The Fool's Time

Loot

"Luoluo, come out and eat your dumplings! Skipping New Year visits on Lunar New Year's Day is bad enough—what are you still dawdling in your room for?!"

Mom's familiar Lion's Roar echoed from outside the door, rattling my eardrums until they buzzed.

"Coming, coming! Putting my pants on, quit rushing me!"

My mouth rattled off a practiced excuse on autopilot, while my body very honestly bolted to the door in a single bound and clicked the deadbolt shut.

Are you kidding me? How could dumplings possibly compete with the goods I've got in my hands right now?!

Pinching that icy-cool, pure white rose petal between my fingers, my heart was still pounding like a jackhammer. It wasn't a dream. That cranky old Death rock, the faceless puppet, and Yeller taking the hit for me at the very end in those cursed woods—every single bit of it was real!

I hurriedly raised my left arm and closely inspected the quartz watch on my wrist.

That familiar little nick on the bottom right corner of the sapphire crystal was still there, and the time had ticked forward normally to 10:40 AM on Lunar New Year's Day. Yet when I focused my eyes and looked closer, I noticed that on the once-smooth leather strap—right next to the faint, hidden mark of [0 · The Fool]—a tiny, slightly dim [I] had actually appeared, wrapped in a miniature "∞" symbol.

Is this... a trophy mark for trashing The Magician's turf?

Tentatively, I reached out with my right index finger, pressed lightly on the [0] pattern on the strap, and gave the crown a quick twist while I was at it.

The very next second, water-like ripples spread through the air, and my right palm suddenly sank under a heavy weight!

That wooden staff carved with a "0" at the top and curved into an "∞" at the bottom—along with the dusty bottomless bundle tied to it—had materialized right into my hand out of thin air!

Holy s**t! I actually brought them out with me! Other people go through nine kinds of hell in an Infinite-flow instance and have to thank their lucky stars just to walk away with a single item—meanwhile, I stroll in once, dine and dash, and pack up both the starter gear and the Boss's entire life savings straight back to reality?!

Suppressing the ecstatic screaming in my head, I tiptoed over to untie the bundle and set it down on my bedroom rug, rubbing my hands together for a thrilling little loot-unboxing session.

I reached my hand into the pitch-black void of the bundle, felt around until I gripped the biggest hard object inside, mustered all my strength, and yanked it out—

"THUD!!!"

With a deeply muffled, earth-shattering crash, the entire bedroom floor trembled three times hard. The chandelier in the living room downstairs probably did a little swing too.

Staring at this half-chunk of bluestone altar sitting in front of me—easily weighing several hundred pounds and still caked in dirt and moss—I nearly jumped out of my skin. Panicking, I hurriedly threw the mouth of the bundle back over it and scrambled to shove the whole thing back inside.

"Lin Luo! Are you cracking walnuts with a sledgehammer in there?! You're gonna bring the whole damn floor down!" the old man yelled at the top of his lungs from outside.

"It's nothing! My hands just slipped doing push-ups and I face-planted on the floor!"

Wiping the cold sweat from my forehead, I patted my chest and let out a long breath. Almost forgot—back when I was exploiting that loophole to avoid triggering the trading rules, I swallowed up the upper half of The Magician's stone platform—pot, dirt, and all. Better let this thing sit tight inside the bundle as ballast from now on. If it actually smashes through the floorboard, my mom will skin me alive long before the Death rock ever gets the chance.

Switching to a gentler approach, I reached into the bundle and fished the items out one by one.

Before long, four items were lined up neatly across my desk—which was usually just a dumping ground for clutter:

A charred-black short wooden stick snapped in two, looking straight-up like a fireplace poker (the toppled Wand);

A short sword with seven or eight notches in the blade, so flaky with rust that even tetanus itself would shake its head and walk away (the shattered Sword);

A glass goblet cracked in half, yet still slowly oozing clear, formaldehyde-scented liquid from the seam (the broken Cup);

And three bizarre coins covered in fuzzy green patina, with a few ghastly white little teeth faintly visible on the back, grinding away (the corrupted Pentacles).

Staring at this literal pile of junk on my desk, I fell into deep thought.

When other protagonists get their cheat gear, it's either Excalibur and divine artifacts, or a Gatling g*n with infinite ammo. So how come when it's my turn, Lin Luo, the aesthetic goes straight to "old man running a scrap metal yard"?! If I took these four things to a flea market to set up a stall, city enforcement would kick me out just for being an eyesore and taking up space!

Still, roasting aside, when I lightly brushed my finger against that rusty broken sword, a needle-sharp chill instantly shot through my fingertip. And looking at that busted goblet—still leaking tears despite the three layers of tissues I padded underneath it—wherever the liquid touched, even the varnish on my desk was corroding into tiny little blisters.

They might look like trash, sure, but the eldritch rules attached to them are seriously cursed! Definitely keeping them. Next time I run into some monster that doesn't play fair, I'll just pull out this pile of junk and gross them to death!

Grinning from ear to ear, I packed the four "trash-tier divine artifacts" back into the bottomless bundle and switched it back into watch mode.

Once all that was done, I pulled out my chair and sat back down in front of my PC, my expression gradually turning serious.

There was one question that had been stuck in my throat like a fishbone ever since I realized today was Lunar New Year's Day—

Inside that [0 · The Fool] forest, I'd spent less than an hour tops from start to finish (even if I did get docked over six days' worth of time-currency). Yet in the real world, time had genuinely jumped from a full week before New Year's all the way to New Year's Day!

