Enhancement: Nonhuman Toughness

After obtaining the "Snail Statue," Xia Lun returned directly home.

[Current maximum survival time: 3560:12:31]

"Time really waits for no one."

He glanced at the Information Panel, sighed inwardly, then hurried down the corridor and returned to the dim, enclosed basement.

When he pushed open the door, the adjusted automatic announcer sounded once more.

"Maximum remaining time until your death: 3560 hours."

Xia Lun said nothing. He quickly descended the stairs and reached out to switch off the automatic announcer.

Click.

He sighed, then sat down in the chair beside the gaming pod.

—According to White Line, the normal way to play an "Investigator" was to avoid combat as much as possible. But Xia Lun was facing the Withering Curse now. He simply had no time to develop slowly.

Therefore, he had to take risks and pursue an unconventional path. He had to fight more, take more chances, so that he could find a way to cure the curse and gain the strength to deal with the threat of the Foresight Club.

And that meant he had to continue strengthening his combat abilities.

"There are still six days until the instance cooldown ends." He sorted through his thoughts by talking to himself.

"During these six days, I need to obtain the Nonhuman Toughness specialty through Dream Entry; I also need to get new skills from the Special Memory, Courtly Tournament, if possible. Besides that, I need to arrange the items I'll bring into the next game."

With that thought, he stopped hesitating and climbed directly into the gaming pod.

—For the next five days, aside from necessary meals and his daily training to maintain his marksmanship and swordsmanship, he devoted all his remaining time to dream memories.

Through personal experimentation, he had learned that a full twenty-four hours provided three Dream Entry attempts. Therefore, he only needed five days to fully experience the Nonhuman Toughness specialty memory, which required fifteen Dream Entries to complete.

Within those unending long dreams, Xia Lun seemed to become the pirate captain Geliide in her youth. Unlike the swordsmanship Dream Entry, this one offered almost no freedom. He could only passively and completely experience the suffocating, agonizing years of Geliide's youth, as though watching a film.

Like Xia Lun's current identity, the young Geliide was a merchant. But unlike Xia Lun, she had not risen from nothing. She had risen with the help of her highly influential father.

On the eve of the Black Rose War, Geliide had predicted through common sense that food prices in the Borland Kingdom would skyrocket. She had planned to stockpile grain and make a fortune.

But to her surprise, her father sternly stopped her and stripped her of most of her control over the merchant association.

Geliide had been young then, and she had been deeply dissatisfied. Thus, through the introduction of a broker friend, she began cooperating with the senior noble known as the "Commodore," who was in charge of naval supplies at the time.

The Commodore claimed he wanted to work with Geliide to resell soon-to-expire and expired grain. Young Geliide suspected nothing and carelessly trusted him.

Having already lost control of the merchant association, Geliide provided the Commodore with a family heirloom as collateral for the transaction.

When war broke out, grain prices throughout the Borland Kingdom indeed soared. Geliide was overjoyed, but the Commodore delayed delivering the grain.

At first, she thought the Commodore intended to raise the price out of greed. But several days later, riots caused by food shortages erupted in the capital. As the unrest escalated, something even more terrifying happened—the warehouse storing the navy's grain was reduced to ashes by an unprecedented fire!

The bewildered Geliide only felt that the deal might have fallen through. But a few days later, she was suddenly arrested by the royal guard on charges of arson and grain burning.

Her father was quickly arrested as well because of her implication. To quell the unrest, on the Commodore's suggestion, her father was directly beheaded to calm the public's fury.

Only when the executioner's longsword sliced through her father's neck and severed his spine did the despairing Geliide finally understand the entire chain of events in a moment of clarity.

—The Commodore had never intended to make a deal from the beginning. His goal had always been to burn the warehouse and balance the accounts. And because of her stupidity and blind trust, the Commodore had also gained the chance to frame her and strike at a political enemy...

She had killed her own father.

All of that was what Xia Lun experienced during his first Dream Entry. The main part of the dream memory, however, was the various forms of torture Geliide suffered after her arrest.

