The Limits of "Humans"
Su Luo crouched beside the creek, gazing at its clear, rippling water. It burbled as several fish of indeterminate species darted nimbly through it.
"The water's clear, with no obvious odor or floating debris..." he murmured. A glimmer flashed in his eyes.
"Appraisal!"
[Appraisal: Unknown creek water]
[Result: No deadly pathogens or parasite eggs detected... preliminarily judged safe to drink.]
Level 5 Appraisal was powerful, and the information it provided was fairly comprehensive.
Su Luo bent down, cupped some creek water in his hands, and cautiously took a few sips. Its cool, sweet taste instantly soothed his parched throat.
After drinking a little water, Su Luo followed the same approach and used Appraisal to find several kinds of edible roots and wild fruit. He found a tutorial on the forum and wove a carrying basket, then filled it to the brim with the food he had gathered.
He also learned to make a fish trap and set it upstream before turning to leave.
[Time remaining: 45 hours, 27 minutes]
At that point, Su Luo couldn't spare a thought for taste. He simply kept stuffing everything edible he found into his mouth, frantically replenishing his energy in the most primitive way possible until his stomach protested, stuffed to bursting.
Once he had filled his stomach to the point where it couldn't hold another bite, Su Luo ran back to the creek for a drink, then slowly walked away.
"I'm alive again, alive again."
Su Luo collapsed onto the grass, greedily breathing in the relatively fresh air, enjoying the long-missed sunshine, and feeling the tangible warmth flowing through his belly as the food digested.
After blissfully resting with his eyes closed for a while, Su Luo took off his dusty, sweat-soaked clothes and pants, which were torn and stained with blood. He gave them a quick, halfhearted wash downstream, then jumped in and bathed.
He wrung out his clothes and hung them on a branch, then found a clean spot to lie down, completely naked.
"First, let's raise my attributes... time to pick some skills." Su Luo opened the list of skill names Qin Lang had sent him and began choosing.
The system was known to possess boundless power. The moment a relevant skill leveled up, it could skip the process entirely and directly increase attributes.
So how could he take advantage of that mechanism?
Grind away at a single skill?
No!
Getting started, from Level 0 to Level 1, was the easiest! It was the fastest way to grind levels! The fastest way to raise attributes!
By the same token, if someone had enough Skill Books, they could raise their attributes quickly.
So was this actually a pay-to-win game...?
Qin Lang had sent him seventeen Skill Books. Su Luo carefully picked out nine that increased attributes.
[Basic Movement Technique] [Ape Staff Technique] [Basic Fist Technique] [Basic Snap Kick] [Straight Kick] [Rear Naked Choke]
[Mana Affinity] [Basic Visualization Method]
[Gluttonous Digestion]
The first one he opened was [Gluttonous Digestion]. His digestion speed determined how quickly he could grind attributes.
[Your "Gluttonous Digestion" has leveled up!]
[Gluttonous Digestion Level 1 (0/100)]
[Your digestion rate has increased by 10%]
[Your "Gluttonous Digestion" has leveled up!]
[Gluttonous Digestion Level 3 (0/300)]
[Your digestion rate has increased by 30%]
Feeling that most of the food in his stomach had been digested, Su Luo quickly changed skills.
[Your "Basic Movement Technique" has leveled up!]
[Basic Movement Technique Level 1 (0/100)]
[You can now run faster and move with more flair]
[Constitution +0.1]
Energy was instantly drawn away and absorbed into every part of his body. Without pausing, Su Luo switched back to [Gluttonous Digestion] and ate fruit like mad, filling his stomach.
Time flew by as he frantically learned, replenished energy, and consumed it.
[Time remaining: 23 hours, 47 minutes]
[Your "Gluttonous Digestion" has leveled up!]
