Chapter 940: Ancient Martial Arts Successor |
As Liu Xing and Li Hanxing stood in silence, another young man entered the convenience store.
Upon seeing Liu Xing and Li Hanxing facing off, the young man immediately stepped forward and asked, "Li Hanxing, what's going on here?"
Li Hanxing smiled and shook his head, pointing at Liu Xing, "It's nothing, he's one of us."
"Oh, I see. I was wondering why you suddenly started a Private Room session," the young man said, turning to Liu Xing. "My name is Sun Huiwen, Li Hanxing's partner."
At that moment, Li Hanxing suddenly patted his head, took out a business card from his pocket, and handed it to Liu Xing.
Liu Xing examined the card and noticed its simplicity, containing only Li Hanxing's name and phone number, along with the name of a company—Bao Jiejue Company.
It didn't seem like a legitimate company at all.
However, Liu Xing had a hunch about the identities of Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen.
"Are you mercenaries?" Liu Xing asked straightforwardly.
It seemed that these two were in a similar situation as Shi Zixuan.
In the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, apart from notorious pirates like Shi Zixuan, there was another profession that could break free from module restrictions—mercenaries like Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen. They could accept missions from both players and NPCs, just like Shi Zixuan. However, players who wanted to hire them would already be inside a module, so Li Hanxing and his partner must have gained the approval of the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall to interfere in modules freely.
Becoming a recognized mercenary in the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall was no easy feat. These mercenaries needed to possess a wide range of specialized skills and pass numerous challenging exam modules. As a result, in Liu Xing's memory, the number of mercenaries in the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall could be counted on one hand, and each of them was renowned. Liu Xing had never heard of the names Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen.
Li Hanxing noticed the confusion in Liu Xing's eyes and smiled, "We only recently passed all the assessments of the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall to become recognized mercenaries before the Public-Military Conflict. Then, we rushed to the Island Nation. However, there's a new mechanism for us mercenaries, similar to the reputation system in other games, but it's calculated separately for each region and country. Our previous area of operation was the Middle East, so our reputation is higher there."
"After arriving in the Island Nation, we realized that our reputation here is almost zero. This place isn't very familiar with the situation in the Middle East, and there are numerous famous mercenary organizations there. Individual mercenaries like us, who take on odd jobs, aren't well-received. Since coming to the Island Nation, we haven't received a single proper mission from a player. The most we've done is help NPCs deal with local thugs. As for our current mission, it's to teach this convenience store employee a lesson."
Liu Xing nodded. Although he hadn't encountered other mercenary players before, he had heard stories about them. For instance, mercenary players could accept missions from both players and NPCs, but there was no priority difference between the two. Therefore, mercenary players couldn't ignore missions given by NPCs in favor of player-issued missions.
However, once a mercenary player accepted a mission from a player, the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall would not assign them any NPC missions.
Lastly, and most importantly, the NPC missions given to mercenary players by the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall were quite interesting, as they were determined by the player's reputation in their current location. When a player's reputation was low, the NPC missions they received would be rather peculiar, such as finding lost cats or dogs, helping truck drivers deliver goods safely to their destination, or even pretending to be bodyguards to assist someone in acting rich.
But regardless of how bizarre these NPC missions might seem initially, they would eventually lead to the main event, where one or two mythical creatures would be pitted against the mercenary players. For example, a lost cat or dog might have been captured by a Ghoul as a pet, or a truck might collide with a passing Shoggoth. In the case of someone pretending to be rich to impress a girl, the girl could turn out to be a Deep One Hybrid.
Liu Xing was curious about what Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen would encounter during their mission to teach the convenience store employee a lesson. Could the employee locked in the break room be a mythical creature?
It didn't seem likely.
As Liu Xing pondered this, the door of the break room suddenly shook as someone inside tried to break it down.
Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen exchanged a glance, then retrieved their weapons from under the cash register.
Li Hanxing wielded a pair of short spears, while Sun Huiwen held a ring-pommel saber.
Liu Xing raised an eyebrow, surprised that Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen were using cold weapons.
Apparently, they were both close combat experts.
The saying, "One shot, one kill," was no joke. With the advent of hot weapons, the decline of cold weapons became inevitable. In most cases, hot weapons had the advantage of distance and could cover an area with rapid fire. Most importantly, their power was no less than that of cold weapons.
Therefore, unless one could get close, cold weapons were at a disadvantage against hot weapons. Even "Ling Ishikawa," whose swordsmanship had reached a world-class level, still preferred to use firearms in combat.
Liu Xing couldn't help but admire Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen for daring to use cold weapons in a place like the Middle East, where bullets flew freely.
"Liu Xing, just watch, and we'll take care of this minor issue," Li Hanxing said confidently.
Just then, the door of the break room was smashed open, and a Kappa appeared before Liu Xing.
The Kappa was a traditional mythical creature in the Island Nation, not too different from a Deep One. However, it had a body structure on its head similar to a bath ring, which allowed it to store water. If the water on the Kappa's head was removed, it would be finished.
