Chapter Ten: Ordinary and Unremarkable

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Zhou Shu had expected that adding points this time wouldn’t cause much of a stir, but the complete lack of any reaction still left him a little disgruntled. After pondering a while, he concluded it was probably because… the increment was too small, so the change wasn’t noticeable.

So, on a whim, he added 0.01 to his Constitution as well, but that produced even less of a reaction.

Glancing at his updated panel, he felt the “Extremely Low” rating was too glaring, so he had the system hide that display.

Out of sight, out of mind.

With those elements hidden, the latest data panel appeared much more streamlined.

[Hunter System]

[User: Zhou Shu (Rookie)]

[Mental: 0.93 (cap)]

[Strength: 0.74 (cap)]

[Agility: 0.75 (cap)]

[Endurance: 0.72 (cap)]

[Constitution: 0.74 (cap)]

[Auxiliary Equipment: One standard exoskeleton power armor from “Edge of Tomorrow” (good condition)]

[Origin Force: 1.67]

His mental attribute was still the highest—a gift from another world. Of the other four, only Constitution had changed slightly, still aligned with the average levels for a normal seventeen-year-old.

Agility edged out Strength, which made sense—he was only seventeen after all, still growing, with decent flexibility and suppleness.

Of course, he couldn’t quite match the girl who sat in front of him.

After adding to Constitution, it was now on par with Strength, not bad at all, but his nearsightedness hadn’t improved. He wondered whether nearsightedness was unrelated to Constitution, or if a normal Constitution should actually be higher.

After all, even the scrawny classmate behind him, who looked borderline malnourished, had a 0.75 in Constitution.

He also realized that his Endurance stat was rather poor, the lowest among all his attributes.

But looking at his classmates, it seemed Endurance was generally on the low side. Several boys had higher Endurance than him, but he was on par with the girls.

This… was a bit vexing.

He thought, “It looks like I really do need to interact with more people and have Xiao Shou compile a general human physical attribute chart. Normal teenagers probably don’t have high Endurance; I should be average. There just aren’t enough samples yet, that’s all.”

And so, the first class passed with him mired in such small worries…

Ahem, truth be told, he was usually quite focused on his studies; today was just a special case. Understandable, perfectly understandable.

After class, realizing it was getting late, he called the homeroom teacher to explain about dismantling the restroom.

The call was picked up quickly, but the homeroom teacher seemed truly busy. After hearing him out, she simply said, “Alright, you don’t have to worry about it,” and immediately hung up.

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Zhou Shu was left dumbfounded: “???”

What did she mean by he didn’t have to worry—did it mean he didn’t have to pay for damages, or just that he didn’t need to fuss about the details, so long as he paid up in the end?

If he didn’t have to pay, that would be ideal—his allowance was limited, and breaking a restroom was not something he could easily ask his family for money to fix.

So he figured it was the latter. Something got broken—there was no way he wouldn’t be held liable.

He decided he’d better think about how to get through the coming days.

And, of course, he still had to wander around campus for the sake of compiling the human attribute chart.

At midday, after lunch, when they returned to the dorms for a rest, Zhou Shu was surprised to find the restroom already repaired—and the maintenance department hadn’t come to him for payment.

Now that was odd.

He tried calling the homeroom teacher to clarify whether he really didn’t have to pay, but she didn’t answer.

He had no choice but to wait for the afternoon math class to ask her in person.

But no matter how long he waited, the homeroom teacher didn’t show up; instead… the PE teacher arrived.

“Your homeroom teacher is sick, so you’ll have PE during math class. Everyone to the field.”

…

Night, Dorm 204.

“Hey, I’ve noticed the Eagle Federation really is a hotspot for alien and UFO incidents. Listen to this news: someone named Tom died in one town, but his neighbor and friend Jerry insists he was killed by aliens, even claiming to have seen the aliens himself—and sketched a drawing on the spot.”

“Oh? What happened next?”

