Who told you I am an NPC

Chapter : 3

I wondered if my luck stat was just too low.

After hacking away dozens of times, the magic lock hadn't budged an inch.

The dagger's 50% defense-piercing ability seemed like a sham.

My hand was sore, yet the defense-piercing property hadn't triggered even once.

I was about to have a breakdown myself.

"Don't just stand there watching, think of a way to help!"

I said to Lilian, who was watching the show.

"Do you have any magic you can use right now?"

Lilian spread her hands. "It's not that I don't want to help you, little kitten."

She tapped on the glass bottle trapping her.

"This is also an alchemical product, an anti-magic bottle.

How can I use magic when I'm locked in here?"

Only then did I notice that the body of the glass bottle also had the same dark, flowing patterns as the magic lock.

Right, they had already captured an elf, so it was impossible that they would just casually lock her in a glass bottle.

Elves were magicians naturally attuned to the wood element.

"But the cage you're in doesn't have an anti-magic effect, just a magic lock.

Why don't you try attacking the cage with magic, little kitten?" Lilian suggested.

Nonsense, it's because I don't know any magic at all! I closed my eyes.

"Stop calling me little kitten."

That nickname was making me uncomfortable.

"My name is Yan Yunqing.

You can call me A-Yan or Yunqing."

"A-Yan?" Lilian repeated.

"That's a bit of a strange name... It doesn't sound like a name from the beastman royal family.

Don't you have a royal surname?"

I paused. Oh right, this was a game with a Western fantasy setting.

Of course, my Chinese name would seem strange among a bunch of Western names.

"No." I thought for a moment and said, "I'm not from the beastman royal family, I'm just... um, an ordinary beastman."

There were two races listed on my panel, and there was a question mark after 'Beastman'.

I even felt that I might not really be a beastman.

I just didn't know where my cat ears and cat tail came from.

It was really hard to accept that even my species had changed after transmigrating.

I switched to hacking at the cage bars. Lilian's words had given me an idea.

If I couldn't break the lock, maybe I could break the cage.

Finally, on the ninety-first strike, the cage emitted a faint white light. With a crack, one of the bars was severed.

Good heavens, did that count as the pity system kicking in?

My spirits lifted, and I continued to hack away at my cage with a clanging sound.

This noise was much louder than my previous conversation with Lilian.

Rustling sounds also came from several other cages.

I heard many strange languages, but when they entered my ears, they were automatically translated into words I could understand.

"Save me..."

"Sob, mommy..."

"Who are you? Who's there!"

My attention was drawn to those voices.

Relying on the eyes that could see in the dark after my species change, I was surprised to discover that Lilian and I were not the only living, intelligent cargo in this warehouse.

I even saw a mermaid locked in a glass tank.

She was an incredibly beautiful creature, with a head of beautiful sea-blue hair cascading down.

A dress made of seashells and light gauze adorned her body.

Her silvery-white tail, because the tank was too small, could only be folded and curled up pitifully.

That face, in my world, could definitely compete with the famous female celebrities in the entertainment industry.

Her emerald-like eyes looked warily in my direction.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but no matter how carefully I listened, I couldn't hear anything.

"Her tank is filled with a silencing potion," Lilian explained for her.

"Mermaids are natural singers.

Their voices are their most effective means of attack.

The humans who hunt mermaids are afraid they will use their songs to bewilder the guards, so after capturing them, they will use a silencing potion to take away their weapons."

I saw the mermaid lash her tail against the glass wall of the tank as if in a stress response, splashing countless water droplets, but the glass didn't move an inch.

Just like the glass bottle trapping Lilian, this water tank was also an alchemical product.

The little mermaid trapped inside could do nothing.

Seeing this left a bad taste in my mouth.

As one of the pieces of cargo also locked in a cage, I couldn't quite describe what kind of mood I was in right now.

With a soft sigh, I put away my extraneous thoughts and focused on hacking at the cage.

I could barely save myself right now; sympathizing with others was just a waste of time.

It was better to focus on saving myself first.

After I don't know how many strikes, the cage holding me was finally broken open with an opening just barely big enough for me to squeeze through.

Several waves of guards came on patrol in the meantime, but thankfully, I now had cat ears, and my hearing was much better than when I was human.

The moment I heard footsteps from afar, I would stop my actions and quietly wait for the patrol to leave.

I shook my hand, which was numb from the vibrations. After stopping, I felt a wave of dizziness.

I quickly opened my character panel and, sure enough, saw that my vigor had dropped to a pitiful 4.

It dropped from 22 to 4 just from hacking a cage?!

Just how squishy was I! Could I really escape from this heavily guarded auction house?

I leaned against the undamaged part of the cage, panting heavily.

After the little stars in my vision disappeared, I rummaged through my inventory, found a vigor pill left over from the early game, and tossed it into my mouth, chewing a couple of times.

It didn't have any particular taste.

The texture was similar to a gummy candy, just without flavor.

It was like eating an eraser...

After swallowing it, I suddenly felt alive again.

My previously sore and weak limbs regained their strength. It was quite magical.

I followed the same pattern and destroyed the iron chains on my hands and feet.

Climbing out of the cage, I stretched my body, which was a little stiff from being curled up for a long time.

