Despite being surrounded by monsters at level 250 and higher, Xu Tao remained calm.
"M-Mr. Master..." But Yifa, newly awakened and faced with grotesque, gigantic monsters all of a sudden, was visibly shaken.
She clutched the hem of Xu Tao’s robe, as if praying not to be left behind.
Right now, Yifa had no ans of surviving an attack from level 250 monsters. Thus, Xu Tao understood her reaction—and given her appearance, he even found it a little endearing.
With confidence, he patted her head gently and reassured her. "Don’t worry. These are just scrubs."
Without another word, he opened his fan to the seventh and eighth ribs. In the next instant, sand spikes erupted from the ground, launching all the giant scorpions—Death Stingers—straight into the sky.
"Hmph!"
With a single sword hand, he manipulated his sword to pierce through the monsters’ eyes—like a needle stitching cloth. The blade entered one socket and exited the other, destroying the creatures’ brains within monts.
Before the giant bodies even hit the ground, they had already began pixelating into loot boxes mid-fall, like deleted enemies in a ga, as system notifications rang in his ears.
"..."
Yifa’s mouth hung open.
She could tell that Xu Tao’s current cultivation was far below his real-world level. Yet he effortlessly defeated the monsters surrounding them.
"Is this... a dream?" she whispered, pinching her cheek.
But the sting in her cheek was far too real to ignore.
"This place is sothing like a ga world, from what I can tell," Xu Tao began explaining as he walked forward, grabbing loot boxes one after another. "Just like you, I lost all my cultivation when I arrived. But it should return without issue once you log out."
As promised, he began explaining their situation—albeit compressing a mountain of detail into a few sentences.
"Log out...?" But that was all she needed to hear. "You an... I can leave this place?"
"Yes." Xu Tao gave a small nod. "Though in the first place, how did you even get here? I didn’t think anyone else could hitch a ride into this world..."
"That..."
Yifa tried to recall what had happened and recounted it without a hint of deception.
"When Mr. Master entered the pod, I... snuck in and snuggled against your body," she said, her eyes drifting to the side. "I-It was just a little playful trick to tease the young lady... but the next mont, I found myself here..."
"...I see."
Just from her words alone, it was hard to tell exactly what had occurred.
Still, seeing her this ek felt strange to Xu Tao. He rembered how proudly and freely she’d acted in the real world. She’d even attacked him out of nowhere, almost like she was testing him.
"Then, how can I log out?" Yifa asked, cutting straight to the point.
"You should see a cog icon for the nu, right? Should be in the upper-right corner of your vision."
"Hmm?"
Yifa looked around—first shifting her gaze, then turning her head, then eventually spinning her entire body in a slow, confused circle.
After her third full turn, Xu Tao placed a firm hand on her head, stopping her in place.
"Just your gaze is fine. No need to spin like a top. You can even access it by touch."
He explained this with a faint smile, amused to see soone even more clueless than he had been on his first entry. However—
"...Nope. I don’t see any cogs."
—Yifa’s words made him pause.
"Really? Look closely. There should be a pure white cog, about the size of your thumb," he said, narrowing his gaze at her.
Doing so should have made her na pop up above her head—but nothing appeared. "The fuck is this...?" he muttered, confused.
Of course, being new to gas himself, Xu Tao didn’t know what a "bug" was. So instead, he tried checking the system logs for any anomalies. Since Yifa had co with him, there had to be a note sowhere about her presence.
As he scrolled upward, passing through hundreds of kill notifications and thousands of loot logs, he finally reached the earliest entries after arriving.
[You have successfully logged in! Manifesting at recorded coordinates... Success!]
[Warning! A foreign unit has been dragged into the teleportation of your body!]
[The unit does not have a system. Would you like to share your system with the unit?]
"Oh, this must be it." Xu Tao nodded, relieved.
After reviving the notification log with a long press, he tapped the "Yes" button.
"...!"
The mont he did, Yifa’s body jolted. Within her verdant eyes, a golden loop appeared, flickering briefly as her gaze locked onto sothing invisible mid-air.
"The... Lost System?" she murmured, seemingly reading sothing.
"Yes, yes, that’s it!" Xu Tao smiled, glad it finally appeared. "Now, there should be a cog icon in your view."
"...Yes, there is."
As if in a trance, Yifa raised her hands and began navigating the invisible interface. She tapped cautiously at first, then her fingers began dancing faster, gaining speed and confidence.
Despite it being her first ti in a VR environnt, she navigated the system panel almost as well as Xu Tao did.
After a few exploratory taps, she reached the Logout button and pressed it—
[Error! Cooldown not over! Ti remaining before logout is available: 245:50:24]
—an error screen popped up before both of them.
A rough ntal calculation told them they couldn’t log out again for another ten days!
Xu Tao, with his sharp mory and strong arithtic skills, quickly deduced sothing more troubling.
"The first cooldown was just over three days... Now it’s over ten. Is it tripling every ti I go between worlds?"
If that were the case, the next ti he logged out, he’d have to stay on Earth for a whole month before logging back in again!
"No, it’s too early to assu that. First, I need to figure out how much ti passed in the real world while I was gone..."
As he sank into thought, a soft voice interrupted him.
"I... can’t log out for ten days?"
Xu Tao looked over and saw Yifa’s confused face. He sighed.
"Unfortunately, it seems that way," he said. "For now, follow back to our base. It’ll be safer to spend ti there than out in the open—and before that, open your character panel and allocate your free points to Cultivation. It should help."
"Stats? Cultivation...?"
Yifa was puzzled.
Given her advanced age, it wasn’t strange that she’d never played digital gas before. But she did have so familiarity with modern technology—after all, she owned a smartphone. That made navigating the nu easier.
Following Xu Tao’s instructions, she opened the character panel and dumped all three available points into her Cultivation stat.
The mont she did, she felt a change.
Three drops of Qi flowed into her Dantian from nowhere, raising her cultivation to the 1st Stage of Body Refinent—just one drop away from reaching the 2nd Stage!
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