Huo Yuhao's Despicable Build

Origin Internet Cafe, afternoon.

After the historic "Xuan Lao Flight Incident" and the subsequent "Elder Team-Building Event," the internet cafe finally regained a rare moment of peace.

Strange cries occasionally came from the private rooms on the second floor.

The Beast God, Di Tian, was personally teaching Xuan Lao how to make sounds in the game.

The two old monsters, whose combined ages were nearly a million years, were arguing red-faced over who would get to kill the frost dragon in the game first.

The atmosphere in the gaming hall on the first floor was completely different.

Fan Yu, the deputy dean of the Soul Tool Department, and his wife Zhou Yi had arrived with stern faces to inspect the results of the special training.

But the moment they entered, they saw the usually dignified Xuan Lao wearing headphones and shouting at the screen, "Take this, my Dragon Shout! Hahahaha! It flew! It really flew!"

Fan Yu and Zhou Yi exchanged a glance, their expressions completely frozen.

"Th-this... is Xuan Lao?" Zhou Yi swallowed, barely daring to believe her eyes.

Fan Yu adjusted his glasses, but his gaze was drawn to the intricate image on the screen. "That seems to be... a new game?"

"Teacher! Teacher Fan Yu!" Huo Yuhao took off his helmet in the corner and waved at them. "Come quickly! Boss Lu said this new game has amazing effects on mental power and soul tool research!"

Ten minutes later.

Fan Yu and Zhou Yi had also put on helmets, officially joining the "Skyrim Sightseeing Group."

In-game, Bleak Falls Barrow.

Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, and Xiao Xiao were challenging their first tomb.

"Charge! I'm going to be the future master mage of the Destruction school!" Wang Dong's character wore mage robes, flames blazing from both hands—Flames—as he charged into the burial chamber first.

"Take this—Dual Fireballs!"

Whoosh—!

Two fireballs smashed into the draugr ahead, dealing pitiful damage and only burning off a layer of skin.

The next second, the draugr overlord roared and charged over, swinging its two-handed greatsword.

"Ah! Stop chasing me!" Wang Dong ran around in panic.

He was still a novice. After wildly throwing out skills, his magicka was instantly depleted, leaving him with no choice but to fight the draugr in melee with a small dagger. It was an utterly miserable sight.

Xiao Xiao had chosen a heavy-armored warrior and chased after it with a warhammer. "Wang Dong, stop running! I can't catch up to the monster! My stamina bar is empty!"

While the two of them were in complete chaos.

In the shadows.

Huo Yuhao's character was quietly crouched in a corner.

He wore neither high-defense heavy armor nor flashy mage robes, only light leather armor. In his hands was an ordinary Ancient Nord Bow.

"Spirit Detection Sharing, activate." Though soul power was sealed within the game, his spiritual talent had been converted into a special sensory ability.

Golden light flashed through Huo Yuhao's eyes.

In an instant, the entire tomb's layout became a semi-transparent three-dimensional model in his mind. The position of every draugr, their patrol routes, and every blind spot in their vision were crystal clear.

Huo Yuhao took a deep breath and drew his bow to its full extent.

A soft twang.

In the distance, the draugr overlord chasing Wang Dong suddenly stiffened. An iron arrow had precisely pierced the gap in its kneecap.

[Sneak Attack! Critical Hit!]

"Roar?" The draugr overlord cried out in pain. Half of its health bar vanished instantly, and it dropped to its knees, forcibly staggered.

It angrily turned its head and looked around, trying to find its attacker.

"Who? Who's there?"

However, the instant Huo Yuhao released the arrow, he had already used Mental Detection to predict the draugr's line of sight. With a silent roll, he moved behind another pillar.

The draugr overlord looked around in confusion and found no one. The red alert marker above its head slowly turned yellow, then it muttered, "Must have been the wind."

It pulled the arrow from its knee and was just about to stand up and resume chasing Wang Dong.

Thwack.

Another bowstring sounded. This time, it was a headshot.

