The attack came out of nowhere!
Alarm bells rang in Xia Lun's head. He ducked, and a heartbeat later, a burning flare slammed into the planks above him. Flaming splinters and rainwater pelted his head.
Boom!
Thunder cracked. In the flash of lightning, Xia Lun saw his attacker: the short Black overseer. White smoke still drifted from the flare gun in his hand.
"Sorry, mate! Keep it busy for a while!" the overseer shouted as he slipped back into the shadows. Beside him, several pirates were trying to rescue the First Mate from the wreckage of the forecastle.
Shock and fury hit Xia Lun at once. The man meant to use him to draw the monster's attention!
Squelch—
The limping monster whipped around. The tumors and tentacles beneath it moved with startling speed, as though they had been greased. When it spotted Xia Lun, its remaining scarlet compound eyes seemed to brighten.
There was no doubt about it: the monster was intelligent, capable of emotion, and fiercely vindictive.
It let out a broken hiss. Somehow, Xia Lun heard a note of triumph in the jumbled sound. The next instant, the monster lurched straight at him!
There was nowhere to dodge!
The thought flashed through his mind, and Xia Lun entered Heightened Focus once more.
According to the Game Panel, this was the last time he could safely use the skill today.
His gaze swept across a crack in the deck beside him, then the Black overseer snickering in hiding farther away. Finally, it settled on the limping monster's few remaining compound eyes.
The roar of rain and the screams vanished. His vision narrowed until even the round raindrops seemed to hang motionless. All he could see were the monster's scarlet compound eyes.
His thumb pressed down on the Revolver's hammer, and the cold metal answered with a solid click.
"Click—"
Xia Lun dropped to one knee, turned, raised his gun, and took aim. Every movement flowed into the next, like a textbook demonstration of kneeling fire.
The instant a compound eye lined up with the notch of his rear sight, his index finger pulled the trigger.
Bang!
A silver-gray bullet burst from the barrel. Its searing tip spun free of the rifling, tore through curtain after curtain of cold rain, and struck a compound eye like a sledgehammer!
Gelatinous matter flew. Slime sprayed everywhere!
"Click—bang!"
Xia Lun cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger again. Orange muzzle fire flared, briefly revealing his cold face in the dark.
Another compound eye burst apart. The monster's charge faltered.
"Click—bang!"
The flash lit up the pirates' horrified faces. The monster's last compound eye shattered.
"Click—bang!"
The Black overseer's stunned grin froze. In the flicker of gunfire, his head burst like a watermelon. The large-caliber bullet sheared away the upper half of his skull, sending a spray of red and white matter backward as though a spinning millstone had struck it.
A moment later, Xia Lun left Heightened Focus. His perception of time returned to normal.
A sharp smell of gunpowder spread with the wisps of white smoke rising from the muzzle. Then the monster's hysterical shriek exploded in his ears.
The monster was completely blind, but its momentum still carried it straight toward Xia Lun like a runaway truck!
Without a second thought, Xia Lun rolled sideways toward the crack. As he dropped through it, he drove his Short Sword into the wall to slow his fall.
There was nowhere to hide on deck. Below deck, hiding places were plentiful.
Bang! The monster slammed into the wreckage of the mast.
Broken splinters spiraled down through the crack, pelting Xia Lun's head along with the rain. Half a torn grappling hook fell with them.
Boom!
The remains of the mast crashed over the crack and sealed it completely. Darkness swallowed the hold.
The monster raged and thrashed, but it could not find Xia Lun.
With the crack blocked, the monster could not threaten him in the hold for now. Nor could Xia Lun climb back onto the deck through it anytime soon.
His risky plan had failed after all.
Xia Lun sighed. He felt a little frustrated, but he was not disheartened.
Things going wrong was part of any risky plan. When they did, he only had to adjust and find another way. Feeling sorry for himself would accomplish nothing.
Besides, he had already gotten his revenge.
Thud.
Xia Lun pulled the Short Sword from the wall and landed steadily on the hold's floor.
He closed his eyes for a moment to adjust to the darkness, then opened them and looked at the broken grappling hook.
He froze. To his astonishment, half a torn Wax Book was still caught on it!
The plan had failed, but not entirely!
Xia Lun hurriedly bent down and picked up the half-book.
The Wax Book felt slick and cold, like human skin with a pulse still beating beneath it.
But Xia Lun no longer cared. What he held did not feel like a Wax Book. It felt like a cure for a terminal illness!
He eagerly opened it. A long string of unfamiliar, tadpole-like symbols greeted him.
Xia Lun studied them carefully, then realized a serious problem.
He could not read the writing of this world!
Strictly speaking, his identity in this scenario was that of a complete illiterate...
What am I supposed to do now?!
Even someone as resolute as Xia Lun felt the crushing helplessness of having all his efforts come to nothing.
He could hardly ask another group of equally illiterate pirates to teach him to read, could he?
Reluctantly, Xia Lun closed the pale Wax Book and tucked it into his weapons belt.
