Chapter 4: Concept Profession, Heaven-sent Object
The scene before him was already familiar to Ian.
This nightmare… no, perhaps it was better to say it was the peculiar state he fell into every night, which appeared even earlier than the period before he awakened his system panel golden finger.
“What exactly is this place?”
Frost crystals quickly formed on Ian’s eyelashes. He raised his hand to catch the snow falling endlessly from the sky, and the vast white snow curtain before him swallowed the skyline of the ruined city.
The snow was too heavy.
Only things right in front of him could Ian see clearly. Strangely, he didn’t feel cold in this environment, as if he was actually here but detached from the entire world.
Amid the howling wind mixed with the crisp sound of cracking ice, the silent city resembled the deathly stillness depicted in an apocalyptic painting, and perhaps this world was already one after the apocalypse had come.
“Da da da~”
“Da da da~”
Ian walked on the frozen ground. He didn’t know what he could do in this world; all the attempts he had made before had proven he couldn’t take anything back from here.
Perhaps the only benefit this city could bring to Ian was inspiration to become a famous decadent style painter: the broken elevated bridge slanted into the snow like a dissected steel skeleton.
Those rusted car wrecks were half-buried in the ice, the collapsed bus stops had their glass canopies long shattered, and the buildings shrouded in deep snow had also collapsed quite a bit.
Broken wires swayed everywhere in the wind; this place was like ruins abandoned by a deity, and even hearing a single insect chirp was an utterly impossible luxury.
“Hey! Come out!”
Ian shouted boredly at the sky, but no garbage poured down from above. His nine years of compulsory education still hadn’t become the cheat code for exploring this strange world.
“Looks like I can only go by the old rules.” Ian had strict requirements for himself even in this world. His ability to level up the 【student】 profession to LV7 in such a short time was partly thanks to the nightmare world. In this world, Ian had an extra seven hours of time for time management.
Even in dreams, he had to study.
He deserved his excellent grades and super-fast leveling.
Right on cue.
Ian had already begun searching the ruins-like icy snow world for bookstores that hadn’t been completely buried yet; most of them had plenty of 18+ magazines and journals inside.
His two older brothers still had to hide such books in the neighbor’s doghouse, but Ian didn’t have to worry about being discovered by his parents at all, and he could even gain experience points from such appreciation. How could appreciating the adult world not count as a form of learning? Ian’s 【student】 profession was very flexible in judging experience acquisition.
“No weaknesses in any field—this is what a true god of learning in the new era is!” Ian was very satisfied with his planning as he walked through street after street covered in snow.
Constantly stepping on the ice, Ian’s boots made a teeth-grinding friction sound. Of course he would slip and fall in this environment, but after patting his butt and standing up, he felt no pain.
Just like a lucid dream.
Just more coherent and special. Soon, Ian found his destination: a bookstore buried in snow. With diligent hands, he only needed to dig for half an hour to crawl inside.
There was no one in the bookstore, not even dead customers. Fortunately, though the books on the bookshelves were quite fragile, the ones in the glass display cases could still be gently flipped through.
【You seriously read and comprehended some aesthetic techniques. 【Student】 profession experience points +1】
【You seriously read and comprehended some aesthetic techniques. 【Student】 profession experience points +1】
……
Time passed minute by minute in fulfilling study.
Ian also luckily found a still-usable revolver next to a collectible magazine. He directly aimed it at his temple and fiercely pulled the trigger.
“Bang bang bang~”
The bullets touched his flesh, rippling, but couldn’t harm him at all. Ian had long figured out the peculiarities of the dreamscape, and such behavior also brought him extra experience.
【You attempted to learn catching bullets by hand. Though practical learning failed, you comprehended some death-defying techniques. 【Student】 profession experience points +3】
【You attempted to learn catching bullets by hand. Though practical learning failed, you comprehended some death-defying techniques. 【Student】 profession experience points +3】
……
Six system prompts—not Ian’s limit, but the limit of the revolver’s magazine. Unfortunately, no more bullets were found nearby; otherwise, Ian would have thanked nature’s gift properly— a full 18 experience points, which would take a long time of reading to earn. It proved that only going all out could lead to success.
“Still not satisfied.”
Ian gave himself some narration.
As mentioned before.
His 【student】 profession’s experience acquisition judgment was extremely flexible, which was also why he felt his system panel was like some unfinished game.
Not that it had many bugs, just not too many restrictions.
“See you tomorrow night, miss who doesn’t like wearing panties.” Ian put down the personal photo book in his hand, estimated the time to return, and moved a table to the bookstore’s front door.
Though there was no coffee or little cakes, the bookstore naturally had no shortage of pictures of these two things. Ian cut out several and placed them in front of the small table.
When boredom reaches a certain level, one becomes a bit abstract, but Ian saw it as a sense of ritual. Without such time-killing activities, he’d be stifled to death every night.
The deathly still world.
Wasn’t it just a stuffy little dark room?
Outside the dog hole Ian had dug, snowflakes drifted silently, with only the occasional crisp sound when an icicle broke from the signboard and stabbed into the snow pile.
“Boom!”
Wait, the sudden noise wasn’t crisp, but loud, with even a muffled thunder-like vibration in the ground, really startling Ian who was used to the silence.
The sudden noise was intense and muffled—not the sound of an icicle falling, but like a mountain collapsing with a crash, slamming heavily into the ground!
“Holy crap, something really fell from the sky?” After coming back to his senses, Ian quickly stood up and deftly crawled out through the dog hole he had dug at the front door.
On the street.
The gale carrying ice shards was still howling.
There.
Ian, staring in disbelief with wide eyes, reflected in his pupils a figure the size of a small mountain—that was the culprit that had fallen from the sky with a muffled crash.
A green giant, completely frozen by ice and snow just like this world!
