Beaten up by knowledge!
Beaten up!
Lin Fuque felt as if she had been beaten black and blue by unfamiliar knowledge.
The "Mechanic Apprentice" assessment only tested "Repair" and "Manufacture." It lasted two hours. First, she received a pile of scrapped butterfly monitors and wind-powered hand cannons—ten in total. The goal of the assessment was to repair them.
The exam provided blueprints, making it essentially an open-book test, but Lin Fuque had never made a wind-powered armguard hand cannon before.
However, she didn't have any tools or materials.
Lin Fuque had no choice but to first dismantle the easily removable parts from the "exam questions." She set the intact structures aside for later use and managed to fashion tools out of the completely scrapped ones. After dismantling everything, she was only able to piece together two butterflies. Furthermore, the time given to her was too tight. She could only focus on keeping her head down and assembling them, with no time to test their flight. As for the "exam questions" that were scrapped due to programming errors, she could only skip them entirely.
Once the time was up, the repair questions had to be submitted. After Lin Fuque submitted her work, she found that the assembled butterflies had disappeared, but the scrapped materials were left behind. Then, the second question appeared on the panel:
[Use the current materials to manufacture [Butterfly-shaped Camp Autonomous Recharging Miniature Monitor] x1, [Portable Wind-powered Armguard Hand Cannon] x1]
Lin Fuque: "..."
These materials had already been dismantled and scrapped by her!
In the end, one of the two butterflies failed to meet the requirements, and the other had a minor issue that didn't affect its functionality. Lin Fuque only scored 4 points in the assessment.
Then, she was dropped into an "Audio-Visual Library."
The assessment time turned into study time. The ten defective butterflies and hand cannons were dismantled one by one in a video, teaching Lin Fuque how to repair them, why the power system would malfunction, why the hand cannon would overheat during use, why such a structure would affect balance, and how to efficiently utilize the existing energy...
But the video played very fast, and there was almost no explanation. Lin Fuque had to watch with rapt attention. Moreover, the end of the half-hour course stated: An experienced mechanic apprentice must thoroughly master these two blueprints. During repairs, they can "cut corners" and use the saved materials to complete Question 2.
As for how to do it, please explore on your own.
After reading this sentence, Lin Fuque flopped onto the ground.
So hard...
Wait, no!
She sprang back to life. "It's not like I really have to pass this assessment..."
She had been thinking about it all wrong. The assessment recommended a mechanic level of LV5 to take the test. She was only LV1, so she definitely couldn't pass it.
The focus should be on the half hour after the assessment. Lin Fuque noticed that she could hand in her paper early. She could completely note down the parts she didn't understand during the Question 1 stage, and then repeatedly watch the explanation for Question 2.
Lin Fuque rubbed her head and immediately entered the examination room again.
First, she noticed that the reasons for the scrapping of the ten scrapped items this time were actually different from the previous exam. Obviously, there were many questions in the question bank, and she would be given different ones at random each time.
But Lin Fuque didn't rush to start modifying them. She just looked through them one by one, comparing them with what she had learned in the previous half hour, and thought in her mind about how she could repair them, and where the difficulties lay in those she couldn't repair.
Finally, she set aside the ones she could fix, rested for a while to adjust her state, and submitted her 0-point exam paper.
Then, Lin Fuque sat cross-legged and began to take the class seriously.
This was the first time she felt—
"Taking classes is so interesting!"
Finding that her idea was correct made her especially happy. After learning a little bit of new knowledge, she also felt particularly satisfied.
After finishing the course, Lin Fuque was even a little eager to start another exam and fix something. However, before she became addicted to taking exams and took action, she first noticed that King was biting her shoe.
The Pomeranian let out a "woof," gesturing for Lin Fuque to look at the panel.
"Wow!" She noticed the pop-up window. "Has the CG animation been updated?"
Below the original game CG, "Assault on the Star Sea," there was an additional video file labeled "New"!
King seemed to be inviting her to watch it together.
Lin Fuque stepped back a bit, wanting to hug King, but the puppy seemed reluctant. It just lay parallel to her, about a fist's distance away, looking up attentively at the screen and lifting its chin, as if telling her: Watch closely.
Lin Fuque: "Alright..."
She opened the video.
Is it a short sci-fi war film similar to the game CG?
The video seemed to load for two seconds, and then a prompt popped up.
[According to the film rating requirements (G rating), the film format is being converted...]
[Conversion complete]
The Pomeranian beside her tilted its head, seeming a bit bewildered.
It heard Lin Fuque exclaim in a slightly surprised voice, "It's a cartoon~"
Hey!
A cartoon started playing on the panel!
