Chapter Fifteen: Black Brahma Under Immense Pressure

The white elven ranger, standing about half a head taller than Mottan, turned to him in confusion. “Magic power?”

“Uh… yes, magic power,” Mottan replied with an awkward smile, nodding. To be honest, his psychological resilience was rather lacking at the moment. His skill at lying was only slightly better than when he was in a lawful good state. Even though he knew the plan he had just hastily concocted theoretically shouldn’t have any flaws, he still felt uncertain inside.

But that was only relative to his other personalities. Being ordinary and moderate in nature didn’t mean his abilities were the same. After all, Mottan had an immense reservoir of knowledge and countless firsthand experiences with crises; handling this minor situation was well within his capability.

Sure enough, Silverna showed no suspicion, casually responding, “Of course. We elves naturally have some magic power within us, which accumulates over time even if we do nothing. But since I specialize as a ranger, I’ve never trained or meditated to cultivate it, so I can’t compare to you.”

“And…” she glanced dangerously at Mottan, “I’m still young — about seventeen in human years — so you’d better watch your words~~”

Mottan gave a dry laugh and quickly nodded. He then calculated the time and cautiously asked, “Do you think you could handle recharging a magic crystal lamp?”

“Why?” Silverna eyed him suspiciously. “Trying to slack off?”

By then, they had already put some distance between themselves and Dieyan City. But since this was the main road leading north to the great city of Huagang, there were still quite a few travelers. Every two hundred meters or so, magic crystal lamps were installed atop short stone pillars by the roadside. They didn’t operate during the day but provided light and warmth to travelers at night, while also repelling low-level wild beasts.

These lamps were the common lighting devices throughout the Innocence Continent.

They had just arrived at the first magic crystal lamp.

“Not trying to slack off,” Mottan said softly, pressing his hand against the crystal panel attached to the stone base. He gave Silverna an expression of embarrassment before attempting to sense his own magic power without activating any skills — immediately breaking into a sweat.

As mentioned before, the game “Innocence Realm” was quite unfriendly to players. Unlike other games where standing near a quest target automatically triggers a pop-up box asking if you want to inject magic power with simple YES or NO options, here you had to actually think of a way to inject magic power yourself. There was no “one-click completion” feature at all.

No way!

If a quest or any other task required you to inject magic power, you had to figure out how to do it yourself — no shortcuts.

As for even more outrageous functions like auto-pathfinding or AFK monster grinding… even browser games nowadays don’t stoop that low.

This world was realistically tough.

But that wasn’t even the worst part. Players in the newbie phase didn’t yet know that not only were basic operations tricky, but even some advanced skills required a certain level of technique to activate. At this stage, most skills were low-threshold, low-cost, and foolproof — activated merely by thought without requiring any skill. But as you leveled up your profession, that would change completely…

By the way, Mottan had long been able to use multiple advanced skills proficiently, especially in black sorcery — though he had no memory of it.

“What are you doing?” Silverna asked curiously. “Are you treating this thing like your dream lover? You’re touching it so carefully…”

Mottan shrugged helplessly. “I’ve never done this before. Honestly, it’s way harder than praying or singing hymns…”

He then closed his eyes, focusing hard to sense the “magic power” that didn’t exist in reality. It was difficult — like trying to imagine what it feels like to suddenly have a tail or wings — but human adaptability was truly, truly, truly astonishing…

Soon, Mottan’s face flushed red and his neck strained as he felt two indescribable presences dwelling inside him — one concentrated in his limbs and the other in his brain. The former seemed to resonate faintly with the environment, ever-changing and highly unstable; the latter continuously gave him a sense of peace and warmth.

[First-time magic power and faith detection triggered: Intelligence +1, Faith limit +5]

A gentle system prompt sounded in Mottan’s ear. Moments later, the gauge on the basic magic crystal in his hand began to glow.

After consuming 20 points of magic power at a rate of 5 points per second, the crystal’s energy was fully saturated.

“Well done~” Silverna patted his shoulder, smiling. “For someone who only knows how to pray and sing hymns, that’s quite impressive. Actually, you don’t need to fill it completely — seventy percent or a hundred percent magic power won’t differ much in duration; the latter just shines brighter.”

Mottan nodded, then instead of heading to the second lamp two hundred meters away with Silverna, he looked at the apprentice ranger with an almost pleading expression and lowered his head. “Remember our earlier conversation?”

“About slacking off?” Silverna raised an eyebrow.

“Not exactly.” Mottan sighed. “I’ve run into some trouble. If you can keep it a secret…”

He glanced at her, silently repeating in his mind, “If only you were a woman… if only you were a normal woman…”

“Of course!” Silverna’s eyes lit up as she quickly said, “I love sharing secrets and keeping them buried inside!”

It turned out she really was a normal woman. Even among elven females and NPCs, it was hard to resist the allure of gossip.

“I want to prepare something. In about forty minutes,” Mottan whispered, “I might be away for a while. If you could help recharge the rest and tell everyone I wasn’t slacking, that would be great… especially Futaba. Don’t tell her, okay…”

Silverna leaned casually against the stone pillar, a sparkle in her eyes that could kill several trucks full of cats, chuckling. “No big deal, but what’s your excuse? And why especially hide it from Futaba?”

Mottan said nothing, just gave Silverna a knowing look.

Instantly, she nodded. “I get it~ I get it!”

[What exactly did you understand from that look? I damn well don’t understand! Such a powerful imagination…]

Mottan laughed awkwardly and roared silently in his mind, but his intention was to mislead her and let her fill in the blanks however she wanted — that was enough.