There was no need to describe the process in detail. In short, it was a dark journey filled with pain, scars, and abyss-deep psychological pressure.

Water torture, flaying, and the iron maiden were merely routine daily occurrences. The truly scalp-crawling centerpiece was the various premodern medical experiments comparable to witchcraft.

An ordinary person facing pain of that level would surely feel some urge to retreat, perhaps even choose to give up. After all, beyond the pain itself, the psychological trauma inflicted by such experiences was equally real.

But Xia Lun was not an ordinary person...

Driven by his intense desire to gain the power to protect himself, he entered the dreams again and again without rest or pause.

He completely ignored the horrifying destruction of the body and the mental torment filled with dark imagination, as though they were nothing more than an insignificant breeze.

By the later stages of the dreams, he had even found a strange sort of grotesque amusement in the endless torment, like Sisyphus pushing his stone...

Logically, there should have been no freedom in the memory process of the Nonhuman Toughness specialty. The dreamer could only passively endure torture and bear it.

But perhaps because his beginning to enjoy the torture was simply too absurd, the executioners, who had originally been as cold and fixed as a program, gradually began to fear Xia Lun.

By the end, the identities of prisoner and executioner had even reversed in a strange way. Most executioners no longer dared meet Xia Lun's eyes and refused to face him. Some mentally unstable ones even developed a degree of worship toward him.

If he had been able to speak voluntarily during this memory, Xia Lun even felt that he could have transformed himself into a cult leader and tried organizing a small cult for a riot...

But regardless, Xia Lun successfully endured fourteen Dream Entries in the end and obtained the Nonhuman Toughness specialty as scheduled.

He opened his eyes.

When Xia Lun opened his eyes and returned to reality, he could still seem to feel the burning pain beneath his skin, as though rusty tweezers were still cutting through his muscle fibers, pulling them apart, pinching his blood vessels, and exposing them to the air.

His body was still suffering phantom pain, as though his bones had shattered into powder and mixed into his blood like sand laced with iron filings, then continued slicing through his organs with every beat of his heart.

Xia Lun took a while to recover. Once the phantom pain subsided, he looked at the Information Panel.

[After a long period of learning and recollection, you have obtained the specialty "Nonhuman Toughness." Over time, your endurance, recovery ability, and resistance to blows will all greatly increase.]

[Nonhuman Toughness: Due to certain extremely special experiences, your toughness has reached a nonhuman level. Even if you are severely injured and on the verge of death, you can still act as though uninjured—until you die completely. At the same time, your pain shock threshold has greatly increased. Over time, your endurance, recovery ability, and muscular explosiveness will all greatly increase.]

Seeing this information, Xia Lun immediately let out a long breath.

The suffering had not been for nothing! He had finally obtained this specialty!

His eyes shifted slightly as he looked at his attributes.

[Strength 11→13!]

[Strength: 13 (base condition 10, specialty "Nonhuman Toughness" provides a major training increase +3)—You are very strong. Things that would be heavy to ordinary people are merely normal weight to you.]

[Constitution 10→11!]

[Constitution: 11 (base condition 6, specialty "Nonhuman Toughness" provides a major training increase +3; mystical specialty "Transcendent Regeneration" provides a moderate mystical increase +2)—Because you suffer from a curse, your body has weakened. But after certain terrifyingly nonhuman experiences, along with the blessing of supernatural power, you could even be considered healthy among ordinary people.]

"Wait, what about the attribute training increases provided by my Reflexive Evasion and Familiarity with Pain?"

Xia Lun frowned slightly, then realized something: when it came to attribute increases, bonuses of the same type apparently did not stack.

For example, the Strength increase provided by the Reflexive Evasion specialty and the one provided by Nonhuman Toughness were both training increases. In that case, the three-point training increase provided by Nonhuman Toughness overwrote the one-point training increase provided by Reflexive Evasion.

But attribute increases of different types, such as mystical increases, could stack with each other.

"It's a little like the rules from when I played Dungeons & Dragons tabletop campaigns in my previous life." Xia Lun shook his head, then stood up from the gaming pod. "I need to rest briefly and replenish my nutrition."

