Chapter Eighty-Seven: God’s Gift

"Ahem..." For some reason, the Heavenly God known as "Fallen Angel with Broken Wings" let out a dry cough, which made me deeply concerned for his physical well-being. The Heavenly Gods are so busy managing the myriad affairs of the world to protect the living beings of the Falwei Continent; they truly work far too hard...

"Fine, I will tell you the reward tiers we offer..." Finally, the Fallen Angel made up his mind and began to speak:

"...While the specific figures are adjusted based on the nature of the bug, generally speaking, minor bugs involving small details are rewarded with 50,000 gold coins, or one week of free subscription time, or 200,000 experience points. Medium-level bugs are rewarded with 100,000 gold coins, or one month of free time, or 300,000 experience points. Serious bugs that involve core programming are awarded 150,000 gold coins, three months of free time, or 500,000 experience points..."

Having said this, the cautious Heavenly God swallowed dryly, looked around with his neck shrunken like a thief, and whispered:

"...You must, truly, never tell anyone else about this..."

Feiyin lowered her head to calculate, then asked: "What percentage of flexibility do you have in the reward authority you can grant?"

"According to Article 160 of the employee handbook, bug reward amounts are determined by the company; GMs have no authority to adjust them independently." Huh? What are those large, shiny things on the Fallen Angel’s forehead? Could that be the legendary cold sweat?

"That can't be right..." Feiyin glanced at him skeptically. "...Even the real estate agents selling houses have a two-percent price flexibility."

The Fallen Angel with Broken Wings suddenly began to cough, as if he had choked on water. After a long while, he struggled to say, "We are really not in the business of selling houses..."

"Then do you have any recent promotional events? Rebates, discounts, VIP cards, points-for-cash, or free renovations with the purchase of a new house..." Feiyin persisted.

"I’m sorry, we do not offer renovations, appliances, gas, or electricity subsidies, because we are not real estate developers. We weren't in the past, we aren't now, and we won't be in the future!" the Fallen Angel stated firmly.

"Oh, I see..." Feiyin seemed to have finally understood what the Heavenly God was saying, but she still said, unwilling to give up, "...But GM, we went to great lengths to find this bug; you really have to give us some perks. Look at my low level. I reported it to you so enthusiastically; you really ought to give me some sense of accomplishment..."

The Fallen Angel pondered for a long time, then finally nodded with great reluctance: "If you tell me the bug right now, I will reveal some internal information to you. That is my absolute limit."

Feiyin was instantly revitalized: "That’s good, that’s good! I’ll report it to you right now." As she spoke, she signaled to me, and the gaze of the Fallen Angel with Broken Wings immediately fell upon me.

Being stared at by the Heavenly God, my heart was suddenly filled with both pride and nervousness. I tremblingly took out the boxing gloves I had bought from Foxiao and put them on with shaking hands:

"We happened to discover that these gloves provide an additional attack attribute and can be equipped by professions other than Monks." I solemnly reported to the Fallen Angel before me.

The Fallen Angel checked my attribute changes, then pulled a magical notebook, which looked completely different from ours, out of thin air. He flipped through it for a moment, then nodded:

"Hmm. This bug has indeed not been reported by anyone yet. I will record your accounts. I will notify you as soon as the reward is approved. Now, make your choice: what reward would you like? Gold coins, game time cards, or experience points?"

Feiyin looked at us inquiringly, then pointed to the coin purse at her waist, seeking our opinions. I nodded in agreement, and after a moment of hesitation, Foxiao nodded as well.

Just like that, the wealth we won in this brief meeting with the Heavenly God had already exceeded the amount of gold we had spent so much effort earning by several times over.

Long, long after, when looking back on this scene, I couldn't help but feel a lingering fear: if we had chosen something other than gold coins, or if the Fallen Angel had left behind Feiyin’s contact information instead of mine, my life might have been turned upside down...

As soon as the Fallen Angel finished recording, Feiyin immediately lunged forward with glowing eyes: "GM, what exactly is that internal information you mentioned?"

"This..." The elegantly dressed Heavenly God pondered for a moment, and finally, as if making a painful decision, said: "...Remember, absolutely, positively do not tell anyone..."

Feiyin nodded vigorously.