“Well then, thank you, Silverna,” Mottan scratched his head and smiled sheepishly. “If I haven’t found you by the time everyone gathers, just say I went preaching with the priest. I promised him earlier and can’t refuse.”

Silverna blinked. “You’re so prepared? Looks like you’re confident?”

[What confidence?! What confidence?!]

Mottan twitched at the corner of his mouth and forced a smile. “Sort of… sort of…”

“Have you set the date? Need any help?” Silverna seemed to have completely forgotten the task at hand.

[What date?!]

Mottan was already in a defeated ORZ posture inside but sighed loudly outwardly, shaking his head. “I’d better keep working on these magic crystal lamps, so I don’t leave too much for you.”

“You can leave now if you want~” Silverna waved generously. “The main thing is your real business!”

[What business?! You think routine patrols and maintenance are nothing? Sister, your stance is dangerous!]

Mottan weakly waved his hand. “No, no, there’s still time… let’s keep going…”

Silverna shrugged in agreement. “Suit yourself.”

For the next half hour, they continued the tasks assigned by the Autonomous Army to Fenrir Squad. Thanks to Mottan’s efforts, they completed about seventy percent of the work — limited by his low magic power cap, or else they might have done more.

Around 7:25 PM real time, a chat window suddenly popped up in the corner of Mottan’s vision.

Sender: Futaba

Message: “Hey! Still busy?”

Mottan quickly replied, “Yeah, just barely over halfway done after all this time. By the way, don’t you have work? Why are you still online?”

He could see from the friends list that Futaba had logged off for a while but just logged back in — though he pretended not to notice.

“Resting while playing doubles the break time! Okay, I’m logging off now. Good luck!”

Futaba replied instantly and logged off immediately.

Although the game’s friend list didn’t show statuses like ‘online’, ‘offline’, or ‘invisible,’ Mottan could guess that Futaba had truly exited the game.

Then…

“Daydreaming?” Silverna gently tapped Mottan’s shoulder when he stood still. “Too much energy spent?”

Mottan nodded quickly, then pretended to look up at the sun and sighed, “Ah! I should go now…”

There were no watches in this world, so Silverna couldn’t be as precise as Mottan, who had been counting his pulse for time. She guessed roughly and said, “Okay! You go! I’ll help cover for you with the team~”

Five minutes later:

[You have voluntarily disconnected. Do you want to reconnect?]

“No.”

[Execute wake-up procedure?]

“As soon as possible.”

[Received. It is now 7:30 PM, Year X, Month X, Day X. You will awaken in one minute.]

When Mottan opened his eyes, his phone showed exactly 7:30 PM.

“About as expected…” He got up to pour himself a glass of water, then complained bitterly, “Ah~ Whether working part-time as a hacker or dealing with hackers, it’s dangerous and super troublesome!”

But his complaints at moments like this were never sincere. In fact, whenever he complained, it was never truly sincere.

After all, he was… troubled.

After closing his eyes for about two minutes, when Mottan opened them again, he felt completely different.

He was still himself, but no longer who he had been moments ago.

“Retract my earlier words,” he murmured with excitement and pleasure sparkling in his eyes. “If this world had no troubles at all, it would be too boring.”

Undoubtedly, he now welcomed trouble and was more than happy to cause trouble for others.

Although switching personalities consumed much of his energy, he didn’t rest much but walked straight to the game pod and lay down inside.

…

[Spiritual connection detected.]

[Entering “Innocence Realm” — Player Public Space.]

[Please select your desired login area.]

“Area 13.”

[Received. Accessing Area 13 Public Space. Welcome, chaotic neutral Tanmo.]

…

After a brief dizziness, Mottan found himself in a cramped space. From his first impression upon opening his eyes, it seemed to be a prison cell.

The faintly glowing iron door ahead was the exit.

“The game’s called ‘Innocence Realm,’ but the public space where players log in is this kind of prison environment for ‘prisoners’ or ‘sinners.’ Heh,” Mottan shook his head and smiled, “Such blatant irony…”

He reached out to push open the half-closed iron door.

[You are about to enter the public area. Would you like to blur your appearance?]

“Definitely~” Mottan whistled, answering the system naturally.

Unlike the game world itself, the official introduction to the player public space was quite detailed. The option to blur one’s appearance was something easily found in the documentation without needing to consult forums.

Why forums instead of customer service? Simple — “Innocence Realm” had no customer service hotline, no email, no support at all.

This was truly a rare oddity in the gaming world…

No phone, no email, you had to figure everything out yourself, and once 24 hours passed, no refunds.

This was the attitude of Innocence Corp toward players. Though a fledgling company, it had an air of supreme arrogance that made many players take notice.

And curse profusely…

After a layer of mosaic obscured him, Mottan finally left the “cell” and entered the Area 13 public space.

Strictly speaking, he was spawned there, for if the system had installed a physical door, when many players crowded in, it could easily become a deadly crush — especially if an unlucky dwarf player arrived during peak hours. Tragedy would be inevitable…

So, despite everything, the system was generally thoughtful.

At this point, Mottan still wore the equipment of Tanmo, but all his skills were locked, and his physique had reverted to that of a normal person in reality. Equipment and attribute bonuses were meaningless here.

He quickly scanned the area and immediately spotted the girl with orange long hair and round glasses wearing a robe.

“Hey~” he sneaked close to Futaba, then whispered to a burly orc nearby, “What do you think about mixing Erguotou liquor into water?”

“???”