Chapter 236: Chapter 236 – ‘Naisser Ren’s’ Photography Skills
“Dong Chengling, Level 1 Coupling, Coupling Ability ‘Close to Worlds Apart”’: Teleport 5 meters away (both the point of origin and landing must lie on the same plane). Teleportation is not possible if the user’s surface density (area of skin, hair, etc.) is lower than the average density of the landing point. The cooldown time is 24 hours, and no resources are consumed for teleportation.”
It was only when Ren Suo returned home that he discovered he had unwittingly formed a Coupling with Dong Chengling.
The Coupling Ability was… well, interestingly hard to use.
Ren Suo used the Coupling Ability once to try it out, and he instantly felt as if he was being bound tightly by a rope and dragged towards the target location.
The next moment, he felt himself losing his balance as he instantaneously moved five meters across the living room and ended up at the entrance to the kitchen. When his feet touched the floor again, he almost fell. The instant when time and space shifted caused a severe sensation of falling over. Having already experienced it once before, Ren Suo already expected that to happen, but he still failed to respond in time.
Due to the cooldown time, Ren Suo could only try out the ability once, but he already had a certain understanding of the practicality of that ability: it was extremely challenging to put it to use.
The main reason was that Ren Suo did not have perceptive abilities at present. If he had perceptive abilities, he could use that ability to move through walls or the like.
However, at present, Ren Suo could only teleport if he could visually locate the target location, and so his movement range was limited to his field of view. At the same time, the teleportation distance was only 5 meters—he might as well walk to the target location if it was just 5 meters away and within his field of view.
It was even more useless in combat. Whether it was the 24-hour cooldown time or the severe imbalance caused by the teleportation, the teleport ability was equivalent to a ‘self-destructing truck’ that would backfire in actual combat.
“It’s not useful for now… It looks like this ability would only be practical when the Coupling Level is higher.”
Increasing the Coupling Level was not something that could be done overnight, so Ren Suo also put that matter aside for the time being. Since the students at the Heavenly Institution of Lian were currently on their vacation break, Ren Suo only focused on practicing the “Secret Records of Glorious Xuan” at home, apart from eating his meals.
His progress was now tier 1, 73%, not far from tier 2. In August when he received his pay, along with the Reiki stones, and when he was promoted to tier 2, he would be able to purchase the more practical tier 2 abilities in the Knowledge Web.
Tier 1 was the barrier between the ordinary and the extraordinary, while Tier 2 was the barrier between ordinary Practitioners and ‘Practitioners who could make themselves be valued’.
In the Knowledge Web, Ren Suo could see that there were many tier 2 abilities that involved physical changes and energy changes. Those abilities were far more useful than the tier 1 abilities [Clothes] and [Lock], which only caused changes in Reiki.
Moreover, the healing ability [Heal], the pain-relieving ability [Subside], as well as [Starve], an ability which allowed the user to feel energized despite not eating for an entire day, were all tier 2 abilities.
Practitioners should not only be weapons of war but also function as production units. Although Xuan Nation was still figuring its way through the era of Reiki rejuvenation, the abilities available in the Knowledge Web were testament to the wild ambitions of the nation: they were nurturing Practitioners to become ‘pillars of society’, and not just solely engaging in an ‘Extraordinaire arms race’ with other nations.
Nonetheless, although Ren Suo wanted to practice during such a lull period, his wristband vibrated numerous times over the past few days—
His meeting with Nancy that day was not insignificant—ever since that day, the number of problems asked on the ‘Heavenly Ren Task Force’ increased significantly.
“Deep Dive Into Naisser Ren’s Camera Placements”
“How to Stop Naisser Ren at the Entrance to Mystery Realms”
“Possibility of Possessing Naisser Ren”
Indeed, the task force was not to be taken as a fool. Notwithstanding other suspicions, ‘Naisser Ren’ recorded videos of the process of virtually every Extraordinary event. There was no doubt that the mystery realm was similarly a large-scale Extraordinary event, so they were almost 100% certain that ‘Naisser Ren’ would appear in the mystery realm.
The only problem was, how would they be able to catch Naisser Ren.
