Chapter 4: Another Title
Chapter 4: Another Title
What is the most important thing to become a hacker?
Skill?
Of course not.
Almost all of Chen Mo’s peers would answer: imagination!
Skill was just the foundation. Without skill, becoming a hacker was a joke. But with skill alone, without enough imagination, one could not go far on the path of a hacker.
As a somewhat well-known hacker, Chen Mo always dared to think what others did not dare to think.
After learning that this setting was intentionally designed by the game designers, Chen Mo immediately thought that the game designers might want players to use skills without the system’s assistance.
Whether it was true or not, he would know by trying.
When using a skill to set a trap, Chen Mo’s game character automatically bent down. His faintly glowing fingers and palm moved quickly across the ground. In just one second, a trap appeared out of nowhere.
Chen Mo silently memorized the movements for setting the trap. After the skill cooled down, this time Chen Mo did not issue the command to use the skill. Instead, he imitated the system’s movements, quickly sweeping his fingers and palm across the ground.
When Chen Mo’s hand touched the ground, his palm still felt normal. But when Chen Mo’s hand made the same movements as when setting a trap on the ground, his palm suddenly emitted a faint glow.
This was the glow that only appeared when setting a trap!
His faintly glowing palm swept rapidly across the ground, performing one movement after another.
System Notification: Skill use failed!
But after all the movements were done, no trap appeared on the ground. Chen Mo only received a system notification.
“So that’s how it is!”
But Chen Mo was not disappointed. Instead, he felt excited.
He knew he might have guessed correctly. The skill use failed because his movements for setting the trap deviated from the system’s movements, which caused the failure.
The skill he was trying to use now was Basic Trap Technique, the lowest level skill. It was not very complex. But failing the first time meant the system’s requirements for the movements were quite strict. So for the second time, Chen Mo deliberately slowed down the speed of his movements, focusing on their accuracy.
System Notification: Skill use failed!
The second attempt also failed, but Chen Mo knew he was not far from success.
Even though he slowed down, his palm still emitted a faint glow. This meant that even at a slower speed, if the movements were accurate, he could still release the skill.
As for why the second attempt failed and where the movements were not standard, Chen Mo thought for a moment and then began his third attempt.
His glowing palm moved across the ground. This time, Chen Mo took over three seconds to complete the final movement. But he tried his best to make every movement as precise as possible!
When his palm left the ground, a palm-sized trap suddenly appeared on the ground, right in the middle of the cave passage!
Basic Trap Technique! Success!
System Notification: Free Skill System activated!
System Notification: You are the first player to activate the Free Skill System, achieving the accomplishment “Freedom Pioneer”!
System Notification: You obtained the achievement title “Freedom Pioneer”!
Free Skill System!
Indeed, the game designers wanted players to discover this system themselves. That was why the trap setting had that traditional game-like design.
Activating the Free Skill System also came with an achievement title, which was beyond Chen Mo’s expectation.
The Freedom Pioneer title was undoubtedly much harder to obtain than the Light Speed Death title. Its attributes should be much stronger than Light Speed Death’s. If it added more attributes, his chances of leaving this place would increase significantly.
Chen Mo looked at his backpack with great interest.
Title: Freedom Pioneer
Description: Only the first player to activate the Free Skill System in the game can obtain this. It is a symbol of honor. This title takes effect passively and does not need to be equipped.
Attributes:
Luck Value +3
Favorability with all Human Race NPCs +5
Special Effect: When using the Free Skill System to cast skills, skill Cooldown Time is reduced by 10%.
It was a bit different from what Chen Mo expected. The Freedom Pioneer title did not increase Chen Mo’s five basic attributes. But Chen Mo knew he had hit the jackpot.
This title took effect passively. That meant as long as he did not discard or delete the Freedom Pioneer title, its attributes could take effect simultaneously with other titles!
Moreover, the attributes of the Freedom Pioneer title were actually not bad at all.