“Well, the police left. They didn’t believe a word of it; that kind of story is way too common there. The police trusted more in a serial killer or maybe a savage wild animal—after all, their town is deep in the woods.”

“Ha, I thought you had real news. Isn’t this just the old-school Eagle Federation horror movie setup? Living in a forest town, with no other families for miles, it’s rare for two households to be that close together, right?”

“Yeah, the news said the two families were friends. That’s why Jerry called the press, saying he’d get to the truth. But that drawing of his—honestly, it’s pretty abstract. A humanoid, no head, covered in tentacles…”

“Alright, enough of that, next news item.”

After evening self-study, the boys in Dorm 204 would always take turns washing up, but they never went straight to sleep—instead, they’d hold a bedtime chat.

They talked about anything and everything; the news was just one topic.

They were in the middle of this when Zhou Shu, last to finish washing up, came out of the newly repaired restroom, wiping his face as he spoke, “Hey, don’t skip to the next news yet, I didn’t even catch the last one.”

“Nothing special, just the classic Hollywood horror flick formula—forest town murder case.”

Tonight’s anchor was Li Yuankun, who gave Zhou Shu a brisk summary.

They rotated the news anchor each day, giving everyone a chance to hear news aligned with different interests.

At first, this made it easy to expose everyone’s private preferences, but they’d grown wise—never talking about their own hobbies, only reporting major events.

“Alright then, let’s go to the next one.”

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Hearing there was nothing new or interesting, Zhou Shu let it pass, tossed his towel into his locker, and climbed the ladder to his top bunk.

“Alright, next news.”

Li Yuankun scrolled on his phone for more news, and soon another headline caught his eye. “Big data recommendations really are accurate. Just read about a murder, here’s another—this one’s local, right in the old city. So many photos are censored; the killer must have been brutal.”

“Huh, and there’s more—‘Recommended Videos’ has even more cases. Is our area really this chaotic?”

Listening to these daily occurrences, the only thing that changed was the location. Zhou Shu placed his glasses by his pillow and pretended to sleep.

There were nearly eight billion people on Earth. Every day, over a hundred thousand died, and another hundred thousand were born. It was perfectly ordinary.

If no one ever died and only babies were born, the Earth would have “exploded” long ago.

Closing his eyes, he first summoned the data panel to review the latest status.

The panel’s display was as concise as ever. In fact, it could show much more, but some things were hard to quantify and would require long-winded explanations, so he simply left them out.

For example, Zhou Shu’s current grasp of knowledge.

With college entrance exams looming, he cared a great deal about academics.

He’d wanted the panel to display his scores in language, math, English, humanities, and even his drawing skills. But aside from rote-memorization data, much of it depended on personal understanding and thought, which couldn’t be quantified.

So, he simply opted not to display those.

After all, this system wasn’t a study-aid system, it was a genuine combat-assist system.

By comparison, objectively measurable physical attributes were much easier to organize.

During the day, Zhou Shu hadn’t wasted any time. He’d spent every break between classes roaming the school, observing all sorts of people.

Bookworms, athletes, art students, dance students, music students.

Academic teachers, PE teachers, posture instructors, vocal coaches.

The gatekeeper, cafeteria ladies, maintenance men, dorm matrons.

The muscle exertion of athletes in motion, the speed and rhythm of a cafeteria lady’s ladle, the flexibility and agility of a posture instructor—Xiao Shou had recorded it all into the database.

Of course, some observations were made from a distance, so there might be significant data deviation.

Moreover, Zhou Shu attended an ordinary boarding high school, so he had no contact with combat units, top athletes, or foreigners. For now, he could only compile a rough reference.

After compiling, summarizing, and comparing, he finally arrived at a draft of an ordinary human physical attribute chart…

Except for the mental attribute, Zhou Shu’s own physical qualities were indeed at the middle level for a seventeen-year-old in the Great Qin Nation.

His Strength and Endurance couldn’t match the athletes, his Agility was no match for the dance students, but among regular students, he was perfectly average.

Aside from his good looks, his physical attributes were entirely unremarkable.