Two New Skills

60 seconds.

It passed in the blink of an eye.

Lu Xiu returned to the construction space, but whether the system did it on purpose or not, the completion rating was still hanging there!

She genuinely suspected the system was mocking her!

But she had no proof.

"Forget it."

Lu Xiu gently shook her head, sat down hugging her knees, and rested her head on her smooth kneecaps.

By all rights, she should have felt at least a little accomplished right now.

But she felt nothing at all. She felt like cybernetic assembly-line labor had ground all joy and sorrow out of her, and perhaps she would never feel either again in this life.

So what if it was being sarcastic?

You'd go numb too if you chopped... no, if you fought.

Clearing Sekiro twice in one day, in person no less—though the first time had only been for testing, and she had skipped quite a few things.

But Lu Xiu was still exhausted enough that even the rewards felt meaningless. How could she possibly get angry over the system's sarcasm?

Boring!

Ah.

Right, the rewards.

Lu Xiu remembered something. She raised her head and reached out to open the window that had just appeared.

Let's take a look at the rewards.

After all, she had gone through all that trouble...

[Instance verified!]

[System rating generated—]

[Instance Name: Sekiro]

[Instance Rating: S → SS]

[Instance Type: Action/Combat/Multiple Endings]

[Ticket Price: 700 Survival Points]

[Instance Description: Players will take on the role of a disgraced, battle-scarred shinobi and face the dangerous Ashina clan and numerous vicious foes in order to protect a young Divine Heir who carries an ancient bloodline...]

[Instance Special Tag: Loser's Obsession]

[Possible Rewards: "Loser's Obsession"; valuable skills; Shinobi Prosthetic tools; consumables; attribute point rewards.]

[Creator: Lu Xiu]

"Wow, SS. So impressive."

Lu Xiu recited it flatly with a blank expression, then opened the next window.

[Construction reward calculation in progress—]

[Instance rating: SS. Instance completion score: SSS—]

[Construction EXP +1280]

[Spirit attribute points +8]

[You have advanced to Level 5 Constructor! Immersion function unlocked!]

[You are the first Constructor to create an SS-rank instance! Special reward calculation in progress... Congratulations! Based on your performance during instance verification, you have obtained the special skill [Audience]!]

"Wow... Wait, Audience?"

Lu Xiu froze slightly. Her deadened heart slowly revived, and she finally remembered why she had been doing cybernetic assembly-line labor in the first place.

To protect herself!

She reached out and opened the strangely named skill.

[Special Skill: Audience]

[Rating: SSS]

[Type: Rule-based/Active Activation]

[Ability Description: 1: Upon active activation, you may lock onto any target within your sensory range and within 30 meters, entering [Audience State]. At the same time, an isolated domain will be generated. You and the enemy will be designated as the only interacting entities; damage, healing, or interference from any third party will be rendered ineffective.

During this period, neither side may voluntarily move away from the other. If either side exceeds a certain distance, they will be forcibly pulled back.

2: In Audience State, you and the enemy will enter a forced cold-weapon duel. Both sides' original health values will be locked and grayed out, no longer being calculated. The battle will be converted into a pure posture contest, with the maximum posture value (posture bar) forcibly set to the same fixed value.

3: In Audience State, all damage received by both sides will be converted into posture value. When either side's posture value (posture bar) is filled, they will enter a 0.5-second collapse state and expose a fatal weakness. If that weakness is struck, they will die immediately. The moment this skill is activated, the enemy's posture value (posture bar) immediately increases by 20%.

4: In Audience State, actions such as taking hits, blocking, and clashing will continuously accumulate posture value. When not actively engaged in combat, posture value will slowly decrease. Successfully deflecting an enemy attack or dealing effective damage to the enemy will reduce your own posture bar.]

5: Upon killing an enemy, you could plunder one random attribute or skill from the target. Upon leaving the Audience state, all status effects would reset; if the skill was canceled before the enemy died, both sides' posture gauge progress would be converted proportionally into actual damage for settlement.

6: When your HP reached zero after taking fatal damage from a hostile target, if this skill was not on cooldown, you would be forcibly immune to that instance of damage and the skill would activate automatically. The skill would automatically target the source of the damage regardless of distance, and its priority would be judged as the highest level, ignoring all control, suppression, and anti-magic effects.]

[Activation Requirement: None]

[Skill Lock Range: The target must be within 30 meters of you and within your perception range.]

[Duration: Until one side dies or the skill is manually canceled.]

[Cooldown: 2 hours]

[Cost: None]

[Note: Forced 1v1. If you're a man, come take a swing at the legendary blacksmith.]

"..."

Lu Xiu stared at the skill, utterly at a loss for words.

Because the note had already said everything she wanted to say.

To put it simply... forced 1v1! If you're a man, come fight me!

It directly dragged someone into a posture duel, even forcibly setting both posture gauges to the same fixed value. Victory or death would be decided by cold-weapon skill, making it possible to challenge opponents above one's level.

For players who had reached high sequences and possessed high overall attributes, this was practically cheating... and it was even cheating against many bosses in system instances.