Judging by the employee uniform on the Kappa, it was likely the same one from earlier.
The Kappa glared at Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen with anger and charged at them without hesitation.
Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen remained calm. Li Hanxing swiftly and accurately thrust his spear towards the Kappa's eye, causing it to dodge just in time.
Before the Kappa could regain its balance, Sun Huiwen swung his saber at the Kappa's left arm, forcing it to roll on the ground to avoid the blow.
Li Hanxing seized the opportunity to attack again, stabbing both spears into the Kappa's shoulders, pinning it to the floor.
As the Kappa howled in agony, Sun Huiwen mercilessly swung his saber... and the Kappa fell silent.
The coordination between Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen was truly impressive, rendering the Kappa helpless.
In the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, defeating an opponent without any resistance was no easy feat. It required high attribute values and a good deal of luck during Judgment.
Of course, if it was a battle with numerical superiority, the conditions would be more relaxed, but there would still be certain requirements, especially regarding the players' teamwork.
Liu Xing believed that if he and Zhang Jingxu used cold weapons against the Kappa, they wouldn't have an easy time like Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen.
Impressed, Liu Xing said, "Your skills are truly remarkable. No wonder you passed the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall's exam module. I've heard that less than one-thousandth of players can pass it."
Sun Huiwen wiped the Kappa's blood from his saber onto its uniform and smiled, "Of course. In the real world, Li Hanxing and I are descendants of the legendary ancient Warrior Faction..."
Li Hanxing looked at Sun Huiwen helplessly and interrupted, "Stop it, Sun Huiwen. If you want to brag, do it on your own. Don't drag me into it. I'm just an ordinary martial arts enthusiast who took a few years of martial arts classes as a child. If I hadn't been lucky enough when I received my initial character card, I wouldn't have gotten this character card from the ancient Warrior Faction."
Sun Huiwen sighed and said, "Li Hanxing, why do you always have to ruin my fun? Aren't we supposed to be close brothers? Alright, I admit I was just talking nonsense. Li Hanxing and I grew up together in the real world and attended the same martial arts classes as children. But in this parallel world, we are genuine Ancient Martial Arts Successors."
Ancient Martial Arts Successors?
Liu Xing nodded, realizing that Li Hanxing and Sun Huiwen were indeed lucky to have been assigned the Ancient Martial Arts Successor character card.
In the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, Ancient Martial Arts Successors were considered rare. In the Cthulhumyth universe, ancient martial arts had become a highly polarized skill.
In the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, most skills had only two outcomes: success or failure. If further divided into combat damage skills, the damage would fall within a predetermined range after a successful Judgment.
However, ancient martial arts skills were different, as their damage range was much broader.
For example, Liu Xing had once seen a player's introduction to the "True Taijiquan" skill, which stated that after a successful Judgment, the skill's damage range would be determined by subtracting the Judgment value from the skill value and then performing another Judgment.
There were a total of 40 different damage ranges, from 1d2-1 to 10d4.
Ancient martial arts skills were either deadly or harmless, with the latter being more likely due to the difficulty of improving the skill's value.
As a result, Ancient Martial Arts Successors in the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall received highly polarized evaluations. Those with exceptional strength could single-handedly challenge any lower-ranked mythical creatures (except for Formless Offspring, which were immune to physical damage), while those with average strength might become comedic characters, dealing only 1 damage despite their impressive moves.
Based on the current situation, Sun Huiwen and Li Hanxing, as Ancient Martial Arts Successors, seemed to be quite powerful, capable of working together to defeat a mythical creature like the Kappa.
Kappa was a challenging mythical creature to deal with due to its divine nature.
As mentioned earlier, players in the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall categorized mythical creatures into three types. The first type was from the original Cthulhumyth, the second type came from traditional myths, legends, and ghost stories from various countries and regions, and the third type was created by the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall for module storylines, such as the pig head butcher in the Panlong Town module.
Among these, the traditional mythical creatures were the most interesting because they often had multiple origins, sometimes even appearing in neighboring countries or regions with identical appearances and abilities but different backstories.
For instance, the Nine-Tailed Fox had several origin stories in China, such as the Qingqiu Kingdom story, the fox-turned-spirit story, the Daji story, and more. In the Island Nation, the stories of Tamamo-no-Mae and Inari were derived from the Nine-Tailed Fox.
Consequently, the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall faced a dilemma when creating these mythical creatures, as different origin stories would result in different backgrounds. For example, if the fox-turned-spirit story was used, the Nine-Tailed Fox would be an ordinary monster, but if the Daji story was chosen, the Nine-Tailed Fox would be connected to China's powerful Old God, Nüwa.
The same was true for the Kappa, which was believed to have originated from China's water ghost and later evolved into its unique form in the Island Nation. Therefore, the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall separated the Kappa in the Island Nation from China's water ghost.
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