Chapter 8: The Newbie is Terrible

What a terrifying bunch these newbies were.

Su Luo sighed, shutting down the forum.

After a moment’s thought, she reopened the system marketplace, curiosity tugging at her.

The marketplace was sparse, its offerings laid bare before her:  

– Health Potion (3 points)  

– Stamina Potion (3 points)  

– Temporary Disguise Potion (3 points)  

– Permanent Disguise Potion (300 points)  

(Any item could be sold, provided it was brought into the system from a dungeon with proper documentation.)  

Su Luo scanned the list, her mind calculating.

A disguise potion per game round seemed essential—a small price for survival.

If she earned 25 points per round and spent 3 on a potion, she could afford up to five health or stamina potions before breaking even.

Anything more, and she’d be in the red.

Glancing at the clock, she was startled to see it was still nine o’clock.

Time in the game didn’t touch the outside world, it seemed.

But that didn’t mean her energy and stamina were spared.

Exhaustion weighed on her like a heavy cloak, her body pleading for rest.

She mulled it over.

Everything urgent had been handled, hadn’t it?

With a weary sigh, she collapsed onto the bed, her eyes fluttering shut…

When she awoke, the sun had already dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of twilight.

This continent’s dusk wasn’t so different from the one she knew, yet it carried a breathtaking beauty—a vivid, pulsing vitality born from surviving the heart-pounding thrill of life-and-death games.

Su Luo tapped the room’s service AI and said, “Please prepare a standard dinner for me.”  

“Certainly,” came the reply, smooth and mechanical.

“It will be ready in your cabinet in five minutes.”  

She’d read about this feature on the forum: the first year came with free standard meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Anything fancier required payment, a luxury she wasn’t ready to indulge in.

For now, Su Luo had no plans to take up a side job or trade points for cash.

She’d resigned herself to a month of standard meals, a practical choice for a practical girl.

While waiting for her food, she reopened the player forum.

It was divided into several sections, one of which was the Newbie Corner.

Curious about her fellow newcomers, she clicked in, eager to see how others from her cohort were faring.

A post caught her eye: [“He’s Not Me: The Destructive Power of Newbies”]  

[Original Poster]: “During today’s trial, I ran into a newbie. She looked sweet, innocent even, so I offered to guide her.”  

[Floor 1]: “Grabs a chair, ready for the tea.”  

[Floor 2]: “And then? Bet this sweet girl stirred up some chaos.”  

[Original Poster]: “Oh, you have no idea. She joined my team with this look like she was convinced I was out to sabotage her.”  

[Floor 3]: “Wait, why’d she join if she was so paranoid?”  

[Original Poster]: “Probably thought if she refused, I’d go all ‘if I can’t have you, no one will.’ Who knows what goes on in her head?”  

[Floor 4]: “(Cackling) This is getting good. Picture it: a kindhearted veteran trying to help a paranoid newbie. I’m here for it.”  

[Floor 5]: “Hands you the pen, write the story!”  

[Floor 6]: “Slides the pen to the big shot.”  

[Original Poster]: “Hold up, I’m not some old geezer!”  

[Floor 7]: “Stay on track, OP, keep going!”  

[Original Poster]: “So I told her, ‘We run into monsters, we each take one.’ Fair, right? Tell me that’s not fair.”  

[Floor 8]: “Totally fair. Then what?”  

[Original Poster]: “Let me just get this out. While I was tangled up with three regular monsters, this girl bolts. I couldn’t even chase her before she ran straight into another pack of three. Next thing I know, she’s a flash of white light—gone. Dead on the spot.”  

[Floor 9]: “That’s it? She died that easily? I thought she had some secret solo strategy!”  

[Floor 10]: “Born for the drama…”

Su Luo stared at the screen, dumbfounded.

Why would anyone be in such a rush to throw their life away?

Was surviving really that unappealing?

But as she scrolled further, she realized this newbie’s antics were just a drop in the bucket compared to the parade of clueless rookies.

Another post loomed: [“SeriousName: Just How Much Do Newbies Want to Die?”]  

[Original Poster]: “I’ve been playing this game for years, mentoring one newbie annually. So far, I’ve guided 38 of them.”  

[Floor 1]: “Whoa, a legend in our midst!”  

[Floor 2]: “So, OP’s 56 now? Ready for retirement?”  

[Original Poster]: “Pretty much, which is why I’m here venting.”  

[Original Poster]: One newbie I mentored was a support class. Somehow, she got it into her head that ‘supports are super rare, so everyone has to listen to me.’ She ran around the dungeon mouthing off at everything—sky, earth, air. If you didn’t obey her, she’d sabotage you, pulling monsters left and right. Her skills were awful, always hitting the monsters like she thought she was dealing damage. In the end, she pulled too many and got herself killed.  

[Floor 3]: “(Shudders) That’s terrifying. Pulling monsters like that screws everyone over.”  

[Floor 4]: “Newbies like that don’t deserve to live.”  

[Original Poster]: “Then there was this guy with the wildest moves. Rejected all veteran offers to team up, insisted on going solo. His talent skill must’ve had some monster-attracting effect because he ran through the dungeon, pulling a trail of enemies behind him.”  

[Original Poster]: “We’re talking a horde—sixty, maybe seventy monsters—chasing him while he sprinted ahead. We were fighting our own battles, and not a single monster paid us any attention.”  

[Floor 5]: “Wow.”  

[Floor 6]: “Was he planning some ultimate move?”  

