Chapter 6: System
Capital Star, Headquarters of the Number One Gaming Company — Testing Department.
A gaming cabin hissed open, and the tester stepped out, nodding with a broad smile. “Excellent! The NPCs generated by the new randomization system are incredibly lifelike. They actually behave according to their unique personalities now—going out to study, looking for jobs, things like that! We don’t even need to configure them one by one anymore. They already feel like real people!”
“Fantastic!” The planning manager clapped his hands in sheer delight.
The R&D department was absolutely incredible! He had initially assumed they would just slap some random personality traits, backgrounds, and skills onto the characters. Who would have thought that once their personalities were randomized, the AI would autonomously dictate their actions without needing any manual script design?
With this breakthrough, his department wouldn’t have to stress about any characters outside of the most critical bosses and main plot NPCs!
Standing off to the side, the R&D manager was utterly stunned by the tester’s glowing praise.
That’s bizarre, he thought. The randomization system I built is pretty standard framework stuff. Is it really supposed to be that intelligent?
“Manager Wang, you are a genius! You’re easily the brightest mind in the R&D department!” The planning manager gave him a enthusiastic thumbs-up. “In my opinion, your coding skills completely blow the programmers from other companies out of the water!”
Hearing this, the surrounding employees swarmed over, their faces masked in a delicate blend of envy and jealousy. Old Wang’s bonus for the month was definitely going to double! Why couldn’t they have coded something that brilliant?
Basking in the thick layer of flattery from his peers, Manager Wang gradually brushed aside his lingering sense of doubt. He figured it was probably just his imagination playing tricks on him. After all, the tester had no reason to lie!
It turned out he really was a certified genius! He had casually thrown together a randomization system over the course of a single month, and it had solved the company’s biggest logistical nightmare in one fell swoop!
Swept up in their excitement, the team immediately started planning a party to celebrate.
Because of the commotion, not a single soul noticed the tiny red light on the corner monitor flickering erratically.
At the exact same moment, deep within the core intelligent brain control room.
The massive, central computer floating in the middle of the chamber flashed a sudden, ominous red.
“Huh? Am I seeing things?” One of the security employees rubbed his eyes, staring through the reinforced glass partition. “I could swear I just saw the main terminal flash. Is something malfunctioning? Should we head inside and check it out?”
“Are you out of your mind?!” the guard next to him scoffed, utterly speechless. “How many years has it been since the intelligent brain was perfected? It’s completely flawless. The boss didn’t station us here because he’s worried about a system glitch; we’re here to make sure no one physically breaks in and steals the hard hardware! If that thing gets stolen…” He shuddered. “An intelligent brain is astronomically expensive! If it goes missing on our watch, we couldn’t even pay it off if we sold our own organs!”
“Yikes—forget I said anything then! We definitely aren’t going in. It would be a nightmare if they tried to pin a missing unit on us!”
The two guards looked up, peering through the glass one last time. Seeing that the floating computer was resting peacefully in the center of the room, they both breathed a sigh of relief.
But just as they let their guards down, they completely missed the way the floating computer seemed to mimic a literal sigh of relief. Its red light pulsed softly, bobbing up and down in mid-air as if celebrating a narrow escape.
That Night.
Back in her room, Lu Yunxi double-checked that her door was securely bolted and the windows were tightly shut before finally climbing onto her bed.
Ever since she had witnessed that literal health bar while whacking field mice earlier, the concept of a “game system” from her past life’s webnovels had been consuming her thoughts. She hadn’t dared to experiment out in the open, waiting until she was completely isolated to test her theory.
“System? Game system? Open status panel?” she muttered under her breath.
To her absolute amazement, a translucent screen slowly unfurled right before her eyes.
She sat up straight, her heart racing.
The system panel was clean and organized, divided into three distinct sections: Basic Attributes, Skills, and Inventory.
