Chapter 7: Buy! Buy! Buy!

The individual ranked first on the global leaderboard was named James, clearly a foreigner, though the system had automatically translated his name. Chen Mo wanted to click on James to view more detailed information, but a warning sounded in his mind.

"Warning! Insufficient permissions! Perhaps collecting more wisps will unlock this permission."

Ning Xuan, seeing her brother frown, became immediately upset. "Brother! I’m so amazing, and you don’t even praise me!"

Chen Mo quickly gave her a thumbs up. "Brilliant, little sister! As expected of my sister—after all my careful guidance, you’re truly impressive!"

Ning Xuan raised her chin proudly. "Hmph, that’s not it at all. It’s just that your sister is naturally clever! By the way, brother, what’s your rank?"

Chen Mo glanced at the long string of numbers on the display—2,945,737—and felt too embarrassed to say.

"Uh… well… rankings are just fleeting clouds. Only children care about them; what matters is taking part!"

"Tch! You must be ranked in the hundreds of thousands and are too ashamed to tell me, stingy!"

In reality, even the hundreds of thousands was an overestimate for Chen Mo—his real rank was over two million.

"Hey, there's also a points leaderboard here?" Ning Xuan clicked open the points leaderboard and was nearly frightened out of her wits.

"This, this, how come the top score is so high? That must be cheating! This is too fake!"

Chen Mo swallowed hard and quickly opened the points leaderboard, discovering that the number one position was held by none other than "Great Demon King"!

[Points Leaderboard]
[1. Great Demon King == 2,304,586]
[2. James == 104,353]
[3. Lei Dongtian == 80,345]
[4. Slayer == 73,563]
[5. Musashi Miyamoto == 63,463]
...
[500. Not Comfortable Unless Soonsky == 20,452]

Sure enough, many nearby people had noticed that "Great Demon King" was at the top of the leaderboard.

"What the hell, how is this possible? James is the top player globally, with an 18,000-meter record that no one can beat, but he only has a hundred thousand points!"

"I just checked—this ‘Great Demon King’ only got 1,000 meters in the instance, but has over two million points. That's way too suspicious. He must be cheating!"

"He must have found some special trick to farm points!"

During the instance challenge, some people got lucky—even if they fell into the abyss, they accidentally activated a hidden instance filled entirely with gold coins, each worth 100 points.

And after reaching 5,000 meters, there’s a chance of encountering gold coins on the way, causing one’s points to snowball. That’s why James, in second place, was able to amass over 100,000 points.

Chen Mo covered his mouth, afraid he would burst out laughing.

Ning Xuan, however, thought her brother’s pride had been wounded and hurried to comfort him. "Brother, what’s wrong? Don’t be sad! If it doesn’t work out, we’ll play again next time! Besides, it’s just a game; what counts is participation!"

Mmm! Mmm-mmm!

Chen Mo pinched his thigh hard to keep from laughing. "I’m not upset! Not upset at all! Ha—"

Ning Xuan looked at her brother with concern. She knew he was proud, and maybe his poor performance was too much for him to accept, so he was both laughing and crying.

Most people believed this was just some alien virtual reality game, so despite the Great Demon King’s high points, people just cursed a bit and didn’t care. After all, what use were points? It’s not like you could exchange them for money in real life.

True, points couldn’t be exchanged for cash, but they could be exchanged for equipment.

Chen Mo opened the points shop.

[Instance Shop = Beginner]

It was divided into three main categories.

[Character Packages], [Attribute Points], [Equipment]

#############

[Character Packages]
[Beginner Warrior: Constitution 50; Spirit 10; 100% chance to awaken a combat skill; Points required: 100,000]
[Beginner Mage: Constitution 10; Spirit 50; 100% chance to awaken a magic skill; Points required: 100,000]
[Outstanding Ordinary Person: Constitution 10; Spirit 10; Certain chance to awaken a special ability; Points required: 100,000; only ordinary people can purchase]

#############

[Attribute Points]
[Constitution: Points 10,000; upon purchase, randomly increase either Strength, Vitality, or Agility by one; tiny chance to awaken another special attribute]
[Spirit: Points 10,000; upon purchase, randomly increase either Magic, Qi Sea, or Meditation by one; tiny chance to awaken another special attribute]

###############

[Equipment]
[Beginner Sword: Strength +2, Points: 1,000]
[Beginner Staff: Magic +2, Points: 1,000]
[Beginner Armor: Vitality +2, Points: 1,000]
[Beginner Magic Cannon: Meditation +2, Points: 1,000]
[Beginner Shoes: Agility +2, Points: 1,000]
[Note: Every beginner receives one cubic meter of storage space, for instance equipment only—not for real-world items]

##################

After viewing the instance shop, many people began to curse their luck.

"This is outrageous! Character packages cost 100,000 points each. Only two people in the world have reached that. What a joke!"

"And those attribute points—10,000 points for just one, and it’s random, you can’t even choose! That’s so lame!"

Of course, some rational voices analyzed the situation.

"100,000 points seems tough now, but don’t forget—everyone can enter up to ten Evolution Spheres a day, which means ten instances daily. Even if you earn 1,000 points each time, that’s 10,000 a day! In ten days, you’ll hit 100,000!"

"That actually makes sense! Just treat it like an MMO—grind, grind, and grind some more! Let’s farm points nonstop!"

