Chapter 51 - Ways to Awaken the Extraordinary Seed (Part 1)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Once he left the mission hall, he looked at the players around him who had started to move back and forth, still feeling a little excited and uneasy.

There had been a sudden increase in the number of players, and the entire camp had begun to become slightly chaotic. Most of the players were just as shocked and curious as they had been when they entered the game for the first time. Other than a small minority, the majority of the players who were entering during this wave had been brought in by the previous fifty players. They heard about it from their friends or relatives boasting about the game dozens of times before, but even so, being shocked by the realism was simply unavoidable.

Everyone was full of curiosity about all aspects of the camp. After staying in the camp for a while, many people began to walk around the base.

Only this time, Meng Yang did not have anyone stop them, and allowed them to explore on their own. He had a rough sequence of processes planned out and had arranged for someone to offer simple guidance and explanations near the summoning circle. Everything else was open for exploration, and the players were allowed to go crazy.

Furthermore, once they had squandered about enough to realize that their resurrection time would be greatly extended due to a lack of contribution toward the magic crystal, they would naturally get back to work. Coupled with the prestige feedback mechanism of other players, they would naturally be on the right track.

As for whether the prestige mall would cause the financial system to collapse because of the players’ high prestige point, Meng Yang did not think too much about it. Since there was no financial system here, he would just change the name or patch it if the prestige system did not work out.

In Meng Yang’s opinion, it would be useful to have these things at hand for now, as it could act as an incentive. Right now, he had to rely on his own capabilities to create a complete system so that the players could play before he would slowly follow up with patches.

He was now mainly observing the changes and chemistry between the players and survivors, and trying to see if there would be any conflicts and unexpected changes. If there were, he needed to solve it in time.

Meng Yang felt that he was now an old farmer watching his vegetable field. There were now rows of leeks, and he wanted to use all of these people to get the most benefits possible.

After passing through the mission hall, Meng Yang quickly came to a blank space outside the camp. This area was not big, and it was surrounded by a small fortress built on the original old buildings, such that there was only a tiny area in which they could move about.

At this time, almost two dozen players had squeezed into this area which was about half the size of a basketball court. It included men and women, with all of them being part of the second beta players group who had previously helped during the battle against the gnolls. After seeing the four players that had awakened the Extraordinary Seed, they could not contain their excitement any longer.

Once they had entered the game, they swarmed over after they heard the news that Phoenix could teach them the methods to awaken the Extraordinary Seed. Players were always eager to improve stats such as their strength, especially when their prestige points were not high enough to trade for a potion. If this was the case, choosing to learn from Phoenix was one of the only viable options to awaken the Extraordinary Seed.

These players had all reached Meng Yang’s requirement of having more than 100 prestige points. After all, Phoenix would only be training them once they had reached this fundamental condition.

The way to check the player’s prestige was also quite simple. Meng Yang had provided Phoenix with a magic crystal panel of her own. Once a player extended their hand and touched the connection point Meng Yang had built through the Summoning Pixie on the panel, the player’s prestige data would appear on it.

It was similar to the design in the prestige mall. This was inside the contract agreement between the summoner and the summoned creatures. Meng Yang could get the player’s data, and it would be possible for him to show it to the others as well.

If he had not prepared this, only Meng Yang would have been able to tinker and play with the entire prestige system, with zero real-world interaction with the people of the Land of the Forgotten. He would have been exhausted, and it would be impossible to allow for anymore players to enter.

Meng Yang’s original plan was only to let some of the players be qualified to take lessons on how to awaken the Extraordinary Seed. This was also so that the numbers of players would be manageable. Despite this, Phoenix had overridden him and stated that prestige did not matter at all, and that they could come as long as they were willing to learn. The number of people was never the key. After all, there were always very few people who could awaken the Extraordinary Seed through training anyway.

Of course, there were still some other players who had chosen to learn the way of self-awakening from Hera. However, Hera’s method was more troublesome than Phoenix’s. Not only did they have to reach a certain level of prestige, but players also had to complete the task of collecting materials requested by Hera.

“This is so boring!”

“Can you really awaken the Extraordinary Seed this way?”

“I feel like we’re training to have iron skin right now!”

“That’s not it. This is more like platooning with hard Qigong1.”

“I’ll be vomiting blood soon if we continue hitting like this. Hey, buddy, can’t you do it lightly?”

“F*ck, you struck me too hard earlier.”

…

When Meng Yang appeared, he walked in to see more than two dozen players holding a wooden stick in one hand, continually beating and attacking each other. The strikes were so powerful that many of them had been beaten until their flesh was torn to shreds, but they were still grinning whilst talking and laughing.

“Isn’t this self-abuse?”

Meng Yang was puzzled when he saw the scene from the side. He also wanted to learn the way to awaken the Extraordinary Seed from Phoenix. However, at this moment, the actions of the players in front of him was nothing short of masochistic.

Meng Yang was not the only one who thought about this. Many of the players present were confused as well. Since everyone wanted to awaken the Extraordinary Seed, it was not purely self-abuse.

“Everyone halt.”

