Chapter 167: Difficulty in Choosing

The final allocation of skill talents is a feature exclusive to players at the Bronze tier and above.

Within this respawn point, aside from Wen Nan, everyone else belonged to the lowest tier. Consequently, the others wrapped up their settlement phases early and quietly watched in the direction of their guild leader.

They could not see the talent tree hovering before Wen Nan, remaining deeply trapped in a state of utter shock by the nearly ten thousand experience points displayed above his head.

The newest recruit, who had been admitted last, still had soul threads wrapped around his body, but he wriggled like a nimble maggot over to the other members and asked, "Brothers, is our guild leader... always... this ridiculously overpowered?"

Huang Yan finally snapped out of his shock momentarily, raised a hand to pat the shoulder of the person beside him, and spouted nonsense off the top of his head, "You didn't know? Congratulations, you've struck gold and hit the jackpot."

Upon hearing this, the recruit's eyes lit up instantly. Connecting this with the 9,972 experience points displayed on the screen overhead, a flash of sudden insight struck him. He let out an "ah" and said, "Could our guild leader possibly be... some unnamed... legendary top-tier bigshot?"

Hearing the new recruit put it that way, Huang Yan froze for a moment. Then, he suddenly felt that what the other person said actually made a lot of sense. If he wasn't a legendary bigshot, who else would dare to aggressively hoard six soul puppets right from the start, and who else could rack up nearly ten thousand experience points in such an introductory dungeon?

"Consider yourself smart!" Huang Yan nodded heavily.

Their conversation reached the ears of the other members. Simultaneously, expressions of shock, deep thought, conviction, and escalating astonishment swept across the faces of the remaining few.

Since the most veteran member of the guild had confirmed it, then this matter was probably set in stone.

Hu Jiayao nudged Gu Jingxing with his elbow. "I knew we hit the jackpot, but I never expected it to be a jackpot this massive. An unnamed legendary bigshot? Doesn't that mean our Steady Win Guild might actually stand a chance of rivaling, or even surpassing, the top six major guilds in the future?!"

Gu Jingxing raised a hand to push the bridge of his glasses up, feeling that something was amiss. "If he's a hidden legendary bigshot playing on an alternative account, he must have already surpassed the Gold tier. Theoretically, unless he bought a guild qualification early on and failed to pass the probation period—resulting in a complete revocation of his guild creation privileges—shouldn't he have already possessed a system-gifted guild long ago? Why is he suddenly fretting over the number of members during the probation period now?"

This... seemed like a valid point indeed.

Hu Jiayao pondered for a moment, failed to figure it out, and waved a hand dismissively. "Who the hell knows? He's already a legendary bigshot above the Gold tier; what kind of resources are in his hands—how could we possibly guess? Starting from scratch to build a new guild should be as easy as pie for someone like him."

Gu Jingxing offered a noncommittal response.

Many details led Gu Jingxing to suspect that the guild leader was a genuine rookie. Yet, the heaven-defying amount of experience points right before his eyes, coupled with the profound calm and composure the leader displayed when facing a high-star female ghost and a collapsing building, truly qualified him as a bigshot among bigshots...

However, none of that mattered anymore.

Regardless of whether he was a real bigshot disguised as a rookie, or a real rookie pretending to be a bigshot, one point was an undeniable fact—this was absolute genius!

Following a player like this, they were guaranteed to profit without any losses.

While the members whispered among themselves, Yu Shujun stood quietly to the side holding his sword, his head tilted slightly as he looked at Wen Nan's profile. His gaze grew deep, and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Meanwhile, Wen Nan had no spare attention to give to the reactions of the others. With one hand cupping his chin, his entire focus was dedicated to pondering the allocation of his talent skills.

Right now, a total of eight options lay before him.

Among them, the first three were the ones he had abandoned when he first advanced to Bronze: the Golden Bell Shield (Defense type), Clairvoyance (Magic type), and Invisibility Cloak (Magic type). Now, he had gained two extra skill selection opportunities, allowing him to reclaim these three skills.

The fourth option was Mind Reading (Perception type), which he was currently using. It was currently at Level 1, with a maximum target limit of 1, an active duration of 10 minutes, and a cooldown time of 3 hours. If upgraded to Level 2, the target limit would increase to 2, the active duration would extend to 20 minutes, and the cooldown time would shorten to 2 hours. If upgraded to Level 3, the target limit would increase to 5, the active duration would extend to 60 minutes, and the cooldown time would shorten to 1 hour.

If Wen Nan applied both of his newly acquired skill selection chances to Mind Reading, he could raise it directly to Level 3.

Aside from the four existing skills, four additional new skills appeared on the screen before him for selection: [Stepping on Multiple Boats], [Time Management Master], [No Lewdness Allowed], and [Stamina is King].

Wen Nan: ?

Something was wrong.

These four newly matched skills were even more wrong than the original four.

Were these kinds of skills really matched according to the characteristics of an upright gentleman like himself?

The system must have some deep misunderstanding of him! But alas, there was nothing he could do. Since they had been issued, he had no right to refuse and could only reluctantly click through the details page for each skill—

[5. Stepping on Multiple Boats (Enhancement type): Within a specific range around the player, when multiple target capture characters exist simultaneously, the number of target capture characters acts as a coefficient to enhance a designated attribute of the player. The designated attribute here can be one of the player's own strength/armor/agility/charisma, or an inherent attribute of the equipment/props worn by the player. Level 1 has a range of 5 meters, an active duration of 1 hour, and a cooldown time of 1 hour after the skill ends.]

[6. Time Management Master (Magic type): Simultaneously increases the capture progress of multiple target capture characters by a certain amount over a given time. The player can accumulate a fixed duration of time-stop capability, and the accumulated duration can be unleashed at any time designated by the player. Level 1 requires increasing the capture progress of at least three characters by over 50% within 1 hour to trigger, and a single trigger accumulates 0.1 seconds of time-stop duration.]

[7. No Lewdness Allowed (Magic type): When causing the target to experience emotions of "pain intertwined with pleasure," a certain skill can be stolen from the target. The attribute value of the stolen skill is weakened or enhanced based on the disparity between the target's star/tier level and the player's level, while also being influenced by the target's emotional value: the higher the target's emotional value, the higher the attribute value of the stolen skill, with no upper limit on this attribute bonus. Level 1 cooldown time is 12 hours.]

[8. Stamina is King (Enhancement type): During zero-distance or negative-distance contact with a target, as the contact duration increases, a designated specific attribute continues to enhance. The designated attribute here is the same as in skill 5. Level 1 cooldown time is 1 hour, with an enhancement coefficient of 1.]

Looking at these four newly matched options, Wen Nan fell into a dilemma of choice...
(End of this chapter)