Soulless Players

Ding!

— I n i t i a t i n g S y s t e m —

Ding!

…

Name: Steve Works

Story: The Rising star in the Business World

Profession: Businessman

Level: 6 (11500/12700)

Stats:

Physique: 8 (+10)

Mental: 10

Mana: 0 (+15)

Spirit: 0 (+5)

Attributable Points: 0

Karma: -100

Uniqueness: Golden Eyes - Active (Lv. 1)

-See through the value of things.

…

After Steve whispered the magic word, an illusionary and transparent screen panel appeared before him.

On the holographic screen, information about Steve was shown. From his name, story, and profession, to his golden finger were indicated on it.

Seeing the negative three-digit number at the bottom, his temple could not help but furrow.

'Why is this still not changing?' Steve gritted his teeth, looking annoyed. He had been waiting for some changes in his karma after experiencing the misfortune of being scammed.

After a whole night of waiting, the man never returned nor reported to Steve what had happened. He just disappeared without any notice.

In addition, Steve didn't know what exactly had happened to Philip. Whether he was dead or lurking somewhere alive, Philip's condition remained a mystery to Steve.

The only thing he knew was that Philip was now disabled. Because when the rain stopped and the forest fire had fully been extinguished, he ordered his men to look for Philip and found his bloody leg left near the cliff.

Steve had some guesses of what had happened but he wasn't 100% sure of it and could only investigate more to prove it.

However, after a whole night of investigation, he could not find any traces of Philip and the man.

'Obviously, they had fought, but why didn't the man return?'

Steve could only bite his nails in annoyance. He had invested a lot of resources just for this but still ended up on the losing side.

Looking at his karma again, Steve became even more frightened about what would happen to him.

He had no idea why his karma became negative. It was just one day, he woke up with a -100 karma without any indication.

'From what I knew, karma is a deciding factor of the person's future existence based on the person's past living.' Steve thought, 'But I've never done so immoral aside from catching Philip!'

Burning the forest was the only thing he had done wrong in this life. As for Philip's parents, he only planned on using them as hostages, their death was their own action.

His karma started to become negative when he involved himself in his family business. Giving business proposals and ideas of what merchandise to sell was the only thing he had been doing all this time.

Steve had no inkling why his karma became negative as days passed by. He never did something worthy of the world's anger.

'If only the system gave more information...' Steve lamented, he wished for the system to have more details.

Steve glanced again at the window, his arms were slightly shaking.

Steve had been pressured by the existence of his negative karma. It was like a loose rope slowly strangling him, waiting for a perfect moment to end him.

This was also the reason why he was obsessive about getting Philip. He wanted to kill Philip not just because of him breaking his expectation, but also because of a quest.

Steve looked down at his screen and saw the mission board with the quest he pinned above.

***

Mission: Kill a player

Reward: 5 Attributable Stat Points, 1 Experience level-up card, 1 Uniqueness level-up card, Steal Player's Uniqueness

***

Seeing the reward, Steve could not help but be greedy, especially about stealing uniqueness.

Steve knew himself the most. What he lacked the most now was power as his own uniqueness could not be used directly in a fight.

"What a useless power," Steve grumbled, his dislike of his innate power was evident in his voice.

Although it was a good thing that Steve was given a mysterious power despite coming from a magicless world, he still could not help but complain about it.

Steve's power involved seeing the value of things, whether living or nonliving. This was also his way of knowing about the scammer's hidden power.

'The more powerful the person, the more valuable he is.' This was what Steve speculated upon using his uniqueness.

Although it was useful in many ways, Steve still had some misgivings about it as he wanted a power that could damage his enemy.

'The game involved killing, what would I do when I fight a player face to face?' Steve thought. He then whined internally in an annoying voice,

'See this, I can make my eyes golden! Cool right?~'

Steve rolled his eyes upon imagining this. To win the game, he needed a more destructive power.

'And this ability has some catch…' Steve thought while rubbing his eyes.

Because the power involved light, every time Steve used his ability, it would always overwhelm his eyes, especially when looking directly at an expensive object.

In addition, when looking at the surroundings, Steve sometimes couldn't differentiate them as everything was glowing.

Unless the item was destroyed to the point that even its by-product is useless, everything has a value of its own. And with value, they would glow in respect to their worth, making Steve's ability impracticable when seeing a lot of things.

Steve could also sometimes use his power to look at something from afar. For example, last night, he could see his men fighting against each other as their light overwhelmed the value of the burning woods surrounding them.

But when it started to rain, Steve could no longer use his ability as numerous glowing drops of water distracted his sight. That was also the reason why he could not see exactly what had happened between Philip and the scammer man.

Overall, Steve dislikes his uniqueness. He believed that its drawbacks outweighed its usefulness.

Steve had also thought of another way of getting stronger, for example using the system's stats attribution.

'But I think I made a beginner's mistake…' Steve depressingly thought while looking at his stats, especially his Mana.

Physique: 8 (+10)

Mental: 11

Mana: 0 (+15)

Spirit: 0 (+5)

When Steve saw Mana first, he was excited. Starting from 0, he allocated 15 points to it, thinking he could finally use magic like other players.

But alas, after exclaiming 'Fireball' numerous times in the past, he still could not use magic.

Steve later realized that maybe there were some sort of prerequisites to learning it.

Thus, he looked for every knowledge he could gather regarding magic and spell crafts but ended up not finding the right one.

'Magicians were too hidden…' Steve concluded, he could only wait for himself to grow so that he could personally look for them.

After the Mana, Steve allocated 5 points to Spirit, wishing for something special to happen. But like Mana, Spirit produced nothing in allocating stat points to it.

Good thing, Steve attributed 10 points to Physique as this gave him the strength of an 18-year-old.

In short, Steve was nothing but a child with the strength of a teenager. Surely, this was not enough to face the tragedy if his negative karma started to take action.

After not having anything new in his system, Steve closed it and sat on the chair to think.

'The only thing I can do now is to hire my person…' Steve decided. He already had enough of the mercenaries he employed.

Steve knew why the mercenaries had easily been manipulated by Philip into fighting each other.

'It's because they have no loyalty,' Steve concluded, he also had his fair share of betrayers in his past life as a main character.

As a former businessman, backstabbing was a common occurrence. But because the life he had been living in the past was just for entertainment, his story had a lot of plot holes. Even he sometimes wondered how he didn't notice them given their numbers weren't that low.

'I can't really call myself a true businessman because of the awful writing of the author,' Steve complained. Due to the author's excessive use of plot armor, Steve's foundation was too weak.

Authors had a great impact on how their characters would become. With a single word, they could change their characters' trajectory.

In his story, he was too dependent on the author's twisting his fate to become the top of his field. This resulted in him having a weak mindset and low self-esteem when he finally broke free from the book world. He had difficulty adjusting to a life without his creator.

Steve scratched his head irritably upon experiencing defeat. Today's failure was Steve's first struggle without his almighty plot armor.

'The book world really messed with my character.'

Steve took a deep breath and stood up, looking determined. He knew his weakness and to deal with this, he could only learn slowly until he finally freed himself from the influence of his past life.

'I have no choice but to grow up…'

Steve left the room. He had to quickly find a group of trusted men before his bad karma befall him.