Having received this highly unreliable assurance, the Heavenly God sighed helplessly and handed a small booklet to Feiyin: "Although I cannot directly give you a divine artifact, I can give you this Divine Artifact Introduction Manual. This manual contains the attributes, drop locations, and drop rates of all divine artifact equipment—it’s all undisclosed internal information..."

A treasure map of every divine artifact in this world?

I never expected that the seemingly stingy deity before me would bestow such a precious gift.

It is no exaggeration to say that this was a grace of the highest order. Of course, we couldn't dream of sitting back and reaping the rewards by having the deity generously hand us a divine artifact. However, he had pointed us in a direction. He must have had his reasons for doing so; perhaps he wanted to use this to give us, these humble existences, some necessary tempering to see if we were qualified to possess and master these weapons of the divine realm.

But regardless, once we possessed this atlas, we would be the beings closest to the destructive power of the gods in this world. This alone was enough to make us feel deeply grateful to this generous deity.

Feiyin’s eyes were shining as she quickly flipped through the atlas, which held the secrets of the continent’s artifacts. We could fully understand her excitement, but...

Ahem, Guild Master. As a refined lady—or at least someone who prides herself on being a refined lady—shouldn't you wipe the drool from the corner of your mouth first?

Under our reverent gaze, the Fallen Angel with Broken Wings spread the wings on his back with some difficulty, gathered all his strength to flap them, and slowly rose into the sky, flying toward the sun. As he drifted away, his figure gradually turned into a floating silhouette, almost melting into the bright sunlight.

"Oops..." Suddenly, his left wing stiffened. His body fell straight down like a rock, heading toward a hill in the distance. Just as we all thought another flight accident was about to occur, he managed to adjust his balance at the last critical moment and, to our relief, managed to rise back into the sky.

Flying toward the distant, unknown world.

What a resilient Heavenly God, braving great dangers to travel between the divine realm and the mortal world, working hard for the happiness of all beings. My eyes filled with moved tears, while my palms were still clenched tight, damp with the sweat caused by his clumsy flying skills...

...

"Guild Master, I didn't expect you to choose gold coins..." On the way back, Foxiao said to Feiyin. "...I thought you would choose something more practical, like time cards."

"Time cards are so boring..." Feiyin replied. "...It's a market economy. Spending money for fun is only natural. If you work yourself to death in the game just to save money, and then spend your hard-earned money on time cards, it becomes a cycle of being forced to play the game every day. That's not worth it. Besides..." Feiyin swallowed. "...That’s 50,000 gold coins. It can buy nearly 200,000 health potions; just thinking about it is exhilarating..."

There is one thing about our Guild Master that I have always found puzzling: for some reason, she always likes to convert the amount of gold coins directly into the number of cheap health potions, thereby arriving at a value far greater than the gold itself, at which point she becomes even happier. It seems that for this woman, the larger the number, the more she subconsciously believes her wealth has increased, resulting in a stronger sense of satisfaction.

To put it nicely, she is a delicate and sharp woman who is particularly sensitive to numbers and possesses extraordinary perceptual and cognitive abilities. But to put it plainly...

This is pure self-deception!

"Hee hee hee..." the Guild Master laughed triumphantly. "...Not only that, but I also managed to wring the artifact information out of the GM. The 'Guide', the longbow 'Whisper of the Wind', the spear 'Law of Space', and... hmm?"

Suddenly, Feiyin seemed to have discovered a problem. She stopped in her tracks, her face turning pale and then red:

"Jeff, you must be level forty-nine by now, right?"

"Yes..." I nodded, puzzled, wondering why the respected Guild Master would ask such an obvious question.

"Then how much experience do you need to reach level fifty?"

I checked my attributes: "835,327. Why do you ask?"

"Hold on a second..." Feiyin waved her hand at me with a deathly pale face, then raised her hands to her ears, making an upward motion as if taking something off her head. Then, she stood there expressionless, as if her soul had left her body, motionless. However, her mouth kept making strange "click-clack" sounds, as if someone were pressing some odd keys.

I wasn't surprised at all: "Void-Walkers" often perform such strange behaviors, and they usually recover after a short while.

Sure enough, a moment later, Feiyin regained her senses. She had clearly been dealt a massive blow. She gritted her teeth, her eyes filled with murderous intent. When she looked at that artifact scroll again, the joy was gone, replaced by a deep-seated hatred, as if she wanted to chew it to pieces and swallow it.

