Chapter 10: New Team Member

Although Hua Yibing’s opening slogan was very chuunibyou (scratched out) and full of momentum, when it came to the actual operation, he was stumped and ran around in circles.

The first problem he faced was that he had boasted to the audience in his stream room that he was a master house-builder, but in reality, as a weak otaku who couldn’t carry anything heavy, he had never come into contact with any knowledge about repairing houses.

The house he chose was the one the system had given to Old Li.
It was about two stories high and looked fairly complete from the outside.
The biggest problem was that there were some large and small holes in the walls, and a whole section of the roof had been washed away by the sea.

Hua Yibing decided to temporarily divide the next task into two steps: first repair the walls, then patch the roof.

And then… there was no ‘and then’.

How was he supposed to apply these building materials to those holes?

He picked up the green piece of wood that he had just used as a sword to cosplay a knight and tentatively poked it at a hole.

The wood, which had just been hard in his hand, instantly deformed as if it had melted, transferring from Hua Yibing’s side to the wall, and very reasonably patched up that part of the wall.

Young Hua: “…”

Damn it!

He had just forgotten that this was a game!

It was all Sea Realm‘s fault for making the realism so high that he didn’t think of this for a moment.
He had actually been genuinely troubled for half a day, and had even thought about buying an axe first to chop the wood into a suitable size to fill the holes.

At this moment, the stream room had already gone crazy with laughter.
Taking advantage of the fact that Huahua hadn’t opened the bullet comments, they spammed the screen with great abandon—

[Goose goose goose goose goose goose goose goose goose goose goose goose]

[Screenshot taken, a new emoji is born—Never would have thought!]

[I was actually worried just now too, hahahaha, as expected, patching walls in a game isn’t as hardcore as in real life.]

[Newbie here, just asking, is this a painter’s stream room?]

“Ahem!”
Hua Yibing coughed solemnly twice to interrupt them, looking heartbroken and hurt.

The audience really thought he had opened the bullet comments again and was hit by the blow, so they all fell silent.
Some people were even afraid that he was really sad and started to comfort him.

The next second, the merman with sparkling pink short hair on the screen proudly placed his hands on his hips.
“Were you all laughing at me? You were scared by me, weren’t you, hahahahaha!!”

Then, like a primary school student who had succeeded in a prank, he happily hummed “The Little Painter” and went to patch the wall.

Bullet comments: … 凸¹

By the time Old Li returned from saving a fish at the quarry and taking a tour, what he faced was his “brand new” house.

The sturdy, dark green-tailed merman just stood there foolishly in front of the house, receiving strange looks from passing players.
Then, when they saw the house opposite that person, their gaze instantly turned to pity—

This house must have been repaired by some enthusiastic player!

Once that special quest was released, passing players today had already seen many strange house repair results, but the one before them was still the most astonishing.

Never mind that the walls, because of too many holes, were used as a canvas for an impromptu painting on the spot, and never mind how rugged and abstract that painting was.
Just looking at the bright green roof directly above the house was enough to give the owner a cardiac arrest.

‘Good lord.’

After watching the excitement, the passing fish didn’t forget to take a screenshot as a memento, planning to post it on the forum after logging off.
Joy is better when shared, right!

Old Li pinched his arm hard, feeling dizzy as he opened the door and walked inside.

‘Sure enough, no pain, so it’s fake. It’s good that it’s fake. Wait…’
He forced himself to forget about Sea Realm‘s zero pain sensitivity and began to hypnotize himself.

Then, a pink-haired teammate suddenly pounced out from in front of him, proudly taking credit, “Old Li, look, I took a special quest today, and the system provided free materials to repair the house. You were the first person I thought of, brother! How about that, am I loyal or what!”

Old Li’s fantasy was thus ruthlessly shattered.
His face was a blank slate as he raised a finger and pointed at the wall, asking his good brother, “What did you do to this wall?”

Hua Yibing turned his head to look, and said with a hint of showing off, “I painted this based on your UP avatar from your cloud site! Isn’t it exactly the same!”

His cloud site avatar had been used for many years and had almost become his personal logo, so it wasn’t strange at all that Hua Yibing would draw it.

But,

Old Li looked at the unidentified creature on the wall with four legs of different lengths and a strange square head, and couldn’t connect it with the handsome German shepherd on his avatar at all.

“What about the roof? Why did you make it this color?” he couldn’t help but continue to ask.

Hua Yibing pointed at the tail beneath him with righteous indignation.
“Isn’t this the color of your tail! It took me a long time to gather so many green pieces of wood!”

Sykes, taking advantage of the fact that both players had left, went to renovate the cave he had used.
By the time he was done and returned to the mage tower, he happened to see this scene through the magic mirror.

“Is he drawing a big-headed beast?”
The merman remembered the sea beast he had helped the humans deal with that day.
He leaned in for a closer look and said with approval, “I didn’t expect this troublemaking little devil to have pretty good artistic talent.”

‘This square head, these sprawling tentacles, it’s drawn really well.’

Ella, who knew the whole process, had just returned to her master’s side after finishing her guidance work.
She stuttered for a rare moment and couldn’t respond in time.

But Sykes didn’t notice, just continuing to give instructions on his own.
“Ella, go browse the human gaming forums some more and see what other elements their popular games have.”

