Mysterious and Unclear

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Welcome back, Lawful Good Mo. You are about to enter Innocent World. Have a good night.

When Mo Tan came to, he found that the system had not spawned him in some random wilderness. Instead, he was lying on a clean, soft bed, with a faint fragrance lingering in the air.

Of course, he had not accidentally wandered into the boudoir of some sheltered young lady waiting to be married. Although such melodramatic clichés still appeared frequently in novels, anime, and countless films and television shows, stubbornly exuding the stench of brainlessness, at least they would not appear in Innocent World—or Quadruple Schism (crossed out)... Please rest assured.

"It seems this isn't the battlefield from before." Mo Tan sat up and glanced around the room, muttering, "So this is what it means to disconnect whenever I want. Fortunately, nobody noticed at the time. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened..."

Here was what had happened. Not long ago, after Mo Tan and Shuangye reached an agreement in the public space, he had logged off instantly before she could react. Then, with considerable effort, he had forcibly switched his personality and logged into Hei Fan's character as quickly as possible.

Although he was ninety percent certain that he would no longer arouse Shuangye's suspicions, he was unwilling to take any unnecessary risks. If Shuangye still harbored doubts after their meeting, then immediately logging into the game and discovering that Hei Fan was absent might still have kept her on guard...

So Mo Tan had planned to return to camp as quickly as possible. If he received a message from Shuangye, he would reply instantly. That should have completely put her at ease.

In this game, players could not see whether their friends were online. If they wanted to know whether someone was playing, they had only two options: meet them in person or send them a message and ask.

This time, however, Mo Tan had worried needlessly. After receiving a friend request from Tan Mo, Shuangye had completely dismissed her earlier suspicions, assuming she had simply overthought things. She had already turned her attention to the person who had just connected with her, and had not logged in again afterward.

Mo Tan's explanation—that he had been distracted by a large amount of fake information suddenly appearing online and had then conducted a brief investigation—had no logical flaws. It successfully convinced Shuangye that the chain of events afterward had nothing to do with the priest she had met in the game.

At least in the short term, the initiative was firmly in his hands.

Of course, what Shuangye thought no longer mattered...

Everyone understood the principle that one wrong step led to another.

After returning to the military camp and making a few simple checks, Mo Tan sent Shuangye another message. He mainly complained that charging the magic crystal lamps was boring and shared some insights regarding the perception of magic and faith. After confirming that she was truly offline, he greeted Ned and the others, left the base, and prepared to visit the church to see what skills he could learn.

Then, on the way... he had another episode.

And so, he disconnected...

After logging back into the game, Lawful Good Mo made his dazzling entrance~

That was more or less what had happened earlier.

Of course, for Mo Tan—his current self—it was a good thing, because he was very concerned about what had ultimately happened to the Sylph Caravan and the Voltilong Mercenary Group, who had served as its guards.

The first half of that statement was practically nonsense, though. No matter which personality Mo Tan used to log into the game, the character matching his current personality would undoubtedly be the one he most wanted to play.

So, being a madman really did have its advantages~~

"Since I can appear here, that proves this must be 'reasonable.' At least I don't need to worry about danger for now." Mo Tan did not leave immediately. Instead, he sat on the bed with his chin propped in his hand and thought. After all, two days had passed. If the companions who had fought alongside him had met with misfortune, arriving a few minutes earlier or later would make no difference. If everyone was safe, there was even less reason to hurry.

As mentioned before, although he was upright, kind, and extremely responsible, Lawful Good Mo was not the sort of straightforward person who never used his brain. Personality could not affect intelligence, so he did not rush into action. He even wondered whether the answer might appear before him on its own before long...

At that moment, Mo Tan was thinking about another matter.

A matter that was important from every angle.

He was too weak!

The "he" in question was not the current Lawful Good Mo, but Mo Tan himself—his true self. It was the same no matter which character he used...

Forget the NPCs. Even among the players, Mo Tan was relatively useless. It was not that he played badly or lacked talent. On the contrary, every character represented by his different personalities had tremendous potential. But...

