Chapter 61 What is wrong with this game?!

Within the frame, Su Xiao had just completed Athena’s newbie tutorial stage.

The test result was fairly satisfactory, earning him an A grade and a system prompt granting an additional twenty percent to his intelligence attribute.

(Note: Intelligence serves as the mana pool for casting skills. The higher the intelligence, the more skills one can cast...)

At first, Su Xiao was quite pleased with this data.

However, when he saw that above the A grade there was an S grade, and above the S grade there was a double-S grade, his smile gradually faded.

The shorter the sorting time, the higher the rating; the higher the rating, the greater the bonus to his intelligence.

Su Xiao shook his head in disappointment.

"I was still too slow while sorting!"

"Why did I hesitate just now over such simple twenty-six letters?"

"F is followed by G, why did I hesitate!"

"Sigh..."

"..."

Looking extremely annoyed, Su Xiao entered the newbie village.

Inside the newbie village, NPCs were everywhere...

After taking a quick glance, Su Xiao left the village, ready to go grind some monsters!

Yet...

The moment he stepped outside, before he could even swing his sword, a chicken ran over clucking and killed him instantly.

"Die!"

"Die!"

The screen instantly turned black, and then two massive English words alongside audio prompts appeared before his eyes.

"I can't even beat a chicken?" Su Xiao was stunned.

He stared in disbelief at his glowing, incredibly refined-looking long sword...

It looked so badass, yet turned out to be a total waste of space?

He fell into a state of self-doubt.

Shortly after, a brief prompt appeared on the screen: Please input the word "die" three times on your keyboard to revive...

"D"

"I"

"E"

Every time he entered a letter, the audio would pronounce it.

Once he finished typing "die" the first time, the voice would also read the English word aloud, followed by a Chinese translation of "death."

Upon resurrection, Su Xiao received a prompt from the Goddess Athena. The Goddess Athena advised that if he could not defeat the wild monsters outside the city, he must complete various quests within the city to acquire equipment.

Su Xiao maneuvered his character in front of the blacksmith shop...

"I've always wanted to forge a suit of armor using magic. Magic-forged armor not only possesses higher defense, but also greater strength..."

"However, I've never figured out how the iron element in the periodic table is actually represented using letters..."

"Is it Fe, Ca, or K? This truly is a difficult problem... Brave warrior, can you answer this?"

"Only by correctly arranging the elements from the periodic table and preparing them properly can we forge the armor's raw template!"

"..."

To acquire armor, he needed to select the corresponding elemental symbol for iron?

Isn't this just the periodic table?

Is this supposed to be magic?

Su Xiao was dumbfounded after seeing the choices.

When he made the correct choice, the system didn't give him the corresponding armor right away; instead, the old man selling the armor stroked his chin.

"If I burn iron with fire magic, and add chlorine... what kind of result will I get?"

"Because the iron element is far too precious, I only have one chance, so I need some magic theory to back it up..."

"If you provide my equation, I'll gift you the armor!"

"2Fe + 3Cl2 === 2FeCl3!"

Another chemical equation depicting elemental changes appeared before the screen...

Su Xiao’s science foundation was actually decent, so this wasn't too difficult for him. After inputting the chemical equation, his character finally flashed with a bright light, and he obtained a piece of "Demon-Warding Armor."

Elated, Su Xiao grabbed the Demon-Warding Armor and rushed out of the newbie village, only to be instantly killed in seconds by a little chicken yet again.

This time, Athena prompted that his intelligence was insufficient, making him unable to release the chicken's spiritual attack!

He needed to increase his intelligence!

Enduring the agonizing resurrection password "die" once more, Su Xiao followed Athena's directions and ran over to another bookstore NPC to start doing intelligence quests...

As for the intelligence quest, it was given by a little girl wearing glasses who asked: "Dear brave young warrior, what is the full text of the Tang dynasty poet Li Chonghuan's poem 'Qingming'..."

The questions posed by the bespectacled little girl NPC were utterly infuriating.