"Do you think the equipment and enhanced attributes we buy here will have any effect in the real world?"

"Hahaha, you must be crazy! I think this is just a virtual game. How could it affect reality? If people could really cast spells in real life, the world would be in chaos!"

While everyone was discussing what exactly the Evolution Sphere and instance game were, Chen Mo had already entered a crazed shopping spree.

He was the man at the top of the leaderboard, after all!

First, he bought all the character packages! Only 100,000 points each—child’s play!

Ding-ding!

[Sorry, you cannot purchase the Beginner Warrior package.]
[Sorry, you cannot purchase the Beginner Mage package.]

Damn it! Even with enough points, he couldn’t buy them.

Surely, he could buy Outstanding Ordinary Person!

[Congratulations, purchase successful.]

Obtained Character Package: [Outstanding Ordinary Person]; attributes increased.

Chen Mo quickly opened his stats panel.

[Great Demon King]
[Outstanding Ordinary Person]
[Constitution: 15 (Strength: 3, Vitality: 2, Agility: 10)]
[Spirit: 15 (Magic: 3, Qi Sea: 3, Meditation: 9)]

The base attributes for an ordinary person should be Constitution 10, Spirit 10; the extra 10 attribute points were accumulated from Chen Mo’s ten thousand instance challenges.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a chance to awaken a special ability? Where was it? He couldn’t see anything!

Chen Mo subconsciously checked himself—nothing seemed to have changed! Damn, what was special about this thing? What a scam!

He decided to buy a full set of beginner’s equipment—it should look cool.

[Sorry, you are not a Warrior and cannot purchase Beginner Armor.]
[Sorry, you are not a Mage and cannot purchase Beginner Magic Cannon.]

What the hell! This stupid system, this stupid Evolution Sphere—sooner or later, Chen Mo was going to pin that elf girl to the ground and teach her a lesson for this nonsense!

At least he could buy attribute points.

[Confirm purchase of attribute point for 10,000 points?]

Hey, it worked! He could buy!

Confirm! Confirm! Confirm!

Buy! Buy them all! Buy like crazy!

With 2.2 million points, Chen Mo spent them all in one go.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

A piercing sound blared in his ears like an alarm clock.

Red light! Blue light! Flashed endlessly from Chen Mo’s body!

Fortunately, to protect player privacy, others couldn’t see what was happening to Chen Mo. Gaining a point of Constitution caused a red glow, gaining Spirit a blue glow. If people knew he had just added over 200 attribute points in one go, they’d go mad.

[Insufficient points, unable to purchase more attribute points. Current points: 4,586]

Finally, Chen Mo had spent all his points. He felt as if his entire body was brimming with power—he could punch a bull to death! No, ten bulls!

He opened his stats panel.

[Great Demon King]
[Constitution: 150 (Strength: 40, Vitality: 30, Agility: 60; Other: 20)]
[Spirit: 100 (Magic: 20, Qi Sea: 20, Meditation: 60)]

Wait—something was off. Strength, Vitality, and Agility add up to 130, but Constitution was 150. Where did the other 20 points go?

Did the system really stoop so low as to steal his attribute points?

Looking closer, there was a line of golden glowing text after Constitution.

[S-Rank Combat Talent: All Warrior skills’ effects are doubled.]

Even though Chen Mo rarely played online games, he knew that S-Rank was the top tier in any game, and gold signified the highest quality!

All Warrior skills’ effects doubled—just by the description, it sounded invincible! No wonder 20 attribute points had disappeared—it was this talent, equivalent to a 20-point bonus.

Wait a second—

Suddenly, Chen Mo recalled something crucial: he wasn’t a Warrior, and didn’t have a single Warrior skill. What use was this S-Rank Combat Talent? It wasn’t even worth a steamed bun! This was way too useless!

What Chen Mo didn’t know was that precisely because he wasn’t a Warrior and didn’t have a single skill, this S-Rank talent only cost 20 attribute points to awaken. Otherwise, even 2,000 points wouldn’t have been enough.

The Evolution Sprite’s voice rang out: "Rest period is over. In three seconds, you will be forcibly ejected from the Evolution Sphere!"

3!

2!

1!

Everyone was enveloped in white light, just like when they first entered the Evolution Sphere. Their bodies plunged downward, passing through corridors of swirling color, making it impossible to distinguish reality from illusion.

Each person’s body shifted from translucent to solid, and one by one, they were teleported out.

From the moment they entered the Evolution Sphere, only half an hour had passed!

Wailing sirens blared all around!

As soon as Chen Mo reappeared, he found Ning Xuan, grabbed his sister’s hand, and quickly fled the scene.

The two of them moved like the wind—no, even faster than the wind—through the crowd.

"What’s the rush? Why are you shoving?" Some passersby had no idea what had just brushed past them.

At that moment, Xiao Yong was also teleported out of the Evolution Sphere.

He casually punched the ground.

"Captain, what are you doing?" The other security guards were confused, but soon their confusion turned to shock as a jagged crack split the ground where he’d struck.

Xiao Yong understood everything! He finally realized—the Evolution Sphere wasn’t a virtual game at all! It truly helped humans evolve! All the increased attributes from inside became real in the outside world!

As a retired soldier, Xiao Yong knew what it meant when any ordinary person could gain terrifying power so easily.

Xiao Yong’s voice boomed, "Anyone who entered the Evolution Sphere—stop right there! You are not allowed to leave!"