Episode 59

Level B Challenge “Rubble Village” completed: 1000 points

Number of Surviving Team Members: 3, 300 points

Degree of Challenge Participation: A, 700 points

Analysis and Deduction of Challenge: 90%, 800 points

Completed optional mission of uncovering truth behind Rubble Village, did not eliminate Special Characters: 500 points

Points Received: 3300

Total Points: 3350

Remaining Points: 3350

Su Jin stared at the string of numbers in his Handbook with a despondent look on his face. He had earmarked the High Level Body Strengthening Elixir but his current points were nowhere near enough.

The Rubble Village Challenge had been his first real Level B Challenge and all the newbies had died. Of course, there could have been some old timers among them as well, but they were all dead too. Even Team Wind and Rain had gone through so many life threatening situations. If Su Jin hadn’t suddenly activated his Spirit Power at the end, they might have all perished.

“We only managed to make it because all of us had to drain whatever Spirit Power we had. Is that how hard real Level B Challenges are going to be?” Su Jin’s heart was still pounding in fear. He was mentally prepared to use the Demon Lord’s Spirit Power at the end if the baby evil spirit wasn’t cooperative, but that would also have taken some additional time and everyone in the group might have died by the time he got back to the ancestral hall.

Su Jin’s first Challenge had been a Level B Challenge too, but it didn’t seem as crazy as this one. Also, the newbies ended up in the same team, so half of them managed to survive because the Handbook was usually more lenient towards newbies.

The newbies this time round were a lot more unfortunate. They had chosen to team up with old timers but ended up dead anyway. Three of them had even been tricked into incurring their own deaths by Xiang Nan. Su Jin now understood why Liu Yingying and Jiang Li left them behind right from the start. Perhaps that was actually their way of protecting newbies as well.

Su Jin’s greatest reward from this Challenge was the fact that he had activated his Spirit Power. But the number in the top right of his line of sight was gone.

“Blackie, tell me more about Spirit Power,” Su Jin said to Blackie.

“I will now proceed to go through a basic introduction of Spirit Power. Spirit Power is defined as a supernatural power that the owners of Hell’s Handbook are able to awaken within themselves. Everything from magical powers to internal energy commonly referred to in Chinese martial arts can be considered a form of Spirit Power. There is an upper cap on Spirit Power after an owner activates it. Owners can cultivate your Spirit Power in order to increase this cap. Most Spirit Power weapons and equipment require a particular type of Spirit Power, so please be careful when selecting any item that requires Spirit Power to operate.”

“At the same time, you will also receive an Internal Screen. This is specially meant for owners who have just activated their Spirit Power. You will be able to see how quickly you are consuming your Spirit Power so that you can get used to using your Spirit Power. Once you are familiar enough with using Spirit Power, this Internal Screen will disappear. That is all the information you are able to obtain regarding Spirit Power,” Blackie introduced Spirit Power to Su Jin very quickly.

Su Jin rolled his eyes. None of this information was new and most of it could be deduced pretty easily with some exposure to Spirit Power. The Handbook’s stance on Spirit Power was clearly to let the owners explore the possibilities themselves.

“So, I only get a maximum of 100 at the start?” Su Jin wasn’t pleased with his Spirit Power’s upper limit at all. 100 was only enough for him to use the Demon Lord’s eye twice and the Boning Knife once. He wouldn’t be able to use the Demon Lord’s Longbow at all.

If some other owners heard Su Jin grumble about how little Spirit Power he had, they might bash him up. The only difference between a veteran and an ordinary owner was Spirit Power and Spirit Power gave veterans a huge edge. There were owners who had gone through more than ten Challenges without activating Spirit Power. Being able to activate Spirit Power after just three Challenges like Su Jin was definitely a rare case.

Now that Su Jin had Spirit Power, his survival rate in a Challenge was going to increase significantly and it would be very helpful to his team as well.

Su Jin looked through the point exchange menu and noticed a few items that didn’t look too bad, but he just looked at them and didn’t exchange any points for them.

But he couldn’t resist buying Lucky Draw Bags again. After he spent 500 points in exchange for five bags and opened them, he felt like chopping his hand off as a punishment.

“Thank you for purchasing a Lucky Draw Bag!” The first three bags contained nothing else but this message. So, the bags didn’t always contain an item, thought Su Jin. He had been very lucky the last time, that’s all.

He finally heard that familiar soothing music fill the air when he opened the fourth bag.

“A Translation Watch. Spend 100 points to start simultaneous interpretation of any language of your choice. A must have for travelling overseas for work or going through a Challenge.”

“Woah! This is not bad!” Su Jin wasn’t sure if he would have to translate a foreign language often during a Challenge, but as long as he needed to do that, this item would come in handy. Spending 100 points wasn’t too expensive either, since being able to read anything during a Challenge could make a huge difference.

“Wait a minute. This…this is actually for the lazy, isn’t it?!” Su Jin quickly realized there was something wrong here. Any owner could exchange points to learn languages inside their Personal Hell Domain. There was pretty much no time limit on learning and you could learn almost any language in the world. So this was only useful to those who didn’t want to waste time learning a foreign language from their Hell Domains.