[Sneak Attack! Fatal Strike!]

The draugr overlord turned into a real corpse before it could even cry out.

Wang Dong was dumbfounded. So was Xiao Xiao.

"Th-that's it? It's dead?" Wang Dong stared at the elite monster that had just been chasing him, then looked at Huo Yuhao in the distance, still crouching in the shadows as if he had never moved.

"Yuhao, what kind of fighting style is that?" Wang Dong shouted. "That's way too... too underhanded!"

Huo Yuhao stepped out of the shadows with a slight smile. "It's not underhanded. It's called tactics."

"In this game, there's an amazing skill called Sneak. As long as I crouch down and combine it with my Mental Detection, enemies will never be able to see me."

"As long as they can't see me, every attack I make is a killing blow."

This was one of the powerful, even balance-breaking builds in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim—the stealth archer.

Before this build, Destruction mages and two-handed warriors were nothing but flashy live targets.

Zhou Yi, who was watching from Huo Yuhao's perspective, had a sharp glint in her eyes.

"No need for direct confrontation. Use the environment, vision, and weaknesses to kill the strongest enemies at the lowest possible cost!"

"This is the perfect assassin! This is the combat awareness a control-type soul master should possess!"

Zhou Yi slapped her thigh excitedly. "Yuhao! You have to master this move! In future tournaments, you can hide in the back and ambush people like this... ah, no, control the battlefield like this!"

Meanwhile.

Fan Yu was not paying attention to Huo Yuhao's battle.

At that moment, Fan Yu was controlling his character as it stood blankly at the entrance to a massive underground ruin called "Alftand."

"Th-this... what kind of creation is this!" Fan Yu's voice trembled.

Before his eyes stood a brass mechanical city that was still roaring as it operated.

Massive gears meshed and turned. Scalding steam burst from pipes, while intricate pistons drove elevators up and down.

This was a remnant of a lost civilization in The Elder Scrolls—the Dwemer.

Fan Yu stared at the Dwemer sphere that was patrolling near the entrance.

It was a sphere made entirely of brass. The instant it detected an enemy, it would unfold and transform into a half-humanoid, half-spherical mechanical warrior armed with a powerful crossbow and arm blades, moving with incredible speed.

"No soul power fluctuations..." Fan Yu stared at the mechanical sphere. "There's no sign of a soul power core at all! What drives it?"

"Steam? Geothermal energy? Or some kind of special soul gem?"

"This precise mechanical transmission structure... this transformation design..." Fan Yu suddenly lunged at it, but not to attack. Instead, he pulled an iron pickaxe from his inventory and tried to strike the mechanical sphere's shell.

"Don't move! Let me see! Let me see your internal structure!" At that moment, Fan Yu looked nothing like an eighth-ranked soul engineer. He looked more like a crazed researcher.

Clang! The mechanical sphere slashed back with one blow, sending Fan Yu back to the respawn point.

But the next second, Fan Yu charged back from the respawn point, muttering to himself, "I understand now! That joint is a universal joint! If this technology could be used in soul tools..."

"Current fixed soul cannons are far too cumbersome! If they could be made with a transformable, foldable structure like this..."

"And that auto-aiming ballista! That's practically the perfect form of a soul cannon turret!"

Fan Yu abruptly pulled off his helmet, grabbed paper and pen, and began drawing frantically.

His eyes were bloodshot, but his mind was more excited than ever.

"Zhou Yi! I found it!" Fan Yu excitedly grabbed his wife's hand. "I found the future direction of soul tools!"

"The future of soul tools lies in machinery and automation!"

"If I can fully understand this Dwemer technology... Shrek's Soul Tool Department will surpass the Sun Moon Empire by five hundred years!"

Zhou Yi looked at her husband's obsessed expression, then at Huo Yuhao nearby, who was shooting enemies in the knees with arrows.

She sighed helplessly, though the corners of her mouth could not help but rise.

"It seems Boss Lu's place... really is a treasure trove."