Just then, a translucent cobalt-blue Information Panel sprang up at the edge of his vision!
[Incomplete Grimoire detected.] [You obtained the Grimoire "Prayerbook of the Drowned" (incomplete; 31% complete).] ["Prayerbook of the Drowned" (incomplete): An evil tome whose pages were made from Molten Wax rendered from the fat of the drowned, with its text written in a corpse's blood. To ordinary people, it is a book without words. To those who have died and returned, and to the mad, its pages are filled with blasphemous writing. Its crooked letters recount bizarre, maddening Secret Arts.] [You meet the prerequisites for reading "Prayerbook of the Drowned."] [Once you obtain the complete "Prayerbook of the Drowned" and spend enough Memory Points, you will gain the Secret Art Specialty "Transcendent Regeneration."]
After the succession of cobalt-blue messages came a glaring scarlet warning.
[Warning: Keeping a Grimoire for an extended period will significantly impair your cognitive abilities and severely damage your Mental Health. Handle with care!] [Note: A Secret Art Specialty may be powerful, but is it truly worth the price of cognitive corruption?]
"Transcendent Regeneration—that can definitely cure my Lung Disease!" Xia Lun's eyes lit up.
A moment later, he fell into thought.
"Memory Points? What are those?"
"I think they appeared in my initial character information..."
As he pondered, a wisp of gray mist seeped through the sealed crack and shot straight into his body!
Xia Lun startled, but the Information Panel unfurled before him once more, smooth as flowing mercury.
[Feat! You blinded the supernatural Evil Spirit "Abyssal Hand." You gained 600 Memory Points!] [Kill! You killed a formidable pirate. You gained 30 Memory Points!]
Is that another name for experience points? Xia Lun wondered, a smile creeping onto his face.
So far, the game's difficulty had been absurd. Under this much pressure, even the smallest improvement was precious.
His gaze moved down to the explanation of Memory Points.
[You can gain Memory Points by accomplishing feats, solving puzzles or uncovering the Worldview, earning others' recognition, or killing and injuring sentient beings.] [By spending Memory Points, you can enter the memories of beings you have killed or whose recognition you have earned while you sleep. Through firsthand experience, you can safely acquire their Specializations, Specialties, and skills.] [Alternatively, after each scenario ends, you can spend Memory Points to redeem any non-sentient item you saw during that scenario and manifest it whenever you need it.] [Current Memory Points: 630] [Note: Memory makes faded things vivid again.]
After reading that, Xia Lun fell silent.
"So the normal way to play this game is to solve mysteries or earn the characters' recognition through social interaction, then gradually improve Specializations and unlock skills and Specialties."
"In a way, it's probably a lot like the Cthulhu tabletop RPGs I played in my previous life."
"Charging in and fighting from the start, then facing the final monster alone... that's probably a pretty outrageous way to go about it."
"But compared with the normal route, combat seems to offer high risks and high rewards."
As Xia Lun considered this, he continued reading the Information Panel.
[You fought a formidable monster. You gained a partial memory of the Specialty "Reflexive Evasion." After obtaining information about this Specialty three times, you can spend Memory Points to gain complete training memories for it the next time you sleep.] [Reflexive Evasion: Through long training, dodging attacks has become a conditioned reflex. You react more quickly to attacks. Over time, this Specialty can also slightly improve your explosive strength and endurance.] [Note: Even partial memories of a Specialty you have not fully mastered will improve your physical capabilities proportionally over time.]
That's pretty useful, Xia Lun thought.
He read on.
[Specialization detected. Confirmed Specialization: Firearms Use (Mastery).] [Firearms Use (Mastery) (progress: 19% → 22%): When it comes to firearms, you are an undisputed expert. Maintenance, assembly, reloading, and aiming all come easily to you. Your precision shooting is good enough to push a familiar weapon to the limits of its performance.]
Looks like I'm a decent shot, Xia Lun thought. He swung out the Revolver's cylinder, took four rounds from his belt, and loaded them without haste.
Even before his rebirth, Xia Lun had been a shooting enthusiast. Afterward, the city where he lived had such terrible public safety that he had devoted much of his spare time to practicing with firearms.
With Heightened Focus helping him learn, his shooting had improved quickly.
Before entering the game, Xia Lun could consistently hit over eighty percent of the clay pigeons at the range without using Heightened Focus. In his previous life, that would have been good enough to compete professionally.
His skill with firearms was also a major reason he could throw axes and grappling hooks so accurately.
After taking stock of what his risky venture had gained him, Xia Lun nodded in satisfaction.
Next, I need to get out of the hold, return to the deck, and find the other half of the Prayerbook of the Drowned, he thought. If I can get Transcendent Regeneration, I'll be saved...
Either way, I should keep going down this passage first.
With that, he flicked his wrist, twirled the Short Sword from a reverse grip into a forward one, then raised his Revolver and looked down the dark, narrow corridor ahead.
The exit lay just ahead.
Before you continue