I am a Big Player
Chapter 120 - 119, Cycling Downhill! _1

Chapter 120: 119, Cycling Downhill! _1

Although studying was intense in the ninth grade, everyone still paid some attention to the hottest video of the moment, "Knight’s Fame."

So, there was a buzz about it in class, but no one knew that they were actually discussing their very classmate.

With Ren He’s sly personality, of course he quietly listened to others praising him and then snuck off to the side, chuckling with delight. Meanwhile, Yang Xi and Xu Nuo, clear as mirrors in their hearts, just found Ren He shameless, actually joining in the discussions and praising himself along with everyone else...

The classmates were all dumbfounded; they felt that Ren He had become suddenly active. Later, some caught onto the pattern: whenever someone started discussing the short video series "Knight’s Fame," Ren He would proactively join the conversation!

What was going on? Did they have a die-hard Knight fan in the class?

Ren He scared everyone with his enthusiasm, so they simply stopped mentioning it and went back to focusing on their studies.

Watching everyone bury their heads in their work, Ren He whispered with disdain, "How boring!"

Yang Xi could hardly straighten her back from laughing so hard at her desk. Ren He’s shamelessness was constantly refreshing her perception of him.

In fact, during adolescence, everyone’s skin is thin, and they often do things out of pride that make them suffer in silence. Among classmates, losing face could likely end in a fight to resolve the matter.

Each one had their pride and brimming with youthful vigor.

But it seemed that Ren He was not like that, more scheming than anyone, and incredibly shameless. Yet somehow, being with him always filled Yang Xi with positive energy.

Yang Xi didn’t mind at all; she felt that this was the real Ren He.

Duan Xiaolou watched Yang Xi laughing her head off in bewilderment, having no clue what was going on...

Yet when watching the videos, the protagonist always felt strangely familiar.

Recently, her interactions with Ren He had decreased. They no longer ran together at night, and she had no idea what he was up to. Sometimes she would think of Ren He, but just as ripples began to stir in the calm waters of her thoughts, she would push them down.

However, for some reason, when she saw Ren He these days, he seemed to have changed again—had he become better looking? Duan Xiaolou didn’t think so. Ren He’s appearance had always been slightly above average, with well-proportioned features that were pleasing to the eye, but it was just that, pleasing—nothing stunning.

Yet Duan Xiaolou always felt like Ren He was constantly changing, so fast that it was hard for her memory to keep up. She had just reassessed him a few days ago, and today she had to do it all over again.

He definitely had become more charming. Not only did she occasionally catch herself looking at Ren He, but Duan Xiaolou also heard from some acquaintances that younger female students were starting to consider Ren He a campus heartthrob.

Duan Xiaolou was so shocked she couldn’t speak for a while. So the Ren He she seldom acknowledged before had become this popular?

Life always returns to calm. Under Ren He’s supervision, Xu Nuo was swiftly progressing through this year’s high school entrance exam questions, oblivious to how astonished he would be by the same problems in the exam room two months later—exactly the ones he remembered practicing repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Ren He began to ponder how to start working on game development; he didn’t have much else to do at the moment, and clearly one summer vacation wasn’t enough time.

For now, he didn’t need to worry about the programming side of things. Instead, the artwork could be started first.

But the problem was how to make others trust a middle schooler like him?

And until now, he still wasn’t quite clear on Xu Nuo’s programming skills—because he didn’t understand it at all. In the future, how would he manage the quality of their work? After all, he wasn’t some big company with a dedicated technical department. Once the game was developed, they couldn’t just keep on supporting those tech workers—it was expensive!

What’s the most expensive thing in the 21st century? Labor costs, that’s what’s most expensive. Open a hotel, and it’s not the ingredients that will cost you most, it’s the wages of the waitstaff and chefs. That’s just how reality works, and no one’s an exception.

If Ren He planned to become a company like Nintendo of his previous life, he’d have to maintain his technical staff because making one game after another was never a losing strategy. But Ren He didn’t plan to do that because he only intended to make Dota.