[Gluttonous Digestion Level 9 (0/900)]
[Your digestion efficiency has increased by 90%]
Su Luo finally stopped and looked at his newly transformed panel:
[Su Luo: Alive] [Age: 22] [Level: 0 (0%)] [Strength: 4.9 (↑0.3)] [Spirit: 6.2 (↑0.2)] [Constitution: 4.7 (↑0.4)] ------ [Magic Power: 2 (↑1)] [Talent: ...] [Skills: Appraisal, Gathering, Ice Arrow, Raise Shield, Meditation, Basic Body-Strengthening Technique, Basic Movement Technique, Ape Staff Technique, Basic Fist Technique, Basic Snap Kick, Straight Kick, Rear Naked Choke, Mana Affinity, Basic Visualization Method, Gluttonous Digestion]
Su Luo decided to stop learning [Gluttonous Digestion]. The skill was no longer particularly cost-effective, so he opened a crucial spell instead—[Fireball]!
At present, nobody could use this skill because their class didn't match.
What did being unable to use the Skill Book have to do with learning it?
[Your "Fireball" has leveled up!]
[Fireball Level 1 (0/100)]
[You can now conjure a fireball to attack]
The skill was grayed out and couldn't be used through the system because his class didn't match.
But how could he be unable to use something he had learned and understood?
A warm, dancing wisp of orange-red flame obediently hovered above Su Luo's fingertip.
Light! And light under his control, at that!
Su Luo now had a way to see in the dark!
In high spirits, Su Luo ran upstream to check the trap he had set earlier.
Sure enough!
Two fat fish of unknown species were struggling inside. One weighed about three jin, the other a jin and a half.
After using Appraisal to confirm they were edible, Su Luo took them out of the forest, gutted them, and skewered them on sharpened branches.
With a touch of his finger, the loose branches caught fire, roasting the two fish propped above them.
Su Luo took down the clothes he had dried earlier and put them on. After some thought, he took them off again.
No one can see me anyway...
As he enjoyed the long-missed taste of delicious roasted fish, Su Luo compiled detailed information about the Dungeon, photos of the environment, the time limit, and a list of its drops, then sent it all to Qin Lang.
[Qin Lang: A Class Change Certificate?!]
[Su Luo: Yes. There's a chance it drops when you kill Experiment Subject 003. Experiment Subject 003 is most likely the Dungeon boss.]
[Qin Lang: Recommended level: 0–5... a Class Change Certificate... maybe you can change class at Level 5.]
[Su Luo: I don't know. What level is your highest-level survivor?]
[Qin Lang: Just reached Level 2... going from Level 0 to Level 1 takes about twenty ordinary Level 0 monsters. To get from Level 1 to Level 2, the survivor in our Mutual Aid Association killed nearly two hundred Level 0 monsters.]
[Qin Lang: We suspect that high-level survivors suffer a huge experience penalty for killing lower-level monsters. Under normal circumstances, they should kill monsters of the same level or even higher to gain experience for leveling up.]
[Qin Lang: You get one free attribute point per level. Our survivor put them all into Strength and reached 11 points with the Talent effect... all I can say is, it's terrifying! He sent a half-ton monster flying with one punch, and he can bench-press at least 3,000 kilograms!]
[Su Luo: Got it.]
Attribute increases weren't linear, but followed a different system of calculation.
This was where a legendary forum post came in:
[Attribute Research and Discussion]
The post documented in detail what people could do at various Strength values and made conjectures about subsequent attribute increases.
Take Strength, for example.
The world's top athletes in relevant fields probably had an attribute value a little over 7.
As for Xiang Wang, who had historically refused to cross back east of the Yangtze, the forum experts had discussed it and concluded that his might have been around 7.5.
The human attribute limit was 8. Note: human, not Homo sapiens!
The post conjectured that a natural Strength or Constitution of 8 wouldn't exist in modern humans, but perhaps in the extinct Heidelberg Man or Neanderthals.
The attribute for which members of Homo sapiens could reach the limit of 8 was probably Spirit.
But in any case... a bench press at 8 attribute points couldn't possibly exceed 500 kilograms. The world record before the crossing had been only 335 kilograms.
Yet with just three more attribute points, a Strength of 11 brought the bench press up to at least 3,000 kilograms, entering the terrifying realm where it was measured in tons!