The One-Armed Saber Master Is Me?
"My lord, will you be dining or training next?"
The maid who had knocked earlier approached him once again.
"No, I'll go back to my room for a while. What's your name?"
When the maid heard Chen Xinhe ask her name, her face lit up with delight.
"Lilian."
She had been selected three months ago to join Baron Merrick's Family and serve the baron personally.
As his personal maid, Lilian naturally knew what that meant.
She had intended to win over the young baron and find a new path for herself and her family.
But in the past, the baron's thoughts had always been on Miss Anna. She hadn't expected him to ask her name today.
"Lilian, you know where the family's books are kept, right?"
"In the library. Butler Anke took me there once."
"Then go there again and find me a few history books, especially ones about the history of our city."
Before long, someone knocked on Chen Xinhe's door again.
But it wasn't Lilian outside. It was an old man at least sixty years of age, short and dressed in a distinctive black uniform.
"Anke?"
When the man nodded, Chen Xinhe knew he had guessed correctly. This was his butler.
"My lord, Lilian can't read. These are the books you wanted."
"The one on top is a history of the Duchy of Will, and there's another on the history of the Kingdom of Lucian."
The Duchy of Will? The Kingdom of Lucian?
Wait! The Kingdom of Lucian?
Chen Xinhe's eyes widened as memories came flooding back!
"If you need any other books, my lord, you can send Lilian to find me."
The door swung gently shut. Anke, the old butler, didn't disturb Baron Merrick's thoughts.
Chen Xinhe hurriedly opened the first book, which introduced the Kingdom of Lucian. Sure enough, everything matched what he remembered about the kingdom perfectly!
The Kingdom of Lucian wasn't a kingdom in the Earth Federation. It was the setting of the second-act expansion for the game Divine Revelation.
After players completed the first-act expansion, Rise of the Ancient Eastern Kingdom, set in the beginner village, the second act took place in the Kingdom of Lucian in the western world.
And the main storyline of the second act was the birth of the Lucian Empire.
There was only one difference between the book and the Kingdom of Lucian he remembered from the game.
The reigning king had been Lucian IV, but the book recorded II as the current ruler.
Could I have transmigrated into the expansion before the game even began?
Then what's going on with my current identity as Lister Merick!?
He put down the history of the Kingdom of Lucian and picked up the historical records of the Duchy of Will instead.
As one of the duchies under the Kingdom of Lucian, the Duchy of Will didn't have a long history.
There had only been two generations of rulers so far, and Chen Xinhe didn't have a strong impression of the duchy.
He only remembered that he seemed to have come to the Duchy of Will on a quest once.
He kept trying to recall the background lore of Divine Revelation and some of its past expansions.
Before he transmigrated, Divine Revelation had been running for seventeen years, and its expansions had reached the ninth act, which revolved around a great struggle in the interstellar age.
The old second-act expansion was practically still part of the beginner stage, and Chen Xinhe really struggled to remember it.
It wasn't until he took a break and remembered his upcoming duel with Quint that he suddenly registered Quint's name.
As he recalled, the Duke Will III he had encountered while doing a quest in the second-act expansion seemed to have been named Quint-Quint Will.
A string of memories came flooding back to Chen Xinhe.
That's right!
Anna... could she be that boss, Ghost Bride Anna?!
No wonder she had looked familiar at first glance.
At the same time, his memories of Merrick came rushing back.
Could I be that one-armed saber master-Master Merrick?!
If he remembered correctly, Master Merrick had taught many of the saber inheritances, class advancements, and skill upgrades in the second-act expansion.
The rare-quality Merrick Saber Technique had been unbelievably cool when the expansion first launched.
Merrick's Exclusive Iai Slash in particular dealt area damage to everyone, and many players hadn't replaced it even in the later stages of the game.
So have I really transmigrated into the one-armed saber master, Merrick?
As he recalled, Master Merrick's arm had apparently been cut off in a duel.
He had then fallen into a slump for ten years before taking up his family's secret Merrick Saber Technique again at the age of forty, becoming invincible in the Duchy of Will!
Could that so-called battle have been the duel with Quint—the future Duke Will III-over Anna, where he lost his arm?
So I really have transmigrated into the game world of Divine Revelation?
His fantasy of being born in a game had actually come true!
Chen Xinhe's face lit up with excitement. He didn't miss the real world of the Earth Federation at all.
In 3071, only fifty years had passed since the Federation's world war, and global resources had already been exhausted.
The government had organized technological advances and begun mining resources in space, while also creating the largest virtual reality game.
It hoped to ease the trauma the war had inflicted on the Federation's people, while also giving its lower classes, living under the control of capital, a new world where they could scrape by and dream.
Now he no longer had to live as one of the Federation's poor. Coming to this new world of Divine Revelation, which he was equally familiar with, was naturally much better!
At that thought, Chen Xinhe slapped his thigh, his face full of regret.
If I'd known I would transmigrate into the game world, I should have gone through the quests carefully and studied every act's expansion!
Instead, he had rushed about completing quests and leveling up.
For a moment, regret kept welling up inside him.
Of course, Chen Xinhe didn't dare waste too much time. Although he didn't know why Anna would ultimately become the boss Ghost Bride, the duel a month from now was fast approaching!
He didn't want to have his arm cut off by Quint again, just as in the expansion.
In the future, he still hoped to be introduced simply as Merrick the saber master, without "one-armed" in front of it!
The thought gave Chen Xinhe an immediate sense of urgency.
Judging by Lister's current level and attributes, he really was trash.
His family's secret Merrick Saber Technique was only LV3, and even his passive skills, the most valuable in Chen Xinhe's eyes, were only LV2. It was a terrible waste.
In the early stages of the game, everyone looked only for active skills of rare quality or higher and paid no attention to passive skills.
Little did they know that there would be no way to obtain those passive skills after the second act.
It wasn't until the late game, especially after the interstellar expansion began, that they learned the truth.
All those flashy skills and classes were trash.
By the time the game entered the galactic age expansion, it had reached the middle-to-late stages, and players' strength began to split into tiers.
The martial arts and mechanical paths, which had been weaker early on, began to rise.
The poor relied on skill, the rich on technology!
Of those two most powerful paths, pure technique-based players in the martial arts path became the one true god.
In the middle-to-late game, a technique-based sword player relied on his own advanced swordsmanship and four crucial maxed-out passive skills to hold the top spot on the server rankings for a long time.
Only then did everyone realize that level wasn't the key in the world of Divine Revelation. A character's actual attributes and strength were what mattered.
The same was true of the game's bosses. A level 50 overlord-class boss could even take on a level 80 leader boss one-on-one.
The ungraded passive skills players had considered useless at the start of the game suddenly became god-tier skills coveted by everyone.
Unfortunately, they learned the truth too late. The later the expansions went, the scarcer passive skills became, until they disappeared altogether.
Every top martial arts technique expert with several passive skills was practically a humanoid overlord, without exception!
After all, every player character's base attributes and active skills had limits. For example, the four main attributes could reach a maximum of only 20 points at level 20, even with the help of all kinds of precious medicines.
Passive skills were different, however. They could break through the level-based limit of 20 points and add extra attributes.
Now, as far as Chen Xinhe was concerned, everything had worked out for the best.
He was in the second act, and the game hadn't even officially launched yet. As long as he could get as many passive skills as possible and max them out, he would definitely become a future overlord of this world!