Most outrageous of all, it could automatically activate when she took fatal damage, essentially granting her one chance to cheat death.

It was strong.

Incredibly strong.

But aside from the death immunity, Lu Xiu felt that the rest of the skill seemed rather useless to her.

Why would she go around dueling people for no reason?

Although the instant the skill activated, the enemy's posture value immediately increased by 20%, giving her an inherent advantage, and killing them would let her plunder their skills and attributes.

But she was in there too. Who knew what kind of opponent she might drag in? If they were cannon fodder, there was no need to activate the skill at all. If they were formidable, what if she couldn't beat them?

Could the system have given her this skill just because she had steamrolled the [Sekiro] instance?

...Since you could steamroll Sekiro, you must be a genius at parrying. This skill is simply perfect for you!

But the problem was that although the enemies' attack patterns in [Sekiro] varied, they were generally still fixed. At the end of the day, it all relied on Lu Xiu's memories from her previous life.

Enemies in the real world did not have fixed attack patterns.

The only situation where she could use it without worry was probably when fighting bosses in those system instances that did not strip players of their original abilities... Any troublesome boss could be dragged into a field she was familiar with.

But Lu Xiu was not planning to enter one anytime soon.

No, don't just judge me by how I performed in instances.

Looking at this skill, Lu Xiu truly felt that perhaps she would never again know joy or sorrow in this life.

Forget it.

She would just treat it as a resurrection-coin skill.

After studying the skill's details for a while longer, she finally opened the next window.

[You have cleared the "Sekiro" instance!]

[Instance Completion: 100% (Dragon's Homecoming)]

[Overall Clear Rating: SSS]

[Experience Gained: 1810, Survival Points: 4600]

[Items/Equipment Gained: Ungo's Sugar*10, Mortal Blade: Gracious Gift of Tears (Broken Blade)]

[Special Reward Gained: Agility +4, Strength +4]

[First clear of this instance. SSS Rating Reward Gained: Perfect Deflect]

[Settlement complete.]

A new window popped up.

Lu Xiu looked at the settlement rewards on the screen. When she saw the words Perfect Deflect, she froze for a moment before reaching out and opening it.

[Special Skill: Perfect Deflect]

[Rating: SSS]

[Type: Passive/Rule-Level]

[Ability Description: Activates when the user blocks while wielding a cold weapon. If the user's timing falls within the "absolute window"—the instant just before the attack lands, when it could theoretically be blocked—it will ignore differences in strength, weapon weight, and body size. For an extremely brief moment, the user's limbs and weapon will break through the limits of their own attributes, making minute spatial adjustments at a speed beyond biological limits, forcibly triggering a "perfect block" judgment and redirecting the incoming kinetic energy in a designated direction, producing an absolute deflection effect.

Supplementary Explanation: Other than continuous damage attacks without a distinct point of impact or absolute window, such as flames, poison mist, or gravity fields, perfect deflection may be triggered against any other difficult-to-evade attack so long as there is a trajectory of force that can be redirected and the "absolute window" is successfully captured. Applicable targets include, but are not limited to, bullets, energy beams, shockwaves, supernatural strikes, and so on.]

[Trigger Requirement: Must be holding an object that can be judged by the system as a cold weapon.]

[Cooldown: None]

[Cost: None]

[Note: The legendary blacksmith has arrived!]

"Hell yeah!!!"

The next second.

Lu Xiu, who had supposedly sworn off all joy and sorrow, sprang straight up from the ground.

The dejected posture of hugging her knees vanished without a trace.

As she looked at the description beneath Perfect Deflect—"ignores differences in strength, weapon weight, and body size"—her beautiful eyes, dulled somewhat by exhaustion, shone with astonishing brilliance, like the brightest stars in the night sky.

If one were to ask what Lu Xiu feared most after experiencing the [Sekiro] instance.

It would undoubtedly be those high-sequence stat monsters who could crush ten foes with sheer strength.

And the appearance of [Perfect Deflect] directly solved the problems of margin for error and stat suppression.

Not to mention.

It could also work in tandem with the Audience skill. When facing high-sequence players whose overall attributes far surpassed her own, Lu Xiu definitely would not dare casually pull them into [Audience].

Originally, [Audience] merely changed the rules of combat. If the opponent's stats were too high, even if she completed the blocking motion, she might still fail to block the attack.

But now that she had [Perfect Deflect], things were different.

And even setting [Audience] aside.

This skill was still extremely useful. Sekiro was, after all, an instance with its own compensation mechanisms.

Back then, Lu Xiu had forced herself to clear it by clashing blades because she worried there would be no Shinobi Prosthetic in reality. But blade clashes had been against enemies within the instance; she had no idea how things would work in reality.

But now.

The arrival of Perfect Deflect completely solved that problem.

The hardships Lu Xiu had endured in the Sekiro instance and the experience they had tempered into her were still there. Now, with a skill to guarantee the basics, so long as an enemy's attacks were not so fast that Lu Xiu could not react at all.

Then after creating a few more instances, Lu Xiu believed she would lose to no one!

She could go even with anyone.

And if it was a group fight!

Then she would activate Audience!

If that wasn't self-preservation ability, what was!