One moment she asked about classical poetry, the next about classical Chinese prose, then about mathematical equations, and occasionally even historical questions...

Seeing these questions, Su Xiao felt completely numb!

These problems looked vaguely familiar, as if they frequently appeared on exam papers, but answering them was extremely grueling...

Every time he answered incorrectly, the quest would fail.

Moreover, unless he got everything right all at once within the specified time limit, the quest would still fail!

"There's no way I can't even kill a chicken in the newbie village, right?"

"This..."

After suffering three or four failures, Su Xiao's head was spinning with classical Chinese prose, math equations, and history.

He had a headache!

Yet, he felt somewhat unwilling to give up.

These all seemed like basic questions.

Just at that moment...

"Do it again!"

"Choose this one..."

"Why don't you even know something this basic? Wasn't it covered in your textbooks?"

"Like this, just like this!"

"How could you get something so simple wrong?"

"This is a math problem. Isn't math your strong suit?"

"..."

"..."

Su Bin's wife started to get anxious.

This program was being recorded, after all. If her son performed this poorly and it got broadcasted, wouldn't that be a complete loss of face?

She hurriedly reminded her son.

Meanwhile, Su Bin stood off to the side. Though he remained silent, his gaze was fixed entirely on the computer screen.

Deep down inside, he was anxious too...

He wanted nothing more than to grab the mouse and click the correct answer for his son!

Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal, but everything here was being recorded from start to finish. Although the footage would definitely be edited according to their requirements when broadcast, still...

Knowing Zhang Liang's personality, he would definitely edit in footage of his son failing, right?

That was genuinely embarrassing!

After enduring five failures, Su Xiao finally answered all the questions from the bespectacled girl NPC correctly!

His rating wasn't high—only a C—but the NPC still handed him a book, which boosted his intelligence by ten. Upon gaining those ten points of intelligence, he comprehended a skill: water skill attack!

"(Athena's prompt: Before casting a skill, press the Enter key, and quickly spell out the English word for water—'water'—within five seconds. Casting a second skill requires spelling the plural form of water... Once proficiency is fully maxed out, inputting will no longer be necessary. After equipping the skill, directly press the 'W' key to cast it. Current progress toward max level: 99% remaining.)"

"..."

"..."

Operating the mouse in front of the computer, Su Xiao excitedly rushed out of the newbie village. After inputting the skill keys as required, he heard a very passionate English voice prompt. Having defeated the chicken, his character finally leveled up, followed by a prompt asking whether he wished to tame the chicken as a pet. Pets could attack alongside their master, but he had to press the Enter key and input the English word for chicken three times...

This time, the chicken didn't provide letter prompts; Su Xiao had to find them himself...

Subconsciously, Su Xiao pulled out his English textbook and began flipping through the pages to find the English spelling for chicken. Once he located it, he typed it in immediately.

The game pronounced "chicken" three times, and he finally saw the chicken become his pet companion. At the same time, the word "chicken" became the title floating above the pet's head...

Su Xiao suddenly felt a tiny sense of achievement.

However, Athena's prompt gave Su Xiao a slight sense of vexation: "The faster you type the word, the better the attributes of the tamed chicken..."

Su Xiao checked the quality of his chicken. Upon seeing a C-grade quality, he was deeply disappointed.

After that, he continued operating his character to cast skills and entered the pet-taming phase...

................................................

Outside the frame.

Zhang Liang was eating instant noodles while watching the game.

Su Bin's wife was watching as well...

In truth, he had originally viewed this game with a critical attitude.

However, as he kept watching, he suddenly found that this game was actually quite interesting.

Every single thing you could see inside the game was material straight from middle school textbooks.

This included the dogs, pigs, cows, and sheep that appeared in the system...

These were all vocabulary words learned in middle school English classes.

Furthermore, every single quest here had a time limit, yet every quest felt just like an exam...

At first, the game was still very simple, with obtaining items primarily relying on multiple-choice questions. But as the levels gradually increased, some application-style long-answer questions would also appear!

Time flew by, and four hours passed before they even knew it!

