City of Eating Time

After eating, Su Jiang returned home and rested for a while.

Then he got up and logged into the game.

After quitting his job, he had plenty of free time. With memories of his past life, he did not need to worry about income either.

Of course, Su Jiang felt he needed to grind silver coins while he still could. Whether it was the later decline in the currency exchange rate or the limit of ten adventure quests, both would greatly reduce his current income.

As soon as he logged in, Su Jiang went to an empty corner and transformed into Tokisaki Kurumi.

Players with the Dimensional Avatar talent could open Talent Enhancement Chests to obtain core avatar items, as well as other skills for their avatars.

Su Jiang was not sure whether he could obtain a powerful avatar. After all, there were plenty of useless everyday avatars, so it would be better to further strengthen Kurumi instead.

Besides, Su Jiang himself wanted to get talent items related to Kurumi. The Kurumi Incarnation had immense potential, and its skill effects were absurdly powerful. No matter what, he would not lose out.

As long as he did not get the guaranteed reward of a random avatar skill level +1.

"Spirits of heaven, spirits of earth, give me something good, will you~"

The pleasant voice muttered a few lines before saying, "Talent Enhancement Chest, open!"

"Ding—Talent Enhancement Chest opened successfully. Congratulations, your talent skill Dimensional Avatar: Tokisaki Kurumi has awakened a skill: City of Eating Time."

"Ara! Ara—That's amazing!"

Su Jiang had originally wanted to say, Holy shit, that's awesome, but for some reason, that was what came out instead.

Still, details like that did not matter. Kurumi hurriedly looked at her newly acquired skill.

City of Eating Time LV.1

Cost: None

Active Effect: Upon activation, a barrier with a radius of 9 meters appears centered on yourself. While within the barrier, drains 1 point of Time Value from all units every second, reduces all speeds of hostile units by 1% every second (when the slowdown reaches 100%, enemies enter an eroded state and cannot move), increases all of your speeds by 10%, lasts 10 seconds, cooldown: 1 minute.

Hiss...

He had not expected it to be this skill. Excellent—powerful indeed.

This skill would give Kurumi ten seconds of unlimited firepower every minute while surrounded by monsters. She would have more Time Value than she could spend, neatly solving her endurance problem.

Moreover, the speed gap between both sides would widen further within the barrier. Now, even without dodging, Kurumi could easily kill packs of wandering Wild Dogs.

But this skill was not without flaws. All hostile units inside the barrier would be taunted and frantically attack Kurumi. If there were too many Wild Dogs within that nine-meter radius, she would not be able to handle them alone.

Unable to suppress his delight, Su Jiang hummed a tune as he canceled his transformation and headed to the Adventurer's Guild to accept quests.

"Honored adventurer, word of your heroic extermination of the Rat King has spread throughout our guild. The guild thinks highly of your future. Therefore, we have decided to assign you a chain quest. What do you think?" When the receptionist saw Su Jiang enter, her eyes lit up as she spoke with a bright smile.

"Of course. It is my honor to help the Adventurer's Guild resolve its difficulties."

In his past life, he had had little contact with the Adventurer's Guild and had never accepted quests above the rare tier.

Quest rarity used the same classification as items: white common, blue excellent, purple rare, red legendary, gold epic, and multicolored mythic.

However, by the time Su Jiang had escaped the tyrant's control in his past life, the game had already been running for years. Most rare-tier and higher quests had been completed by others, and he lacked the ability to accept even higher-tier ones. Thus, he was quite curious about what quest the Adventurer's Guild would give him.

The receptionist immediately looked at him with starry eyes. "Adventurer, your noble spirit fills me with admiration."

After saying that, she began introducing the quest.

That still did not raise her favorability... Su Jiang was a little surprised, then looked at the quest details.

At the same time, the system notification sounded.

"System Notification: You have triggered a large hidden quest, Prelude to the Anomaly. Do you accept?"

Huh?

Wasn't this a fucking epic quest?

Upon seeing the quest's name, Su Jiang froze, then immediately became excited.

This quest was closely tied to the Meta World beginning to affect reality half a year later. No, it should be said that this quest was a warning before the great anomaly arrived.

"Accept! Accept!"

Prelude to the Anomaly (Rare Quest, no level restriction)

Quest Description: A large number of humans have descended upon this world, disturbing those slumbering beings. Outside No. 13 Novice Village, a group of Fear's Minions is attempting to uncover the truth behind humanity's arrival. Eliminate them!

Quest Reward: Unknown

Quest Progress: Open the instance dungeon (0/1), rescue the knights and nuns from the Holy Grace Divine Cult (0/5), defeat all of Fear's Minions.

Quest Hint: Fear is your enemy. Please be careful...

This...

No, wasn't this the ultimate boss from the later stages?

In his past life, he had heard that frontline players had held out for years without successfully killing even a single deity.

Before the extraterrestrial enemies appeared, the enemies of all players had always been these deity monsters.

These deity bosses were born from human emotions and desires. Their existence was similar to the deities of legend, but they had health bars!

Players believed in one truth: as long as it had a health bar, even a god could be killed.

But this truth was utterly useless against these deities.

Su Jiang knew why. Deities relied on humanity's seven emotions and six desires to exist. As long as humans did not rid themselves of those emotions and desires, the deities would not die.

In the end, humanity could only grow accustomed to their existence and become a race that walked alongside deities.

Fear's Minions... the underlings of the current version's ultimate boss. There's no way I can beat them...

Su Jiang murmured inwardly.

But he was reluctant to give up this quest.

The rewards for this kind of chain quest were bound to be generous. Though the system currently labeled it a rare quest, once one reached the final stage, they would discover that it had become an epic quest, with astonishingly valuable rewards!

The reason Su Jiang knew this quest's details so well was that after it had been completed in his past life, humanity's Mind Net had officially descended. Any human with a functioning brain could log into the Meta World directly with a thought.

Su Jiang was not confident he could complete this quest yet. First, this dungeon carried the power of the Fear Deity. Without a way to remove the debuff or survive without being killed while the debuff lasted, he could not possibly clear it.

Second, deity monsters had extremely high health pools and were difficult to kill.

His level 6 attributes were not nearly enough.

If he wanted to clear it safely, he would have to wait until he reached level 10 before trying.

After considering what to do next, Su Jiang accepted some other quests and went out to kill monsters and level up.