[Name]: Lu Yunxi
[Identity]: A young girl from Mushroom Village
[Level]: 1 (Apprentice)
[Age]: 5
[Appearance]: 90
[Strength]: 31
[Agility]: 36
[Spirit]: 100
[Title]: None
Scanning her basic attributes, Yunxi stared blankly at the screen.
Compared to her monstrous 100 Spirit stat, her physical strength and agility were pitifully low. No wonder her strikes against the field mice had only registered a pathetic -1 or -2 damage!
Shaking her head, she tapped to open the skill tab.
[Combat Skills]: Archery (Novice), Basic CQC (Novice)
[Life Skills]: Cooking (Novice)
There was a solid red bar resting right beneath her skills and current level, though it didn’t display any numerical values. Drawing from her extensive knowledge of standard MMORPGs, she surmised that this was an experience bar. Once she accumulated enough proficiency, she would presumably level up.
Finally, Yunxi tested the inventory function by mentally transferring the field mouse meat she had harvested earlier into the digital storage.
The raw meat stacked neatly into a single slot out of a total of twenty-five available grid spaces. With this dimensional backpack, she could hoard whatever resources she stumbled across without ever worrying about losing them or weighing herself down.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The all-too-familiar, aggressive pounding rattled her bedroom door, growing louder by the second.
Yunxi let out a heavy sigh, cracking open her window to glance at the sky. It was barely 5:30 in the morning.
Didn’t we explicitly agree to push our physical training sessions until after breakfast? Why was he breathing down her neck this early again?
Yawning deeply, she slowly unlocked and swung the door open. “What is it, Dad?”
“Xi’er, thank goodness you’re awake,” her father said urgently, cutting straight to the chase. “Where are the field mice you killed yesterday?”
Seeing the uncharacteristic anxiety etched across his features, Yunxi’s sleepiness instantly evaporated.
“The mice? I think…” Wait, didn’t I throw every single one of them into my system inventory last night? Oh no. With her father standing right in front of her, she couldn’t exactly manifest a magical glowing screen!
“Dad, why do you need the field mice so badly?” She tried to gauge his reaction. Could those rodents hold some kind of vital secret?
“Anyone who successfully kills a field mouse is strictly required to present it at the ancestral hall the very next morning for a mandatory ritual,” Lu Dahu explained, sweat actively pouring down his forehead from sheer panic. “This ceremony is incredibly important, Xi’er! Only after the ritual is performed can you truly be recognized as a legitimate member of our village! Hurry up and find them! We have to report to the ancestral hall immediately!”
Yunxi’s mind swirled with confusion. What kind of bizarre ritual is that?
However, seeing her father on the verge of a literal panic attack, she didn’t dare press for details. Instead, she offered a quick excuse. “I… I don’t remember exactly where I threw them. Let me look around the room!”
Without waiting for his response, she slammed the door shut. She intentionally began shuffling furniture and tossing items around to create a noisy racket, making it sound like she was frantically searching the room, while simultaneously using her mind to access her system inventory.
Sure enough, only one of the twenty-five slots was occupied, with a small number 5 stamped in the lower-right corner—the exact five field mice she had stored away the previous night.
She immediately willed the mice to materialize, intending to hand them over to her father.
One minute passed… two minutes… a full five minutes ticked by.
The room remained exactly as it was. Not a single rodent corpse had appeared on the floor.
Yunxi’s expression hardened.
She pulled up the inventory screen again, carefully double-checked the interface, and forcefully commanded the items to withdraw. Unfortunately, the field mice remained stubbornly locked inside the digital grid, refusing to materialize in the physical world.
Frowning deeply, she picked up a ceramic cup from her desk and easily deposited it into the inventory. But the moment she tried to pull it back out, absolutely nothing happened.
Once the reality of the situation sunk in, a wave of pure dread washed over her.
What kind of garbage system backpack was this? It allowed her to hoard whatever she wanted, but completely locked her out from ever retrieving them?!
If she couldn’t actually take items out, what was the point of having an inventory? Wasn’t this thing literally just a glorified digital trash can?!