Su Xiao kept his eyes glued to the computer. Without realizing it, textbooks for Chinese, mathematics, English, and science were piled up across his desk...

Yet his eyes remained locked on the computer screen, occasionally picking up the textbooks to flip through them...

He was chatting with one of the NPC companions. If he raised their mutual favorability, he could recruit the NPC companion to fight alongside him, but the companion's chat dialogue was basically all in English!

He had to chat with them in English, and his replies also had to be in English. If he made even a single mistake, the companion's favorability would drop!

"Grammar!"

"Your grammar is wrong. Why are you using Chinglish again? How do you expect their favorability to increase if you do that..."

"You have to do it like this!"

"..."

Su Bin's wife watched her son's clumsy performance and kept prompting him.

She seemed to have immersed herself in the game as well.

Zhang Liang looked over closely and suddenly realized that the chat content wasn't actually difficult; it was basically derived from middle school textbook materials...

Just as Su Xiao was fully engrossed in it...

The screen of the entire game suddenly darkened.

"Prompt: It's been four hours, time to rest..."

"Good night!"

Su Xiao stared blankly at the darkened screen.

He had just gotten used to chatting with the in-game girl, watching her favorability rise from 10 to 30 as he really got into the zone, just as she was giving him a shy, bashful smile—and this damn game just shut off?

Su Bin was also bewildered.

Has it been four hours?

That fast?

Watching from the side, four hours had slipped by without him noticing...

"This thing has a limit?" he muttered blankly at the sentence on the screen.

Then...

He stared blankly at the textbooks on the desk...

And then, he fixed his gaze on Su Xiao, who was still looking at his English book.

That was when he remembered he had originally approached this game with a critical attitude...

This game seemed...

Not that terrible after all?

Shortly after, he saw the previously darkened screen light up once more as Athena's voice rang out.

"Brave warrior! You did a great job today. Today, you mastered the use of the water skill, and you also tamed a pet, plus..."

Su Bin looked at the screen.

Though he didn't know English, when the little chicken appeared, he even found himself murmuring its English name. Closing his eyes, he could actually spell out the word for chicken!

He could even speak a couple of simple English sentences now, along with some simple chemical equations...

Goodness!

His eyes widened in shock!

"This game! Something is wrong with it!"

"..."

Immediately following that!

The computer screen flashed with a prompt that the official website had updated its national rankings...

Subconsciously, Su Xiao clicked onto the official website. Upon opening it, he discovered that his overall comprehensive strength was ranked 10,000+...

"No way, someone already tamed a science companion? How is that even possible? Are they a freak?"

They even tamed an elite-grade chicken pet, maxed out their water skill, and even trained the rock-throwing skill to maximum level?

In just four hours!

How did they pull that off?

Were they cheating?

Su Xiao's eyes widened as he spotted the player commendation section on the official site!

Must be a gaming god, right?

He suddenly felt an indescribable sense of crisis!

Not long after...

His mother's phone started ringing.

After answering the call, his mother's expression changed drastically!

"What? The number one ranking belongs to Jiajia from your family?"

"With grades as good as your Jiajia's, why are you playing this kind of game? Isn't that just bullying people?"
"Wait, what? The official staff called saying they want to award your daughter a trophy? Really? Even the top ten get one? Is that for real?"

"..."

Su Bin's wife suddenly felt an intense wave of crisis!

..............................................

"Hello? Is this Jiajia's parent?"

"Thank you for your support of our game. To commend your learning ability, we hope to custom-make a one-of-a-kind trophy for you, and we hope your daughter continues to forge ahead and create new brilliant achievements on her educational journey!"

"Please keep up the good work tomorrow!"

"..."

Zhang Yang gave a light cough, picked up the phone, and delivered these lines with a beaming smile.

As soon as he finished speaking...

He heard a knock at the door.

Right after that!

"Senior, Senior! We've gone crazy! Our game has gone crazy!"

Outside the office.

Song Qingqing rushed in excitedly, holding several documents...

(End of this chapter)