Singlehandedly - Chapter 2
Chapter 2: First Sentence Upon Waking up Every Day
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Individual value increased by 1?
Tang Hong put his hands in his pockets and wiped the phone screen in a daze, with a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘Experience for the first time.’
This was a keyword. This shows that this thing couldn’t be repeated, the benefits of multiple experiences of the same thing would likely be reduced, or even not exist at all.
‘Train journey alone for the first time.’
Tang Hong regarded it as a complete and simple specific event.
And now he obtained one ‘individual value’ from it.
What was the meaning of individual value and what use does it had?
Strength percentage…
Willpower percentage…
He looked out the window at the surging crowd, his heart beating slightly.
Power of One and individual value. According to the name, was this System planning to let him live alone for the rest of his life?! He really wanted to ask the intelligence mechanism that ran away if it could come back and for a while and give him a different system.
“And also!”
“Individual value, what a weird noun, this is way too casually named!”
“If a person’s specific behavior or specific event alone can increase the individual value, then it should also be called the loneliness value instead, isn’t it!”
There was no logic at all.
Then again, Tang Hong thought of how the sudden appearance of this support system was the most illogical thing in itself.
…
Following along the exit direction of Yunhai Station with the flow of the crowd, Tang Hong boarded the somewhat old Yunhai Metro Line 2.
The system intelligence escaped.
He was very sad.
But it’s okay. Tang Hong thought: “Now, I can only rely on my profound knowledge and wisdom in life to find out the effects of this support system myself.”
“And the true meaning of these terms.”
While thinking about it, he was observing the various data on the system interface and Tang Hong’s mind was turning rapidly.
Mortal: Extremely small and weak creature.
Willpower: 33%
Strength: 27%
Realm: 0.00
Individual value: 2
Tang Hong thought about these values seriously. Then, the value in the individual value column flickered, reducing from two to one.
At the same time, the percentage value in the strength column began to flicker, increasing from 27% to 28%. Just like the instinct of breathing, there wasn’t any hindrance.
“Oh.”
“Am I stronger?” Tang Hong stared at the plastic handrail he was holding on to. There is also an advertisement inside the plastic facing him, something about a publicity advertisement for a men’s hospital.
Of course, Tang Hong didn’t care about the advertisement.
He was trying very, very hard to squeeze the plastic handrail.
“Why isn’t it breaking…”
“This shouldn’t be the case…”
Tang Hong continued to exert force. He lowered his head, lest others discover his abnormality.
Add more strength again.
Tang Hong’s mind moved and the strength percentage value increased by one percent again. “I’m have become stronger again.”
It felt very clear and real, and his strength had indeed become stronger.
But he still couldn’t crush the plastic handrail.
“Alright.”
“It’s also reasonable.” Tang Hong breathed out softly. One had to eat a meal bite by bite. It was unscientific for his strength to increase greatly when the strength value only increased by 2%. Therefore, Tang Hong loosened his left palm which was holding the plastic handrail.
After sitting for seven stops, Tang Hong changed to the Yunhai Metro Line 9, which went directly to the Yunhai University of Finance and Economics where he currently studied at.
Today was 3rd May.
There weren’t many people on the train, but it wasn’t little either. There was no empty space on both the left and right sides, so he just stood at the carriage conjunction area of the train. The crunching sound coming from the train couldn’t interrupt his contemplation.
“Let’s assume.”
“The percentage of strength represents the limit of an interval.”
Perhaps the current value means that his strength was equivalent to 29% of the human body’s strength limit value.
After all, he was a modern man who had been immersed in novels and movies for many years. The explosion of information on the Internet had broadened his imagination. Therefore, Tang Hong appeared to be very calm along all this while. He checked the information interface over and over, and it wasn’t his hallucinations, nor was it an illusion. He came up with a simple way to verify his strength.
He had arrived at his stop…
Eyes wandering around, he found a self-service beverage vending machine…
Tang Hong took out his phone, opened WeChat, and bought a bottle of an unknown drink with a glass iron lid… He grabbed the bottle lid without shaking it, twisted it twice, and it was successfully unscrewed!
His strength had really grown.
He was convinced of this.
“But.”
Tang Hong stared at the information interface. What did the illusory willpower represent and what did the realm indicator that was zero from beginning to end mean?
Following the sparse flow of people, he came out of the subway station.
There was a bit of a drizzle outside. Yunhai City in early May had a subtropical monsoon climate, it was already relatively hot and the air was stuffy. This light rain made the people felt a small sense of coolness as if the streets have become clear and tidy.
Swoosh swoosh~
A crowd of people stood at Exit C of the subway station. They were mainly women and were more student-like.
“When will the rain stop?”
“I didn’t bring an umbrella either.”
A few girls in cool clothes huddled on the side of the ascending elevator, muttering something, discussing where to eat later.
Tang Hong finally raised his head with a pensive expression, observed the rainfall, and walked out.
In less than 20 minutes, the side entrance of Yunhai University of Finance and Economics came into view. This was a key research university directly under the Ministry of Education of Hua Country, focusing on economic management, with economics, management, law, liberal arts, science, philosophy, and other disciplines for coordinated development. It was a key construction university of Hua Country’s ‘211 Project’.
