Otto stepped on the thick fallen leaves, trudging forward step by step, and now he finally understood what it meant by “the road ahead is long and far-reaching.”
It was really so tiring!
Although he wasn’t weak, he couldn’t withstand wandering around blindly like a headless fly in these deep mountains and old forests.
Panting, Otto let out a few bitter laughs; watching those wilderness survival shows in his past life and seeing Ed running around naked in the woods felt pretty exciting, but now that it was his turn to experience this primitive lifestyle, it was simply disastrous.
Looking up at the sky, the sun was about to set, and the dim yellow light spilled through the tree canopy as the temperature in the forest began to drop.
“I should consider where to stay tonight.” Otto vigilantly looked around.
This was a medieval great forest, to say nothing else, just those mosquitoes larger than modern flies could potentially stack a debuff of “medieval unknown virus” on him with a single bite, not to mention that this forest definitely hid quite a few native residents like wild boars and snakes.
The best choice right now was naturally to find a dry cave; if that really wouldn’t work, he would have to settle for the second best and climb a tall enough big tree to make do for the night.
Of course, sleeping in a tree also had risks—if a snake crawled up in the middle of the night, that scene would simply be too beautiful to look at.
While making the worst preparations, Otto continued to grope forward.
After pushing aside a dense patch of bushes, his vision suddenly cleared, and a natural cave half-hidden beneath the rock wall appeared in his sight.
“Good luck?”
Just as Otto wanted to step forward, his footsteps suddenly halted.
He narrowed his eyes and looked closely: on the edge of the cave entrance, several tufts of black animal fur were impressively hanging, and on the grass leaves nearby, a few pools of dried and blackened blood remained.
“Excuse me, farewell.”
Without a second word, Otto turned around and left.
Are you kidding me?
This cave obviously had an owner; was he going in to deliver takeout?
In comparison, the big tree outside was simply too good—snakes were snakes, still better than being treated as a midnight snack by a large beast of prey.
Just as his mind was full of thoughts about which tree would be safer to climb, that crisp electronic voice in his mind rang out again at an inopportune time.
[Ding!
Triggered side quest: How can a bishop sleep outside?]
[Task Details: As a noble transmigrator, how can you sleep on the streets and brave the wind and dew on the very first night of transmigration?
Go slay the beast inside the cave and seize your luxury single room, Lord Bishop!]
[Task Reward: 320 gold coins.]
Looking at this string of provocative quest descriptions, Otto’s mouth twitched wildly.
“What kind of good person calls this a luxury single room!”
Complaining aside, staring at the “320 gold coins” reward, Otto still swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
Although he didn’t know what these gold coins could buy yet, only a jerk wouldn’t earn money when it’s there.
However, relying on these puny arms and legs to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the fierce beast inside?
Clearly unrealistic.
Otto fished out the glowing golden Rubik’s Cube from his pocket, and immediately thought of a very serious problem, quickly calling the system in his mind:
“Hey, system, when I came to this world, am I still using Honkai energy in my body?
Or rather, do I have…
uh, something like a mana bar, MP, or the like that can support me in using this thing?”
This was the 1st Divine Key, Void Archives; if it ran out of electricity, it would just be a relatively heavy, high-end brick.
[The host can rest assured,] the system answered truthfully, [there is no Honkai energy in this world, but the host has a universal power in your body that can activate ‘Void Archives’, which can be understood as the mana bar you mentioned.]
[Smile] Damn setting actually has no Honkai!
After all, such an omnipotent and convenient energy source is really too great.
Otto understood in his heart and let out a long breath of relief.
When he first transmigrated, his mind was dazed and he hadn’t considered the mana bar issue at all.
Of course, having no Honkai energy was a good thing; after all, he didn’t want to become the oldest dead-servant.
“That makes things easier.”
Otto weighed the Rubik’s Cube in his hand and pondered another problem: Void Archives was an artificial intelligence, and that guy not only had a terrible personality, but also thought about backstabbing its master every day.
Could that artificial intelligence have followed him over as well?
Otto felt a bit chilled in his heart.
Of course, he felt that it probably wasn’t here.
After all, given that artificial intelligence’s nature, if it were still around, it should have jumped out to bewitch him the moment he got the cube.
Unable to figure it out, he stopped thinking about it and decided to go in and take a look himself.
But Otto didn’t know how to operate it specifically either, so he simply closed his eyes, tried to sense the so-called “magic power” in his body, and then slowly injected this energy into the golden Rubik’s Cube in his hand while sinking his consciousness into it.
Immediately afterwards, Otto experienced an unprecedented sense of weightlessness, and the scene before his eyes suddenly changed.
When he opened his eyes again, he was already standing in a library-like space so grand it had no boundaries, surrounded by towering bookshelves densely packed with countless books.
Otto quickly inspected the space and even shouted a couple of times.
There was no response, nor was there that Void Archives AI.