So he and Xu Nuo would inevitably have to go all out initially, and later on, either Xu Nuo or a couple of technicians would handle the routine updates, maintenance, and version patches.

Thinking about how he was about to start working on a game that could dominate the world in the future, Ren He was thrilled. This was Dota! Successfully creating Dota could mean money would become just a number in his life. Then, he could afford any extreme sports without ever worrying about funds; burning through equipment would be trivial.

Of course, Dota’s fermentation period would also be very long, but Ren He was mentally prepared for that.

At that moment, Ren He received a text message with his monthly electronic subscription royalties for his bestseller, the royalties from the Three Character Classic, and the royalties for the print edition of Kunlun! They were 230,000, 410,000, and 670,000, respectively!

It could be said that even if Ren He wrote nothing else and only focused on updating his bestseller, he was already an author earning over a million a month, which was absolutely unthinkable in 2005.

The truth was, he had a bit too many money-making works at the same time.

Then came the Divine Punishment System: "Mission: Cycle for 1 hour, maintaining a speed of 100 kilometers per hour for a cumulative total of over 30 minutes. Deadline: one week. Penalty for failure: host will suffer incontinence for a month."

"Mission: Cycle past 100 motor vehicles without cheating. Deadline: one week. Penalty for failure: host will suffer incontinence for a month."

"Mission: Complete a cumulative total of 36 drifts while cycling. Deadline: one week. Penalty for failure: host will suffer incontinence for a month."

Another three consecutive cycling-related missions, and what perversion of punishments—truly twisted. He couldn’t quite grasp the Divine Punishment System’s sense of humor. Incontinence for a month, does that mean losing control of both pee and poo, wetting oneself while talking?

Can’t you dole out some normal penalties?

As for these three missions, Ren He understood them this way: within 1 hour, there needed to be a cumulative total of 30 minutes maintaining a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. In other words, the speed could rise and fall in between; it didn’t matter if it occasionally dipped below 100, as long as it totaled 30 minutes at that speed.

The question was: how to reach that speed of 100? Ren He felt that his speed on flat ground could barely reach 80 to 90km/h at most. He could sprint faster, of course, but couldn’t maintain it for long—that was a sprinting speed, after all, and even professional sprinters only managed for a handful of minutes.

Then came the hidden meaning of the Divine Punishment System’s mission: it was actually a downhill task! There were no mountain requirements, nor specific instructions on how to complete it, but essentially, it was a low-budget version of a downhill mountain biking mission! Without downhill, sustaining 100km/h for over half an hour was almost impossible for humans.

To think he’d be facing a downhill mission so soon—exciting!

At this point, Ren He suddenly thought of a problem. The pressure from having three difficult missions scheduled every month was a bit too much. If he was always busy completing these three missions, wouldn’t he be trapped by them? Wouldn’t that leave him no time for anything else? He knew the missions were getting harder and not something that could be completed immediately like before.

He asked the Divine Punishment System, "If I give up one stream of income to do some good deeds, could the other two tasks be converted to one-time penalty missions? After all, you want me to bring out more works to enrich this barren entertainment world. If I’m always tied up with these fixed tasks, wouldn’t that bind my time too? If I can’t finish the tasks at hand, how can I dare to take on new ones?"

The Divine Punishment System fell silent, seemingly pondering the question earnestly. Ren He dared to pose this because there was some truth to it. The Divine Punishment System naturally wanted Ren He to produce as many works as possible, but too many tasks would lead to royalties for long-term revenues. Over time, Ren He could end up with a dozen fixed tasks per month. Neither his energy nor his physical strength would be sufficient. Almost every day, he’d have to spend all his time on the tasks until he was completely burned out.

In doing so, anyone would be discouraged from releasing new works—a self-inflicted fast track to the end.

Ren He was now slowly negotiating terms with the Divine Punishment System, fighting for everything that could work in his favor!

...

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