Chapter 83 Back to Reality - Test

The sea breeze whipped at the cliff's edge. If someone with a fear of heights stood here, looking down into the bottomless abyss shrouded in white mist, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say their legs would go weak.

No one expected Bai Xiao to jump so decisively. Seeing her leap without a word, they couldn't help but be stunned, their skeptical remarks catching in their throats.

The three people closest to her were the first to react, rushing to the cliff's edge to look down.

The moment Bai Xiao jumped, she had already drawn her silver sword, but the expected sensation of weightlessness didn't last long before her vision plunged into a familiar darkness.

Before leaving the game, she heard a fragment of a conversation that wasn't very clear.

"This newcomer is pretty good. I wonder if the ones after will dare to do the same."

"This is just a test game. Could the difficulty be too high? What about the next two games?"

"The higher-ups said three games are enough. This planet's progress is too fast; there's no time to continue testing. Besides, the preliminary data has already been analyzed."

"Is just the preliminary data enough? Last time..."

As her body fell, she could no longer hear the rest of the conversation. Another familiar voice replaced the exchange in her ears.

[Congratulations to Player No. 526 Bai Xiao for achieving victory in the 'Life-Feed Park' game. Game rewards have been issued to the player's personal panel; please check them in time. Disconnecting from the game, please be prepared.]

When her vision cleared again, Bai Xiao was back in her 12th-floor residence. Outside, the rain was still pouring, occasionally drumming against the window.

The park clothes she had been wearing were gone, replaced by the clothes she had on before entering the game, which were perfectly intact.

This game didn't use the players' own clothes; upon entry, they were changed into the grey sportswear exclusive to the Blue-Bloods. Leaving was the same—she wasn't wearing the park clothes, and the Electric Bullet Gun she had been carrying was gone.

Bai Xiao didn't know if the remaining people chose to jump after she left. If they saw her body vanish into thin air, they should believe that jumping was the right choice. However, she suspected the game wouldn't be so kind as to let people get the right answer without paying a price.

Forget it. Bai Xiao shook her head, tossing aside the extraneous thoughts. Whether the others believed it or not had nothing to do with her. She was already gone, so why worry?

However, the conversation she heard before leaving made her ponder. Those three people in park uniforms—Bai Xiao had originally thought they were Blue-Bloods who had taken over identities like her. Now it seemed they were neither Blue-Bloods nor park employees, but more like people from the game itself.

They mentioned a test game and preliminary data. Could it be that the games she participated in were just tests in the eyes of others? Just a way for some entity to collect data?

What did they mean by there being two more games, but the planet's progress was too fast to continue testing?

Did it mean the data collection was complete and there would be no more games?

Impossible. Their conversation was clearly not that simple. If the three test games she participated in had ended as they said, and there were no new test games, but the games still wouldn't terminate, wouldn't that mean all subsequent games would be official games?

To think such a cruel game was merely some kind of test, using so many human lives for testing... Such a bloody and cruel affair was summarized by them with the simple word "test." A nameless fury quietly built up in her heart.

Bai Xiao couldn't calm her mind for a long time. For the first time, she truly felt what it meant for lives to be as cheap as grass, as insignificant as ants. In the eyes of this game, humans were just grass and ants. This feeling of extreme insignificance and being at someone else's mercy was infuriating, yet it also brought a deep sense of powerlessness. Slowly, out of that powerlessness, a spirit of defiance quietly grew.

A fire of desire to increase her strength more rapidly burned fiercely. Bai Xiao tried her best to suppress her complex emotions. After sitting quietly for a moment, she opened her game panel to check the rewards for this game.

[Name] Bai Xiao

[Gender] Female

[Age] 23

[Game Number] 526

[Level] Level 1 (90/100)

[Comprehensive Score] 75 (Limit 100)

[Potential] 7 (Limit 10)

[points] 100

This time, her experience points increased by 40, which was 10 more than last time. The accumulated experience from three games had reached 90. With just 10 more experience points, she could reach Level 2. She wondered what items the Level 2 mall would sell; it certainly wouldn't be worse than Level 1.

She continued looking down at the points. Her total points had reached 100. In the previous game, she had spent a total of 85 points on a weapon, an enhancement potion, and an expander. The remaining 5 points were spent on a food package before entering the third game, so her points column had been reset to zero upon entering. The current 100 points were all rewards from this game.

This meant both the experience points and points for this game had increased. Bai Xiao reasonably suspected it was because she had cleared the game a day early.

She thought it would be better if there were reward details. Having details would be like having the key points of an exam; only by knowing the evaluation criteria would she know which direction to work toward.

However, there was no use overthinking it; it wasn't something she could decide. Following the old rules, Bai Xiao first went to the [Game Mall] to buy a bottle of enhancement potion. Once it was in her hand, she couldn't wait to drink it.

Up until now, this was her third time drinking an enhancement potion. According to the description, her body would be strengthened by 40% of its initial base values this time.

Bai Xiao waited quietly for a while, feeling the changes in her body. The physical changes this time were even more subtle than the previous two. She even felt that when the potion description mentioned strengthening by a certain percentage with each dose, this percentage didn't mean every function of the body was strengthened by that multiple.

For example, with weight-bearing capacity, it didn't mean that a certain percentage of strengthening allowed one to lift exactly that many times more weight. While the potion improved physical fitness, this change also distributed the potion's potency.

Simply put, the state after each drink didn't stack exactly according to the potion's description; the stacking was smaller than the labeled percentage. This discrepancy might be for balance under a certain mechanism, likely limited by her current game level.

Therefore, she could feel that at Level 1, even if she drank all the effective enhancement potions, she could only reach the peak level of human capability at most.

If she continued to use them, she would be hard-pressed to find an opponent in terms of hand-to-hand combat alone—unless she encountered a male who had consumed the same number of enhancement potions. If the other person's initial physical assessment values were higher than hers, she would certainly be at a slight disadvantage. However, once the body was strengthened to a certain point, the differences in speed and strength became very small, and technique and tactics were the ultimate keys to victory.

Bai Xiao thought of the Basic Close Combat book she had bought. She figured that after her game level increased, there should be more advanced courses available for study.