Hesitant Choice

Ren Suo opened his computer and waited for over a minute before 360 finally displayed the message, "This boot took 10 seconds, your boot speed beats 99% of computers nationwide!" He then slowly opened a Word document.

Another ten-odd seconds passed, and the 2003 version of Word finally launched.

Seeing this, everyone should have a basic understanding of Ren Suo's computer performance: describing it as a withered flower would probably be accurate. However, he only used it for watching videos and writing papers, which met his daily needs.

But ever since he started playing the Little World Game Console and enjoyed its instant, high performance, he couldn't stand looking at his old machine anymore. Electronic products don't have much 'nostalgic' value; after all, their performance doesn't change much, while their appearance gets prettier and prettier, with more and more lights.

He typed into Word:

"Cross My Corpse · Chapter One"

"Lurk · Chapter One"

"Slaughter Dungeon"

He paused, hesitated for a moment, then wrote:

"Cross My Corpse · Chapter One" has a maximum reward of 80 Merit Points, a difficulty of 2 stars, and a unique reward of 'Strong Heart Technique'.

"Lurk · Chapter One" has a maximum reward of 100 Merit Points, a difficulty of 2 stars, and a unique reward of 'Heart of Deceit'.

"Slaughter Dungeon" has a maximum reward of 60 Merit Points, a difficulty of 1 star. As it is a free game with a difficulty of 1 star, the unique reward is canceled.

Furthermore, because he possessed a certain amount of Merit Points, the system not only displayed the maximum rewards (last month's free games didn't show this) but also popped up a prompt: clearing any chapter of a free game will reduce the total purchase price of that game by a certain amount.

Players can use the search function in the World Store to find information about the total game price.

For example, Ren Suo played the 'Bloodstained Banquet' chapter in Assassin, so Assassin would be discounted when he searched for it. As for how much the discount was, he didn't know—he wasn't willing to spend 10 Merit Points to search just to satisfy his curiosity.

"Cross My Corpse · Chapter One" is a management game. The synopsis is: 'Allows players to experience realistic family management! Amidst numerous crises such as natural disasters, man-made calamities, ghosts, and monsters, players must not only preserve their own family in a chaotic world but also fight with various forces to break the curse of fate.'

"Lurk · Chapter One" is a text adventure game. The synopsis is: 'With a heart both burning and cold, will you step into the endless hell of lies with hope and no regrets for a better tomorrow for your country, or will you be a drifting person swaying left and right for your own honor and disgrace?'

"Slaughter Dungeon" is a card adventure dungeon crawler game. The synopsis is: 'The abyss hidden in the dungeon has corrupted the world. Just for yourself, you must cross the despairing city, the dark caves, the terrifying dungeon, and fight a decisive battle with the heart of the abyss.'

Ren Suo took his hands off the keyboard and fell into deep thought, looking at the content in the document.

These three games were this month's free games, and they all looked pretty good.

However, he could only choose one of the three.

It wasn't impossible to play more free games. The system prompted that if the player level increased, the number of free games available each month and the total number of free games would increase. But currently, Ren Suo didn't know how to increase his player level, so he had to adapt to this game console and make a painful choice.

After all, there were no game discounts right now. If he didn't play a free game, he wouldn't have anything to play. With his current Merit Points, he definitely couldn't afford a game after searching.

"What should I do?" Ren Suo was quite hesitant.

If he completely ignored the game content and judged solely by the rewards, "Lurk" was undoubtedly the most cost-effective: the short-term benefit was Merit Points, the long-term benefit was a game discount, and only the unique reward 'Heart of Deceit' seemed useless.

"Cross My Corpse" ranked second, slightly less cost-effective than "Lurk," but the unique reward 'Strong Heart Technique' looked somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, Ren Suo didn't know the specific information about this skill.

"Slaughter Dungeon" was the least cost-effective. Neither the short-term nor the long-term benefits were great, and there was no unique reward. It could be said that he would only choose this unless there were no other options, just like when he previously only had Assassin's Bloodstained Banquet to choose from.

However, considering the game content, it couldn't be viewed so simply.

Assassin's Bloodstained Banquet, game difficulty 1 star; If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters, game difficulty 1 star.

Undoubtedly, these two games were the simplest, but were they easy? The former was truly impossible to pass without some brains, and the latter directly made Ren Suo stay up for several nights.

You should know that although Ren Suo hadn't bought a game console before, he usually went to internet cafes to play games. While he wasn't a master, he definitely wasn't clumsy. He just played games in moderation for his future, but his skill level was basically the highest among his peers. When playing FPS and MOBA games, his classmates would rush to cling to his leg.

Even someone with such good gaming talent was almost stumped by a 1-star game. So how difficult could a 2-star game be?

After much thought, Ren Suo decided to temporarily put aside the game selection. After all, he was very tired from traveling all day today, so he should rest first.

CTRL+A, Delete.

Ren Suo casually deleted everything he had just typed, then took a shower. He heated up the cold Braised Beef Brisket Noodles with Fried Sauce, brought it to his computer desk, opened the Gilirili video website, and prepared to watch videos while eating... a late-night snack?

However, when he opened the website, he immediately spat out the hot noodles he had just put in his mouth. The keyboard and screen were covered in warm, sticky brown noodle paste.

He saw that the banner at the top of the website, where seasonal information and large promotional events were usually displayed, now only had eight large characters in black on a white background:

If You're Strong, Climb 10,000 Meters!

Wiping off the stuff he had spat out, Ren Suo took a deep breath and clicked in, only to find that it was... Holy crap!?

A large-scale continuous documentary!?

The entire video had 55 parts (which are video segments, i.e., separate episodes). Except for the last two parts, all the others were 120-minute videos, adding up to nearly 4 and a half days of duration!

Each part had a title, such as the first few being 'April 3rd 00:00~02:00', 'April 3rd 02:00~04:00', 'April 3rd 04:00~06:00', all categorized by time, extending all the way to the 54th part 'April 8th 10:00~11:43'.

And the last part was the 'Essence Version', which seemed to be an edited and revised version, but it was also 200 minutes long, nearly three hours!

April 3rd...?

Ren Suo thought about it. Wasn't that the first day of his Intensive Training?

However, that was also the second day he uploaded his game review!