He had too little time!

Other people could play one character from seven in the evening until seven in the morning, for a total of twenty-four hours of game time. (That was correct; the ratio between real time and game time was one to two.) Mo Tan, meanwhile, averaged less than one-third of that. This would have a massive impact on everything from completing quests to raising his level. It hardly needed explanation.

Lawful Good Mo had not even logged in once throughout the past dozen-plus chapters—cough, throughout the entire day yesterday. And that was only the beginning. As the players' total game time increased, this disadvantage would rapidly expand geometrically, eventually forming a vicious cycle.

Well, Innocent World was somewhat different from other games. Its extreme uncertainty might mean the consequences would not be quite so severe, but it would still have a significant negative impact on Mo Tan.

Mo Tan's dissociative identity disorder was not an active skill. It was a passive effect. That meant...

"Unsolvable." Mo Tan sighed and shook his head. "At least for now, it's unsolvable."

He was not lamenting the unfair treatment. He simply wished he possessed the power to help others. In the same battle, the difference between an ordinary cannon fodder soldier and a max-level hero could only be described as the difference between heaven and earth.

Whether it was the death knight who worshiped Brother Chun and could give both allies and enemies full buffs before reviving them on the spot, or the white-bearded old man who could teleport his companions away even when he could not win, either of them was more reliable than an SCV that could only weld, right?

No matter the worldview, highly technical tasks such as dealing damage and saving people required solid strength as their foundation.

And Mo Tan's current strength was probably inferior even to an SCV's. At least an SCV had welding!

Still, although the bug of possessing multiple characters came with major disadvantages due to Mo Tan's condition, it was not entirely without benefits. For example...

Crash!!

His thoughts were interrupted when the door was suddenly shoved open with great force. A red-faced, burly dwarf charged in and, without a word, pulled Mo Tan into a bear hug.

"Ugh! Mag... Mag!" Mo Tan felt the air instantly squeezed from his chest. His face and neck flushed as he struggled. "Easy! I'm... I'm going to die!"

The bearded dwarf warrior grinning before him was none other than Mag, the squad leader of the Voltilong Mercenary Group.

"Haha~" Apparently realizing that he had truly gotten too excited, Mag quickly released him and laughed. "Those green little people said you'd woken up, but I didn't believe them. I never imagined it was actually true!"

Mo Tan was slightly dazed. "Woken up? You mean I was unconscious this whole time?"

"Yeah, for nearly two days." Mag nodded and dropped heavily onto the edge of Mo Tan's bed. "We were all worried about you. Someone from the mercenary group had been guarding the room the whole time. But just now, those Sylphs were the ones who told everyone you'd woken up. Tsk, tsk. Could they have installed a magic array in here for peeping? I'll have to ask them later. I've always wanted to watch Hammer Sister bathe!"

Judging from her name, she was clearly a dwarf girl with no low level of combat power. For the sake of his mental health, Mo Tan decided not to imagine anything about Mag's previous words, preserving his worldview as best he could.

"You're thinking too much, bearded man."

A sharp voice came from nearby. Mo Tan and Mag turned woodenly and saw that the potted plant originally placed at the head of the bed was moving. The nameless plant inside had pulled limb-like appendages from the soil, braced itself against the edge of the pot, and struggled to haul itself out. After quite some time, it finally pulled everything below its "waist" free of the dirt.

Mo Tan guessed that this little creature was one of the so-called Sylphs. Its appearance, however, was completely different from the "green little people" Mag had mentioned. At most, it was a walking chive...

"Please keep your infatuation to yourself. I already have a boyfriend." The chive—Sylph—waved its leaves at the somewhat stunned Mo Tan. Then, amid a hazy green glow, it transformed into a miniature woman who looked like a school dean—though what kind of appearance was that supposed to be?—and looked at Mag with disdain. "I knew he had woken up because I was watching him here the whole time. All right, the mission is complete. You two chat."

