"Are you alright?"
Lu Li asked, looking at the sailor-suited girl standing in front of him.
When he first met her, she was a bright, energetic, and completely vibrant teenager. But right now, her hair was a messy rat's nest, she had massive, dark bags under her eyes, and she looked exactly like someone who had stayed awake for a week straight desperately cramming for finals.
"I'm fine. Just check and see if it meets your requirements," the girl muttered, waving her hand dismissively. She pushed a wooden tray across the counter. Resting on it was a neatly folded, pitch-black garment.
Lu Li picked it up and shook it out. It was a long, classic-style trench coat.
In the Terminus Space, the default physical appearance of a piece of clothing didn't actually matter much. Upon deploying into a Mission World, the system automatically provided a 'Disguise' function, allowing Explorers to freely adjust the outward style and color of their equipment to seamlessly blend into the local environment.
However, the default aesthetic of this pitch-black trench coat was timeless. It felt incredibly light to the touch, yet the texture and deep, matte-black finish exuded a profound sense of high-end quality.
[Pure Black Nightmare]
Origin: Terminus Space
Rarity: Purple
Equipment Type: Outerwear (Coat)
Usage Requirement: 29 Constitution, 27 Spirit
Details: An overcoat meticulously forged by Support Staff #█████ utilizing the core essence of a Night Slime and premium Luomeng Silk. It boasts exceptional physical and magical defense. Wearing this garment grants a passive +1 to Charm.
Equipment Skill 1: Fluidity (Passive)
Effect: Due to the unique properties of the composite materials, this equipment possesses extraordinary flexibility and ductility, allowing it to freely alter its outward morphological state. Upon sustaining damage during combat, the garment will slowly initiate self-repair.
Equipment Skill 2: Nightmare Barrier (Passive/Active)
Effect (Passive): While wearing Pure Black Nightmare, the Pioneer gains an absolute increase to their Maximum Vitality (Health) pool, scaling from 10% up to a maximum of 30%, directly dependent on their Constitution attribute.
Effect (Active): The Pioneer can actively trigger a localized defensive barrier that lasts for exactly 3 seconds. The barrier can completely absorb incoming damage equal to 200% of the wearer's maximum Reiryoku (Soul Source).
Cooldown (Active Skill): 1 Natural Day
System Rating: 200+ (Max Rating)
Evaluation: Truly excellent masterpieces are always forced out under extreme pressure.
Reading the system's evaluation, Lu Li couldn't help but sigh in profound admiration.
She actually did it. She literally managed to fulfill almost every single one of his wildly unrealistic demands.
"To be completely honest, this equipment vastly exceeds my expectations," Lu Li praised her. It was the absolute truth. There was absolutely no way he could have purchased a Purple-Grade item of this caliber on the open market for a mere 15,000 Terminus Coins (plus the crystal).
"Heh. My craftsmanship is nothing to sneeze at! After all, my family is the famous..." The girl started boasting, but abruptly stopped herself. "...Anyway, enough chatting. I desperately need to sleep. If you're satisfied with my work, make sure you come back and buy another bed from me next time!"
Lu Li watched the yawning girl shamble toward the back room, a highly bizarre expression on his face. Why the hell are you asking me to buy another bed instead of asking me to commission more equipment?
What a truly bizarre Support Staff member...
Lu Li stored Pure Black Nightmare in his Spatial Inventory and immediately prepared to test out its capabilities.
Because he had already seized the #1 rank in the Tier 1 Arena, matchmaking for actual opponents was practically impossible. If he wanted to test his new gear, his only viable option was fighting AI phantoms in the Training Grounds.
However, this time, he didn't head to the free Beginner Training Ground. Instead, he rented an Intermediate Training Ground, which cost 500 Terminus Coins per day.
The premium, paid Training Grounds offered vastly superior functions. Instead of mindlessly beating up basic wooden dummies or generic, low-level system phantoms, he could manually select and spawn an exact replica of any enemy he had personally fought and killed in a previous Mission World. He could even manually adjust the phantom's core attributes.
Naturally, just like the Arena, 'dying' during a simulation in the Training Ground carried absolutely no real-world consequences. This was the miraculous, highly pragmatic utility of the Terminus Space.
"Terminus. Spawn the combat phantom of Shen Wulong," Lu Li commanded.
This was the absolute greatest, most invaluable hidden reward he had acquired from the Kengan world.
Although he had personally executed Shen Wulong, the Connector's transcendent, millennia-refined combat proficiency was an undeniable reality. Because the Intermediate Training Ground allowed him to spawn any defeated enemy as a sparring partner, it meant he essentially possessed unlimited, on-demand access to Shen Wulong as a personal martial arts instructor.
Generally speaking, it was functionally impossible for a Tier 1 Explorer to ever encounter an opponent possessing a [Grandmaster]-tier Combat Proficiency, let alone anything higher. Shen Wulong was an absolute, logic-defying anomaly within a Tier 1 derivative world—a literal glitch in the system scaling.