Seven whole days!

Going by what my mom said earlier, I spent those entire seven days cooped up in my room, "muttering about game scores, barely showing a shadow during the day except at mealtime."

If my consciousness was pulled into the instance, then who the hell was the "Lin Luo" staying in my house, eating my mom's cooking, and sitting at my PC gaming for those seven days?!

At that thought, the cold sweat that had just dried on my back broke out all over again.

With a trembling hand, I gripped the mouse and shook it to wake the monitor.

My desktop wallpaper hadn't changed. However, on the right side of the screen—which I usually kept fairly tidy—over a dozen newly created .txt files were now packed tightly together! Every single file name was a string of random gibberish, and their creation dates stretched right from six days before New Year's all the way to last night—New Year's Eve!

I swallowed hard and double-clicked the very first file.

Inside was just a single line of text, typed out as if by someone who had just learned how to use a keyboard:

[He is looking at trees. He is looking for watch. I eat dinner for him. Mom's braised pork is too salty.]

My pupils shrank violently, my fingers turning ice-cold as I rapidly clicked open the next few files.

[5 Days Before New Year's: The dial is spinning so fast. He's gonna die soon, the dead rock wants to eat him. I have to grind his score up for him, if the score isn't high enough he'll be erased...]

[3 Days Before New Year's: Time is so expensive. Paid twenty-three hours for him. So sleepy, but I can't stop playing this stupid game.]

[New Year's Eve: He actually robbed Number 1's stall? What a lunatic... Whatever, he's coming back soon. Time for me to sleep too.]

In one breath, I clicked all the way to the very last file, created at 7:30 AM this morning. Inside was just one short sentence, yet it made every single hair on my body stand on end:

[Lin Luo, don't trust the person who teaches you Advanced Math. There is a moon on the make-up exam paper when you go back to school on the eighth.]

Clatter. My hand jerked, nearly dropping the mouse onto the floor.

The one controlling my body over the past seven days wasn't some body-snatching wandering ghost—it was another "me"?! Or rather, the entity inside the watch that paid the twenty-three hours of blood money to bail me out and wrote "Time is expensive" on my wrist?!

Before I could even process this massive info-dump, my phone on the desk suddenly let out a crisp "Ding-dong!"

I looked down. It was that paranormal forum app that wasn't even supposed to have an internet connection.

Following up on that "The journey has only just begun" message from earlier, the mysterious guy with the blank avatar had just sent me a whole wall of text—practically radiating disbelief and sheer meltdown between the lines:

[Hold on, bro—I just got the tremor feedback from the Arcana Corridor. What the actual f**k did you do inside the rookie trial for [0 · The Fool]?!]

[When normal people enter The Fool's trial, they either pull the red feather and get one-shotted by [XIII · Death]'s projection, or they sacrifice their own limbs to [I · The Magician] in exchange for the white rose, barely scraping by nine deaths out of ten just to jump off the cliff and clear it. Why is the system prompting that [I · The Magician]'s altar relics have been completely lost?! Did you literally steal The Magician's stall?!]

Staring at the words on my phone screen, the tense, creepy atmosphere from a second ago shattered instantly, and the corners of my mouth couldn't help curling upward.

Ahem. How could you call it "stealing"? For a man of culture and higher education, that's called an earned zero-dollar acquisition!

My fingers flew across the screen as I typed back:

[Chill, just standard procedure, hold the applause. By the way, bro, who even are you? Were you the one who sent me this watch on my wrist? And what's the deal with these seven days of logs on my PC?]

The top of the chat window showed "Typing..." for a full thirty seconds before the blank avatar finally replied:

[The watch is your own—it just awakened seven days ago as your "Path Anchor." As for the one keeping up your daily routine over the past week, that was your "Subconscious Surface Persona," left behind in the real world when you were pulled in. If he hadn't worked his a*s off grinding enough Anchor Points for you on the forum, you would've been erased in front of that Death rock ages ago.]

[Now listen up, kid. I have no idea what kind of cursed move you pulled to clean out [I · The Magician], but you've officially kicked the hornet's nest. The Major Arcana sequence is linked together ring by ring. Since you forcibly plundered [I]'s relics, next in the line of succession—[II · The High Priestess]—has already locked onto you through karma!]

[The High Priestess governs "Secrets, f*******n Knowledge, and Binary Judgment," and she despises rule-breaking stowaways more than anything. If my guess is right, within seven days—the moment you come into contact with a real-world setting tied to "exams, books, or trials"—her Eldritch Domain will descend in full force. Good luck, you're gonna need it!]

Exams? Books? Within seven days?

Stiffly, I turned my head to look at the last sentence in that text file on my monitor—"There is a moon on the make-up exam paper when you go back to school on the eighth"—and then looked over at my desk calendar, where the eighth day of the New Year was circled in bright red ink: 8th Day of the Lunar New Year: Advanced Mathematics Make-up Exam.

Are you f*****g kidding me, officer?!

When other people's villain Bosses descend, they at least pick an ancient castle, a gothic cathedral, or some desolate wilderness so it looks high-end and atmospheric. You're [The High Priestess], the grand Number II of the Major Arcana, and you're seriously picking a college student's Advanced Math make-up exam to pull a sneak attack?!

Failing the class was bad enough, and now I have to put my life on the line just to take the make-up exam?! I am so done with this godforsaken university!