Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

It was nightfall.

Today, all the dining halls on the third and fourth floors of the lavish Nightless City nightclub had been commandeered by the Lu Conglomerate. They were holding a major celebration party to congratulate the Conglomerate on the completion of the most important part of the city-building mission in War.

The headquarters of the Lu Conglomerate were actually quite far from the Nightless City. Due to the focus of the Lu Conglomerate on engineering and processing, their headquarters were set up on the 17th Administrative Planet and was partitioned to the 22nd Light Industrial Area.

As for Nightless City, as it was in the entertainment industry, it was located in the 22nd Commercial Area. However, since they lived in an era with such developed technology, a half-hour journey by levitating vehicle was sufficient to travel more than a few thousand kilometers, not to mention the distance of 200 miles between the two places.

That was the reason Nightless City was welcoming a huge flow of guests tonight compared to normal days. The levitating vehicles arrived at the city one by one, dropping off the guests before immediately leaving again for the next ride. It was as busy as a beehive.

This was the first time for most of the employees of the Conglomerate to “spoil” themselves at Nightless City, a club they had been hearing about for a long time. Their expressions were painted with excitement, and they all looked trim in their outfits.

As for the employees of Nightless City, although they held a grudge against the people from the head office, it was impossible for them to welcome their guests with long faces at the moment. Especially when the acting chairman, Dark Night Stars, and the rest of the Conglomerate’s directors were all going to attend this celebration party together with the superiors of the head office. After all, it was not possible for everyone in Nightless City to be on the same side as Wu Mu. Hence, the atmosphere was generally merry and joyful.

There was a hubbub of voices everywhere, and it was extremely crowded in all the dining halls on the third and fourth floors of Nightless City. Meanwhile, at a closed multipurpose sports cabin that occupied half of the basketball court on the fifth floor, Feng Luo, who was wearing only a pair of shorts, charged his half-naked body forward and landed a heavy punch on the artificial human target that was made of memory material and was used to test one’s strength.

Bang!

As the punch landed on the target, a dent that resembled a fist appeared on the chest of the artificial body. Simultaneously, the body was thrown backward and landed in the distance. At the same time, the figure on the counter of the levitating virtual screen beside the target jumped straight up to 1,000!

Of course, that 1,000 did not indicate the weight in kilograms. It was a specific measurement unit in this world to calculate impact, known as “standard impact force”!

This measurement unit was far lower than a kilogram. To be specific, it was even slightly lower than grams and closer to the unit of one pound on Earth.

Of course, kilograms and pounds were never the measurement unit for measuring force. Most people on Earth would have only used kilograms and pounds to indicate the weight of their fists. By contrast, “impact force” was a more accurate term.

How much, then, was 1,000 units of standard impact force? Only the top-ranked “Black Boxers” in the Star Federation could achieve more than 1,000 on the standard impact force scale. A large portion of professional boxers could only achieve about 500 to 600.

Of course, this figure was much stronger than that of any professional boxer on Earth that Feng Luo knew about. The power of the underground Black Boxers already exceeded the strength of the boxers on Earth by a factor of at least two!

If this sort of power was used against a normal human, they would end up just like the artificial body on the floor; their ribs would be broken, and their inner organs would be injured. There was a high possibility that they would die on the spot.

This was no anomaly! Due to the advancement in science and generations of genetic improvisation, the average quality of the bodies of the people in the Star Federation had increased substantially. Additionally, the Black Boxers of this world usually injected special microorganisms and genetic medications to forcefully raise the capabilities of their bodies. Some of them could achieve a figure way higher than 1,000 standard impact force.

Undoubtedly, all the formal fighting competitions in the Federation prohibited contestants from using the forbidden drugs, as well as anyone who had used them in the past. However, these forbidden drugs were very popular in the underground Black Boxer competitions. This was because scenes in which the contestants broke pillars with one kick, cracked the ground with an elbow, or dented metal-alloy plates with their fists during the bloody life-or-death fights were the ones that would most provoke the attention of players who watched these battles!