[Original Poster]: “Get this—he seemed to think he could lead the monsters straight to the boss and… what, wipe them all out in one go?”  

[Floor 7]: “That’s next-level audacity.”  

[Floor 8]: “Absolute genius!”

[Original Poster]: “Here’s the kicker—he didn’t know that in newbie dungeons, the boss only spawns when the number of small monsters drops low enough. We tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. I was done. Don’t ask what happened next. Spoiler: he died on the spot.”  

[Floor 9]: “Classic.”  

[Floor 10]: “Brains are a great asset. Can we petition for talent skills to only go to people who actually use them?”  

[Original Poster]: “Oh, and then there was this one newbie with a shapeshifting talent—pretty cool, right? He could transform to look exactly like anything he chose. Problem was, the guy was clueless. He turned himself into a small monster, thinking it’d fool the others into leaving him alone.”  

[Floor 11]: “Wait, what? That’s a gap in my knowledge.”  

[Original Poster]: “Seriously? Some people don’t know this? Monsters don’t need to check if you’re one of them—they just know. It’s like how we see ‘NPC’ floating above someone’s head. Obvious.”  

[Floor 12]: “Noted, thanks for the lesson.”  

Su Luo nodded as she read, a spark of understanding igniting.

So that’s how it worked.

She wondered if the game dungeons followed the same rules.

A soft “ding-dong” broke her focus.

Dinner, she figured.

Opening the cabinet, she found a steaming meal waiting: stir-fried green beans, a small portion of braised pork, and a comforting bowl of tomato egg soup.

It was surprisingly lavish, more than she’d expected.

As she dug in, savoring each bite, Su Luo couldn’t help but think that, aside from the constant threat of death, life here was almost too good.

Fork in one hand, notebook in the other, Su Luo began to wrote down reflections on today’s dungeon.

It was a habit instilled by the orphanage director: after tackling something unfamiliar, always review your mistakes to avoid repeating them.

She scribbled as she ate.  

1. “I came off too green at the start—anyone could tell I was a newbie. It didn’t matter here, but in other situations, I could be an easy mark for scams.”  

2. “I got distracted too easily while fighting monsters. That’s a recipe for getting ambushed or letting my teammates down.”  

3. “My curiosity’s too strong. ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ isn’t just a saying—I could’ve died a dozen times already.

‘Thank goodness I’m not a cat’, she thought with a wry smile.  

Satisfied she’d covered the obvious errors, Su Luo flipped to a fresh page and tackled some lingering questions.

“On Ji Hei:”  

1. “Ji Hei has a high chance of earning perfect scores, suggesting he’s likely a hidden class with a hidden weapon. I’ll probably run into him in the next dungeon.”  

2. “Ji Hei seems like a kid with a story. He doesn’t act like he belongs on Aurore Continent.”  

Her suspicion wasn’t baseless.

When she first met Ji Hei on the plane, he’d worn a hat pulled low, shielding his eyes—a telltale sign of someone guarding their inner world (celebrities aside, of course).

He likely carried some heavy baggage.

In the dungeon, he spoke little, but when Su Luo asked about the rules, he listened intently, as if no one had explained them to him before.

He probably had no close allies on Aurore.

With too little to go on, Su Luo set Ji Hei aside and turned her thoughts to Fatso.

“On SlightlyChubby:”  

1. “White on the outside, black sesame on the inside—a schemer through and through.”  

2. “Her talent skill is probably something that attracts monsters, or maybe a bad-luck aura?”  

Though Su Luo might never cross paths with SlightlyChubby again, her observation skills—usually so reliable—had failed her here.

She needed to analyze why, to sharpen her instincts.

As she pondered, a realization hit: everyone awakened their talent skills at eighteen, and SlightlyChubby was a newbie, so why did she have the face of a thirty-year-old?

She must’ve used a disguise potion from the start.

That alone wasn’t suspicious—SlightlyChubby was a second-generation player, likely tipped off by family.

But paired with her deceptive nature, Su Luo suspected the disguise was to dodge retaliation.

She recalled how, after Su Luo warned the gaming-addict teen, SlightlyChubby stopped cozying up to the two veterans.

Smart move.

SlightlyChubby was no fool.

Then there was the moment they fought an elite monster.

Su Luo had caught the glint of greed in SlightlyChubby’s eyes, a hunger so palpable it had put Su Luo on edge.

SlightlyChubby’s loud shout had drawn attention, and Su Luo now realized she’d genuinely wanted to steal the kill.

But since the veterans she followed showed no interest, she’d been forced to stand by and watch.

In hindsight, SlightlyChubby’s slip-ups were glaring.

Su Luo had been blindsided by SlightlyChubby’s initial, seemingly kind advice, painting her as a harmless, bumbling figure.

That assumption had dulled Su Luo’s senses to the many red flags.

Su Luo let out a heavy sigh.

She still had a lot to work on.

With her reflections complete, she exhaled deeply, a mix of relief and determination settling in.

The revolution wasn’t over—there was still work to do.

A spark of excitement flickered in her eyes.

A mundane life was fine, but this one, brimming with danger and intrigue, was far more thrilling, wasn’t it?

Su Luo had never been the “good kid.”

Even as a child, when she could’ve tattled to the teacher, she’d chosen to take on the bullies herself, beating them into submission.

“You can tell a child’s future at three, their fate at seven,” the old saying went, and it rang true.

She wasn’t one to play it safe.

Gazing out at the night sky, now speckled with stars, Su Luo’s lips curved into a smile.

This life, with all its risks and wonders, was absolutely beautiful.