Chen Mo was not sure what Luck Value was used for yet. But many games had NPC Favorability. Increasing NPC Favorability was definitely not a bad thing. And the additional special effect was clearly useful.
His Basic Trap Technique skill currently had a Cooldown Time of 10 seconds. If he used the Free Skill System to cast Basic Trap Technique, the Cooldown Time would be reduced to 9 seconds.
For a single skill, the effect might not seem obvious. But in the future, with more skills, if every skill had its Cooldown Time reduced by 10%, the accumulated reduction would be considerable. Compared to other players, his advantage would be significantly greater.
Chen Mo opened his attributes panel. In the skills section, a Free Skill System category had indeed been activated. Chen Mo clicked to check it. There wasn’t anything too special inside. It was somewhat similar to the ordinary skills column. But the ordinary skills column mainly showed the Level and proficiency of learned skills. The Free Skill section displayed the number of times a skill was used via the Free Skill System, and the skill’s highest completion rate.
Chen Mo’s only skill currently was Basic Trap Technique. The usage count was of course 1 time. As for the highest completion rate, Chen Mo looked and saw it was only 42%.
Chen Mo did not yet know what these two pieces of data were for. But he knew they definitely had meaning. Especially the completion rate, that data should be important.
Chen Mo was not in a hurry either. He would figure out their uses sooner or later. The most important thing right now was to improve his movement proficiency, set traps at the positions he wanted, and get himself out of this valley first.
The movements for Basic Trap Technique were not very complex. Chen Mo’s memory, learning ability, and reaction speed were top-notch. After practicing twenty or thirty times, when Chen Mo concentrated, he could set a trap in just over one second at the shortest. The highest completion rate had reached as much as 78%.
And Chen Mo was gradually figuring out what the completion rate was for.
Traps set using the system all lasted 60 seconds on the ground. But Chen Mo found that traps he set using the Free Skill System were not like that. Traps with low completion rates had the shortest duration, less than twenty seconds. Traps with high completion rates lasted much longer. Especially the one with 78% completion rate, its duration reached 55 seconds.
Chen Mo estimated that if the skill completion rate could reach 80%, the traps he set would last the same duration as system-set traps.
If it exceeded 80%, the duration might even surpass that of system-set traps!
Furthermore, Chen Mo thought it was highly possible that the skill completion rate also affected the trap’s damage.
He thought this for a simple reason: when low completion rate traps exploded, their sound effects were not as good as those of high completion rate traps.
Although the difference was not very obvious, Chen Mo could still tell.
Whether it was true or not, he would know by testing it.
This was very important. After all, if completion rate really affected the trap’s power, the Crippling Effect that came with the trap would undoubtedly be affected too. Traps with low completion rates would probably have a lower chance of triggering the Crippling Effect. To have a better chance of drawing the White Goblin’s Hatred and running out of the cave, Chen Mo needed to set traps with higher skill completion rates.
At the cost of his life, Chen Mo deliberately set two traps with very different completion rates. Then, outside the valley, he lured two Black Goblins to step on the traps separately.
The result was as Chen Mo expected. Traps with different completion rates had clearly different Damage. For the two traps, the one with over 70% completion rate took nearly thirty Health Points from the Black Goblin. The one with about 40% completion rate only did over ten points of Damage. The difference was obvious. If he used system-set traps, given Chen Mo’s current Attributes, the Damage difference between two traps would definitely not exceed ten points.
So improving proficiency with the skill movements became very necessary.
The movements for Basic Trap Technique were not complex. Chen Mo was not in a hurry. He decided to spend more time practicing to improve his movement proficiency.
Sharpening the axe won’t delay the work of cutting wood. As long as he died fewer times later, he could make up for this time spent.
While continuously practicing the skill movements, Chen Mo suddenly had a flash of insight.
Imitating the system’s movements like this, bending down to set traps, couldn’t really be called free. True freedom should be doing things as one wishes. For example… standing and setting a trap in mid-air!
Thinking of this, Chen Mo’s heart raced with excitement.