The area before his eyes was much smaller than the storage room and only slightly bigger than the elevator. The ceiling was white, and a soft glow filtered down from above. The floor was decorated with black and white tiles, like a chess board. The strangest thing was that, other than the elevator door, all the walls in the room were fitted with funny mirrors.

The reflections of Feng Bujue looked stranger than the one before it. Not only was the physical shape distorted, even his presence was changed by these mirrors. Inside these mirrors, one could see joy, anger, sadness, greed, madness, dullness, blankness… It was as if each reflection represented an emotion or desire.

“And I thought this would be a large shared public space like the market,” Feng Bujue mumbled to himself. His eyes were attracted to the only object in the room. In the middle of the floor was a large, intensely colorful box. It was a one meter by one meter cubed.

“So… if I open it, there will be a clown attached to the box springing out to scare me…” Feng Bujue shrugged and smiled as he walked to the box. Suddenly, the system announced, “When you’re at the Thriller Box, you can open the special menu to browse the objects on sale.”

“Tsk… So, this is just for decoration?” The rather disappointed Feng Bujue opened the menu. The list of items was long, surprisingly long in fact. There were more than four thousand items, and all of them were at least excellent quality.

In just two days of the closed beta, or fifty hours in real life, and five hundred hours of sleeping mode and one hundred hours of non-sleeping mode, the combination of both modes would add up to twenty-five days. In this period, each randomly generated scenario would have one or two items that players were unable to bring out of the scenario. Other than that, there was countless pieces of equipment inside the scenarios that the players did not even discover. All these items, after having their attributes adjusted, would show up in the Thriller Box.

The open beta had started at 8 am, and it was since then that everything in the Thriller Box had started their countdown toward demolition. By then, six hours had passed and so everything generated at the start of the open beta in the Thriller Box had the tag saying, “Remaining time of existence: six Days seventeen Hours thirty-eight Minutes”. Other than that, there were quite a few items that were added after the start of the open beta, and their countdown started the moment when the scenario that they were generated in ended.

Out of curiosity, Feng Bujue searched for ’Zombie-Must-Die’, which he had encountered in his tutorial. He did manage to find it, but the attributes of the sword had been changed.

———

Item Name: Zombie-Must-Die

Item Type: Weapon

Quality: Excellent

Offense Points: Slightly Strong

Element: None

Special Effect: Its attack can melt a zombie instantly.

Equip Requirement: Fighting Mastery D, Level 18

Remarks: One of the earlier products made by the legendary dwarf blacksmith, Orr All-Must-Die. A cunning goblin merchant used several bottles of Sorghum Wines to trade for the sword. Half a month later, Orr forged another blade called ’Goblin-Must-Die’.

———

As a weapon with a specific purpose and acceptable damage, the updated equip requirement was more logical. As a level eighteen player with fighting mastery, no matter what their equipment was, fighting against a zombie should not be too difficult, but it should not be too easy either. However, that would change if said player had this sword; they would basically be able to kill every zombie without suffering any damage in return.

This sword’s price matched Feng Bujue’s expectations of such a standard of weapon; it was three hundred Skill Points. Therefore, this rather conceited fellow could not help patting himself on the back. However, Feng Bujue did not plan to buy this sword. After all, this weapon was much too specific, and the chance of a player running into a zombie in the scenario would be less than ten percent. Feng Bujue could not see it being a hot item at the auction house either.

He adjusted the list according to the time remaining and started to browse from the first page. And then… his reading habit sunk him into this trap. The equipment there was cheaper than the ones at the auction house, and they were worth every penny, so he was afraid that he might lose out on some good finds.

The more Feng Bujue scrolled through the list, the more excited and surprised he became. Even though he did not see much equipment with legendary quality, he had already spotted a few with perfect quality. Of course, he could only window-shop with their price tags of several thousand Skill Points. These items probably only showed up during the opening CG or were owned by the final boss. Most of them were like ’Zombie-Must-Die’, something that helped the player clear the scenario quickly and efficiently. However, most of them would be recycled in the Thriller Box, awaiting the fate of being deconstructed.

Therefore, it was possible to find legendary items like Xuan Yuan Sword or Illidan’s Glaives in the Thriller Box. As long as the player had enough Skill Points, they would be able to purchase them, but whether they could be equipped, that was a different matter. In any case, Skill Points were something that could not be purchased with money, and the only way to obtain them was through one’s combat or puzzle-solving in the scenarios. Therefore, players with high Skill Points would not be so weak.

Feng Bujue stood there and studied the list for more than an hour. His initial plan of purchasing the items there and selling them for money was completely abandoned. He thought to himself, Does the system think the players are idiots by placing this function of exchanging Skill Points for Game Coins here? The exchange rate given by the system is only 1:10, and that is a one-way exchange. If that is not a scam, what is‽ One thousand Skill Points can only trade for ten thousand Game Coins. Turn that into RMB, and that is only five RMB, but in return, can five RMB buy one thousand Skill Points? Even a level fifty player with all of his masteries maxed out wouldn’t do this trade. They can use the excess Skill Points to buy items to sell at the auction house; they wouldn’t have been dumb enough to use this feature of trading Skill Points for Game Coins.

Not only Feng Bujue, plenty of players had gone onto the forum to mock this feature that afternoon. Of course, this was nothing serious. The system never forced players to make this trade. If they thought that it was not worth it, they could ignore it.

Currently, Dream Inc. hadn’t provided any response. They adopted the attitude of see no evil, speak no evil. In second week of May, after one month had passed since the open beta launched, with several updates to the real money exchange rate and the general player-base familiarizing themselves with the economy, the prices at auction house would stabilize. Only then would Dream Inc. change the exchange rate of Skill Points for Game Coins.