Looking at the side entrance of the school, Tang Hong was suddenly dazed.
‘This isn’t right.’
‘According to the general setting of movie novels, the protagonists in them were either from a third-rate university or were top students with super-high IQ. Tang Hong muttered secretly to himself, his mind slightly in a mess.
He glanced around. There were a lot of electric cars parked at the side door, most of them here for food delivery.
However, the campus of the University of Finance and Economics prohibits food delivery vehicles from entering.
These thoughts flashed past, and Tang Hong slowly returned to his dormitory with a gray school bag on his shoulders. This was a bunk for four people with quite a large space. It had its own washroom, just that it had no shower.
Click.
Opening the door with the key, Tang Hong went in and threw his schoolbag on the empty desk. Tang Hong looked around. “The three of them are not back yet? But class will be starting tomorrow.”
The quilts are neat and the trash can had no debris. It was obvious no one had returned to the dorm yet.
Tang Hong opened WeChat, flipped through the chats, and sent a husky question mark to his roommate Han Zhibin: “What time are you coming back? Shall we eat rice noodles at night?”
After sending this message, it was like a stone dropped into the sea, no answer came back. Tang Hong shook his head and pulled out a stool.
Since he had nothing to do, he called up the information interface.
Mortal: Extremely small and weak creature.
Willpower: 33%
Strength: 29%
Realm: 0.00
Individual value: 0
Tang Hong held his chin and enjoyed the empty four-person dormitory alone. There were occasional bird sounds outside the window. He felt lonely and cold now, but for some reason, after sitting alone for more than two hours, his individual value didn’t increase.
So, was it an objective fact that causes an increase in the individual value; or was it a change in emotion that would trigger an increase in the individual value?
If it was the former, then there would exist some hidden requirements for the behavior and the event itself, such as time compliance, such as the degree of difficulty.
If it is the latter, then there would be many loopholes, and he could even make use of bugs to grind the individual values.
“If it’s idealism, there is no standard to measure, the individual value will increase according to changes in mood. I can just force myself to suffer from depression and autism. The more ill I am, the stronger I will be. Or I can just find a big hospital and inject hormones to make myself feel lonely.”
“A weaker choice would be to self-hypnosis by spending money to find a psychiatrist.”
Tang Hong recalled that the first individual value he obtained was when the train arrived at the station and he looked at the backs of the couple.
“Huh?”
“No no no, I remember that the initial interface already started with one individual value.” Tang Hong was a little confused, was the initial one individual value a gift?
The intelligence mechanism had run away, even though he was puzzled, he had nowhere to ask questions.
Dong Dong~
A crisp WeChat message prompt broke the silence of the dorm, making Tang Hong exhale. He almost thought it was a system prompt.
Ding dong and dong dong, these two sounds were a bit similar.
It’s just that the former resounded both physically and mentally, and the latter was in the ear. Tang Hong glanced at his WeChat and saw that it was a message from his roommate Han Zhibin. An expression of an obedient cat flipping over and acting cute: “Hehehehehe, the three of us haven’t returned to Yunhai yet. We have just decided to go and experience a full body massage for a night, and we will go back tomorrow or the day after. Boss Zeng is treating, so we are going to gain some experience.”
“…”
Tang Hong was speechless.
Dong Dong.
Han Zhibin was a bit excited and sent three messages in one go.
“I asked you to come with us previously, but you chose to go home instead!”
“Why not you book a ticket and come over now. We are in Hang City, in a five-star hotel suite!”
“Tomorrow on the 4th, it’s a Wednesday class. Anyway, there isn’t any professional class… What are you afraid of? Come here quick, if you are my brother, then let’s hehehe together!” Han Zhibin reclined on the sofa and tried to entice Tang Hong.
Tang Hong hesitated and said, ” But I’m not familiar with Zeng Li.”
“Zeng is very generous, he said that it’s just small money.” Han Zhibin tried to persuade him, “We don’t need to lick him like Wu Jie, it’s enough for you to just say a few good words to him, we can all have fun together.”
Tang Hong usually didn’t play together with Zeng Li.
He hesitated for a while, but in the end, he refused in a righteous way. “There’s nothing interesting about it, I shall go to the library to study instead… What you guys are doing is illegal!”
“Haha.”
“We are kindly contributing to the economic construction of our nation…” Han Zhibin put away his mobile phone with some regrets and didn’t try to persuade Tang Hong anymore.
He didn’t want to study and he subconsciously didn’t want Tang Hong to study too, but Han Zhibin himself didn’t notice this subtle thought.
…
10 PM at night, at the entrance of the library, the oncoming cool breeze made Tang Hong shiver.
Back to the dormitory?
As soon as he thought that there was no one in the dormitory and he was going to spend the long night alone, a piece of information emerged.
[Ding dong!]
[You tasted the joy of studying alone and feel slightly lonely, individual value increased by 1.]
Tang Hong was surprised and happy at the same time.
The information prompt for the increase in individual value this time was somewhat different from the last time, there were more emotional factors.
