2 Chapter 2: What the Hell is Thick-Skinned?

"Who am I?"

"Where am I?"

"What on earth has happened?"

Song Jian opened his eyes, his gaze settling on the dilapidated and unkempt room before him, a wave of perplexity washing over him.

At that moment, he found himself sitting on a worn-out single-seater sofa bed. The room was heavy with a mouldy smell, and a thick layer of dust covered the nearby furniture and the floor. The four walls around him were splotchy and tired. Its original white paint now turned light yellow, with black and red traces streaking across them in places, their dried remnants looking ominously like bloodstains.

The light filtering through the window was exceedingly dim, not unlike the scene just before a heavy downpour.

In one corner of the ceiling hung a gigantic cobweb, its center claimed by a colossal spider the size of a washbasin. Unmoving. At its sight, Song Jian jerked back in fright, his body instinctively recoiling. He had never seen a spider this big before.

There was a dull ache at the back of his head, just like the feeling after waking up from a hangover. Shaking his head slightly, Song Jian was convinced there was something wrong with his brain. Because, when he had looked at the spider on the ceiling, he had noticed a line of faint yellow text positioned right above its head.

"LV1 Mutant Spider Vitality: 78/78"

"Oh my god. Can someone tell me what's happening here?" Song Jian shot up to his feet, wanting to get out of this room. This wasn't his rental place. Looking through the window, it seemed like he was in a high-rise apartment building.

Just as he got off the sofa bed, a meditative mechanical voice echoed in his ears.

"Welcome to the game 'Doomsday City'!"

"Who's there?" Song Jian took fright all over again, his body giving a sudden jerk as he looked around in panic. But he couldn't find a thing.

"I am your beginner's guide in this game and will assist you on this extraordinary journey ahead!" the mechanical voice replied.

"What are you exactly? I don't want to play any game! I am just a simple salesperson, I don't have the money for this." Song Jian shouted at the top of his lungs, "Most importantly, I don't know how to play any games! I've never played any! I haven't even heard the name of games like Legendary, Miracle, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, or PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds!"

"..."

"If you wish to leave this place and return to your world, you must complete the novice game tutorial first," the mechanical voice replied after a brief silence.

"..., I can come back? So why wait? Let's get started. What's my first step? Do I need to kill that spider?" Song Jian pointed to the large spider in the corner of the ceiling.

Spider: "....."

Man, you're quick to get into character, brother!

A spider that big hanging around right over his head was terrifying. What if it decided to give him a bite when he was sound asleep?

Damn it, is this a game or some kind of teleportation thing? Because everything seems so real right now.

The system seemed a bit delayed, and no words came from it.

Running his hand lightly across the bed, Song Jian's fingers traced a path in the grey dust. The realistic feel of the bed beneath his fingertips was too convincing. It felt no different from reality. If it were not for that downright chilly system notification, Song Jian would have never believed that he was in some Doomsday City game.

"Step one, please open your character attribute panel first. Let me explain the role of the character attributes in this game, and things you need to pay attention to as you level up," the system voice finally responded.

"That should be easy! Open the character attribute panel!" Song Jian shouted loudly. As someone who had never played an online game before, this operation seemed simple enough. Or maybe not.

"....."

Nothing happened.

"System?"

"Character attributes?"

"Open the panel?"

...

"Okay, tell me how to open the character attribute panel!" Song Jian asked with a trace of embarrassment.

"You don't have to shout it out loud. Just think about it or silently read it in your mind. Everything in the game is transmitted via brain waves, which are ten thousand times more advanced than sound control!" the system voice replied.

Song Jian mentally recited 'character attributes'.

Just as expected, a semi-transparent light blue screen appeared before his eyes. A 3D model based on Song Jian's body proportions emerged on the screen, with various attribute data about him listed below.

Name: Song Jian

Species: Human

Gender: Male

Age: Twenty-two

Biology Level: Common Level 0

Attributes: (Average adult male attributes rate as 5)

Strength: 4 points. Strength partially determines the power of close combat attacks and can enhance your carrying capacity. It also adds bonus damage to unarmed combat techniques.

Agility: 3 points. Agility affects movement speed and initiative, and also affects your own dodge rate. It even adds a bonus to long-range physical attacks.

Vitality: 4 points. Vitality determines your life energy and stamina, and also affects your resistance to hits and various abnormal states, as well as resistance to spell attacks. It also plays a certain role in regaining life energy and enduring stamina recovery speed.

Intelligence: 3 points. Intelligence determines the power of spell attack damage while influencing your learning ability and receptive powers. But intelligence is not equal to IQ and EQ, so please don't mix up the two.

Spirit: 5 points. Spirit determines the upper limit of your energy, while slightly affecting the power of skills. It has a significant effect on various status skills.

Charisma: 7 points. Charisma is the combination of looks, temperament, and affinity. It determines others' first intuitive perception of you. People with high charisma can quickly get along with strangers and affect others' decisions through various means. It has a significant effect on alluring or summoning skills.

Beneath these data, there are two horizontal bars. The top one is red—otherwise referred to as the 'blood bar'—which represents Song Jian's vitality. Beneath it is the blue bar, or the 'mana bar', which represents his energy levels.

Song Jian ignored the rest of the attributes, his eyes locked onto "Charisma: 7 points". He nodded approvingly and said with an air of gravity: "This data seems rather fair and objective. This indicates that my attractiveness exceeds that of most people, and even among the handsome ones, I am outstanding. Yes, this matches well with my actual situation! This will help me become the future king of sales."

"..."

"After the introduction to the character attribute panel, please open the skills panel!" the mechanical voice continued.

Song Jian nodded slightly and opened the skills panel using the same method.

Upon scanning through the skills panel, Song Jian's face changed. "What kind of shitty data is this? Is there any sense of fairness or impartiality? Is this all just nonsense? What the hell is thick-skinned?" he cursed.

In the light blue screen, the skills panel only had one skill, blandly hanging there in the first column.

"Thick-skinned (Passive), Level 1, Skill Effect: Increases your own defense by 5%, resistance by 3% and enhances your resistance to ridicule, allure, necrotoxin, paralysis, dizzying, and other adverse effects. Skill Clarification: As a salesperson, you can already have a certain immunity to insults, rejections, and mockery. In addition, your capability to resist hits has been improved, as well as resistance to adverse effects."

...