Morning sunlight spilled over the medieval town. The stone buildings lining the streets looked astonishingly real, and even the faces of the pedestrians were lifelike.
"Did I enter the game wrong somehow? Or did I crank the graphics settings all the way up?"
Yue Shen's first instinct was to log out and check his equipment.
He certainly didn't want the gaming device on his head to suddenly start smoking while he was playing.
But no matter how long he searched, he couldn't find the logout option. Before, all he had to do was close his eyes for more than five seconds to open the settings menu.
Yue Shen stood on the rural street in silence for a long while before he gradually understood his situation.
Going by the usual Qidian formula, some unavoidable force had probably transported him into the game while he was playing.
This was a full-dive online game based on a novel from a few years ago, "Divine Throne."
However, the game was still in closed beta, and players could only enter by purchasing a character save.
So this is a bare-bones beginner knight account?
Standing beside a pool, Yue Shen looked at his reflection with a sigh.
Although he had skipped character customization and uploaded his own facial data instead, he was fortunately pretty good-looking. He had also put most of his starting attribute points into charisma...
As a result, the Yue Shen reflected in the water was a cute little boy with his looks practically maxed out.
But...
"Fuck you! Give me my money back!" Yue Shen suddenly shouted in frustration. "Then wasn't that 'High-Class Demon save' I paid a fortune for a complete waste?"
Yue Shen was furious. He had scrimped and saved for months to afford that "High-Class Demon save."
If he had known he would be transported into the game, he would have played that save first. He could have become a High-Class Demon the moment he entered, starting out above everyone else. Wouldn't that have been better than leveling an alt now?
Although Yue Shen wasn't averse to being transported into another world, testing the waters with an alt had saddled him with decades of unnecessary effort. For a moment, he desperately wanted to start over.
Unfortunately, the game didn't support restarts. Once a character died, the account was deleted.
After thinking it over, Yue Shen decided it was better to play it safe.
"Forget it. I'll just keep playing like this. At least I'm a transmigrator now. I ought to make something of myself."
To Yue Shen's pleasant surprise, however, although the settings menu was gone, he could still bring up the game panels normally.
With a mere thought, his Status Panel appeared before him.
Character information: [Name: Yue Shen] [Age: 12] [Class: Knight (Squire)] [Rank: Tier 2, Level 6] [Spiritual Power: 165 (External Spiritual Power: 165, Internal Spiritual Power: None)]
Next came his personal Status Panel.
Since Yue Shen had an ordinary bare-bones account, most of his attributes were about the same as those of an average person.
Only the following two attributes had particularly impressive numbers:
[Charisma: 98 (Heavenly beauty)] [Comprehension: 89 (Once in a millennium)]
After seeing his stats, Yue Shen's previously sour little face immediately broke into a smile.
A promising future.JPG
What could he do about being so lucky? His randomly generated attributes were actually this good.
What relieved him most, though, was that he hadn't given himself some bizarre or unbearably embarrassing name just for laughs.
After all, NPCs didn't care about that. No matter how outrageous your name was, if you dared to choose it, they dared to say it. To some extent, these IDs were also an important way of distinguishing players from NPCs.
For instance, Yue Shen had once seen someone named "Brother Jie, Please Don't"...
And that guy's gameplay was genuinely twisted, too.
His videos mostly consisted of chasing characters around the game and making them say his full name... Yue Shen shook his head, doing his best not to picture the wretched scene of that guy trekking over mountains and rivers to find the young protagonist, Long Haochen, then pinning him down and forcing him to read his ID aloud.
Once he calmed down, Yue Shen explored carefully and discovered that he could access not only his Status Panel, but also a Spatial Bag with unlimited slots.
He could also obtain freely assignable attribute points when he advanced in rank, just like a player, and use them to strengthen his character.
However, this also suggested that other players might exist in this world. There might even be other transmigrators like him.
Yue Shen fell silent for a moment. He didn't yet know whether the existence of other players would be a good thing for him.
Then again, there were only so many pretty girls in this world. What did they need so many players and transmigrators for? Of course, that wasn't the main point.
The real issue was that players were practically all plot wreckers, and they might disrupt many of his future plans. Of course, that was assuming they had the ability to do so.
One thing was certain, though: even if other players existed, there wouldn't be many of them.
After all, apart from a handful of players with unusual tastes and casual players, pretty much everyone came here to be the protagonist.
Besides, putting too many players into one world would seriously affect everyone's gaming experience.
As Yue Shen continued thinking, a huge question suddenly popped into his mind.
He reached down and gently tugged at his pants, only to discover that they actually came loose!
Well, damn! It looks like I've unlocked some adults-only gameplay.
Yue Shen: A promising future 2.0.JPG
"Hey! Yue Shen! How long have you been out here, you brat?" A muscular young man suddenly appeared, interrupting Yue Shen's fantasies.
"I sent you out to buy bread. Why are you wandering around here?" He looked Yue Shen up and down. "And where's the bread I asked you to buy? Don't slack off just because today's an important day!"
Yue Shen froze for a moment, then accessed the save's memories to learn who the young man was.
Xia'er, a third-tier knight, served as an assistant instructor at the Demon-Resisting Sub-Temple. Although he had a bit of a temper, he was actually a decent person.
As for what made today so important...
After reading the memories, Yue Shen jolted in surprise. Wasn't today the day the Demon-Resisting Sub-Temple had arranged for eligible candidates to undergo Sacred Awakening? (It was about as important as martial soul awakening in that other fandom.)
Fortunately, Yue Shen had arrived early enough that nothing had gone wrong at the crucial moment of Sacred Awakening.
"Sorry, Brother Xia'er. I'll go buy the bread right now," Yue Shen said sheepishly.
"Forget it." Xia'er waved a hand. "I went through the same thing back then. Of course I know how anxious you all get at a time like this."
Xia'er stepped forward and patted Yue Shen's shoulder, reassuring him, "I'll buy the bread for you. Go back and get yourself in the right frame of mind."
Since Xia'er had put it that way, Yue Shen naturally nodded in agreement.
This was the perfect chance to read through all his character's memories so he could fit into this world more easily.
After returning to the Demon-Resisting Sub-Temple, Yue Shen went straight to his dorm room and shut himself away.
It didn't take him long to sort out his current background and relationships.
First was his background in this world.
Both his parents had been knights, though his memories contained no images of them. All he knew was that shortly after he was born, both had died fighting on the battlefield against the demons.
The orphaned little Yue Shen had then been adopted by the Demon-Resisting Sub-Temple in his parents' hometown. Naturally, he had begun training as a knight and become a member of the Knight Temple.
As for his social circle, how wide could it be for a child who had grown up in the Knight Branch Hall in Demon-Resisting Town? Apart from the townspeople and his childhood friends, it consisted of little more than the elders and fellow trainees at the Demon-Resisting Sub-Temple.
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