“‘Study alone’ is simpler and easier than ‘taking a train journey alone, so even until I left the library, I didn’t meet the corresponding standards, I was always a little bit away from the mark… But my mood made up for this gap?”
Tang Hong was startled, then overjoyed. “That’s it!”
There were both objective facts and emotional factors, but which one was the focus still remains to be verified.
Tang Hong lowered his head, pondering all the way. The train journey at noon took more than two hours, plus the time to leave home and to return to the dormitory from the subway station, it should be a total of at least five hours. The time used for self-study should be less than two hours.
As for which was more difficult, it varies from person to person.
Tang Hong love to study. For him, self-study was easier than taking a train.
He went back to the dorm, quickly washed, climbed onto the bed, and covered himself with a quilt.
The desk lamp placed in the corner of the desk exuded a non-glaring yellowish light, the slightly dark dormitory, the empty beds… The green alarm clock on the desk of his roommate Han Shibin made a tick-tick sound as the second hand moved… Tang Hong suddenly sat up, feeling lost, and sighed. “I am in a foreign place to study, I miss home, I feel so lonely!”
Silence.
There was no information prompt.
Tang Hong lay down, sat up again, and tried to wipe the non-existent tears at the corners of his eyes. “It’s scary to sleep alone, sob sob sob sob, it’s too scary.”
Even the sound of a pin dropping would be heard in the deathly silence of the dormitory.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Is the System broken again?’
‘But there isn’t any way of restarting it.’
After subconsciously tossing about for an hour, Tang Hong finally fell asleep.
…
The dark sky was lit up, and there seems to be a fire on the eastern horizon. It was cool in the early morning. There were sometimes footsteps and chatting outside the dormitory door, these were mostly students who were up for a morning run. There were also some who were used to getting up in the morning to take part in oral practice.
Until 9 AM in the morning, when the sunlight shining on the floor of the dormitory was glowing, Tang Hong flipped his body to another side.
He woke up.
He opened his eyes.
In an instant, a stream of information flashed and throbbed and emerged: [Experiencing living alone, individual value increased by 1.]
“This…”
The first sentence every day when he got up was individual value increase by one?
Tang Hong became sober, sat up, and immediately figured out the true source of that initial individual value.
“Adding up.”
“It’s been more than two months.” Tang Hong hugged the quilt, stared at the information interface, and muttered to himself, “Let’s discuss this, increasing the individual value by 60 points is enough.”
No response.
Tang Hong coughed twice. “10 points are fine too!”
Still no response.
He sighed, his heart feeling relieved at the same time. If the System really had an intelligence mechanism to assist him, Tang Hong would feel uncomfortable instead. Modern people pay attention to privacy and don’t like prying. He didn’t want to have an intelligence mechanism to monitor and record his life.
Despite the lack of guidance of an intelligence mechanism, he didn’t want to stay still and wait comfortably for results to come. He couldn’t just lie in bed and just wait for the first sentence to be individual value increase by one every day he woke up, right? That would be such a waste of the System.
As a standard modern person, curiosity and thirst for knowledge were catalyzing Tang Hong’s thoughts.
If there was no limit to strength, could he grow stronger endlessly, and even become a superman?
Destroy the teaching building with one punch?
Crush a grove with one foot?
If there was no upper limit to Willpower… Tang Hong didn’t understand the meaning of the percentage of willpower for the time being.
“Does it mean self-control?”
“When being tempted by beautiful woman and money, I can still remain unmoved?” Tang Hong uncontrollably ran loose in his thinking. Picked up the phone next to the pillow, he logged in to the browser, searched for the term willpower, and its training methods.
Willpower was a concept of psychology. It refers to the precious quality of a person consciously establishing goals and mobilizing one’s own actions, overcoming difficulties, and finally achieving small goals.
“To put it bluntly, it’s just the ability to concentrate on something.”
Tang Hong flipped through the web page and then thought of how his action now, trying to explain the terms in a support system that couldn’t be explained scientifically based on the existing concept. It was like sitting in a well and thinking it’s the entire world, too opinionated.
The Willpower value might have a deep meaning.
For example, logical thinking ability, or intelligence and emotional quotient, perceptual talent, the telekinesis that existed in movies and novels, and even the aptitude for cultivating immortality, these possibilities weren’t ruled out.
“Individual value…”
As the saying goes, wealth shouldn’t be revealed, but hidden deeply. Since ancient times, there was already the saying of how treasures would tempt people to commit evil.
Tang Hong thought for a long time. The increase in strength was intuitive and easy to understand. In terms of external changes alone, the increase in strength should be more conspicuous than willpower.
Therefore.
The first choice for using the individual value should be to increase willpower, not strength. “Yesterday, I had wasted two individual values to increase my strength. For now, I will give priority to increasing willpower.”
“Take it easy.”
“I mustn’t rush.”
Thinking of this, Tang Hong sat quietly for a while, then picked up his mobile phone to search for what was the experience of being alone.
Tang Hong looked through the results patiently and became more and more disappointed. These years, there was a lot of spam on the Internet. He turned to the second page and his eyes lit up. He found a few keywords: loneliness level.
“There’s actually such a thing?”
Tang Hong hurriedly searched and found the loneliness scale.
