Ian was already used to the scene before him.
This nightmare... no, perhaps the situation where he fell into this strange state every night, had started even before he awakened the System panel as his "cheat."
"What exactly is this place?"
Crystalline frost quickly appeared on Ian's eyelashes. He raised his hand and caught the ice and snow cascading from the sky. The vast white curtain of snow swallowed the broken city skyline.
The snow was too heavy.
Only objects close by could Ian see clearly. Strangely, he didn't feel cold in this environment, it was as if he was physically present here yet somehow outside the entire world.
The howling wind mixed with the brittle crackle of cracking ice. The quiet city was a deathly silence, like a doomsday picture scroll. Perhaps this world was already a post-apocalyptic one.
"Tap-tap-tap~"
"Tap-tap-tap~"
Ian walked on the frozen ground. He didn't know what he could do in this world. Various attempts he had already made verified that he couldn't take anything back from here.
Perhaps the only benefit this city offered Ian was inspiration to become a famous decadent artist. The broken overpass slanted into the snow like a dissected steel skeleton.
The rusty car wrecks were half-buried in the ice. The collapsed bus stops had shattered glass roofs, and the snow-shrouded buildings had suffered extensive collapse.
Broken power lines swayed in the wind everywhere. This place was like a ruin abandoned by the gods, where even hearing the chirp of an insect was an impossible luxury.
"Hey! Come out!"
Ian shouted boredly at the sky, but no rubbish fell down from above. His previous compulsory nine-year education still hadn't become the secret key to exploring this strange world.
"Looks like I'll have to stick to the old routine." Ian had strict requirements for himself in this world. The fact that he was able to upgrade his [Student] profession to LV7 so quickly was partly thanks to the nightmare world. In this world, Ian would have an extra seven hours for time management.
Studying even in a dream.
He certainly deserved his excellent grades and rapid leveling.
And so.
Ian was already trying to find bookstores that hadn't yet been buried in the ruins of the ice and snow world. Most of them contained plenty of adult-only magazines and periodicals.
His two older brothers had to hide such literature in the neighbor's doghouse, but Ian didn't have to worry about being discovered by his parents, and he could even gain experience points by appreciating them. How could learning about the adult world not be called studying? Ian's [Student] profession was very flexible in judging how to acquire experience.
"Having no shortcomings in any area—that's the true modern-day Academic God!" Ian was very satisfied with his plan. He walked through street after street blanketed in snow.
As he constantly stepped on the ice, a grinding friction scraped from the soles of his boots, making his teeth ache. He would occasionally slip in this environment, but after dusting himself off and standing up, he didn't feel any pain.
It was like a lucid dream.
Just a very coherent and special one. Soon, Ian found his destination: a bookstore buried in snow. With diligent work, he could dig a hole and crawl in within half an hour.
There was no one inside the bookstore, not even dead customers. Fortunately, although the books on the shelves were fragile, the magazines behind the glass display cases could still be gently flipped through.
[You seriously engaged in reading, grasped some aesthetic techniques, [Student] Profession Experience +1]
[You seriously engaged in reading, grasped some aesthetic techniques, [Student] Profession Experience +1]
...
Time passed minute by minute in productive learning.
Ian also coincidentally discovered a still-functional revolver next to a collector's magazine. He immediately aimed it at his temple and sharply pulled the trigger.
Bang! bang! bang!
The bullets touched his flesh, causing ripples, but they could not harm him in the slightest. Ian had long figured out the peculiar nature of the dream, and this action brought Ian extra experience.
[You attempted to learn to catch a bullet with your hand. Although the practical learning failed, you grasped some death-seeking techniques, [Student] Profession Experience +3]
[You attempted to learn to catch a bullet with your hand. Although the practical learning failed, you grasped some death-seeking techniques, [Student] Profession Experience +3]
...
Six system prompts was not the limit of Ian's action, but the limit of the revolver's cylinder. Unfortunately, he couldn't find any more bullets nearby, or else Ian would definitely thank the bounty of nature—a full eighteen experience points that would take a long time to gain from reading. Facts proved that only by being ruthless could you get ahead.
"Still craving more."
Ian narrated a voiceover for himself.
As mentioned before.
The experience acquisition criteria for his [Student] profession were very flexible, which was why he felt his System panel resembled a game that hadn't been fully developed.
One couldn't say it had many bugs, only that it didn't have too many restrictive conditions.
"See you tomorrow, Miss who doesn't like wearing panties." Ian put down the personal photobook. After estimating the time for his return, he moved a table to the entrance of the bookstore.
Although there was no coffee or small cake, the bookstore naturally had no shortage of pictures of these two items. Ian cut several pictures out and placed them in front of the small table.
When a person is bored to a certain extent, they become a bit abstract, but Ian felt this was his sense of ritual. Without some activity to pass the time, he would be stifled to death every night.
A dead silent world.
It was also a dull, small dark room.
Outside the escape hole Ian had dug, snowflakes drifted, and the silence was extreme. Only occasionally did an icicle snap off a sign and stab into the snowdrift, making a brittle sound.
Rumble!
Uh, the sudden noise was not brittle, but very loud. The ground even shook with a kind of muffled thunder, which truly startled Ian, who had grown used to the silence.
The abrupt noise was violent and heavy, absolutely not the sound of an icicle hitting the ground. It sounded like a massive mountain had collapsed and crashed heavily onto the surface!
"Holy crap, did something really fall from the sky?" Ian quickly stood up after regaining his senses and skillfully squeezed out through the hole he had dug at the entrance.
On the street.
The fierce wind, laden with ice shards, was still howling.
He saw.
Reflected in Ian's disbelieving, widened eyes was a figure like a small mountain. That was the culprit of the muffled crash that had fallen from the sky.
A figure, completely frozen by ice and snow, just like this world... a Green Giant!