At the End of the Heavenly Ladder?

At the End of the Heavenly Ladder?

Having lived two lives, Zhao Xu did not dwell on it for long before reacting.

He could try answering a large number of questions vaguely to narrow the statues down to only Wizard and Cleric.

For someone with Dual Elite classes like him, perhaps the Flaw System would activate once only two glowing statues remained.

Even if he guessed wrong, it would not matter. He could keep answering questions and rule out the Cleric statue.

This approach would be more difficult, but he felt no pressure.

Could answering questions possibly be harder than Grinding Monsters?

The career-selection questions allowed vague multiple-choice answers. Although that slowed the results, it was also Zhao Xu's opportunity to choose options that leaned toward both Wizard and Cleric.

Zhao Xu immediately stepped onto the Heavenly Ladder and began answering questions.

He was not a Wizard, but he had seen Wizards.

He was also the only person in the world who had encountered both Wizards and Clerics before the game began.

Aside from those naturally suited to a class, no one else necessarily possessed Zhao Xu's sensitivity toward classes.

In fact, by the late stages of the game, players had accumulated enough experience to understand which classes suited them.

Many people simply skipped the class recommendation stage, and it did not affect their future development.

Just as Zhao Xu had expected, the light of the Wizard and Cleric statues steadily intensified, while the light of the other classes gradually faded.

The Fighter class from Zhao Xu's Previous Life was the first statue whose light went out completely.

As he continued answering, he even began to vaguely grasp a certain underlying principle behind the question bank.

Once Zhao Xu understood that, he became even more at ease.

By the time he had climbed the five hundredth step, he had successfully extinguished half the statues.

Extinguished, not eliminated. Once his answers revealed a certain inclination, statues that had gone dark could light up again.

Zhao Xu was like a kitchen assistant chopping vegetables, repeating the same cuts over and over.

It looked mechanical, but only he knew where to apply force.

For ordinary people, after thirty questions, several relatively bright statues would usually appear for them to choose from.

If they were more cautious, then by one hundred questions, most of the statues would be fairly dim, while the remaining ones would shine as brightly as light bulbs.

Unfortunately, the Flaw System only recognized a state where ten statues had been completely extinguished. It did not recognize statues that were merely dim and nearly unlit.

Otherwise, Zhao Xu could have accomplished it in two hundred questions as well.

A complete extinguishing only occurred when the system deemed a class wholly unsuitable and did not recommend it at all.

This was also why not many players activated the Flaw System.

By the time he had answered more than nine hundred questions,

the statues before Zhao Xu were almost all extinguished.

The two floating Wizard and Cleric statues had become blindingly bright, but the Druid statue still retained a faint glow that refused to go out.

Zhao Xu had just answered at least fifty questions, yet none of the lights on the field had changed at all.

He knew the AI would not deliberately target him, but these completely useless, redundant questions were beginning to stir the faint anxiety beneath his usual calm.

Druids possessed ninth-circle Divine Spells, and their alignment requirements mandated that they remain Neutral on one of the two axes: Lawful-Chaotic or Good-Evil.

To some extent, that happened to align with his own philosophy.

Unless there was an obvious question, such as whether he hated nature or animals, it was genuinely difficult for him to extinguish the Druid class's final trace of light directly.

More troublesome still, Zhao Xu had underestimated the number of questions. He had not expected so many irrelevant questions to appear later, and he might still have to eliminate the Cleric afterward.

This Heavenly Ladder only had two thousand steps.

Once he answered two thousand questions, the system would not refresh any more questions even if he wanted to continue.

Ordinary people would not drag things out to two thousand questions as long as they answered seriously. Even with the highest standards, by one thousand questions only one glowing statue would remain, and the system would stop refreshing questions then.

If players were truly dissatisfied with the recommended class, they could still choose a statue whose light had gone out.

Zhao Xu could only begin making trade-offs. If he could not eliminate the Druid before fifteen hundred questions, then he would directly eliminate the Cleric as well.

To ensure that Wizard was the only class left in the end, he had to maintain a five-hundred-question buffer.

Zhao Xu continued answering.

The count slowly climbed—1,000, 1,100, 1,200, 1,300, 1,400.

When the questions reached 1,500, the Druid's light had several times come close to an atmosphere of complete extinction.

But Zhao Xu had not been able to grasp the rhythm. Twice, its light had brightened somewhat again.

Otherwise, he would have eliminated that last trace of light as early as 1,300 questions.

Seeing that he had reached the 1,500th step without completing his goal, Zhao Xu sighed and followed his original plan, shifting the direction of his answers from eliminating Druid to rejecting the Cleric's light.

Ordinary people might have thought that since they had already come this far, they might as well try another dozen questions. Perhaps they could directly eliminate the Druid's light.

But Zhao Xu had never possessed that kind of gambling mentality.

When he entered a casino with a thousand chips, he would leave decisively once he lost them all. He would never think about winning his money back.

The questions continued: 1,510, 1,520, 1,530.

As he neared 1,550, Zhao Xu finally noticed that the Cleric statue's light had begun to dim in a visibly noticeable way.

Then, after Zhao Xu answered a question similar to the Trolley Problem—whether to save one rule-abiding child or five children who did not follow the rules—

he made his choice entirely from a Wizard's perspective.

To his surprise, the Cleric's light did not dim. Instead, the final trace of light on the Druid statue went out completely.

"Player's Dual Elite classes confirmed. Question-answering system automatically closing."

"Flaw System activated. Please choose whether to load a flaw."

Zhao Xu's heart jolted, followed by irrepressible joy.

He had gambled right.