“Nice!” Otto almost laughed out loud.
Without that unlucky AI messing around nearby, this library was his own back garden.
[Facepalm] Without that AI, it means you alone have to find what you want from the data of a civilization.
After confirming safety, Otto began searching among the bookshelves for useful things.
Void Archives recorded all the knowledge of the previous civilization era, and theoretically, any weapon could be built.
Otto quickly searched for books on ordinary weapons.
Soon he found a piece of data on “Modern Light Weapon Construction.” (Oh, finding books so fast, just treat it as the author’s divine will at work)
Opening it up, Otto was completely dumbfounded.
“What kind of ghostly scrawls are these…”
Complex mechanical blueprints, gunpowder proportion formulas…
they made Otto’s head buzz, and he felt a strong wave of drowsiness wash over him, as if he had returned to that afternoon in college attending a higher mathematics class.
But he still gritted his teeth against the impulse to sleep, grabbed a handful of his hair, and forcefully figured out the construction blueprint of a pistol.
“Hoo…
That’s about it.”
After engraving the knowledge into his mind, Otto exited the library space, and his consciousness returned to the real forest.
Then, taking a deep breath, he began operation.
After receiving the magic power, the golden Rubik’s Cube in his hand immediately spun and disintegrated rapidly like a scrambled Rubik’s Cube, countless golden light-textured blocks recombining and splicing in the air.
Before long, the light dissipated, and a modern pistol with a golden body and a long silencer tube appeared in Otto’s hand just like that.
Otto pulled the slide, and the crisp chambering sound sounded exceptionally pleasant in the quiet forest.
“Heh, I’m still quite strong.” Looking at the modern firearm in his hand, Otto’s previously weak heart instantly inflated.
Beyond seven steps the gun is fast; within seven steps, the gun is fast and accurate.
With confidence, Otto immediately entered tactical mode, maintained a safe distance, cautiously circled to the side of the cave entrance, and then plunged into the dense bushes to hide himself.
Then he groped for a stone the size of an adult’s fist on the ground, aimed at the cave entrance, and threw it in with a “whoosh.”
In such a small cave, even a random throw would make a sound, and the stone smashed against the cave wall, producing a series of clattering noises.
Sure enough, the next second, a low, irritable roar came from deep within the cave.
Accompanied by heavy footsteps, a bizarre beast the size of an adult calf, covered in black hair and with a ferocious face that made its breed unrecognizable, crawled out from the dark cave.
Its red-glowing eyes scanned around, and saliva dripped onto the ground along its fangs.
Hiding in the bushes, Otto felt his scalp go numb as he watched.
“Times have changed, you beast.”
Seeing this, Otto held the gun with both hands, aimed at the beast’s torso, and pulled the trigger without letting go.
“Puff!
Puff!
Puff!
Puff!
Puff!”
The gunshots with a silencer sounded somewhat muffled, but the firepower and penetration were uncompromised.
Bullets poured onto the beast like a torrential storm.
The beast didn’t even have time to scream before dozens of blood blossoms exploded on its body.
Without even a struggle, like a broken rag doll that had been played to death, it collapsed to the ground with a snap and completely lost its breath.
Are there normal beasts in the era of King Arthur from Type-Moon?
[Ding!
Side quest completed.]
[Reward: 320 gold coins have been distributed.]
Listening to the system’s pleasant prompt and watching the currency column at the edge of his vision, which originally read “0,” tick up to “320,” Otto felt a wave of refreshment in his heart.
Although reason told him this was mostly a gacha game routine, he couldn’t help asking:
“System, by the way, what can these gold coins actually be used for?”
[Oh, they’re just used for gacha pulls,] the system answered very straightforwardly, [160 gold coins per pull, the host’s current balance is just enough for two pulls.]
160 per pull…
isn’t this fucking the pricing of that kind of game!
Otto’s mouth twitched, but a gamer’s DNA had already activated, and he eagerly said: “Since I’m already here, let’s pull!”
The next second, a semi-transparent light screen popped up.
Looking closely, wasn’t the gacha screen before his eyes Genshin Impact’s gacha screen?
What’s worse, he searched the interface for a long time without finding those few lines of crucial small print.
“System, is there a bug with your interface?” Otto asked somewhat confusedly.
[Interface operation is completely normal.]
“Normal my ass, where is the pity system?
Where is the prompt for ‘a 10-pull guarantees a 4-star’?
Where is the explanation for ‘the 90-pull hard pity’?”
[This system adheres to the principle of absolute fairness and randomness without any pity mechanism; please trust your bloodline, host.]
Looking at this bottomless pit interface without even a pity prompt, Otto felt a bottomless despair.
Can gacha without pity even be called gacha?
That’s paying an intelligence tax to the system.
But under the pressure of survival, he had no other choice.
Otto took a deep breath, his soul of chūnibyō burning fiercely at this moment:
“My turn!”
“Gacha pull!”