admit I was a little impatient just now. What's wrong? Got a cold? Need some fever medicine?
I just bought some for a quest a while back.
It's from Luo Pharmaceuticals, so the quality is absolutely guaranteed."
"You look like you're only seventeen or eighteen. Why aren't you in school? Why come fight in underground matches?"
Berry Milkshake, who had already sidled up: ?!
She frowned and pushed the man back, vaguely noticing other players showing signs of moving in to snatch the quest.
She quickly said, "Little sister, how about we draw your lot first? We can talk about all this afterward."
Jiang Xun nodded and fumbled with the LCD screen's controls.
She listened to the notification on the LCD screen.
【Pupil recognition verified. Welcome, Bronze Hunter Jiang Xun. Please draw your opponent.】
Jiang Xun looked at her reflection in the camera. It was her seventeen or eighteen-year-old self, though her hair was a bit longer. Due to the fever, her face had an unnatural flush. Her eyelids drooped, and her thin lips were pressed together, giving her a listless, world-weary look.
She raised her hand to look at her Optical Brain; the LCD screen had already sent her the details of the opponent she had drawn.
【Breaking Waves Riding Wind, Kill! Kill! Kill!】
Ring Number Eight. The match would begin in one hour.
Jiang Xun: ...
In her current state, in a game she knew nothing about, with a world setting that may or may not have special abilities...
Jiang Xun stepped away from the terminal and smiled at Berry Milkshake, who had approached her, eager for a quest.
"Thank you. I think I have a fever. Could you give me a fever reducer?"
Since they thought she was a native of the game world, a story NPC, she might as well try issuing a quest.
She just didn't know if an outsider like her could successfully issue one.
The next second, she heard a ding in her ear. Berry Milkshake's eyes lit up as a blue panel suddenly appeared before her.
【Jiang Xun has issued you a new quest: Deliver one cold medicine tablet. Time limit: Within half an hour.】
It actually worked.
Berry Milkshake rummaged through her backpack for a while before finally buying the fever reducer from I Am Number One in the World.
Jiang Xun touched her burning forehead. Her intuition told her this was no ordinary cold.
It had come on too aggressively, making her head feel like it was full of paste, making it difficult to think or even function.
She swallowed the tablet dry. What little reason she had left told her that medicine from the Luo Consortium was high quality; the fever should break in just three minutes.
Berry Milkshake was chattering away, saying it was the best quality fever reducer and that it absolutely wouldn't affect her performance in the ring.
But after three minutes.
Her eyelids were still burning hot.
Berry Milkshake felt Jiang Xun's forehead in confusion. Seeing that her quest was still incomplete, she turned to find I Am Number One in the World.
"Is this fever reducer of yours fake?!"
"How could it be? I can even find the pharmacy receipt for you."
They argued noisily.
But Jiang Xun touched her own forehead.
She disagreed.
It wasn't a problem with the fever reducer.
It was because another wave of memories was flooding her mind.
The original owner of this body was also an interstellar citizen. As an orphan, her memories were unremarkable.
She had grown up on interstellar welfare funds, her compulsory education had been free, and higher education was available through loans.
In a way, as long as nothing unexpected happened, she could just barely scrape by during the period where she had no earning power.
Unfortunately, something unexpected did happen.
She awakened an Ability, becoming a one-in-ten-thousand ability user.
This should have been a good thing, but nurturing an Ability and acquiring the knowledge related to it both required a great deal of money.
Thus, to improve her Ability, the original owner had taken out bank loans and even moved to a cheaper apartment in a much more chaotic district.
On her very first day there, her identity as an ability user reached the local gang. Their initial intention was to recruit her as an underling, but because of her exceptional beauty, one of the gang's minor leaders condescendingly offered to make her his lover.
Although the original owner was timid, her values were sound. She feigned compliance, saying she would consider the offer, while secretly looking for ways to earn enough money to buy a starship ticket and escape the planet to get away from them.
Having spent her whole life in school, however, she lacked real-world experience. The method she chose to make quick money was to fight in black market matches.
It was a way to get rich quick, but it was also extremely dangerous.
Furthermore, because her Ability was Gacha, her combat effectiveness was extremely unstable. She won some matches and lost others. Sometimes, when she lost badly and was severely injured, she had to use an incredibly expensive Healing Pod just to survive, so...
Her already tight finances didn't improve much.
She was often in a state of getting rich one night only to be broke the next.
