Chapter 1 The Afternoon

That afternoon, Ruoyu went out to run some errands after lunch. Feng Bujue was home alone, with nothing to do, so he lay down in the game pod once more.

After arriving in the login space, Jue-Ge looked at his friends list and found that Xiao Tan and the others were all offline. After a moment of thought... he went into the storage room, took out that long-dusty [“Poker Hero” hero ID card], and then returned to the elevator.

Jue-Ge was now level fifty, a full seven levels higher than when he last entered the Free Exploration Mode. Therefore... he felt it was about time to participate in the "Universal Super-alliance’s" "Hero Level Test."

[Madness is Justice, Level 50]

[Please select the game mode you wish to join.]

[You have selected Free Exploration Mode.]

[Each entry into this mode will cost 20,000 game coins. Please confirm this operation.]

With a few quick and practiced operations, Jue-Ge selected the game mode and clicked the confirm option.

[Confirmed...]

[Searching for a multiverse currently being explored. Connect?]

If the player selected "No" here, a dialogue box would immediately pop up on the touchscreen asking "Do you want to randomly select a new multiverse?". However, Jue-Ge had no intention of changing universes.

[Loading begins, please wait.]

"Welcome to Thriller Paradise," the system voice sounded as the elevator began to move.

[Loading complete. You are currently in Free Exploration Mode.]

[This mode has no quest system, no time limit, and no negative game judgment.]

[You can travel between the login space and the script world via the “Safe House” (each entry into this mode will cost 20,000 game coins).]

[Script has begun.]

When the elevator doors opened, the first thing that caught Jue-Ge's eye was a rather small bathroom. Stepping out of the bathroom, Jue-Ge arrived in his dormitory, code-named "z250."

Unlike his first entry, this time the system no longer required Jue-Ge to "leave the safe house within five minutes."

"Hmm... how long of a time span did I choose when I left last time..." Sitting down in the room, Feng Bujue began to recall some details from his last visit, "Oh, right... three cosmic hours." He muttered, touching his chin, "That is to say... in the eyes of the people in this universe, I've been in the room for three cosmic weeks (the universal unit of time in this universe, roughly equivalent to one hour). As far as 'adjusting my condition' goes, that's enough time, right?"

When he first exited this script world, he had already considered... pretending to have "rested for a while," so he chose a moderate round-trip time span (the other four options were one minute, one hour, twelve hours, and forty-eight hours).

"So... let me see." Then, Feng Bujue used the computer in the room to check where he wanted to go, "Hmm... it's quite close, I can walk there (this asteroid has a very sound, free transportation system)."

After confirming his destination, he left the dormitory and headed towards the "testing area" of this Universal Super-alliance.

The last time he was here, Foil-Paper Hero and Dr. Eternity personally took Jue-Ge through all the procedures and explained a lot of basic information about the Universal Super-alliance to him. With Jue-Ge's ability to learn chuunibyou knowledge, he naturally remembered all this information firmly—heroes who obtain registration qualifications in the Universal Super-alliance must undergo the "Hero Level Test" within forty cosmic weeks after registering their "hero ID," otherwise their registered ID will be directly revoked.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as "abilities too strong to be tested" or "mental or physical damage not yet healed"... they can submit a written statement to the alliance to postpone or waive the test.

…………

To make a long story short, about twenty minutes later, Feng Bujue leisurely arrived at his destination.

Level testing usually doesn't require queuing, so after Jue-Ge chatted with a blue-skinned alien with a horse-shoe-shaped face at the service desk in front of the testing area, the other party signaled for him to go in.

The entrance passage to the testing area was very interesting. There were a total of ten entrances, seven of which were arranged like steps, from small to large. This was clearly for aliens of different sizes to pass through. The other three entrances... were the same size, but each door was covered with a force field of a different color. These three were for "non-corporeal beings," "beings unable to stop moving," and "super-adaptive beings" to pass through.

Feng Bujue entered through door number three, which was about four meters high and three meters wide, and classified as a "small to medium-sized corporeal being."

After passing through a metal通道 hundreds of meters long, Jue-Ge saw a large device like an airport security checkpoint ahead. Next to the device stood a coffee-colored skinned guy with a face like a fathead fish.

"Hello," the fish-head guy took the initiative to greet him as Jue-Ge approached.

"Hello," Feng Bujue replied.

"Please put your ID card here," the fish-head guy pointed to a slot next to the testing device.

Feng Bujue did as he was told, and then passed through the checkpoint under his guidance.

As he passed through the checkpoint, all the items on his body (his luggage was a dimensional pocket, so the items inside could not be scanned) appeared on the display screen next to the device, and each item automatically popped up with a brief annotation. For example, [Magazine], the annotation was "Ammunition for filling firearms in the Secondary Technology Era"; another example was [Bell's Daily Knife], the annotation was "A cold weapon with super-causality function."

"Okay, the authentication is complete, you can go in," the fish-head guy didn't show any surprise at the items Jue-Ge was carrying, acting as if he was used to it, and said with a normal expression (for a fish-head), "The tests are conducted in batches, and the staff inside will guide you through them; after all the items have been tested, wait for half a cosmic week, and you can go to the card collection point to pick up your card and leave." He paused, "At that time, your ID card will have been upgraded to the version of your current level."

"Understood," Feng Bujue nodded and continued forward.

After walking another two hundred meters and turning a corner, Jue-Ge's eyes widened as he saw a very vast space.

This place was like a super-large stadium, filled with many strange large testing machines and gym equipment-like things. At this moment, many aliens of various shapes were undergoing tests inside, and there were also many staff members.

Arriving here, Feng Bujue deeply felt that... at least in this parallel universe, humans could only be considered a "minority." Looking around, there were very few guys in the venue who looked like "people."

"Hero name?"

While Jue-Ge was still looking around, a tall staff member composed of spheres and cylinders walked up to him and asked straight to the point.

"Uh..." Feng Bujue sized up the other party and replied, "Poker Hero."

"Oh..." The other party also looked at him, and looked down at the tablet in his hand, "Earthling, are you... okay, follow me."