Experiences from His Past Life

"How much are you buying them for?"

After thinking for a moment, Su Jiang remembered that Mop God of War was also in a guild. The Silver Coin purchases were probably arranged by her guild.

"Um... the current buying price is one to twenty. Does that work for you?"

"Twenty?"

Su Jiang was stunned. When he had entered the game in his past life, the exchange rate had been around six yuan for one Gold Coin, and one Gold Coin could be exchanged for a hundred Silver Coins. That meant one Silver Coin had been worth six cents. Now, one Silver Coin was worth twenty yuan!

This was insane. How many times higher was that? If he sold all the Silver Coins he farmed now, how many Gold Coins could he buy back in half a year?

"Sell, sell, sell!"

"Great! Then let's add each other as friends. You can sell me any good stuff you get in the future!" Mop God of War flashed a bright, dazzling smile, hiding the slyness in her eyes.

Looking at this little girl who was about the same age as his daughter, Su Jiang did not suspect much. He accepted the friend request and completed the trade.

In an instant, a notification told him that eight hundred yuan had been deposited into his account.

Su Jiang: ...

Making money was too easy. It did not feel real.

Su Jiang felt that if he had a few more days, he could earn at least tens of thousands more yuan just by clearing Adventurer's Guild missions.

Mop God of War said, "Forty Silver Coins? Big bro, do you have some kind of money-farming cheat?"

Su Jiang was speechless. If not for the eight hundred yuan she had paid him, he could not even be bothered to give her a reaction.

"No. Anyway, I don't have any cheats. I'm already level six. Isn't it normal for me to have this much money?"

Mop God of War's mouth fell open into an O.

Then an extremely shocked voice rang out. "What? Level six?"

Su Jiang could not stand this loud, excitable little girl. She was practically the complete opposite of his quiet daughter.

"That's enough."

After playing for so long, Su Jiang was getting a little hungry.

Ignoring Mop God of War's shrieking, he logged out to eat.

Playing games while lying in bed had left Su Jiang drenched in sweat from his highly active mind.

After taking a shower and changing clothes, Su Jiang went to the commercial street on the first floor of the residential building and found a fast-food restaurant he often visited.

After all, he had been eating there for years. The moment Su Jiang entered, the owner asked, "The usual?"

"Mm."

He chose a single seat facing the street.

Before long, a steaming bowl of soup rice was placed before him.

As he ate, he watched videos about the "Meta World" on video sites.

Although the government opposed the game and prohibited livestreams or promotion of it, there were still plenty of related videos on video platforms.

After browsing for a while, he came across an explosively popular video.

"The trigger mechanism for the Gold Boss Rat King that appeared in Novice Village No. 13, and the mysteriously powerful new player"

When he clicked on it, he found that it was a report compiled by a gaming news channel.

"Hello, everyone. This is Rookie Player, your little Rookie~"

"Based on the information we've gathered so far, to trigger the Rat King mechanism, players must first become members of the Adventurer's Guild. Then, they need to accept a rare mission called 'Drive the Rats Out of the Fields' and drive away more than a hundred times the required number of rats. The Rat King will then see it as humanity provoking it and jump out on its own to hand out experience."

"If you don't accept that mission, you can't trigger the hidden mission, 'Resist Rat King's Assault.'"

"However, based on what we've seen so far, only the first Novice Village to successfully trigger the mission got a Gold Boss. The Novice Villages that triggered it afterward only got Silver Bosses, and the rewards were nearly cut in half..."

"Also, two Novice Villages have already failed the mission. Hunger status plus death debuff reduced their attributes by twenty percent, and now they can't kill anything other than Slimes. So Novice Villages trying to trigger this hidden mission should carefully consider the players' strength."

After discussing the hidden mission, the video began talking about the expert whose damage was ten times higher than the average player's.

"Little Rookie guesses that he probably accepted some hidden mission and gained a huge amount of experience, allowing him to reach level three, level four, or even higher before everyone else."

"Or maybe he drew a powerful talent."

"Either way, it can't be a cheat. Anyone who has played knows this game isn't simple."

The comments below were filled with disagreement.

"The uploader is being way too hasty. VR games have only just begun, and a game like this, the first of its kind, is bound to have plenty of exploits. It wouldn't be strange even if there were cheats."

"I think there aren't any cheats. This game... how should I put it? It feels too real. Too perfect."

"My god, 140 damage. The highest damage I've dealt to a Slime so far is only fifteen..."

"I only deal five. My attributes lean toward Intelligence, and Intelligence doesn't boost normal attacks. Sob..."

"I just saw a foreign player whose talent was Lightning Control. One strike took several hundred HP off the Rat King... so 140 isn't that high, is it?"

"The person above, that guy's talent has already been revealed. It deals damage based on a percentage of max HP. Make him strike a Slime, and he might not even deal as much damage as my basic attack."

Most netizens kept debating. One moment they suspected cheats, and the next they felt there probably were none. Before long, though, their attention was drawn away by other videos.

At this point in time, the damage Su Jiang had dealt was enough to attract some attention, but this world never lacked lucky players. Some people drew incredibly powerful talents right from the start and could kill monsters above their level as easily as eating and drinking.

Su Jiang was merely one of them.

After closing the post, Su Jiang looked through a few others.

Some people were complaining that the talent drawn at the start determined an account's upper and lower limits, just like real life, where the family you were born into determined the kind of life you had. They advised newcomers not to start playing, or to quit if they felt their drawn talent was not good enough.

Su Jiang knew there was indeed no way around that. Even if someone changed devices, networks, or accounts, the talent they received upon logging into the Meta World would always be the one they had drawn the first time.

That person was right. This game determined your future upper and lower limits from the very beginning.

Of course, that was not absolute. After all, there were plenty of self-made big shots in real life, and naturally there were such people in the game too.

After watching for a while, the excitement surrounding Novice Village No. 13 gradually died down.

The player who had dealt absurdly high damage—Su—had only briefly caught people's attention.

That result was good.

Su Jiang did not want his real body to attract too much attention.

Some people had absurd talents that could use the game to find where you were in real life, then come for an offline real-life fight.

Besides, Su Jiang did not want anyone to discover that his real body was a thirty-five-year-old man.

He did not want to experience the misery of his past life again.

The longer he possessed the memories of his past life, the more he absorbed them.

Although he still seemed to be separated from those forbidden memories by a barrier, he could now glimpse some of what lay within.

In his past life, his ex-wife and daughter had been captured, leaving Su Jiang with no choice but to become the Overlord's pet.

He had tried resisting the Overlord's orders and refusing to transform. The result had been every kind of cruel punishment.

Once he transformed, that Overlord would constantly manipulate him, saying that if he left, he would only become someone else's water heater, and that his ex-wife and daughter would only be safe if they stayed with him.

On top of that, the Overlord allowed his subordinates to mock and despise him...

"My past life really was hopeless."

Su Jiang could not help sighing. He now somewhat understood why, after escaping the Overlord's control in his past life, he had still run everywhere to gather the mythical materials needed to activate Twelve Bullets, determined to send those memories back.