"You actually got out." Lilian exclaimed in admiration.

"You really are a persistent little kitten."

"...I told you not to call me little kitten." I rejected this embarrassing nickname.

"Okay, A-Yan." Lilian pressed herself against the glass wall, looking at me expectantly.

"Are you leaving this place?

Take me with you.

I'm very useful. As long as you let me out, my magic can lure those guards away for you."

"Then here's the problem."

I walked up to Lilian's glass bottle and poked it with my finger.

"How am I supposed to let you out?"

Lilian thought hard, then said dejectedly, "I don't know either.

I haven't learned how to break this kind of magic circle yet."

I thought for a moment.

"Then do you know any beginner-level magic that can make a loud noise?"

Lilian cupped her small face and recalled for a moment:

"I once developed a prank magic with a friend that should fit your requirements, but little... A-Yan, you didn't even use magic when you were hacking the cage just now.

You probably don't know magic, right?

Even if I taught you Ancient Elvish, you wouldn't be able to use it, right?"

That's not necessarily true.

I thought to myself: I'm not a native of this world. How could a player not be able to use magic?

It must be that the prerequisite quest to become a magician hasn't been triggered yet, which is why all the skills on my [Demon King] skill panel are grayed out and locked.

According to the usual game tropes, the protagonist must first be discovered to have magical talent, triggering the job change quest.

Then an old man would pop out and say,

'I see you have an extraordinary talent, you're good material for learning magic,' and swoosh, toss me a secret manual.

Then the protagonist would automatically learn the most basic magic and complete the magician job change quest.

But since I've already transmigrated into the game, can't I take a shortcut and skip the job change quest and just find an old man to learn basic magic directly?

I stared at the old man in the bottle, oh no, at Lilian in the bottle.

My eyes seemed to glow faintly in the dark environment.

"I just haven't learned magic before.

What if I have a talent for magic?

Why don't you teach me and we can try?"

Lilian blinked. She really wanted to say, don't most of your beastman race lack magical talent?

But looking at my sparkling eyes, she held back from saying such hurtful words.

Just now, the little kitten didn't even use the most basic sharpening magic when hacking the cage.

She thought the little kitten was a magic dud, like most beastmen! After all, sharpening magic was the most basic of magics; even someone with a tiny bit of magical talent could use it.

"Alright, then I'll teach you a lighting spell first." Lilian thought for a moment and uttered a string of esoteric and hard-to-understand words.

Magic was actually the act of using 'language' to guide elements to change and combine to achieve a goal.

The spells used by elves were, of course, in Ancient Elvish.

Other races could also use them, it was just that other races were not as naturally sensitive to Ancient Elvish as elves were, so it was very difficult for them to learn.

I didn't know if it was because I had a player panel, but the string of esoteric words Lilian recited was automatically translated into a language I could understand in my ears.

The general meaning was 'O Spirit of Light, please grant me courage, light the path before me!'

What, what cringey lines!

My toes curled against the floor, and my body stiffened for a moment as I considered whether I absolutely had to learn this magic.

I had to.

I rubbed my face and, following the intonation and speed Lilian had just used, repeated the Ancient Elvish words.

Lilian's eyes widened in great surprise.

Ancient Elvish, Ancient Draconic, and Ancient Ailman—these three languages were recognized as the most difficult languages in the magical world.

Spells involving these three languages were extremely difficult for any creature other than the native races to learn.

Those who could learn them were geniuses among geniuses, with extremely high magical talent.

She never expected that I could repeat it after she had only said it once.

The talent displayed was completely at odds with the fact that I didn't even know sharpening magic.

Could I really be a cat person from some extremely remote beastman village with no access to magic?

However, after waiting for a while, nothing happened.

Lilian was even more surprised: to be able to repeat it after hearing it only once, but with absolutely no fluctuation of magical power, was something she had never seen before.

It couldn't be that this cat person had an exceptionally strong talent for languages, could it?

But one couldn't even recite Ancient Elvish without magical talent, so how could it be repeated perfectly?

I was also thinking, could it be that there was really no way to take a shortcut and bug my way through the job change quest?

As I was thinking, I glanced at the 0/100 mana on my panel and fell silent.

Oh, so I was out of mana.

I rummaged through my inventory a couple of times, found a small blue potion, and chugged it down.

My mana slowly rose, and after waiting for two minutes, it was full.

I tried again.

As the last word of Ancient Elvish fell, the surrounding light elements instantly gathered towards me.

In a flash, the entire warehouse was illuminated.

As if the sun had fallen in.

Yan Yunqing: ???

Lilian also had the look of someone who had never seen the world.

The other creatures in the warehouse stared blankly in my direction, momentarily unsure of what had happened.

Whoa!

I was nearly blinded by the light in front of me.

I took two steps back, and before a national curse could escape my lips, my ears twitched, and I heard the sound of the patrol from a distance.

"What's the situation? Where did that mana fluctuation come from?"

"It seems to have come from warehouse No. 6. Let's go, let's go check it out!"

I was instantly panicked, like my butt was on fire, and looked around nervously.

I wanted to make some noise to attract the attention of the patrol, but not to attract the attention of all the patrols!