“I’ve transformed that cave into an overlapping space. It should be able to be used as what the players call a [Dungeon]. It’s just that I’m running out of space scrolls, so it seems there aren’t enough to design another similar dungeon.”

“A third of the players are already playing passively. What if they refuse to log on?”
The merman was worried.
“There are billions of humans in the other world. A third less means billions of energy sources lost. I must think of a way to keep them.”

Ella blinked her eyes and, in a flash, had already analyzed the corresponding data for her master.

[The players who have shown passive behavior this time, based on their past gaming experience, are combat-oriented players who love exploration, danger, and dungeons. According to the analysis, the new dungeon can temporarily alleviate this sentiment. In the long run, opening up the world outside the domain to them is also a good choice.]

“The world outside the domain?”
The merman hadn’t expected to get such an answer from his butler.
He pushed up his glasses.
“But it’s filled with curses everywhere. The players’ energy membranes will be consumed in no time.”

[In the players’ world, the scientific name for the effect of a curse is “debuff,” also known as a negative status effect. It is a special scene design that players accept as a default existence.]

“So you’re saying… they won’t object to it?”

[Yes, Master.]

Sykes resolved a worry, and the whole fish seemed much more relaxed.
He swam towards his bookshelf, planning to pick out some books about humans to read—although they were humans from two different worlds, there should be some commonalities, right?

The pile of things he had put in the exchange post last time were selected according to the aesthetic tastes of the human kingdoms, and the response seemed to be pretty good.

The merman nodded in satisfaction, as if he could already see the beautiful scene of players enthusiastically participating in the game, and a large number of experimental materials flooding into his laboratory from the spawn point.

While Sykes and his butler were discussing the future content of the game, Old Li had already accepted the fact that his house had been painted in an abstract style and had a bright green roof.

He even couldn’t resist Huahua’s disappointed puppy-dog eyes, and crumpled up his conscience and aesthetic sense, feeding them to the fish, and forced out a few words of praise.

“Emmmm, this avatar is painted really well. Look, they both have four legs!”
Old Li really couldn’t find any aesthetic words, so he could only pick the most basic feature to comfort him.

Fortunately, Huahua wasn’t picky either.
As long as he was affirmed, he would be very happy.

“Really! I told you I have talent in this area! Hahahaha, see, even my teammate said so! You’re all just jealous that my talent is too high!”
The last sentence was obviously directed at the audience in the stream room.

His smug look multiplied the bullet comments several times over—

[Reporting the streamer for mocking the bullet comments.]

[Stop bragging, Huahua. If you call that high talent, my three-year-old nephew is da Vinci reincarnated.]

[Mr. Li, you’re just spoiling him!]

[Old Li is a good person. If my house was transformed like this, I’d have to eat my friend alive.]

[Hahahahahaha, I’m going to die laughing in my dorm. Old Li, touch your cloud site avatar and say it again, where does it look similar?]

[Didn’t you hear what he said, person above? They both have four legs, hahahahahaha!]

[Touching teammate friendship! I’ll accept this friend on behalf of Huahua.]

[Be careful not to let joy turn to sorrow, Huahua.]

Just as the last bullet comment predicted, Hua Yibing indeed did not get to be smug for long.

Because soon, the ‘three-good’ new teammate Old Li had mentioned—the one with max luck who discovered a new dungeon, with exceptional talent who dodged many mechanisms, and who decisively committed suicide to return to the resurrection point—came knocking.
And that person was someone he was damn familiar with—

“What are you doing here??”
Huahua jumped three feet high.

This was no exaggeration.
A fish’s jump in the seawater was completely different from a jump on Earth.
This leap almost made him hit the ceiling.

Yan Shuangwen: “…”

To be honest, he hadn’t expected to see his foolish roommate here either.

But this explained why the meeting place Old Li had arranged was such an ugly house.
He, as a roommate, had already experienced Hua Yibing’s artistic talent many times.

Yan Shuangwen’s mouth twitched, and he ignored his shouting.

“You guys actually know each other?”
This time, Old Li was genuinely surprised.
“What a coincidence! But it’s good that you know each other, so I don’t need to introduce you again.”

“More than just know each other,” Hua Yibing answered first.
“This guy is my roommate, the kind where our game cabins are no more than ten meters apart in a straight line.”

Yan Shuangwen said calmly, “It’s truly helpless to be roommates with such a guy.”

“Hahahahaha!”
Old Li laughed heartily, putting a hand on each teammate’s shoulder and pulling them together.
“You guys seem to get along well! Now I’m relieved. Let’s go, let’s go to the dungeon to get familiar with the way. We’ll push the dungeon together when we log on tomorrow!”

Huahua jumped up and down.
“Who gets along well with him!”

Yan Shuangwen raised an eyebrow.
“Who gets along well with him?”

Old Li helplessly dragged the two bickering people forward.
“See, you’re already so in sync, what’s there to deny.”

Hua and Yan looked at each other and fell silent in unison.

The players in the square who hadn’t learned to swim yet and were struggling to swing their tails watched the three of them leave, shedding tears of envy—the big shots could already have one person lead two people to swim, while they couldn’t even float.

Footnotes:

1. 凸 is an emoticon representing the middle finger.