"Indeed, as expected, this is the fastest way to reach the destination!" Gu Han, who had been thrown from several kilometers away, easily got up from the ground and brushed off the dust from his body. Although a normal person would surely die from a fall from a height of several dozen meters, Gu Han didnāt seem to be in any serious condition. Despite having several wounds on his body, they were healing at a visible speed.
This was the fundamental reason why the initial instance had no difficulty: every new player entering the instance came with a super rookie buff that increased their health by 100 times, their health recovery speed by 1000 times, and prevented them from taking any further damage when their health was reduced to 1 point... You simply couldnāt die even if you wanted to!
Looking at the three-story building with the sign "Honest Man's Grocery Store," Gu Han knew he had reached his next destination.
"System Notice: Mission Update, Mission 1: Escape from the house ruins ā Completed."
"System Notice: Mission Update, Mission 2: Find the Honest Man's Grocery Store, no time limit. Note: After twelve hours, the system will automatically teleport the player to the front of the grocery store."
"System Notice: Mission Update, Mission 2: Find the Honest Man's Grocery Store ā Completed."
"System Notice: Mission Update, Mission 3: Enter the grocery store and find the young man's chronicle."
From the moment Gu Han entered the instance to now, less than a minute had passed, and he had already completed two missions, directly entering Mission 3.
In the most popular initial instance strategy post on the official forum, the time to crawl out of the ruins was always limited to about twenty minutes, and it took another ten minutes to find the Honest Man's Grocery Store. Therefore, most players who strictly followed the strategy post took more than thirty minutes to complete Mission 1 and Mission 2. No one could imagine that someone could complete what took them thirty minutes of all-out effort in less than a minute. Since this was the most popular strategy post, it was clearly widely recognized and optimized to the best steps.
The fact that Mission 1 and Mission 2 took at least thirty minutes to complete became a golden rule in the hearts of countless players. They never imagined that someone could shorten this process to less than a minute. If this fact were to be announced, the "Sword Maiden Online" forum would likely explode.
So, how did Gu Han find this shortcut? To be honest, it took Gu Han two and a half years to find this shortcut. One day, while searching for highlights among millions of initial instance strategy posts, Gu Han suddenly found a post from seventy years ago.
The original poster wrote in a complaining tone that he had enthusiastically entered the instance, picked up a handful of coins, and carelessly threw them away. As a result, he was suddenly grabbed out of the ruins by a mysterious force and thrown several kilometers away, forcing him to spend three hours finding the Honest Man's Grocery Store, and he ended up with a tragic C-grade evaluation.
At the end of the post, he warned others not to throw away any coins they found, as it could be fatal. This post had a low readership, with only about a thousand views and thirty replies over seventy years. Most of the replies were from people mocking the original poster's bad luck and coming to laugh at the situation. When Gu Han first saw this post, he initially thought it had no value, like most of the people who replied. However, unlike most of them, Gu Han remembered the content of the post and the lesson not to throw away coins.
Two years later, after roughly formulating a strategy plan, Gu Han found that no matter how he designed it, he couldnāt shorten the time to less than an hour. Without completing the instance in an hour, it was impossible to get an SSS-level evaluation, and without an SSS-level evaluation, Gu Hanās dream of becoming a swordsman would be nothing but a pipe dream.
At that time, Gu Han was almost in a state of madness, revising and reviewing his strategy plan day and night. He studied it hundreds of times and found that the most time-consuming and optimizable part was Mission 1 and Mission 2. These two missions took half of the planās time, which was unacceptable.
Thus, Gu Han began to desperately research ways to optimize Mission 1 and Mission 2. One day, he suddenly remembered the post he had read before.
Gu Han realized that although the original poster spent three hours completing Mission 1 and Mission 2, those three hours were actually spent on Mission 2. Mission 1, in fact, only took twenty seconds! Prior to this, the fastest completion time for Mission 1 was twenty minutes!
This discovery made Gu Han ecstatic. He studied the post repeatedly and looked for similar cases in other posts. After several months of research, Gu Han was surprised to find that other players had also thrown things like mice, badges, pebbles, cola bottles, and plastic blocks, but they were never discovered by the mysterious force. Only the player who threw the coins was discovered.
Could it be that only throwing coins would be detected by the mysterious force? To verify his idea, Gu Han posted online and found a guy who was about to turn eighteen and activate the game for the first time. He made a deal with him to throw a handful of coins and see if he would be detected and thrown out, and where he would land.
A few days later, the guy reported back that he was indeed detected and thrown out, just like the original poster. However, he seemed even more unlucky, as he was thrown even farther and spent five hours finding the Honest Man's Grocery Store. This meant that the distance and landing point of the mysterious forceās throw were not fixed. Or perhaps, there was a certain pattern!
Gu Han keenly sensed this and believed it was the key to breaking through the mission. If the mysterious forceās throw had a pattern, he could use it to reach any place he wanted.
To verify his hypothesis, Gu Han invested all his savings and hired a large number of new players to enter the instance. He experimented with various aspects, such as the time of throwing the coins, the number of coins, and the force used, trying to find the pattern of the mysterious forceās throw.
However, after a large amount of money was invested, Gu Han sadly discovered that the mysterious forceās throw had no discernible pattern. Even with the same time, number, and force, some people were thrown dozens of kilometers away, while others were thrown just a few kilometers.
After several months, not only did Gu Han fail to get what he wanted, but he also became a minor laughingstock on the forum. Many of the people he hired posted their experiences, earning Gu Han the nickname "Coin Idiot."
The large amount of hiring funds quickly depleted Gu Hanās savings, forcing him to stop the expensive experiment. However, he didnāt give up. He believed that in the vast sea of posts accumulated over two hundred years, he could find what he needed.
Finally, after two and a half years, Gu Han found a post with fewer than twenty views. The post described an incident where the original poster, who was naturally directionally challenged, couldnāt find the Honest Man's Grocery Store after coming out of the ruins. He wandered around aimlessly for almost eleven hours and, when he reached the power plant, decided to close his eyes and rest, waiting for the system to automatically teleport him after twelve hours. Suddenly, he was grabbed by something and thrown out. When he opened his eyes, he found himself at the Honest Man's Grocery Store.
The post went on to write many other things, but Gu Han couldnāt read any further. His attention was completely captured by the story. The original poster was also grabbed by the mysterious force and thrown out, though not from the ruins, but directly to the door of the Honest Man's Grocery Store.
Connecting the two incidents, could the mysterious force that threw players like grenades be the same? If it was the same force, why was the second player thrown directly to the door of the grocery store?
Did the second player do something special?
After reading the post several times, Gu Han found that the most significant feature of the player was that he had wandered for over ten hours... This was meaningless, as ten hours was too long.
The second feature was that he was very far from the Honest Man's Grocery Store, near the power plant... This was also meaningless, as Gu Han could walk to the grocery store five times in the time it took to reach the power plant.
The last feature was that the player was sleeping with his eyes closed!
With a "nothing to lose" attitude, Gu Han decided to try again. This time, he didnāt spend money to hire someone but found a close online friend who was about to turn eighteen and activate the game for the first time. After learning about Gu Hanās idea, the friend first mocked and teased him, then said he would reluctantly help him, closing his eyes and throwing a handful of coins to prove how foolish Gu Han was.
Two hours later, a shocking message appeared on the forum: someone had refreshed the initial instanceās evaluation record, raising the highest S-level evaluation to SS-level. At the same time, the fastest completion time, which was originally two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifty-one seconds, was reduced to one hour, fifty minutes, and thirty-eight seconds!