With that, she swayed away with a waist as sinuous as a water snake and as thick as a barrel...

So graceful, so shapely.

"Don't question your sense of beauty." Mag rolled his eyes and whispered to Mo Tan, "I swear, even among the Sylphs, that one could be considered exceptionally ugly..."

Mo Tan blinked. He offered no opinion, merely smiling as he said, "It's good that everyone's fine. But to be honest, I'm completely confused right now..."

There was absolutely nothing wrong with that statement. Aside from everything else, Mag's remark about him being unconscious for nearly two days had filled Mo Tan's mind with questions. Normally, whether a player logged in or logged off, the process should only involve a discreet flash of white light. Zap—the person appeared, or disappeared~

Mo Tan had never heard that a character's body remained in the game after the player logged off...

Although the official authorities had never explained the details of logging off, merely glossing over them with the phrase "under relatively reasonable circumstances," a character remaining unconscious in the game for nearly two days was still far too fantastical!

If he did not investigate this properly, it would definitely make Mo Tan's skin crawl!

Think about it. The character in the game could be considered the player themselves, or at least another version of them. And then, after logging off, that other body remained in a world full of orcs, ogres, Lizardfolk, magic, alchemy—in short, an unbelievably bizarre and chaotic world.

Anyone would break out in a cold sweat!

"It's all thanks to you~" Mag patted Mo's shoulder. "Otherwise, we never could have arrived here safely with zero casualties. Voltilong owes you one!"

"Thanks to me?" Mo Tan scratched his hair in confusion. "All I did was shout for everyone to break through. Even without me saying anything, you professionals would have made the same choice, right?"

He refused to believe that the mercenaries and Sylphs were all idiots who would keep ignoring that fiery path. It had been everyone's only route to survival.

At most, he had simply reacted a little faster...

"You forgot what happened afterward?" Mag stared at Mo Tan for a long while before muttering, "Could it be some kind of side effect? None of us knows what you actually did back then..."

"What did I do?"

Mag smiled at him, pulled a small wineskin from somewhere on his person, tilted his head back, and took a large gulp. Smacking his lips as he recalled the events, he said, "What did you do? We had barely regrouped and formed up, just as we were preparing to break through, when you suddenly let out a huge roar. Then all those Sand Goblins and Mud Fishmen collapsed where they stood... Some vomited blood, some died, and some passed out. None of them got back up. A while later, you collapsed too, and we brought you here."

Mo Tan spent about five seconds sorting Mag's words through his mind, then spread his hands to show that the dwarf had not explained the important part at all. "Could you be a little more specific?"

The somewhat thick-headed dwarf warrior happily agreed. Then he gesticulated wildly and chattered at Mo Tan for more than half an hour...

In the end, Mo Tan summarized the contents as follows:

After he shouted, everyone began preparing to break through. At that point, he had actually already disconnected.

But the version of him in the game had not turned into white light and vanished. Instead, he had suddenly stood motionless in place. He did not react when others called to him, while the numerous ambushers began regrouping, apparently preparing to launch another fierce assault.

At that moment, "he" suddenly threw back his head and roared. One second later, the countless Sand Goblins and Mud Fishmen nearby began dropping in swathes, like wheat being cut. The archer who had appeared and disappeared mysteriously never fired another arrow. The imminent crisis had been resolved in the most bizarre manner imaginable...

And he, theoretically the culprit, had collapsed as well, falling unconscious.

The mercenary group could hardly understand what had happened. In the end, an ancient Sylph of unknown age pushed through the crowd. After standing there and staring at Mo Tan for a long while, it reached a vague conclusion: the boy had probably activated some kind of forbidden ability, paid a heavy price, and instantly killed a huge number of enemies.

Then, because of overexertion, exhaustion, a price, backlash, or some other reason known only to the heavens, he had passed out.

Mag had somehow managed to spend half an hour explaining this tiny amount of information!

And Mo Tan, who had originally been utterly confused, was even more bewildered after hearing it...

Seventeenth Chapter: End

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