"The lowest-level artifact in here requires level two hundred to equip..." Feiyin roared, waving the scroll like a crazed lioness. "...It takes over 800,000 experience to reach level fifty, and the experience required for each level increases by at least 30%. It will take at least 32.9 quadrillion experience points! Assuming I play four hours a day, at my current speed, training without stopping, it would take at least eight years to reach level two hundred! Eight years! The world might have ended by then, and who knows if this short-lived company will even exist. Besides, even if it hasn't gone bankrupt in eight years, this information will have long since been made public. What the hell is the use of me having it now? The dungeons mentioned in here aren't even open yet..."

As she spoke, Feiyin aggressively raised her middle finger toward the sky: "Damn GM, playing the pig to eat the tiger and tricking me, I’m not done with you! Isn't your complaint line toll-free? Hmph, I... I’m going to complain about you! I’m going to make twenty international calls a day to complain about you! Ah... I’m so angry..."

I don't know why Feiyin was so furious. To me, she seemed merely disappointed and slightly out of character because she couldn't immediately hunt for these artifacts. This kind of thinking is highly undesirable: God does not care for us vulgar mortals for no reason; in bestowing gifts, he must also measure whether we are qualified to receive them. As long as we remain pious, hold firm to our convictions, and accept God's trials with an open heart, one day, he will bestow the promised blessings upon us.

It’s just a level-two-hundred threshold; sooner or later, we will reach it. Isn't that so? If we don't even have this small amount of perseverance, what right do we have to receive his reward?

We could even say that what the deity gave us was not these powerful artifacts, but a thought-provoking admonition. He uses this method to warn us: we should live with pious faith, firmly and uprightly, writing our own lives step by step, in a down-to-earth manner. Only when we work hard enough and shed enough sweat will there be an equivalent reward waiting for us...

To warn us in such a subtle way, while giving the greedy female mage a small punishment and a valuable life lesson—how wise, how generous, and how just he is!

At this moment, the sincere admiration and reverence for the wobbling GM flying in the sky were deeply embedded in my heart...

...

If you have never had the personal experience of strolling down the street with tens of thousands of gold coins in your pocket, I suggest you try it; it feels truly wonderful. My purse felt heavier than ever, as if my storage magic had failed. Looking around, the goods on the street that were once so expensive I was ashamed to ask about them now seemed like "cheap goods." I felt full of confidence and arrogance, as if everything I saw was beneath me.

If anyone is troubled by a hunched back, I have a brilliant idea—just stuff their purse full of gold coins and let them walk down the street; they will immediately stand tall and proud.

...

Not many days after the descent of the Heavenly God GM007, the Fallen Angel with Broken Wings, Feiyin received a generous gift from the divine realm—a reward of over 50,000 gold coins. This was truly a pile of gold that "fell from the sky." Added to the exorbitant profits we had made from selling boxing gloves earlier, our guild became instantly wealthy overnight, with over 70,000 gold coins in cash on the books.

October 15, 1461, of the Gregorian calendar—this was a day that should go down in history. On this day, our guild, "A Group of People Who Are Idle and Bored, Chatting Endlessly About Messy Things," welcomed a big day that was even more significant than the founding of the guild—we finally got paid!

Because Foxiao and I discovered this bug, we each received a reward of 15,000 gold coins, and the others in the guild received various amounts ranging from hundreds to thousands. Our guild mates were so moved that they were dancing and tearing up. Longbow Shooting-at-the-Sun spoke for the vast majority of the guild members:

"I never thought we’d live to see the day we’d get money from Guild Master Feiyin."

What he received, of course, was a sharp Ice Storm spell from the Guild Master and an uninhibited scolding.

Hidden beneath these brash jokes was a sense of happy accomplishment and satisfaction. I feel that this happiness did not come entirely from the heavy gold: throughout the process, all the guild members planned carefully and cooperated seamlessly to successfully achieve a difficult goal. Only those who have personally put in the effort can understand the pride felt within.

But at the same time, this happiness was not entirely unrelated to the gold: only when your hard work is rewarded accordingly can you derive greater joy from the success. Regardless of whether the reward is truly equivalent to your effort, when you hold these gold coins in your hands, you feel they are exceptionally precious.

I suddenly wondered, if we hadn't chosen gold coins back then, but the meaningless "time cards" or non-transferable soul power, what would the scene be like now?