The camera swept across a lush, emerald green mountain forest. After descending, it focused on a somewhat disheveled white Pomeranian. The overall visuals were presented in a 3D animation format. Both the background and the characters looked like moving, vibrant oil paintings. The Pomeranian also exuded a calm and reliable aura—
Lin Fuque recognized it at a glance: "King!"
She giggled and turned her head. "Did you go film a cartoon?"
Lin Fuque knew that "King" was a dog existing in a virtual world, and she could only touch it within this virtual space. However, this didn't stop her from believing that virtual beings also possessed life. Therefore, in her understanding, when King wasn't keeping her company, it also had its own life.
Otherwise, if the puppy were just waiting for her in the training space all the time, how lonely would that be?
Meanwhile, the puppy's raised head slowly, slowly lowered, eventually burying itself right into its chest.
Was it feeling shy?
King was a dog that didn't like to bark randomly. Lin Fuque continued watching the screen. This was an animation without any voiceover narration, much like "Tom and Jerry." However, thanks to the rich and delicate body language and facial expressions, it was easy to understand even without dialogue. Lin Fuque soon saw the Pomeranian encounter a pack of wolves in the deserted forest.
The wolf pack was currently fighting a bear. It was evident that the black bear had attacked the wolves' den. The large wolves at the front were keeping the bear occupied, while the wolf pups at the back were urgently relocating.
As Lin Fuque watched, she nervously grabbed one of the Pomeranian's front legs. Then, the Pomeranian appeared on the screen again. It called out to the wolves, cleverly using the river water to help the pack escape. However, having lost their alpha, the wolf pack appeared highly panicked. In the shot, two wolves were growling at each other, and the pups were whimpering pitifully, seemingly out of fear and hunger.
They huddled together with the Pomeranian. The small Pomeranian, surprisingly, seemed to have become the pillar of support for the wolf pups.
Because it was a cartoon, Lin Fuque wasn't at all surprised as to why the Pomeranian could successfully blend into the wolf pack. She just stared fixedly at the screen.
The little white dog suddenly turned its head and barked in the direction of the camera.
Then, the Pomeranian took two wolf pups along and began to hunt a wild hare it had discovered.
When the wolf pups bit into the hare, Lin Fuque sucked in a sharp breath. She saw the hare struggling as the Pomeranian approached it—
It pressed its front paws against the hare's neck, executing a swift neck-breaking maneuver.
Huh?
Should a dog kill a rabbit like this?
The wolf pup beside it obviously didn't realize anything was wrong, just happily digging in with snorting sounds. The Pomeranian on the screen, however, calmly turned back to the camera and let out a "woof."
As if to say: Yes, exactly like this.
The video ended here. The system quietly raised its eyes to observe the reaction of Lin Fuque beside it.
The little girl pursed her lips, looking quite serious. When it looked over, Lin Fuque also turned her head.
So, did she learn anything from this G-rated animation?
She still pursed her lips, her cheeks looking a bit tense, no longer as happy as she was before watching the animation.
Lin Fuque whispered, "King, are those rabbits really dead?"
The Pomeranian nodded.
Children tend to like cute things, and naturally feel afraid or sympathetic when they see animals die... But the next second, Lin Fuque reached out and picked it up.
The little dog still wasn't very clean, but she supported the system's bottom with one hand and gently held the back of its head with the other, letting the Pomeranian rest its head on her narrow shoulder.
"So... do you really live in a forest like that?" She seemed to understand that this wasn't just a cartoon for her to watch, but an educational documentary. However, the direction of her understanding deviated somewhat from what the system expected. "Are there cities around? Are there people? Is there anything I can do to help you?"
The system: "?"
She pressed her face against the system's, her gaze serious and sincere. "You are always dirty. It must be because you've suffered a lot. You helped the wolf pups hunt, but you didn't even eat a single bite of meat yourself."
"Why is there no food at all in this space..." Lin Fuque frowned in thought. "Or can you take the things I make outside? Like, like that wind energy cannon?"
Although she hadn't made one before, the two exams and the question explanations just now had crammed a bunch of theoretical knowledge into her head.
The system raised a paw to cover her mouth, but Lin Fuque continued to gaze at it just like that.
The system: "..."
So it knew it. It just knew that this unreliable host hadn't learned any "combat and command skills" from watching this combat training documentary. Not to mention, it had been altered into an "animation." After a whole battle, there wasn't even a frontal close-up of blood. The system just wanted to smack her on the head and let her go back to immersing herself in taking exams.
But it had forgotten that Lin Fuque had actually always been a person of great action.
She decided to find a way to help her "virtual friend," and naturally thought of starting with the game itself.