Xuan Nation had already begun negotiations with other nations where mystery realms appeared in, requesting to jointly explore the mystery realms and search for ‘Naisser Ren’. At that juncture, Ren Suo finally understood why the Watchmen of the Federation knew information about the mystery realm in Xuan Nation—it was most likely that Xuan Nation had used that information to entice the other nations to divulge their intelligence.
However, although the questions posed were related to Naisser Ren, they were simply too ‘advanced’—they deduced the locations ‘Naisser Ren’ would record videos from if he were to enter the mystery realm, based on the scenes, light paths, and positions of the cameras in ‘Naisser Ren’s’ past videos.
They even deduced, very quickly, the positions of and the type of recording equipment used, based on the variations of light at the scene.
The reason why they made such strange deductions was because of a major premise: that ‘Naisser Ren’ would release a video related to the mystery realms! The format of the videos was according to current recording standards, which meant that ‘Naisser Ren’ would very likely bring along a DV video camera into the mystery realm for recording. At the minimum, the scenes within the mystery realms had to be stored within the DV camera.
Another possibility was that ‘Naisser Ren’ could have captured the scenes within the mystery realm from afar, then subsequently recorded it into DV format. However, such a method was rejected by many researchers from the beginning. That was because the videos uploaded by ‘Naisser Ren’ so far were all 4K HD videos, and there was completely no evidence of blurriness caused by re-recording.
Furthermore, many researchers also asserted that ‘Naisser Ren’s’ recording skills were top-notch—the amount of light, the vibrancy of colors, the angle and framing of the shot… it was simply exceptional.
However, Ren Suo thought that those researchers who finally had the chance to showcase their ‘talents in photography’ were merely trying to gain more points, which was why they rejected the possibility that ‘Naisser Ren’ would make use of extraordinary abilities to record the videos. Those questions which Ren Suo could not answer had already garnered six to seven accepted discussion replies.
As Ren Suo read through the serious discussions on the thread, he felt that it was funny but was envious at the same time—he also wished that he could gain points just like that!
Ren Suo logged in to the intranet again as he muttered, “Is it another one of such questions…” Although he did not have the relevant knowledge in such areas, as a special advisor, he still had to express his opinions, even if he did not have an answer. Without a doubt, his replies were all hidden automatically (due to not having any reference value).
Unexpectedly, the question posed this time was no longer about ‘Naisser Ren’.
“Basic Analysis of Mage and Relevant Questions”
The post detailed information about Mage, including the various self-sacrificing Forbidden Spells which he revealed and the healing ability and combat ability of Mage. Other related information was also included, such as ‘unpurified monsters in the mystery realm can only be killed by Mage’, ‘the Mage under the World Tree is not afraid to sacrifice himself”, and that ‘monsters in the mystery realm would revive infinitely’.
At the end of the post, a question was raised: “There has been a total of three witness reports of the Mage. The first time, there was only one female mage as the Mage’s companion; the second time, there were three female mages as his companions; the fourth time, there were four female mages as his companions. Furthermore, the male mage was sacrificed almost every single time, but more male mages were not sent. On the other hand, after one battle ended, the female mages would appear in the subsequent mystery realm to continue fighting. Please analyze the pattern of appearance of the mages across the mystery realms.”
Surely, when the logic of the game was portrayed in reality, it would still feel very strange to some if Ren Suo used the ‘World Tree’ to support his assertions.
The reason why there was only one male mage was simply because there was only one game character… Additionally, it was because the companions were all female mages that Ren Suo chose a male mage.
He must have been thinking then: “Who knows, sparks could fly between the main character and the female NPC, and there could perhaps be cheeky bathtub scenes, hot spring scenes, confession scenes or the like…”
However, it was only when he cleared the game that it was made known to Ren Suo that the female mages were all part of Librom’s harem…
As for why the female mages appeared one by one in each subsequent mystery realm, it was clearly because they correspondingly introduced each checkpoint to the player and acted as support—that was all just a predefined setting of the game.
“Okay, how should I explain all of this now…?”
It was fun to blabber nonsense at the moment, but the loopholes would end up a chore to fill later on.
People on Earth would likely be skeptical and not quite convinced about what Mage said, but… what if it was the truth that someone on Earth conjectured?