Of course, it wasn’t easy for anybody to master a foreign language. But if everyone in the team could learn a few each, they would be able to cover most languages.

He kept the Translation Watch away in his Handbook and opened the last bag to see that it was just another pack of Super Oxygenated Chewing Gum.

“What the…oh, never mind. I’ll just take it as replenishing my stock,” said Su Jin with a hollow laugh. Then again, this Super Oxygenated Chewing Gum wasn’t a bad item either. Zhang Shuhan would have died instead of the newbie if he hadn’t had this on hand.

And if Zhang Shuhan had died, Team Wind and Rain would have had one person less to fight the woman during the final battle in the ancestral hall. He couldn’t imagine how things might have ended if Zhang Shuhan hadn’t joined the fight.

He looked through the menu one more time to confirm that there wasn’t anything he needed, then walked into the team’s Hell Domain. Yang Mo was already looking around curiously inside, while Kano Mai had also just walked in from her own Hell Domain.

Yang Mo immediately greeted them merrily when they walked in. His arm and legs had been restored, and he looked like he was in good spirits.

“You seem pretty hyped up!” Su Jin greeted him with a laugh.

“I’m so happy to be ALIVE. This was a Level B Challenge after all.” Yang Mo still couldn’t believe how lucky he had gotten. “I heard that the chances of surviving a Level B Challenge is no more than 20%.”

“Oh? Is there such a thing?” asked Su Jin curiously.

Kano Mai smiled and said, “Yup, there is. For old timers, your rate of survival for a Level D Challenge should be higher than 60%, 40% for a Level C Challenge, 20% for a Level B Challenge and…I heard it’s not even 10% for a Level A Challenge.”

Su Jin nodded. This Rubble Village Challenge had gone relatively well, if that was the case. But while he would have loved for everyone to survive the Challenge, guaranteeing his own survival in the face of the supernatural was already almost impossible, never mind the survival of other owners in the same Challenge.

“By the way, Jin, you…activated your Spirit Power right at the end, didn’t you?” asked Kano Mai as she stared at Su Jin. She had seen that silver glow around his body when they went to the pond behind the hill.

Su Jin nodded with a smile. Kano Mai instantly gave him a hug excitedly and Yang Mo had an equally excited look on his face. He was an old timer who had gone through six Challenges, so he knew how much more powerful an owner with Spirit Power could be.

“What type of Spirit Power do you have?” Kano Mai asked.

“Psychokinesis.”

“You…say that again?!”

“Psychokinesis!”

Kano Mai was speechless for some time, then she smiled sadly and shook her head. “I didn’t expect your Spirit Power to be this type of Spirit Power.”

“Why? What’s wrong? Is this Spirit Power bad to have?” Su Jin knew there must be something bad about this Spirit Power since Kano Mai looked so disappointed.

She nodded. “Yeah. Psychokinetic Spirit Power is also known as a useless Spirit Power.”

“Use…useless Spirit Power?!” Su Jin was stunned. He wasn’t sure if he wanted Kano Mai to explain further.

She tried to break it to him gently, “Let me put it this way. Spirit Power is the one thing that sets a veteran apart from other owners, but a powerful veteran is not just anybody with Spirit Power. One needs to have a lot of Spirit Power. In other words, you need a very high upper limit.”

Su Jin nodded slightly. Kano Mai continued, “There’s only one way to increase the limit, and that’s by cultivating it. It’s the same as martial arts. One needs to constantly practice martial arts in order to increase one’s internal energy levels.”

“If you got some magic type of Spirit Power, you just need to cultivate it by practicing similar magic techniques. All types of Spirit Power come with its own method of cultivation but psychokinesis…it’s not that there isn’t a way to increase it, but the method is simply too difficult!”

Su Jin didn’t know what to say. If it was almost impossible to increase the upper limit of his Psychokinetic Spirit Power, then it was truly a useless type of Spirit Power.

“But you don’t have to be too sad. The point exchange system offers a potion that can erase your Spirit Power. If it’s not working for you, just get rid of it,” Kano Mai consoled Su Jin.

He thought about this option but shook his head. “It’s too hard to activate Spirit Power. As long as there’s still a way to increase this Spirit Power, I want to give it a shot first. Otherwise, I might be dead before I get a chance to activate my Spirit Power a second time.”

Kano Mai didn’t respond to that and just nodded slightly. She didn’t want to dampen Su Jin’s spirits any further. After all, it was so disheartening to hear that the Spirit Power you had been looking forward to for so long had turned out to be useless. Anybody would feel lousy now.

Su Jin took a deep breath and put that aside for the time being. He looked up at the other two and said, “Let’s look at what the Team Hell Domain has to offer! Maybe we can find something that can increase your prowess. Yang Mo, you’ve used up everything in your Spirit Power battery, so you’ve got to find some other way to make yourself stronger.”

Yang Mo’s expression instantly fell when he heard Su Jin mention his Spirit Power battery. That was his trump card, but this Challenge had used up all of it. He didn’t know how he was going to face future Challenges without any Spirit Power.

“Don’t worry, you’ve got us in the future.” Su Jin patted Yang Mo’s shoulder.