Chapter 40, "The World's Finest Sword"
Seeing that Linghu Chong was getting into the swing of things, Lu Yusheng finally felt relieved and ended the complimentary play-along service.
The novelty hadn't worn off yet; they could keep killing forty or fifty monsters at a time. Linghu Chong still had the patience to keep going, but she didn't have the patience to watch anymore.
Then her gaze shifted to Yue Lingshan, who was sitting next to Linghu Chong with her face in her hands, and she smiled and said, "Would this young lady like to give it a try too?"
Yue Lingshan was taken aback by the sudden question. She had assumed that such a rare item would only have one copy, and she hadn't even considered that possibility when she saw the unpowered computer on the opposite table.
Now, after hearing what Lu Yusheng said, and seeing how engrossed his senior brother was, he felt a little eager to try it himself.
So he nodded and replied firmly, "Yes."
It was only natural that Linghu Chong would move the computer opposite him to another position next to him... or rather, he himself enjoyed doing it.
Although the sofas and chairs here are long enough for three or four people to sit side by side, he is always happy to sit closer to his junior sister.
The leveling team now has one more person.
Lu Yusheng, still feeling uneasy, stayed by the side to provide guidance for a while longer. Only after seeing that the beginner's tutorial was basically finished did he sit back down at the bar and turn on the computer on his cashier's counter.
Since this game was recommended to them, Lu Yusheng must have played it himself.
Back then, I was just getting into computers, and this game was quite old. Although many new mounts and costumes with excessive lighting effects were released later, the feelings it evoked when I first started playing were still very profound.
She was equally captivated by the swordsman's spirited appearance in the promotional CG.
In this old game where character customization is very limited, because the "player" character doesn't show their face, the Sword Master "godfather," who is the protagonist of the eternal CG, is always the one with the most exquisite model.
She was certain that every player who had stuck with the game had some ethical expectations for the "godfather" named Lin Jue in the later storyline.
Unfortunately, regardless of the gender of the operator, Lin Jue always maintained that aloof and sharp demeanor, keeping strangers at bay.
They still occasionally appear to save the day in critical moments of the story, leaving players craving them so much they lose all sense of direction.
However, before the reminiscence could end, the cold "Incorrect password" message on the account login page interrupted Lu Yusheng's reverie.
After her relentless attempts and memory replays, finally—
The account page displayed "Login successful" and the progress bar reached the end.
After logging into the server, the unemptied emails in his inbox and the constant pop-up announcements caused the screen to freeze for a moment. Lu Yusheng could only see the numbers next to the character avatars at the very bottom of the page through a narrow gap.
She played this game from the beginning until she got tired of it and quit. Now, her level is naturally 99, which is the maximum.
Lu Yusheng felt much more at ease after successfully recovering her old account. She casually clicked the mouse to mark each email as "read" and then easily deleted the empty emails after receiving the attachments.
At that moment, she was completely unaware that a message flashed on both Linghu Chong's and Yue Lingshan's screens simultaneously the instant they successfully logged in—
[The top player, "I cry every time I'm matched with someone?", is online; come and worship him!]
Eventually, messages from the system chat popped up one by one, showing how to gain experience by killing monsters.
Lu Yusheng, who finally saw the push notification in gold font: ...
When was this title acquired?
When did you choose this lousy nickname?
Having been out of the game for so long, she had forgotten that she had once ranked in the top 20 of the entire server in the Peak Showdown. Like all those with chuunibyou (middle school syndrome), the young Lu Yusheng loved to show off. Knowing that this title had a special effect of being broadcast to the entire server, he worked hard to get it before the season rankings were finalized in a certain year.
She glanced up somewhat guiltily in the direction of Linghu Chong and the others. Now that there was a computer area with green plants separating them, she couldn't see their expressions clearly from her position.
In the past, every time she logged in with this title, she would receive a bunch of flowers and friend requests in the nearby chat channel, and countless newbies would ask her to leave messages on the message board.
But now... she glanced at it and saw that the entire spawn point map was deserted except for a few fixed NPCs.
Fortunately, Lu Yusheng had considered this when creating their accounts, and both accounts were created in her region.
At this moment, Linghu Chong and his companion also saw the words, but they could not fully understand their meaning.
At first, the two thought it was a prompt to trigger a mission, like Lu Yusheng had explained, but no matter how clumsily they tried to click the mouse, there was no response, and in the end they could only ignore it as a plot dialogue.
Lu Yusheng clicked around and flipped through the leaderboard again. There were only three names left on the list now. In first place was herself, with a combat power of six figures. In second place was "Linghu," who had registered half an hour earlier than Yue Lingshan and could already obtain blue equipment from the main quest.