Because Shen Wulong was fundamentally restricted by the biological rules of a relatively grounded martial arts universe, his core numerical attributes weren't astronomically high. But his absolute technical mastery so far exceeded the Tier 1 parameters that Lu Li genuinely suspected very few entities in Tier 2 or even Tier 3 worlds could match him in pure technique.
Having conquered the Kengan world, Lu Li had essentially secured a flawless, supreme Grandmaster coach. Given his own monstrous innate talent for martial comprehension, as long as he continuously sparred against the phantom, his own Combat Proficiencies would skyrocket.
This method of self-improvement was infinitely more cost-effective than burning Inheritance Crystals.
"Phew—"
Lu Li slowly exhaled a long breath, officially concluding his daily physical conditioning routine.
Today was his absolute final day of downtime in the Hub before his next deployment. During his first few days back, while he still had a sliver of pocket change, he had lived inside the Intermediate Training Ground, intensely sparring against the Shen Wulong phantom. As a result, his various combat proficiencies had indeed seen a noticeable improvement. But once his funds finally ran dry, he was forced to rely on traditional, manual body-weight conditioning in his private room.
He had meticulously mapped out a rigorous, specialized training zone within his quarters, segregating his workouts to specifically target his Constitution, Strength, and Agility. Combining this intense physical regimen with the Reiryoku meditation techniques he had learned in the Bleach world, his overall strength had tangibly improved over the past month.
His base Constitution, Strength, and Agility had each permanently increased by 1 point. His Spirit attribute had increased by 2 points.
Furthermore, because he currently possessed two passive Titles that provided permanent attribute buffs, his base Constitution had actually broken past the theoretical maximum limit for a Tier 1 Explorer, reaching a staggering 31 points.
He had thoroughly tested it in both the Arena and the Training Grounds: when he fully activated [Kishin], his Strength and Agility violently shattered the Tier 1 ceiling, soaring well above the 30-point threshold.
He didn't exactly know if his build was considered 'overpowered' by system standards, but having secured the #1 rank in the Tier 1 Arena, he hadn't encountered a single Explorer whose peak burst stats could rival his Kishin state.
Lu Li felt highly confident that with his current combat power, he could effortlessly crush practically any Tier 1 Mission World. The only unknown variable was what specific world the system would throw him into next.
He glanced at his Spirit Seed Roster.
Currently, the [Origin Seed] was being continuously 'watered' and nourished by the vast array of Skills he had mastered. Its Growth Progression had reached 38%. He wasn't sure if his current repertoire of skills was actually sufficient to push the Seed into the 'Sprouted' phase.
The [Armament Haki] slotted into the active chamber had successfully hit Level 10, purely as a result of his relentless, grinding practice over the past month.
To any other Explorer, manually grinding a highly complex supernatural ability to Level 10 through sheer comprehension and physical repetition would seem like a miraculous, near-impossible feat. But Lu Li was actually quite dissatisfied with his progress.
When he had read the One Piece manga back on Earth, he distinctly remembered Haki training not seeming that difficult. Luffy had achieved highly impressive results after a mere two years of training with Rayleigh. And during the Wano arc, under "Teacher Kaido's" brutal tutelage, Luffy had seemingly skyrocketed to the absolute highest tiers of Haki mastery in a matter of days.
Therefore, Lu Li had assumed he would also be able to rapidly scale his Haki to an advanced level. After all, he was quite confident in his own innate martial talent.
But the brutal reality was that his Haki progression was actually quite slow. He wasn't sure if it was due to the ambient environmental restrictions of the Terminus Space, or simply because he lacked a supreme, specialized Haki instructor like Kaido to physically beat the advanced concepts into his skull.
For now, he could only take things one step at a time and slowly grind his Haki proficiency.
After showering and eating a hearty lunch, Lu Li lay down on Dreamless to rest and mentally prepare himself for the impending deployment.
[The Mission World will officially open in one hour. Pioneer, please prepare for deployment.]
[Target World: Demon Slayer (Derivative World)]
Hearing the prompt, Lu Li's expression didn't change in the slightest. He simply kept his eyes closed and continued meditating, ensuring he entered the Mission World in absolute peak condition.
He had never actually watched or read the Demon Slayer anime/manga before he arrived in the Terminus Space. His master hadn't been omnipotent; the old man's personal library was quite small, and preserving pop-culture comics from the old era was incredibly rare in their cyberpunk timeline.
Fortunately, during his downtime in the Terminus Space, he had actively spent his free time catching up on a massive backlog of classic anime and manga. He had actually just finished watching Demon Slayer recently, meaning he possessed a massive, absolute intelligence advantage.
Time slowly ticked away, until the final countdown echoed in his mind.
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