When she first bound this game, most of the text content wasn't translated, and Lin Fuque wasn't familiar with the functions of the interface panel. But now that the panel information was basically translated, she quickly found the information related to the Pomeranian—
[Exploration Log]
According to the small print below, this section was just a record of the items harvested by soldiers during their outdoor explorations.
And there were two names here: "Lin Fuque" and "4577K21D (Exploring Outside)".
Behind both names were icons of harvested items. Lin Fuque saw the "camouflage water gun" she had borrowed from Xiao Ming behind her own name, as well as the ice bullet converter rewarded by the game, the materials she bought, and the butterfly she made.
Meanwhile, there were far fewer things in 4577K21D's inventory—only two bones, a handful of herbs, and a single leaf.
Lin Fuque could tell at a glance that this string of code starting with 4 referred to King.
She tried to drag the items from her inventory over to King—
[Consume 1 point to open a temporary spatial channel for material exchange. Currently, only one-to-one item exchange is supported.]
[Your point balance: 0]
Lin Fuque: "Ah!"
Her points had been completely used up when she bought the blueprints... and she hadn't earned any since. Besides, why could they only exchange? Why couldn't she just give things for free?
She didn't want the little dog's things; she felt she was much richer than the little dog.
Lin Fuque showed the panel to King and found the Pomeranian barking a few times at the words "Exploring Outside" before simply lying down on the spot. She patted King's head, her heart still full of worry. "Are you really not going to encounter any danger? I'll save up points as quickly as I can. Do you want food? No? Then water... you don't want that either? What about a house? I'll go buy you one... Huh..."
King looked like it didn't want anything at all.
Lin Fuque indeed had absolutely zero points right now. She thought about it, then took the tools and materials on hand and made a comb.
"Then let me comb your fur," she said very seriously. "This is the only thing I can do right now, please don't mind it."
The Pomeranian paused mid-shake of its head and was pushed to the ground by her.
In fact, this body, just like Lin Fuque's body, was nothing more than a string of data in the virtual space. The fur became dirty because the system's mimicry in reality had indeed gotten dirty, and it used its more accustomed appearance during transmission.
Even if it was washed clean in the space, there wouldn't be any difference in reality. It was completely meaningless, just a waste of time.
Lying on its back, the system let out a soft purring sound from its throat. It didn't turn its head, but it could feel Lin Fuque focused and patiently untangling its knotted fur.
Just like when she was making the mechanical butterfly.
The ecological environment of the Zhangshan Nature Reserve was rather complex. Covering an area of 5,200 hectares, it encompassed the entire Zhangshan mountain range.
It was home to first-class national protected animals such as leopards and golden eagles, as well as abundant plant resources like the Zhangshan pine forests. To facilitate observation, the reserve's management office not only selected certain trees to hang infrared cameras, retrieving the videos at regular intervals, but also placed movable wildlife monitoring cameras in some areas. Just yesterday, a camera had captured a conflict between the Badu wolf pack family and the black bear, Gera.
Wolf packs always gave birth to pups in the summer, but the period of raising the pups was also when the alpha wolf was at its weakest.
The people in the camp cared about the Badu family, but they would not artificially intervene.
Every animal played a part in the ecological niche, just as they wouldn't intervene in a wolf catching a rabbit.
...But a dog catching a rabbit wasn't quite right.
In the camp near the experimental area, someone remained silent for a long time before asking the question:
"Where did this Pomeranian come from?"
Was this normal? Was this reasonable? It was one thing for it to sneak in, but for such a tiny thing to even be accepted by the wolf pack—this couldn't be right, could it?
At this time, because the Pomeranian had knocked over the rock camera, the humans hadn't observed how the Pomeranian and the two wolf pups hunted, nor had they seen the rabbit that was killed by a broken neck.
There were still seven days until the humans would retrieve the footage from the fixed-position cameras.
In a place they couldn't see, the Pomeranian shook its head and stood up. Fallen leaves drifted down, and it saw the dark, muddy dirt on its paws.
Hmm...
Should it go find a place to wash it off?
The system took two steps forward. Its movements were already like those of a standard dog, strutting forward with its head held high like a large dog—
["Combat Training Mission Video (G-Rating)" has finished playing.]
[By observing live combat, soldiers have a certain chance to gain battle insights and earn experience points...]
[Tally complete!]
[Soldier personal experience points +2. Received the rating: "Guaranteed Reward".]
[The assistant instructor's "D-" rating cannot be revoked. Please continue to work hard!]
The System pulled back its left front paw, and then its right.
Forget about washing them! When they met tomorrow, it was going to take these two little paws and smack them, one on the left and one on the right, directly onto Lin Fuque's face!
