Chapter 14 - Scientifically Impossible
Chapter 14: Scientifically Impossible
Meng Fan looked up and froze for a second. At first glance, he did not recognize the wind like girl. Once he recognized her, it was still embarrassing as his stomach had protested first.
“I thought you had short hair?”
Meng Fan attempted to divert the topic, only to continue with a stupider question. “You’re also a student here?”
No sh*t. If she didn’t go here why would she run at the school’s track field everyday?
“Can I take a look?”
Wu Tong pointed at Meng Fan’s pile of paper atop his desk, promptly picking up the looseleafs after seeing Meng Fan’s brief nod.
Meng Fan regretted his decision as soon as Wu Tong picked up the drafts.
He had completely forgotten, there are characters whose designs were based on the speedy girl.
Just hope to god she won’t find it!
But it was obvious Wu Tong saw it. When she saw the drawing of the female lead, her gaze paused for a moment. This made Meng Fan’s face flush red.
“This drawing is really good.” Wu Tong took out a drawing of the female lead. When Meng Fan’s face grew even redder, she carefully pointed to the adorable Aka. “This one, it’s very cute and spirited.”
She’s doing this on purpose!
Meng Fan felt as if he was being teased.
Yet, this feeling was not too bad.
Wu Tong put down the paper, pointing to Meng Fan’s stomach as she lightly laughed. She then sat down beside him, opened her drawing tube in an orderly fashion and pulling out a phone stand and placing her phone on it.
After a few clicks of her phone, she smiled and waved to the phone screen and began to paint.
Judging from the equipment she had taken out, Meng Fan could tell she was practicing classical art. Only, he couldn’t figure out the meaning of her phone. Was she recording her process for review? Or was this a live stream?
Glug glug.
His stomach once again rumbled in protest.
Meng Fan gathered his things and stood up, still thinking. Curiously, he shuffled over to Wu Tong.
“You’re…” Meng Fan looked at her phone screen. “Streaming?”
With the rapid development of live stream media, it was not uncommon for many art students to begin their own streams and broadcasts for their art.
Wu Tong nodded. “Earning some extra money for art supplies.”
Meng Fan glimpsed at the sudden rows of comments that had appeared on her phone screen, mostly saying “The goddess has finally spoken”. Guess she rarely talked during her broadcasts.
At the same time, he could see many notifications of gifts being sent.
Meng Fan saw Wu Tong still had her head down, continuing to paint, taking it as a sign and left.
He ordered an oversized egg fried rice to take back to the dorm. There was nobody there, so he finished his food and took out a drawing, trying to experience the feeling of “drawing skill +1”.
After studying art for fifteen to sixteen years, Meng Fan was very clear as to what his drawing level was at. Hence, he knew more or less what “Drawing skill +1” would entail.
“My original drawing skills were probably around a 6 or a 7.”
He speculated the approximate values of these numbers. If it followed a scale of a noob, to regular, to excellent to master, etc.then the noob would be at 1-2, average at 3-5, excellent at 6 or more, and probably above 10 for a master.
In other words, after +1 Meng Fan’s skill was still a large distance away from being a master, but it aligned with current skills.
After drawing a few pages in succession, he saw the sun begin to set outside the window. Meng Fan changed into his sportswear and headed for the track field.
Since the increase in endurance and speed, along with today’s continuous running, his “attributes” had evidently increased to a certain extent. To him, running 5 kilometers in one go was no longer a challenge.
However, Meng Fan didn’t continue to run but rushed back to the dormitory to shower before dark.
…
In the evening, he stayed inside the studio for 3 hours before returning to his dorm. Once he was back, he was greeted by Zhang Zhou Wei who was staring blankly at his phone. Meng Fan looked at his screen and asked: “Did you lose again?”
Zhang Zhou Wei had been playing “BanG-Dream”, an osu type rhythm game. His stamina had been drained from 1000 to 0 due to hitting too many Bads and Misses.
Having choked on today’s song seven times already, Zhang Zhou Wei was sad. “Help me pass this song.”
“You’re basically disabled don’t you know? Why are you on Ex mode?”
Meng Fan took the phone and looked at the difficulty of the song. The songs in “BanG-Dream” ranged from easy mode to Ex, or extreme. The song Zhang Zhou Wei had been trying to beat was EX22. It wasn’t the most difficult of all the Ex songs, as the real tough ones ranged from EX 27 to 28, the highest being EX29, which there was only one in the entire server.
Meng Fan also played this kind of game. Previously he had been able to clear up to EX24 to EX25 without an issue, hence why he had the authority to call Zhang Zhou Wei incapable.
As for now… Not even including his increased hand speed, Meng Fan had not played this game mode before, so he was curious about what level he could play for now.
Restart.
For this kind of rhythmic music game, the most important trait to have is good rhythm and hand-eye coordination. Meng Fan’s sense of rhythm was not bad to begin with, and he had also come across this song numerous times before, so as soon as he began, he had already hit a combo. As the song progressed, numerous combos followed, alongside with the ‘perfect’ prompt. His stamina remained at 1000 without dropping a beat.
FULL-COMBO!
This was Meng Fan’s final score. All correct.
“F**k!”
Zhang Zhou Wei stared in awe as he swore. It wasn’t because of the full combo, but because in the second half, Meng Fan’s scores were essentially all perfect. This was difficult to achieve.
“Here, help me do this song too. Ya Nan’s score is always higher than mine…” Zhang Zhou Wei didn’t finish his sentence before Meng Fan tossed his phone back.
Meng Fan was pleased with himself but did not want to continue showing off his hand speed, so he laid down in his bed.
“Go to bed.”
…
The next day’s weather was ideal for running. After receiving heavy rain around 2 am, and clearing up around 3, the track was just dry enough by the time Meng Fan arrived for his morning run at 5 am. It rained a little again at 3 pm, washing away some of the heat.
Combining his morning and evening stats. Meng Fan had run a total of 11 kilometers. Presently, his total mileage had reached 26 kilometers. 5 more kilometers to go until he could claim the corresponding task reward.
Although he had classes in the morning and afternoon, his illustration progress was still fast due to his newly acquired hand speed. By the time studio classes ended in the evening, he had accumulated 50 completed pieces. He was only halfway towards completing [Illustrator] phase 2, which required 100 drawings, but with his current speed, the rest would take a few days max.
Upon exiting studio and returning to the dorm, Meng Fan saw that it was not too late, so changing into his workout clothes, he headed for the door. In order to get the reward [Travelling Deity], Meng Fan would give it his all.
“Huh?”
After running 10 laps, Meng Fan finally recognized a familiar silhouette in the dark. Wasn’t that the speedy girl?
Every morning they would meet, but he’d never seen her in the evening.
Running in the morning and running at night, this speedy girl was really insane.
“You run every morning and night?”
Meng Fan waited for Wu Tong to catch up to him and asked.
“Normally I only run in the morning.”
Wu Tong shook her head. When she was in a bad mood, all she wanted was to sweat out her frustrations in a violent running spree. She didn’t want to do anything, acknowledge anyone; she didn’t even think she would want to acknowledge Meng Fan, nonetheless stop to wait for him.
“You run so much everyday, aren’t you afraid of your knees buckling in?”
Despite knowing it was a rude thing to say, Wu Tong couldn’t help but gesture towards Meng Fan’s figure.
If the average person insisted on running 10 kilometers a day, the strain on their knees would have been suspicious, not to mention Meng Fan being twice the weight of a regular person.
Wu Tong had been running for many years. She could see from Meng Fan’s posture, he was not enduring pain. His knees had sustained virtually no damage; this was very strange to her.