And it was our money-grubbing, greedy female Guild Master, Miss Feiyin, who made the choice first.

She actually could have chosen to get more, couldn't she?

Our Guild Master was currently being grabbed by her members by her hands and feet and thrown into the sky to congratulate her on the successful implementation of her plan. This way of congratulating her didn't seem to be approved by her; she squeezed her eyes shut in terror, screaming loudly in mid-air, threatening to raise one person's interest rates or shorten another person's repayment date, using threats and lures to get everyone to put her down. But the members who usually feared her like mice fear a cat did not obey her orders at all, just cheering and throwing her higher together.

Looking at her rare expression of terror, I suddenly felt that if her choice had been different, she might have received even less.

Who knows...

After everyone had received their respective salaries, there were nearly 20,000 gold coins left in the guild. Feiyin planned it out and took half of it to buy various raw materials needed to practice life skills, providing them to us guild members with production capabilities like alchemy, cooking, sewing, and blacksmithing to level up our skills. The other half was deposited in the Continental Bank as the guild’s public savings, for use in case of emergency.

At the same time, temples and official residences across the continent issued a joint announcement. Tonight, the omniscient and omnipotent Father God Darimos will exert his divine power to eliminate this god-defying property of the boxing gloves. At the same time, he will adjust many subtle rules of this world. Please, all Void-Walkers, do not linger in this plane at that time, so as to avoid being implicated.

They call this a "system upgrade."

This announcement caused complaints from adventurers all over the street who were wearing boxing gloves—those complaining the loudest looked very familiar; they seemed to be the "VIP customers" who had spent 500 gold coins to buy this secret from us. But, shh... we all pretended we had never seen them and left quietly. I sincerely hope they never find out who snitched to the Heavenly Gods known as GMs.

...

Today, when the average savings of people on the continent is less than 1,000 gold coins, a "ten-thousand-coin household" like me is definitely an enviable existence. I spent more than 5,000 gold coins to replace all my equipment from top to bottom—except for the boots bestowed by the temple.

Now, my shield has been replaced with the rectangular tower shield "Library Wall," which can add 120 points of defense and 300 points of health, and it also provides a 10% higher block chance than before. My sword has also become the "Rattlesnake's Wind-Splitting Blade," which adds 170 points of attack power. Although its attack power is about the same as the "Brave's Flame Blade" I replaced, its attack speed is increased by a quarter, its hit rate is correspondingly improved, and it also comes with a poison effect. The other equipment has also been greatly improved.

In addition, I bought a "Scarecrow's Chain Mail." If you could see this armor for yourself, you would find that it is not as fragile as its name suggests. It is called this because the metal chains on the armor are woven very densely and smoothly, just like the weaving method of straw in the fields. This is an armor that can only be equipped after level fifty. As a... ahem... rich person, I decided to prepare for my future.

By the time I had gathered this set of equipment, the Void-Walkers on the street were already very scarce. The remaining few were busy turning in quests for rewards, or just lying there motionless like dead people, setting up stalls to sell goods—their bodies were here, but I felt their souls had long since run off to who knows where.

I found a small tavern on the side of the road and asked the pot-bellied tavern owner for a glass of ale—this stuff can speed up the recovery of your battle qi, but drinking too much will make your head dizzy and lower your hit rate. This nerve-numbing drink does more harm than good in battle, so usually, no one chooses to consume it during a fight. However, when there is no need to fight, people like to have a glass in the tavern, mainly because its refreshing taste is much better than that rotten health potion.

I was the only guest in the tavern. I sipped slowly, and was about to drink the last drop of the fine wine in the glass...

Once again, I encountered the boundless darkness unexpectedly.

(Thanks to all the readers for providing me with the calculation method—although I still can't use any of them—special thanks to April Little Tea, who not only sent me the results directly but also carefully helped me count the digits. If it hadn't been for that, I would have miscounted even after counting three times.

The inspiration for the experience points came from a joke I read a long time ago: someone playing "Legend" cut down an eighty-level treasure sword at level thirty. In his excitement, he calculated how long it would take for him to be able to use it, and then found that it might take about ten years, so that treasure sword could only be used as a status symbol—the experience in "Legend" seemed very low at the beginning, and such a situation will no longer occur now. After reading this joke, I completely gave up the idea of playing "Legend.")