I Have Few Friends

"Wow..."

Qiu Ran huddled in the corner, covering her face with both hands, but through the gaps between her fingers, Nomi could still see her flushed, eager expression. She vaguely heard her excited muttering: "Am I even allowed to watch this? This is way too intense..."

Agent Ya Wen had Li Aoz pinned beneath her. Her teal hair had fallen loose, lending a touch of femininity to the black-and-white Law Enforcement Division Four trench coat that had originally radiated an enforcer's authority. Pulled by gravity, her body pressed tightly against Li Aoz's.

Their faces were pressed together. In her golden-green eyes and his gray ones, they saw each other's reflections. For an instant, they realized that both of their eyes held an incredibly similar streak of gold.

"Waaah!" Qiu Ran's eyes sparkled. "It's so melodramatic, but I love it!"

Smack...

Ya Wen blankly opened her mouth, then stiffly sat up and separated from him.

Li Aoz's head had taken a hit. After a moment of silence, he raised a hand and touched the blood on his lips. As expected, there were traces of something that did not belong to him caught between his teeth.

"Beast... pervert..."

Li Aoz muttered. His face flushed red as he wiped the marks from his lips, then burst into furious cursing:

"Civilization Red Arrow, you female pervert! You actually stole my first kiss after twenty-one years of being single! I—I'm fucking tainted now, asshole!"

"...Huh?"

"Give me back my purity! Damn it, if a man stays pure until thirty, he can become a mage! I only had nine years left! Now it's over, it's all fucking over! You ruined everything!"

As though he had been stung by some disgusting insect, Li Aoz hurriedly retreated several feet away and shrank beside Qiu Ran, repeatedly gagging.

"So disgusting... blegh! I need to find a mud puddle and rinse my mouth out properly!"

Wait... why was this happening?

Ya Wen had been kicked to the other side by Li Aoz. He disgustedly clutched the sofa seat and rubbed his mouth against it viciously, as though he had touched something filthy.

I'm the one who should have gotten the worse end of this, aren't I? Her gaze lingered briefly on Li Aoz's handsome face as she pondered the question.

Maybe I didn't lose out either? Ya Wen was left dazed by Li Aoz's tirade. Before she could react, the two pistols that had been hanging at her waist suddenly slipped from their holsters and fell to the floor between them.

Clatter.

The next moment, both of them exploded into action without hesitation. Each grabbed a pistol from the floor, aimed it at the other, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Click—

No bullet came out.

"—I'm out of bullets."

Ya Wen said in a low voice.

Only then did Li Aoz come to his senses. The humiliation of having his first kiss stolen had gotten to his head.

He had been the one to deduce that the guns were empty.

I only had nine years left before I could become a mage...

It was not a rumor.

In Star Abyss, if someone was over thirty and had no friends of either sex in their social circle, they could obtain an extremely powerful Spellcaster achievement—

Pure Heart: Gain a 10% energy refund whenever casting any spell.

He had planned to go for it from the very beginning, yet it had been ruined here.

"My Pure Heart, my first kiss—oh, the first kiss isn't important. You only lost a kiss, but I lost a ten percent mana refund!"

Li Aoz looked as though he wanted to cry but had no tears.

Holding the empty gun, he pointed it at the woman before him who had ruined him.

For a moment, he did not know what to do.

Because he also wanted the personal talent possessed by this woman named Ya Wen. Killing her just like that would be far too wasteful.

"Don't get worked up. Sigh... I'm not young anymore. I can't get worked up."

In the end, it was because he had not encountered an opponent capable of fighting him for so long that he had gotten a little impatient.

Li Aoz shook his head. Ya Wen placed her gun on the ground.

There was no point in resisting now. There were three of them, and she was no match even for Li Aoz, who had obviously been holding back.

"I lost."

Ya Wen said in a low voice.

Hearing her say that made Li Aoz feel even worse than if he had lost.

"Hmph."

Li Aoz tossed out his chain. Gravity Entanglement bound her tightly and securely.

Rather than returning to the front passenger seat, he sat on the floor in the back, keeping his eyes fixed on her face-to-face the entire time.

Nomi drove in silence. Qiu Ran, on the other hand, had relaxed considerably. She looked from Li Aoz to Ya Wen and back again, the flames of gossip in her eyes burning ever brighter. Who knew what she was thinking.

"Women are so annoying."

After brooding for a while, Li Aoz began to think about serious matters.