Phoenix watched as everyone beat each other for a short while before slowly walking amongst the players. At this time, her dress up was a little different from her usual hooded windbreaker with a bow and strapped to her back. Instead, she wore close-fitting leather armor, which showed off her beautiful curves. It was so attractive that many of the male players could not keep their eyes off her.

The game had to have eye candy. Up until now, Phoenix was the only character that conformed with many of the players’ preferred aesthetics. She was powerful, mysterious, and had an exquisite appearance coupled with a perfect body. She was the so-called ideal model of female NPCs in-game modeling.

“Motherf*cker, don’t look at my goddess with that perverted gaze.”

Liu Chuanfeng breathed rapidly and gasped when he noticed the eyes of the players who were almost sticking onto Phoenix’s body. His anger was uncontrollable this moment.

“Big bro, you’re being too much right now!”

“Right, Phoenix belongs to everyone!”

“Are you made of lemon essence? Why are you so sour?!”

…

Many of the players laughed and teased Liu Chuanfeng.

This guy really regarded himself as Phoenix’s number one dog and was taking his favorability seriously.

The movement in Xu Zhe’s hands had stopped as well. Even though pain tolerance had been lowered, the feeling of fatigue was still there. Even if there was no specific pain, his whole body had been struck so many times that his muscles were sore and weak due to the many movements. It made it feel like he was carrying dozens of pounds of sandbags, which made his body heavy and sluggish.

“Quiet.”

Looking at the somewhat chaotic group of players, Phoenix shushed them in a low voice. She walked to the front of the group of players and slowly said,

“The so-called Extraordinary Seeds represents the full capacity and untapped talents of your body. The first step was to let you attack one another to stimulate your qi and blood, as well as your willpower. Next, you’ll be entering the official stage where I’ll be teaching you a set of techniques for tempering your body.”

“Hey, the show’s about to begin.”

“I’m so excited!”

The noisy players suddenly calmed down, and all of them looked at Phoenix with anticipation.

Meng Yang observed all this from a distance and was also full of expectation.

Despite this, soon, both the players and Meng Yang became slightly dazed.

Unexpectedly, Phoenix started to practice a set of exercises similar to a combination of gymnastics and yoga. There were thirteen movements in total. Although several movements were not easy, they were still comparable to complicated yoga movements. Even so, this was still far below everyone’s expectations.

“It was never a simple matter to awaken the Extraordinary Seed. It requires a strong physique, difficult training, and the strongest willpower.”

After performing the thirteen moves, Phoenix glanced at the players dimly. “After awakening the Extraordinary Seed, you’ll merely be a first-order Extraordinaire. Then, there will be second-order, third-order, and a long road to go. Every step requires countless amounts of effort and sweat. I’ve given you what you needed; the rest will be up to you.”

“Start, start!”

Once Phoenix finished her instructions, the players began to practice the movements she had shown one by one.

The basic dozen movements were easily remembered by anyone that saw them. However, they were harder to execute. Especially when their basic in-game attributes were practically the same as that of their real bodies, hence many could not perform a lot of the movements.

“I’m slipping away! Big bro’s here to play some games, not exercise my body!”

“It feels like a scam and completely useless. I thought we could straightforwardly learn the skills!”

“Hey, she already mentioned what you’ll need is a strong physique, difficult training, and the strongest will. You can’t awaken unless you have these things.”

“This is no different from practicing Tai Chi at home.”

“No, these movements are still challenging. I think it’ll not be easy to do any of them.”

“Should we go and have a look at the self-awakening section?”

“Didn’t they say that self-awakening will be more difficult than this?”

“F*ck, this game is imbalanced!’

“I told you so. The potion is the key. Let’s scram and do the missions. If we have enough prestige, we can trade it into potions.”

In just over ten minutes, all the players in the training ground had walked away. Everyone felt as if they were being tricked.

Many of them actually thought that it would be a straightforward learning process, then they would be able to acquire the skills quickly. In the end, they would still have to practice for a long time.

It could be said that the higher the expectations, the higher the cost. Even so, there was no lying nor misunderstandings as she had mentioned countless times before that this goal needed constant cultivation to achieve.

However, everyone was here to play games. Who would have the kind of patience to come in here and exercise? Those who were willing might not even know about the existence of this game.

Of course, there were still a few of them who remained; Those that did not want to give up and continued trying.

Liu Chuanfeng was one of those people. At this moment, he was desperately trying to stretch his legs. In Phoenix’s earlier example, there was a movement that looked like a galloping horse treading on a flying swallow, and he could not seem to get it right regardless of how many times he tried.

“Master, aren’t you leaving?” Xu Zhe looked at Liu Chuanfeng’s strenuous appearance and could not help asking.

“I’ll try again. Perhaps I’ll awaken once I’ve reached the standard of these movements.” Liu Chuanfeng replied as he panted.

“Then, you continue to work hard. I’ll do some missions to trade prestige for the potions.” Xu Zhe shook his head, turned around, and got ready to leave. Even though he had been upset for failing to awaken after taking the potion, there were still opportunities to succeed as long as he continued trying.