“Confirm submission of Awakening Mission?”
A mechanical female voice sounded. He Wuning repeated, “Confirm.”
It was not as though he had much choice.
In the early days, aside from the addition of levels, equipment, and similar features, this so-called game had felt more like an excessively flashy wilderness-survival exercise. But ever since the first person completed an “Awakening Mission” three years ago, humanity had entered the Awakening stage. Superpowers, magic, Systems… all kinds of bizarre abilities emerged one after another. According to official statistics, the recent death toll had fallen to a rare low, and humanity seemed to have caught sight of a glimmer of hope for survival.
He Wuning, however, was not optimistic.
He had gone through every scrap of information about “Awakening Missions” he could find on the forum and discovered that most of the top players who had distinguished themselves in the game’s early stages awakened abilities that were remarkably useless. Meanwhile, the players who obtained genuinely powerful abilities after Awakening were, astonishingly, mostly elderly people, children, pregnant women, or even people with disabilities.
For example, Bai Yan, currently ranked third on the player rankings and awakened with a healing ability, was a chronically ill man who spent his days in a wheelchair hooked up to an IV.
It was as if some invisible balancing force were making subtle adjustments to prevent any individual from becoming too powerful.
He Wuning caught sight of a familiar name—Yi Luo. His gaze paused for a moment before sliding away as though nothing had happened.
The player rankings were not official. They were something the public had made for amusement in the midst of hardship, mostly because they had too much time on their hands. He Wuning ranked second. Above him was Yi Luo, whom the original poster had dubbed the “Light of Humanity.”
He Wuning was convinced the poster had to be a Yi Luo fan. The user, whose ID was “Guardian,” spent all day either bragging about Yi Luo’s battle record or wailing nonsense like, “Yi Luo still hasn’t done his Awakening Mission. This humble believer vows to eat a balanced mix of meat and vegetables for the rest of his life if the System will please refrain from nerfing him.”
He Wuning decided to ignore the ranking and turned his attention to the pile of materials before him.
The materials on the ground were drawn together, erupting in a blaze of transformation light like something from Pretty O Warrior or Masked O Rider. It looked absurdly fantastical, but He Wuning had long since become immune to flashy special effects like these. He did not so much as blink; if anything, a closer look would reveal a hint of impatience.
If fighting monsters at his current level had not been getting increasingly difficult, he would not have wanted to Awaken at all.