Prisoner Exploration

"And why the hell is she passed out sleeping here of all places."

Cheon Nan-cho — bound to a crimson star and reduced to a prisoner — stared down at Yu Hee in utter disbelief. Dust had piled thick across her body right in the middle of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ruins; just how long had she been out?

"There's no way she's dead."

After discreetly confirming that the chains of the Prisoner status still held her fast, Cheon Nan-cho dumped the luggage she'd hauled all this way in a rough heap and flopped down flat on the ground.

Out of nowhere Yu Hee had blurted something about a "Prisoner Exploration Mode," then used some bizarre technique to fling her off into the distance. Cheon Nan-cho had spent months following the chains that squeezed tighter around her spirit core with every passing day, all for the sole purpose of coming back and giving her a piece of her mind — only to find the girl sprawled out snoring.

And the most ridiculous part? Cheon Nan-cho had returned thinking she'd stacked enough Karma to grow significantly stronger… yet no matter how she looked at it, Yu Hee had gotten even stronger in the meantime.

No wonder the stars had chosen her.

"Hey, so like — a whole lot of stuff happened to me."

Rummaging through the roughly discarded packs, Cheon Nan-cho pulled out a few spirit stones and crunched them between her teeth, settling in beside Yu Hee — who still looked equally likely to be sleeping or completely unconscious — and launched into a long-winded account of her entire journey.

"It was seriously rough."

"Ugh… ughhh… stop… stop talking…"

"You're awake?"

"I think my ears are bleeding."

"Oh, please."

No, they really had been. The Flesh Shell just regenerated them naturally, that was all.

Forcing her creaking body upright, Yu Hee weakly stirred her Flesh Shell to shake off the thick layer of dust, then stared blankly at the mountain of system notification windows filling her vision with a head that still wasn't quite working properly.

The moment she saw that Prisoner Exploration had ended, she shouted without hesitation.

"Prisoner Exploration!"

"Hee-a, you! You were about to send me out again, weren't you?!"

Damn. So that doesn't work.

"Close one."

"Grrr! Don't you ever send me on that again!"

"But you got stronger, didn't you? And it's not like you were ever going to die — you came back just fine."

In Prisoner Exploration Mode, even a Critical Failure never applied permanent debuffs to the prisoner, and death events simply didn't exist. Wasn't that a good thing?

"There's no such thing as 'never'! So just don't send me unless you absolutely have to!"

She said that, but the way she kept sneaking glances made it pretty clear that the second the cooldown was up, shipping her out again would be fine. Whatever this "Karma" thing was, thinking of it as EXP made things simple enough.

More importantly — going by the logs alone, her trip had basically been a leisurely stroll. And yet the epic travelogue she'd been rambling at me for days on end while I lay half-unconscious, paralyzed by an event and barely able to breathe, had been on the level of a multi-decade saga.

In reality, Prisoner Exploration had run for about eight months — the original half-year extended by mid-journey events.

"This is great for topping up minor materials and consumables, though."

Especially the most critical consumable of all: equipment durability repair items. Ever since acquiring the Spoon, gear wear had gotten even worse, so I'd been forced to craft mid-level magic equipment from scrap materials in the crafting window just to keep up.

"Alright then — Status Window."

"Holy shit."

Just how many misfortune events had I been hit with for the permanently drained stats to add up past five hundred? Meaning nearly five hundred points had been restored.

Stats like these at this level were the kind of numbers you'd only get from stuffing yourself exclusively with the best events through every broken cheat mod imaginable.

Cheats, you say? This piece-of-shit game was so thoroughly broken that flipping on Cheat Engine made the game files commit suicide and self-destruct, forcing a full reinstall. A genuine, certified garbage fire of a game.

Rather than waste time building a mod just to make cheats work, you might as well install actual cheat-tier mods and have fun that way.

"Alright — time to crack these open."

I had a full five treasure chests to open, and conveniently my help guide — well, Cheon Nan-cho — was back, so of course I made her do the box-opening again.

"Please!"

But either my luck gauge had been running on empty, or the treasure chests simply decided to dump a cascade of garbage unique items and unremarkable uniques that didn't look useful in the slightest.

Two Dharma Treasures had actually dropped. One was an Intermediate-grade "Powerful" treasure, so I swapped it in for the Low-grade one I'd been using just fine. The other was High-grade garbage.

What? A High-grade Dharma Treasure that boosts movement speed while tanking your defense? Absolute trash. I refuse to acknowledge it! That thing felt like it would tank my luck just by existing in my inventory, so of course I threw it out.

Five whole treasure chests, and the loot had been a spectacular disaster — but I still felt good. Even if I'd leaned on the power of mods, I'd raised every single stat by over a hundred points!

Limit Breaking — that is, maxing out every stat before ascending to the next realm — made the breakthrough far smoother, and you got more bonus stats from the Limit Break itself. So the higher the numbers, the better.

What, I'm cheating at a game? Where's the fun in that?

You try crawling through this reality-patched, absolute dogshit, broken-ass piece-of-garbage game and then tell me how fucking miserable—

"Who am I even yelling at."

"Hee-a, is it the mental illness again?"

"What do you mean, again."

I couldn't even smack her for that.

Ah, fuck.

Consoling myself with the thought that at least I'd gotten one meaningful Intermediate-grade Powerful Dharma Treasure out of the chests, I was about to finish scouting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the terrain and move on to the next map when a thought struck me.

Come to think of it — once again, no events had triggered while I was unconscious. Events that normally popped up a dozen times a day hadn't appeared even once while I was out cold.

Events that fired without mercy whether I was resting, sleeping, or meditating for cultivation practice… simply refused to appear the moment I fainted or completely lost consciousness.

"Is it a bug where Event Mode stops working under certain status conditions?"

In a garbage game where even bugs caused by mod conflicts had to be patched with more mods, what could you really expect — but it still felt weird that this was happening even after the reality patch.

From experience, this definitely seemed like a bug, but I had no idea where the mod collision was coming from. And since mods auto-activated or deactivated on level-up, I couldn't go checking them one by one without burning through my entire Flesh Shell.

"What are you just standing there thinking about?"

"Feels like my mental image buffer is lagging. It's pissing me off."

"Hee-a still says the most incomprehensible things."

"You're telling me."

Lately I didn't even understand myself.

I'd walked the path of cultivation, become an immortal, spent over a hundred years climbing past Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment all the way to Core Formation — and now, of all times, was I hitting puberty?

That seemed unlikely, given that my body hadn't grown or changed in the slightest.

My nails didn't grow. My hair regenerated via Flesh Shell to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exactly the length it had been cut from. No point even thinking about changing my style.

"Ugh."

At the event window that popped up like a scolding, I cut off my thoughts and started moving toward the red dots visible in the corner of the minimap.