Chapter 58 Call

"Mr. Xu, is that you?" Peng Fengnian's pleasantly surprised voice quickly came through the paper mobile phone. "I'm about to leave Sector 014. If we couldn't connect before I leave, who knows when the next time would be."

"014?" This number had appeared on Xu Huo's return ticket.

"That's right. I'm a player from Wormhole Point E27, Sector 009," Peng Fengnian explained. "Upon being promoted to a D-class player, every ticket will have a station address. The Skinner's instance this time is in Sector 014."

"The paper mobile phone can only connect within the same sector. Mr. Xu, are you not a native player of E27?"

"I am." Xu Huo asked again, "Besides the E27 wormhole point, are there other wormhole points?"

Peng Fengnian on the other end paused for two seconds before saying, "There should be. My big brother once met a player from Wormhole Point D13 in a C-class instance, but that's very rare."

"Basically, players from a certain wormhole point will revolve around doing instances within that same wormhole point. I've done several instances myself and have never encountered players from other wormhole points."

"Have you ever heard of a temporary pass?" Xu Huo asked. This was a term mentioned by the Skinner. His exact words were, "If only there had been a temporary pass, then I wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of moving around."

This sentence implied that the Skinner, being a random instance, drifted everywhere and could not freely travel between stations, while a temporary pass seemed to represent the authority to move about freely.

The fact that Peng Fengnian's big brother could encounter players from other wormhole points in a C-class instance meant that mutual access between two wormhole points was not the exclusive privilege of high-level players.

Peng Fengnian's voice was no longer as excited as before. He said, "A temporary pass? I've never heard anyone mention it."

"Instances have been appearing in Sector 009 for over five years, and currently there are fewer than ten B-class players. It might be some special prop."

"What does a resident station super player mean?" Xu Huo continued to ask.

"Some instance bosses were originally players. There are instances like the Skinner that move around everywhere, and there are those fixed at a single station to open a regular instance. Players like this are incomparable to random instance bosses."

"The Paper Puppeteer who makes paper mobile phones is a super player from Wormhole Point E27. He is very famous in the game world, and some instances have props made by him as rewards."

"Wormhole Point E27 has many sectors, which are equivalent to many mutually disconnected worlds. In some sectors, including 009, the game and players are public within this world, including some basic information. Although there is no communication platform among players, after starting to do non-enclosed instances, you can walk around in the station world. If you go to places where the game appeared earlier, a lot of information can be checked online."

"Mr. Xu, you're not a C-class player, are you?"

The information Peng Fengnian mentioned was almost common sense after entering a non-enclosed instance. If Xu Huo didn't even know this, it proved that he had never contacted a non-enclosed instance at all. In other words, he was a rookie player.

"I am an E-class player," Xu Huo calmly said. "It has only been about a month since evolvers appeared in large numbers in the world where I am. According to your ranking, Sector 014 should be a newly opened game arena by the dimensional rift."

"Previously, I only experienced one instance. The Skinner instance is the first random instance I've ever done."

Peng Fengnian raised his voice in disbelief, "Then how did you manage to make a D-class instance collapse?"

"I guess it was something like an instance core, just a lucky stroke of misadventure." Xu Huo was somewhat disappointed by his lack of knowledge.

However, an instance collapse had a lot of luck involved. Whether every instance had an instance core was unknown. Even if a similar item existed, let alone the difficulty of finding it, even if it were found, it certainly wouldn't be easy to destroy. There was too little information and too many variables.

"You are truly amazing. Judging by your mindset and methods, I thought your level was at least above mine." Peng Fengnian hadn't expected this outcome, but Xu Huo's quality was very good, and perhaps he would be promoted to D-class soon.

"You said instances have appeared in your world for five years. Besides the earliest batch of evolvers, are there other ways to become an evolver?" Xu Huo thought for a moment and asked.

"Actually, after the game world connected to reality, people kept transforming into evolvers, just not in as large numbers as at the very beginning. If someone wants to force their way into the game, it can be accomplished through transfusion of blood from an evolver who has not yet taken any evolutionary serum." Peng Fengnian paused and asked, "You know about the genetic defects of evolvers, right?"

"Going more than a month without taking evolutionary serum will cause the whole body to ulcerate and die of weakness," Xu Huo replied.

"That's right. This defect is irreversible, even for cannibalistic evolvers. It must be taken regularly, which is why evolutionary serum is traded at very high prices in the game world," Peng Fengnian asserted firmly.

Xu Huo pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. "Are there no other ways to improve this?"

"I don't know about that," Peng Fengnian hesitated and said. "Because as the evolutionary numerical value increases, the grade of the potion will also increase. P0 targets below 10%, P1 is 10% to 30%, P2 is 30% to 50%, and beyond that are P3 and P4 evolutionary serums. As long as you take them, you can keep evolving, and the higher the evolutionary rate, the stronger you become, and the higher the player level generally is. Since there are P3 and P4 potions, it means high-level players also need evolutionary serum."

"However, even with a dependency on potions, as your level increases, getting evolutionary serum shouldn't be a difficult task by then."

Xu Huo made no comment; this feeling of having one's throat held by someone else made him very uncomfortable.

"Mr. Xu, what did you mean by the last sentence you said to the Skinner?" Peng Fengnian couldn't help asking. "Did you know the Skinner had bad blood with the Field family?"

"Just a bluff," Xu Huo returned the favor. "I learned in advance from the radio that the Chief Executive of E27 had been changed to someone named Carroll Field. Posing as his nepotistic relative—even if the Skinner appeared, this identity had no concrete evidence to debunk it. And the Skinner's traits are very peculiar; perhaps even he didn't know whether any of the pigs he killed had influential backgrounds."

"I didn't know the instance would collapse. Given the situation at the time, the best outcome was for a few players to escape, and it was impossible to save the other ordinary people. So I told a lie to trick the Skinner, making him think he had offended the Field family or related powerful forces. It's very difficult to verify this matter. If the Skinner believed it, the most likely outcome would be him leaving E27, or at the very least leaving the location of the instance."

"That way, there's a high probability this instance won't continue devouring people in the place where I live."

"However, if he saw through it, that would be another story."

Peng Fengnian opened his mouth and let out a short puff of air. Seen through? Now that even the instance had collapsed, the Skinner would probably think someone was deliberately messing with him. How could he not be utterly hoodwinked?

Ordinary players found it unimaginably difficult to clear stages and level up. It was hard to imagine that Xu Huo, as a rookie newly entering the game, could still lay traps for the boss utilizing the game mechanics despite a blank slate of information, and even benefit the real world. Sure enough, players were indeed different from players!