Despite the side effects of the forbidden drugs, there were still a lot of people who used the drugs willingly for the sake of money. However, Feng Luo did not inject any drugs into his body. He had gained his current strength as a result of his natural growth over the past three years.

Three years ago, while Feng Luo had been traveling to the 17th Administrative Planet, his power had not reached 300 units of standard impact force. However, after a period of time, he realized that the power and speed of his body were gradually increasing.

In the beginning, he could not achieve 300 standard impact force with one punch. One year later, it changed to more than 400 standard impact force, and another year later, it changed to nearly 600 standard impact force… Then, half a month ago, when he last came to check, he had gotten a reading of 850 standard impact force!

Due to this sort of situation, he had initially thought that there was something very wrong with his body. However, despite having utilized the latest model of medical pod deployed at the gym at the nightclub, which was said to be able to detect any kind of disease, he hadn’t found anything unusual with his body.

On the contrary, the results showed that his health status could not have been better! His cellular activity, nerve reactivity, durability… All the figures in each category were close to perfect.

To explain this in layman’s terms, Feng Luo’s current physical quality could beat 99.999 percent of the users in the Star Federation who used the medical pod. Hence, he had not dwelled on this issue; if nothing could be detected by this top-rated medical pod, then there would hardly be a different result even if he visited the best hospital in the Star Federation. He had experienced traveling through space to another world, so it was not exactly odd for him to accept some changes in his body.

However, as he had to wait 12 hours to be able to log in again after dying against the Golden King Beetle today, Feng Luo had decided to leave his game cabin for the first time in the past ten over days. Furthermore, he shockingly realized that his power seemed to have increased by a huge amount in one shot.

But this time, it wasn’t just power. His body also felt far stronger in many aspects. For instance, the extent of his vision and hearing sensitivity, as well as his reaction speed, had increased significantly. Most importantly, his mind felt as if it was several times more active than it had been in the past.

He attempted to make a simple two-digits multiplication with his mind. The outcome was as if he could instantly obtain the correct answer without thinking at all!

Subsequently, he repeatedly attempted this with three-digit numbers (half a second) and four-digit numbers (one second). Eventually, the amount of time for him to obtain the correct answer for a five-digit multiplication problem did not exceed five seconds.

Feng Luo was somewhat good at mathematics. As a sniper, there were many circumstances where he had to use mathematics to obtain the exact timing in advance to fire. Nonetheless, it was impossible for his mathematical skill to be this perfect. This super-active mind resembled the one mentioned in War, where one could only achieve this state with the help of the game system.

War used the game cabin to activate and trigger all the nerves in the human body. Hence, one’s mind usually acted faster in receiving and reacting within the game than in the real world.

Theoretically, one’s reaction time in the game could be up to ten times their reaction in real life. This was also the reason why players could sometimes pull off many unimaginable, extreme actions in the game.

This hyperactivity of the brain during the game could cause a player to make incorrect estimations in real life once he or she had quit the game, which could result in severe consequences to the balance of one’s physical body.

Hence, during the game, other than performing some special techniques, the frequency and reactivity of a player’s brain should not be changed too greatly. Instead, it was restricted to a reasonable range by the system.

It was like how Feng Luo had been before, when he’d noticed that his mind was moving more quickly after incorporating the evolution virus. He had been able to do the calculation for a sniper shot within two seconds, as well as correctly obtain some statistics by relying solely on his naked eye. He had thought that these incidences had only occurred because the system had increased the activity of his brain.

However, he had now exited the game, only to realize that the hyperactivity remained. Although it seemed to be relatively weaker in the game, it was definitely better than it had been in the past. Even the power of his body, his hearing, and his sight were all increased…

“The game affects our bodies in reality?”

There was shock in Feng Luo’s eyes as he sucked in a deep breath.

Could this have been the real reason the game of War was so heavily advertised by the Star Federation?