The last one was named by her, and after explaining its meaning, it was quite liked by its owner, Yue Lingshan, who named it "Ling San".
However, this also suggests that she is not difficult to get along with and is probably a lively and playful girl.
Lu Yusheng didn't think much of it and quietly started exploring the map. She didn't need to teleport; she just sprinted and left it running. When she reached a scenic spot, she would pose for a screenshot.
Sometimes I'll suddenly get the urge to attack, and I'll unleash a powerful attack on the scattered monsters by the roadside, luring them over before wiping them out with a single, devastating blow.
With her current combat power, there's no monster, no matter how high its level, that she can't defeat; it's just a matter of time before she can kill it.
But as she strolled along, she glanced up and saw that the two guests behind the grass and trees seemed to be in some kind of trouble.
The intermittent keyboard clicks stopped, and Linghu Chong stood up at some point, moved closer to Yue Lingshan, and seemed to be operating something on her screen.
Lu Yu became curious. Had his computer skills advanced by such a rapid pace?
So he slowly took off the earphone he was wearing (only one earphone was on), walked out of the bar, and approached the two of them.
Hearing her footsteps, Linghu Chong immediately straightened up as if he had been rescued. He moved aside from the screen to look at Lu Yusheng: "Perfect timing, Boss Lu. Could you help me figure out why I can't start this?"
Lu Yusheng glanced silently at the gap between the table and chair and the person. If he tried to squeeze between the two, it would probably be a bit awkward. So he silently stood behind the chair, supporting himself on the back of the chair to see what was going on.
Thanks to her extensive experience exploring the game, she recognized it as a dungeon page at a glance.
Even though she wasn't entirely sure about the specific settings of this instance, she understood the reason after glancing at the text description next to it.
"You need to team up with at least three people to play this game," she explained to the two, pointing to the words "Limited to 3-5 players" on the screen.
There's no other way; it's just a little trick the game uses to improve player retention. Many socially awkward people are forced to socialize because of this, and those who really don't want to team up have no choice but to run two accounts on their own.
However, with her own account included, she now has three accounts, so Lu Yusheng doesn't need to grind alt accounts to play with clients for the time being to improve their PVE experience.
"Team up? What is team up?" The new term clearly stumped Linghu Chong, so he asked with a puzzled look.
Lu Yusheng choked up for a moment. It turned out that the two of them had been playing solo for half a day. When she saw the two little figures standing together on the screen, she thought the tutorial had introduced how to team up.
So she leaned forward, embracing Yue Lingshan, and started moving the mouse, using the "03" account to click on "Linghu" next to her, who was using the initial avatar.
A row of small function keys appeared above his head. The friend was someone Lu Yusheng had added for them before. This time, he clicked to initiate a temporary team, and then had Linghu Chong click to accept the pop-up team request on his screen. The two finally became teammates with a team.
As if remembering something else, Lu Yusheng casually asked, "When you were fighting monsters together earlier, weren't you two not in a team? Didn't you accidentally hurt each other?"
Yue Lingshan, who was in her arms, answered first: "At first, I could, but later we agreed to split up and fight. One person would take turns fighting, and while one person was fighting, the other would stand further away..."
She gave all the dropped equipment to her senior brother, but Linghu Chong refused to accept the dropped "silver coins" and "elixirs".
Ultimately, whenever equipment with higher combat power appeared, Linghu Chong would pick it up, then take off the equipment he had taken off and give it to Yue Lingshan. They would each fight a wave of experience and absorb it themselves, while the remaining rewards would all go to Yue Lingshan.
Lu Yusheng nodded knowingly, then casually opened his friends page, entered his ID, and sent a friend request and a team invitation.
It wasn't until they both saw the cryptic ID that they realized who the broadcast had been talking about.
Just as he was about to ask a question, Lu Yusheng got up and sat down in the seat directly opposite the two of them.
She skillfully turned on the new computer, which had already been activated and had several games pre-installed for future game promotion to increase efficiency, and successfully logged into the account she had just logged into on the computer at the bar.
The message notifications also showed the friend requests and team invitations that Yue Lingshan had just made using her account, which she accepted without hesitation.
It wasn't until this incident that she had the leisure to take a look at the dungeon she was about to enter—[Siren Cave].
The difficulty of the dungeon is almost negligible; what's interesting is the reward inside.
She opened the reward preview, and apart from the usual rewards such as titles, gold coins, and experience, the only special thing was this limited-edition personal item.
Clicking on the item description reveals a detailed explanation with pictures and text. The limited-time reward for this level is called "Siren's Gem." Although it's just an ordinary headdress, it looks much prettier than the plain beginner outfit.
Lu Yusheng clicked on Yue Lingshan's avatar with his mouse and ultimately gifted her a non-binding fashion item from his own inventory.
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