"There are still a day and a half before the scenario cooldown ends. Tomorrow, I need a full day to prepare the things I'll put into the Voidwood Box. That means I still have around fourteen hours to rest up and handle that Courtly Tournament Special Dream Entry!"

With that thought, he gave the Information Panel one last glance.

[Current maximum survival time: 3416:30:49]

With the massive increase in Strength and Constitution, Xia Lun soon felt hunger strike straight into his marrow, making even his brain tremble. Fortunately, he had prepared in advance, so he immediately ate a large meal.

Food flowed continuously into his stomach, turning into nourishment for flesh and bone. Xia Lun ate slowly. With every bite he chewed carefully, the immense psychological pressure brought by five days and fifteen memories full of torture and suffering gradually dispersed like darkness meeting a torch.

After eating, Xia Lun took a shower and let his mind go blank for a while. Then, while he still had time, he quickly handled some miscellaneous matters and assigned work to the others.

Five hours later, at five in the afternoon, Xia Lun had finished resting. He immediately returned to the basement, intending to continue strengthening himself.

"There are still thirty-one hours until the instance refreshes," he thought. "Seven hours is just enough to enter the Special Memory left behind by the last scenario. I'm a little tired... but this isn't the time to slack off. I have to race against time and develop."

With that thought, he raised his eyes to the Information Panel.

[Special specialty memory unlocked!]

[Special Memory: Courtly Tournament (1/1)]

[Note: When you fulfill the wish of the memory's source within a memory, you may obtain a "Special Memory." A "Special Memory" is a possibility extrapolated from the memory itself. By completing a "Special Memory," you can obtain additional specialties, traits, or even skills.]

Xia Lun withdrew his gaze from the Information Panel, took a deep breath, forcibly drove away his mental exhaustion, and climbed straight into the gaming pod the next moment.

I hope I get a new skill this time, he thought as he closed his eyes.

The next instant, darkness surged over him like icy seawater, then transformed like ink splashed through the air into the narrow room where he lingered every time he entered a dream.

Among the shadowy phantoms of fruits in various colors not far away, one golden fruit stood out with particular prominence.

Without any hesitation, Xia Lun reached out and touched the lone golden fruit.

In an instant, the golden fruit burst into a mass of brilliant lightning. His vision suddenly narrowed, and dazzling golden light shot into his eyes like blades. His eyes immediately stung, and he instinctively closed them.

The next moment, accompanied by a familiar sensation of the world spinning around him, the overwhelming golden light before Xia Lun abruptly vanished. Lines of cobalt-blue information then appeared before his eyes.

[Special Memory objective: In the once-every-ten-years Courtly Tournament of the Borland Kingdom, win at least one round.]

[Note: Death during a Special Memory Dream Entry has no effect, but you will not be able to enter that Special Memory again. By achieving the objective, you may receive rewards such as specialties, traits, or even skills. The rewards depend on the degree of completion.]

[Note: Within a Special Memory, you cannot use "skills," but you retain "traits" and "specialties."]

Xia Lun abruptly opened his eyes. A row of fluttering silk banners and dazzling sunlight entered his vision. The noisy shouts around him, along with sticky sweat stench and cloying perfume, flooded into his ears and nostrils like a pot of boiling dark cuisine...

His head hurt a little. He reached out to brace himself against the warm, smooth, pale wooden floor and slowly rose to his feet.

After taking a moment to process it, he suddenly realized that this Special Memory Dream Entry was completely different from his previous Dream Entries.

This dream was too real, almost no different from reality!

He looked around and discovered that he was leaning against the wall of a spacious hall. Near him was an area of roughly thirty square meters, while farther away stood a noisy, crowded audience. Above their heads were several resplendent viewing platforms extending from the second floor.

Through the broad glass facade, he could see the azure sky and, far in the distance, towering round stone towers standing like guards. Countless heraldic banners fluttered between the battlements.

"Don't stand there dazed. The king has already finished his speech. Once the referee explains the rules, it'll be your turn to enter the arena." Suddenly, a low, clear male voice sounded beside him. "Don't disappoint me."