Nimoting probably wouldn't be able to catch up anytime soon. On top of that, Li Aoz had deliberately avoided killing anyone, choosing instead to injure the agents as badly as possible. He had even let one vehicle escape. Nimoting would definitely have to devote some attention to locating her scattered personnel.

And with Outland's ever-changing climate... even if Nimoting wanted to pursue him, she would have no choice but to return and reorganize first.

That meant she had no hope of catching him for at least ten days to half a month.

That was enough time for him to complete his mission.

After tallying up the loot and experience, Li Aoz suddenly felt empty again.

So boring. I really want to scroll short videos, read webnovels, chat in group chats...

Either he was stomping weaklings, or he was getting crushed by someone higher-level—fights like these bored him.

It wasn't as though he couldn't kill someone like Nimoting. Even if his attributes were somewhat inferior, he could slowly wear her down through kiting and gravity, or use the terrain to kill her.

But that would delay his mission.

So annoying, so annoying, so irritating! A red-and-black flicker passed through Li Aoz's eyes. At a thought, the cells within his body began to stir restlessly, and the pod chambers at his elbows slowly vented heat.

"What's going on? Another mutation already?"

He hurriedly calmed himself and suppressed the abnormal reaction.

It wasn't a true mutation yet, but it was close. Stabilizing his emotions could, to a certain extent, maintain genetic stability... though it was mostly psychological.

"I'm no longer a player, yet I still see myself as one."

Li Aoz shook his head.

Players generally enjoyed constantly challenging enemies, honing their skills, and improving their combat ability. He was no exception.

He had no interest in stomping weaklings, because it could not help him become stronger. On the contrary, it would make him lose himself.

Only by constantly challenging stronger opponents could the strong continue to grow. Challenging an opponent one could not possibly defeat was like an Elementary School Student attempting graduate-level exam questions. The gap was too vast; even if they happened to guess a few answers right, it held no real meaning.

Only opponents evenly matched with oneself, equal in strength, could serve as whetstones.

Still, that sort of mindset seemed arrogant enough in itself.

Li Aoz had become the most famous Master Player among Starcallers partly because he had persisted the longest, and partly because he had maintained the mindset of constantly refining his skills.

Objectively speaking, the decline of the Starcaller community had complicated causes. To a large extent, it was also inseparable from the change in players' mentality.

They had become too arrogant. They believed that after putting in so much effort, they were already invincible. They had no interest in developing new techniques, and whenever newcomers made even the slightest mistake, they mocked them relentlessly, putting others down to gain a sense of superiority.

Those who had become Starcallers first were always immersed in the notion that they were a once-in-a-thousand-years phenomenon, forgetting that Starcaller had always been a class with an extremely high skill threshold.

They had only achieved what they had today through earlier accumulation and experience, as well as monopolizing certain resources. Yet they blamed those who came later for not working hard enough, refused to offer guidance, and cared only about their own fame and advantages. How could that possibly be right?

Yet when a community had few newcomers, while the veterans thought too highly of themselves and refused to patiently study new techniques, relying only on resources and version advantages they had secured in advance before pulling rank on others—such a community could only slowly die.

Li Aoz wanted very much to change that situation.

He deeply loved the Starcaller class. As one of the first players when the server opened, he had persisted all the way to this point and watched Starcallers rise and decline with his own eyes.

This was not merely a problem among players. Even among NPC Starcallers, the same phenomenon remained widespread.

But changing the attitudes of NPCs would be difficult.

If players truly appeared in the future, Li Aoz hoped to use their manpower to eradicate the "arrogance" and "nobility" of those NPC Starcallers.

We wield the power of the stars, immortals praised in song by the constellations. Black holes are mere spinning tops at our fingertips, and the sun is our lamp—how could anyone else possibly be this lofty and impressive?

Over time, arrogance had taken root too deeply.

Even Li Aoz, one of the top Starcaller players, was not immune to it—now that he thought about it, he had skirted the edge of death several times. The thought left him somewhat frightened.

"I'd better not do this kind of thing again. You only get one life—sparring with players is still safer. I wonder whether players will even come in the future. There are several competitors I've always wanted to spar with... Wait, am I thinking too far ahead? I'm taking everything for granted."

Li Aoz now felt somewhat lonely and restless.

If Nomi's words had made him initially realize that he was no longer a player, then today's string of experiences and near-disasters had left him deeply irritated and frightened.

If he continued to cling to a player's mentality, he might very well end up throwing his life away one day.