By then, the player-base of Thriller Paradise could generally be separated into three categories: the top layer where many experts resided, the middle layer where the majority of the players were, and the bottom layer where newbie and casual players were.

The top layer’s players generally had their level around thirty, and their mastery development was late in the stage. Their equipment and skill combination was advanced. They had their own way of handling the game and had a title that befitted their ability. With their experience and ability, they could easily take up the role of leading a group of middle layer players. With such a player in the team, even if he gave no guidance, just focusing on the role that he was given, he would prove immensely useful.

As for the middle layer, they were the main community of the game, from professional gamers to frequent casual players. Of course, there were a ton of players from this layer who had the potential to rise to the top layer, but their understanding of the game was still lacking, which influenced their character’s ability and scenario-clearing ability. This group of people defined the term ’players’ the most. Occasionally, they might have their shining moments, and other times, they failed gloriously. They complained about teammates and had teammates complain about them. Most of them thought that they were experts, but they could not figure out what the difference between them and actual experts was. As time moved on, normal players would cultivate this perception—other players were stronger than them in-game because they were richer and had longer to spend on playing games.

That was not wrong, but that was not the entire truth either.

Feng Bujue once made this analysis. For a skill-based game, the top players would be required to possess these seven qualities: knowledge, tactics, luck, determination, spirit, courage, and talent.

There were qualities that were decided once someone was born and were thus uncontrollable, but such was reality. Games were not so different from sports; only a hardworking player born with the necessary talent would be successful.

Lastly, the bottom layer players. They could be split in a further three categories: players who had just joined the game, casual players who did not log into the game too often, and players with fighting capability of a five-year-old.

This was the bottom layer, and the first two types of players would eventually graduate from this layer after enough time had passed. However, the people in the third category would not be so lucky… Everyone had things in life that they were good at and bad at—that naturally included gaming.

That was generally how Thriller Paradise’s player-base was categorized after a month of the open beta.

The author mentioned this now for two reasons.

Firstly, at the end of May, there would be an arena organized in-game. Due to the high number of participating players, one had to fulfil certain criteria to get the registration, so the last category of the bottom layer players were disqualified even before the match started.

Secondly, after hearing all that, it might be naturally to assume that Feng Bujue would become one of the top experts, but that was not the case.

He was the fourth type of player. This type of player was too rare to categorize as a ’group’. For a game that had tens of thousands of active users, there were fewer than ten such players. Their level might not hit the top level ranking, but they were often seen on the combat capability ranking.

In the arena, Dream Inc. made the decision to skip these players’ need to participate in the preliminaries and other matches, so they were directly moved into the finals. Even though this was called out by many players as a sign of unfairness, from other angle, Dream Inc. was trying to protect the majority of the players. If they were allowed to face off against these players in the preliminaries, that would be the real definition of unfair.

…

Feng Bujue had the time of his life, looking through the list of equipment for about an hour.

In Thriller Paradise’s menu, a page would show one hundred items, and each item only consisted of its name, type, and price. Only by clicking on them would the details show up.

Feng Bujue naturally did not click on every single thing. He only checked out the things that interested him and scanned through most of them. Some pages only took him ten seconds to read before skipping over. Even so, it still took him so long, and there was quite a number of equipment that caught his attention.

When he was done, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He arranged his thoughts and used the search function to pull out an item that he had purposely marked in his mind.

———

Item Name: Casey Jones’ Mask

Item Type: Armor

Quality: Excellent

Defense Points: Medium

Element: None

Special Effect: When equipped, the player’s fighting mastery will be viewed as one level higher than the player’s actual level, but the maximum level that this effect can influence is Level C.

Equip Requirements: Male character, Level 15, bound after equip.

Remark: The owner of this mask spent his free time hanging out with four mutant turtles who lived in the sewers and had a passion for pizza. As a youth without any superpowers, he still had a passion for fighting street crime, and this mask slowly became his symbol.

———

The mask sold for five hundred Skill Points, and its main value was the low equip requirement and had the feature of strengthening its wearer.

Before level twenty, it was hard for players to raise their mastery to level C, and this mask’s effect was there to help players breakthrough that threshold. As something that had its lifespan, this mask would be immensely useful for players between level fifteen and twenty. Even after level twenty, if the players’ fighting mastery had not risen to level C, then the item would still have its uses.

Currently, Feng Bujue’s mastery levels were: General Ability E, Workmanship E, Sleuthing E, Fighting E, Marksmanship D, and Medic F. Other than that, after the open beta, the list of mastery in the menu changed. The original font became smaller, and a new grayed out area appeared. This meant that two new masteries had been introduced into the game, but for now, Feng Bujue had no idea what they were.

In any case, this mask was worth more than its price, so Feng Bujue did not hesitate much before purchasing it. Even though he was level thirteen, levelling up to fifteen would not be so difficult. Theoretically speaking, he only needed to clear another four scenarios.

After buying the mask, Feng Bujue took it back to his storage. Then, he returned to the market to place Kenny’s Hooded Jacket on the auction house with 110,000 as the starting price and 140,000 as the selling price. When he made that listing, he paid four thousand Game Coins as a processing fee. This fee was decided by the system and was different depending on the item listed. The difference in price was based on the item’s attributes, so technically, one could base the item’s actual value on the listing price that was given by the system.

If no one bid on the item in twenty-four hours of real-life time, the item would be taken down from the listing and returned to the player. If it was sold, the money would be mailed instead.

After dealing with all that, Feng Bujue returned to his log-in space. It was 3 pm in real life, so he had technically half a day to spend in game. He set up a short-term goal for himself—before the sun rose the next morning, he had to reach level fifteen and level up his workmanship to D so that he could equip Echo Armor and Casey Jones’ Mask. Then, it was time to go and experience the Killing Game mode.