Chapter 3 The Third Barrier Shrink

The third barrier contraction ended quickly, and the fourth was about to begin.

Liu Wu Dai drove the vehicle, talking with Li Ang.

According to the mission briefing, after killing enemy players, players could gain 300 experience points and 1000 game coins, and plunder a random item (skill, equipment, or prop) from the opponent.

Experience points and game coins would only be issued after the mission ended, while items were settled immediately—this malicious mechanism was simply encouraging players in the mission to kill each other, sustaining themselves through war.

"The third-party player Martin, who was kidnapped by the Earl, provided me with a defensive prop."

Liu Wu Dai held the steering wheel with her left hand, and with her right hand took out a palm-sized Western-style golden round copper mirror from her pocket, showed it to Li Ang, and introduced, "This thing's effect is to automatically sense flying projectiles heading towards the player, and generate a two-meter diameter circular transparent barrier in front of the player, temporarily blocking the projectiles in front,

like Arcane Missiles, Arrow Rain, machine gun fire, artillery bombardment. However, it has a damage resistance limit.

Once the shield value exceeds the damage limit, or after being activated for more than 3 minutes, it will automatically shut down. The shield value takes a long time to recharge."

This Fine quality item, named [Faceless Mirror Shield], was probably one of the most valuable things Martin possessed. Its effect was quite good, it could be triggered actively or passively, without having to spare mental energy to activate it during intense combat.

Liu Wu Dai explained the effects of this item to Li Ang, mainly for the sake of the upcoming mission progress, to facilitate cooperation.

She wasn't afraid that Li Ang would have thoughts of snatching it. In regular missions, players' equipment and props were protected by the system. Even if they were dropped directly on the ground, the other party would not be able to plunder them directly.

Moreover, they had gone through several missions together before, and had a certain degree of understanding of each other, so there was no need to be so wary.

Li Ang thought for a moment and said to Liu Wu Dai, "What the Earl provided was a skill that could be considered a type of summoning technique, capable of granting temporary life to inanimate objects, such as tables, chairs, benches, knives, guns, swords, halberds, cars, houses, and things like that."

[Skill Scroll Name: Animation of the Inanimate (Novice)]

[Attribute: Learning type, disappears after one use]

[Type: Psionic]

[Quality: Rare]

[Effect: Through touch, imbues non-living objects with self-awareness, low-level intelligence, and a certain degree of free movement. Lasts for up to ten minutes]

[Cost: Consumes 200 points of psionic energy and 100 points of sanity. After activation, consumes 20 points of psionic energy and 10 points of sanity per second]

[Cooldown time: None. Can be used four times every twenty-four hours.]

[Learning Conditions: Intelligence attribute greater than or equal to 10, Perception attribute greater than or equal to 11]

[Note: Objects granted life do not have special feelings for the skill user. Whether consulting them or giving them simple instructions, the user needs to negotiate with the item themselves.]

[Note: The size of the object granted life cannot be too large or too small. The extent of the object's damage will affect the completeness of its self-awareness and low-level intelligence.]

[Note: After using Animation of the Inanimate (Novice) 100 times, players can pay 2000 game coins to upgrade the skill to the Fine quality Animation of the Inanimate (Intermediate).]

[Note: Necromancers have discovered that spells that make corpses move also work on other "dead" things. For example, a depleted battery, a scrapped car, a broken appliance. Or, a dead friendship, love]

This skill, even among all the special items Li Ang had seen (the store shelves would refresh skill scrolls, and skill equipment would be listed for auction on the forums), could be considered one of the most special.

Although Animation of the Inanimate didn't play much of a role in combat, in other areas, granting inanimate objects temporary life was simply a divine skill.

For example, in a locked-room murder mystery script mission, other players would need to rack their brains, collect evidence, and deduce the truth,

while a player who learned Animation of the Inanimate could completely let the victim's corpse speak and directly say who the murderer was.

Or, for example, when faced with a machine that malfunctioned for some reason, players could use Animation of the Inanimate to make the machine speak and say exactly where it went wrong.

Or, otaku players could give life to their figurines, making their waifus move, or even further, making cars, rifles, and ships have self-awareness, becoming vehicle and warship girls

Most importantly, this was actually a skill with growth potential. After using it 100 times, it could be upgraded to Fine quality—if all four uses were consumed every day, the upgrade could be completed in 25 days.

Of course, the learning conditions for [Animation of the Inanimate (Novice)] were equally harsh, requiring high Intelligence and Perception attributes. Presumably, it was also for this reason that the Earl kept the scroll in his backpack slot instead of learning it directly.

When he was still on the rooftop just now, Li Ang quickly scanned the skill scroll, added the few free attribute points he had reserved to his Perception attribute, met the learning conditions, and directly filled this skill into his skill slot.

Before putting the Earl's corpse into his backpack slot, he also specifically used the skill, trying to grant the Earl's corpse life. Unfortunately, perhaps because the Earl was too fragmented (his head was gone), it showed that the skill failed to cast.

"Is that so?"

Liu Wu Dai was a little curious, but didn't continue to ask—after all, this was someone else's thing, and this skill didn't seem to have a particularly significant role in deathmatch missions.

Now that the skill was in hand, it had to be tested, otherwise, if it was needed later but there was an operational error due to lack of experience, it would be bad.

Li Ang reached out and touched the car interior decoration in front of the i-car's driver's seat, a plastic cartoon-style white rabbit in a squatting posture, looking cute and silly. It was connected to the base with a metal spring, and would sway back and forth when the vehicle was driving.

As Li Ang used the Animation of the Inanimate skill, psionic energy and sanity rapidly flowed away, and the plastic rabbit also seemed to suddenly wake up, abruptly opened its eyes that were narrowed into a slit, looked around somewhat "confused," and subconsciously fluttered its four legs.

Due to the presence of the metal spring, it couldn't leave the base no matter how much it hopped, and could only make sharp "woo woo" sounds similar to those of mules or donkeys in place. It actually looked quite cute.

Li Ang tried to appease the rabbit, but his Charm attribute was only four points, completely unable to calm it down. On the contrary, the plastic rabbit was so scared that it excreted a pile of round, smooth, tasteless white plastic pellets.

Did he scare the "shit" out of it?

Wan Jia Xiong Meng