Right now, the original owner was thirty thousand in debt from using a Healing Pod after her last match and had to keep fighting to pay it off.
How miserable.
What was even more miserable was that the reason she had replaced the original owner was because the original owner had died.
Not from sudden cardiac arrest, but from poisoning.
Logically, a stay in a Healing Pod should have eliminated all injuries, diseases, and bacteria.
But this poison was an exception.
It had been incubating inside the original owner's body the entire time.
When the original owner came to participate in today's match, she only had a slight fever. But just before the draw, the poison fully took effect, sending her soul straight to the afterlife.
And now she, the newcomer, was left to bear the agony of the poison.
But if it hurt, it hurt.
She could endure it, for the sake of being reborn.
Although this was clearly a game world, from the original owner's memories, its setting was remarkably similar to her own world.
What if this was a game created in her original world?
Could she contact her friends?
Jiang Xun took a deep breath, using what little Mental Power she had left to suppress the poison while she considered a way to cure it.
For a poison that even a Healing Pod couldn't eliminate, the antidotes available on the market would almost certainly be useless.
"Thank you," Jiang Xun said, getting to her feet unsteadily as she looked at Berry Milkshake.
"But I don't know why this cold is so stubborn... My constitution has always been good, I haven't caught a chill recently, and I just got out of a Healing Pod."
Seeing her quest still marked as incomplete and Jiang Xun yet to deliver a reward, Berry Milkshake's quest-finding senses immediately started tingling.
"Wait, I think this might be a major quest," she said, nudging I Am Number One in the World.
"Do you have an appraisal skill? Here's your chance to prove your medicine wasn't fake."
I Am Number One in the World hesitated. Appraisal skills couldn't be used carelessly. If he tried to appraise a high-level character, he might not get any data and could even be killed and sent back to the starting village.
But for the sake of a quest...
He risked the potential experience loss and cast an appraisal skill on Jiang Xun.
Jiang Xun watched all of this with a smile, playing the part of a perfect NPC who seemed to exist only to hand out quests.
It was just that Jiang Xun still found it a bit strange to listen to them plotting so loudly right in front of her.
Before long, she felt a wave of Mental Power scan over her body. She didn't resist.
And so, the panel that appeared before I Am Number One in the World read:
【Name: Jiang Xun
Ability: ?
Ability Level: ??
Status: Afflicted with a strange poison, continuously losing health.】
I Am Number One in the World sucked in a sharp breath.
This holographic game they were playing was sometimes so realistic it felt like another world, and it was rare for a word like "strange" to appear in a quest description.
But now it had.
This had to be a major quest!!
"Share the quest with me," he said to Berry Milkshake.
Berry Milkshake: "...Got it."
"I wonder if finding a healing-type ability user would help."
Jiang Xun endured the splitting headache, trying to search the original owner's memories for more information about these "players" to resolve her current predicament.
Like a universal antidote from the game.
Or a priest who could cure status effects.
Unfortunately, the original owner knew far too little about any of this.
As an NPC in a game, her life experience was as thin as a system-generated plotline.
She seemed to have accepted, without much thought, the sudden appearance in her world of many Descenders who possessed abilities capable of turning the world upside down.
The original owner had no interest in them; her mind seemed to be occupied only with studying and getting into a better school.
Jiang Xun's head throbbed even more.
Although she had used her Mental Power to control the poison's spread for half an hour, it had only allowed her to recover a sliver of her mobility.
Still, the original owner's Ability was Gacha. She had drawn a few Star Beasts before. If she got incredibly lucky and drew a Star Beast with healing abilities, her problem would be solved.
It would perfectly solve her current predicament.
But then she thought about the original owner's past Gacha results, and the near-extinct rarity of healing-type Star Beasts...
As expected, a game NPC like her would have to rely on players when it really mattered.
:)
While suppressing most of the poison with her Mental Power, she watched as the two players finally decided to form a party and successfully summoned a healing-type ability user.
This player, named "I Heal Your Whole Family," took one look at Jiang Xun's status and proclaimed:
"As long as this isn't a special quest, I can definitely cure you in a flash!"
With that, two orbs of healing light descended upon her.
Jiang Xun felt her condition improve significantly.
Even her status panel changed.
【Name: Jiang Xun
...
Status: Afflicted with a strange poison, poison effect delayed, health loss paused.】
I Heal Your Whole Family: ...
"No way... Did I really just trigger a special quest?"
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