Chapter 020 Skill Selection (Part 2)
Ke Mingye had barely played any games in his past life, only occasional rounds of Minesweeper and Tetris. His head was always buried in literature, and just when he got into university majoring in literature, he found himself transported to another world. As a result, he had little concept of the terms and core gameplay that many games revolved around.
Fortunately, the former inhabitant of this body was without doubt a web-addicted teen who, starting from the age of six, had played every game adapted from real superhuman figures, ranging from single-player to pay-to-win mobile games, and he had dabbled in all the popular ones.
It must be said that the capitalists of this world also had their own set of slick money-making schemes, from superhero movies to figurines and clothing, then to client-based games, and finally, the most critical moneymaker: the superhero mobile games. They crammed Magic Girls, super villains, and superheroes with superpowers into the games, luring players into the game to pay for unlocking heroes based on their popularity in real life.
Therefore, having inherited the memories of his predecessor, Ke Mingye now effectively had ten years of web-addicted teen experience and naturally wouldn't fall short in understanding various games...
You must know that all the skills in this game were exorbitantly priced, far surpassing items and equipment of the same level, so the opportunity for a "free skill selection" laid before him was extraordinarily precious, and to say it could directly determine the entire early progression of the game wasn't an exaggeration.
In Ke Mingye's view, if his situation were likened to a game, then the early main theme of this game would inevitably include elements like "spy," "assassin," "romance development," "family-friendly," "campus life," and so on, before gradually revealing its true nature, transforming into a full-fledged "Musou hack and slash game."
All that spy stuff, campus romance development, family-friendly themes—get as far away from me as possible. No more pretending; players would switch to mowing down mode like Zhao Yun in "Dynasty Warriors," slashing through hordes on the battlefield, killing from the Arctic to Antarctica, clearing the Earth of grunts, focusing on blood and violence, with the occasional need to call on teammates to gang up and fight when facing a boss like "Lv Bu," just to avoid a beating.
But that was the late game strategy. If one only focused on the late game and skipped the early and mid-game, Ke Mingye would definitely be picking skills like "Invincible Overlord Fist" or "Super Genesis Light Wave," without thinking twice, grabbing them all decisively, considering everything for the sake of killing as easily as mowing the lawn.
However, given that he was currently in the early stage of the game, he had to choose his skills based on doing his undercover work well; otherwise, forget reaching the "fighting feels awesome" phase—he'd choke in frustration with an early Game Over without any talk of later stages.
In summary, the strength of the skills wasn't as important as imagined; selecting the most fitting skills out of the ten available that matched his current situation was the urgent priority.
Ke Mingye's gaze scanned over the descriptions of each skill, weighing the value of each.
The No. 1 skill, "100% Slap," an E-rank skill, ensures a slap will hit an enemy. It's a fearsome causality skill, but its limitation is that it only deals fixed damage, so it's not very useful and was passed over directly.
The No. 2 skill, "Snap Finger Gun," a D-rank skill, allows you to enter the "Snap Finger Gun" mode for five seconds. Every snap of the right hand fires an air bullet forward, with the damage linked to the player's "Physical Fitness."
"The more snaps in five seconds, the more air bullets fired in that period, sounds pretty interesting…" Ke Mingye thought as he tried snapping his fingers a few times in the empty classroom and then gave up. With the agility of his fingers, he couldn't manage multiple snaps in a short period, so this skill wasn't cost-effective for him.
If it were Tengmura Satoruyuki who had broken the Guinness World Record by snapping 296 times in a minute, perhaps this skill would have been boosted from "D-rank" to "C-rank" or even "B-rank" with the right technique.
The No. 3 skill, "Moonstep," a C-rank skill, allows for a jump with added buoyancy for a short time, lasting 30 seconds.
"A flying skill... could compensate for mobility, but I've got a web shooter already. If I improve my physical fitness, I won't need this bit of mobility. This skill must be pretty tempting for other players," Ke Mingye thought.
The No. 4 skill, "Deception Puppet," a B-rank skill.
The effect of this skill is to create a puppet. The player shares vision and hearing with the puppet and can control it while changing its voice and appearance at any time to deceive others.
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And when the puppet is destroyed, it emits a terrifying laughter and explodes in a small radius, causing a continuous fear effect that stuns nearby enemies for 2 seconds.
[With the current level of players, the maximum number of puppets that can exist is: 1.]
"Class B really is Class B..." Ke Mingye raised an eyebrow, his right hand stroking his chin, "It has quite a few uses, at the very least it can help me with my classes. Being tied down by the school is really annoying."
No matter what the skills behind it were, at least this skill was one he had decided on. From the description, it seemed that it could be of significant use not only in battle but also in other situations.
Ke Mingye stretched out his finger and clicked on the skill name, and a panel immediately popped up.
[You currently have two opportunities to acquire skills for free. Do you confirm the acquisition of the skill "Deception Puppet"?]
Ke Mingye didn't hesitate and clicked "Confirm."
[Skill "Deception Puppet" acquired. The skill has been automatically loaded into the first slot of your skill bar. The skill bar can hold up to 10 skills, and must be replaced when full.]
[You still have one opportunity to acquire a skill for free. This privilege will disappear after the exclusive skill sale page refreshes, please use it promptly.]
[Note: You can release the skill by calling out its name in your mind or aloud.]
The following number 5 skill "Thought Delivery" allows the expression of thoughts in an email, and immediately sends the email to any target in the world.
Ke Mingye already had a friend communication panel, and while this skill might have some uses, such as passing information to characters other than players, which might be miraculously effective in certain situations, it wasn't currently very useful to him.
Skills number 6 "Sword Draw Strike" and number 7 "Animal Communication Skill" in the exclusive sale page were the kind that one could tell their uses just by their names. Ke Mingye glanced at them and skipped right over, the latter even reminded him of his friend, the Cheese Snow Leopard in another world, eliciting a wave of sentiment.
Right after these two skills, number 8 "Ground Throw Expert" and number 9 "Same-Sex Charm Skill" both seemed very interesting.
The former was a causality skill, incredibly powerful: within twenty seconds of activating the skill, any character standing on a flat surface within a ten-meter radius around the player must inevitably perform an irresistible ground throw, but this skill could not affect the same target twice during its activation period;
The latter makes a person of the same gender drastically increase their fondness for you, and when their fondness reaches a certain level, you can issue an "irresistible" command to them.
Ke Mingye agonized for a long time; he was quite satisfied with both skills and wanted both if possible, but he only had one more free opportunity to acquire a skill.
Especially the "Ground Throw Expert" skill was so cunning it was almost unimaginable. The moment he saw the skill description, Ke Mingye imagined a scene: walking into the Superhero Association's meeting room, activating "Ground Throw Expert," and watching as the likes of Zeus, Qing Ya, and everyone else thudded to the ground at the same moment, with not a single one able to resist...
Just imagining the scene, Ke Mingye thought it was outrageously powerful, especially since he really wanted to see Qing Ya fall to the ground, with Ke Youqing's expression of dumbfounded shock behind the mask.
Thus Ke Mingye secretly decided that if the tenth skill did not bring him enough surprise, then it was highly probable that his second skill would be "Ground Throw Expert."
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