Gambler's Dilemma

Chi Chuchun's excited expression froze on her face.

The patrons of the Mint Green Leaf Shop cast strange looks in her direction. Realizing she had lost her composure, Chi Chuchun sat back down silently and lowered her voice.

"So, Yuzu, the professional league for this season starts in half a month, and you haven't even put together a five-person team?"

"Wait, wait, wait." Chi Chuchun spotted a major oversight. "Don't tell me... you haven't even created an Oasis account yet?"

Xu Xiaoyou gave a noncommittal hum. Her order of tomato baked noodles had arrived. Ivy, wearing a kitchen bib over a sexy, tight-fitting smoking jacket, threw her a wink.

"Enjoy your meal, My Queen~"

The man’s crisp citrus scent, mixed with a hint of spice and seaweed, drifted away. Chi Chuchun's eyelids twitched violently.

She watched as Tiger Tail Orchid slapped the man's firm buttocks. "You little flirt. The moment I look away, you're off hitting on someone else."

These two really were...

..

Returning to the topic at hand, Xu Xiaoyou ate her noodles methodically. "Yeah, I haven't made an account yet. Do you have a spare?"

Chi Chuchun was beginning to see the reality of the situation. "So this was just a random whim of yours, Yuzu?"

"Not exactly. I've done the math. If I spend twenty-three hours a day in the immersion pod, I should be able to finish building the character before the league begins. Once I reach around grade 2 level 5, I can unlock and finish allocating points into the mimicry skill. As long as I'm not unlucky enough to get matched against an established powerhouse in the qualifiers, breaking into the top 256 shouldn't be a problem."

"Are you planning to soak in the immersion pod until you turn into a bloated corpse?" Chi Chuchun complained, exasperated. She realized that Xu Xiaoyou really lacked common sense regarding Oasis.

"Yuzu, you don't actually think Oasis is like those online games in novels, do you?"

"Isn't it?" Xu Xiaoyou answered vaguely.

"Are you kidding? That's a virtual hive city. The biggest difference between it and reality is that everything is digitized."

History, culture, rules, power structures, resource allocation, and plunder—these are the essential factors for constructing a vast social system. They balance and conflict with each other, collectively driving the wheels of reality forward.

Xu Xiaoyou's gaze remained flat as she thought. She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. "I have a reason why I must do this."

Winning the championship of the eleventh Oasis Professional League and gaining absolute control over Oasis was the sole condition for unlocking Bai Youyou's favorability plot, 【Compassionate Observer of Civilizations】, and one of the prerequisite conditions for Chi Chuchun's favorability plot, 【Walking Alone on the Thorn-Poison Path】.

"I hope you can help me. This is very important to me," Xu Xiaoyou said, her tone sincere.

Feeling a bit uncomfortable under the gaze of those brilliant amber eyes, Chi Chuchun looked away. "Don't just say things like that out of nowhere. Fine, fine, I'll definitely help you."

"As for whether I have an account—every 'dream-wanderer' consciousness transmission device is bound to personal identity information. The Oasis pass is then bound to the transmission device. Account transfers or trades are absolutely impossible."

"Just as I thought." Xu Xiaoyou nodded. "It seems I can only start from scratch."

"But, there isn't completely no way," Chi Chuchun said suddenly.

Xu Xiaoyou looked up. "Oh?"

"There's an item in the game called a hyperdimensional projector. It can project a player's real-world status directly into the game, skipping the leveling process," Chi Chuchun explained.

"The impressive thing about this item isn't that it skips levels, but that it projects the skills you've mastered in reality directly onto your game character. You have to understand, characters in Oasis can normally only use skills they've unlocked. Because of this, even for the star players of top teams, there's a discrepancy between their game character and their real-world status."

"This discrepancy causes an offset in their consciousness sea after they wake up, leading to many hallucinations and unconscious behaviors. They lose the ability to distinguish the boundary between reality and illusion. This offset syndrome imperceptibly changes their psyche. The cure is simple: reduce the ratio of time spent in Oasis relative to reality."

"Though some guys have already soaked themselves into human raisins in those pods." Chi Chuchun's mouth twitched. "Well, never leaving Oasis is also a way to solve the consciousness sea offset, but I wouldn't recommend it."

"When this offset becomes severe enough, it evolves into entropy syndrome. In reality, your limbs might deconstruct into virtual numbers, or you might turn into a twisted monster."

"That's why the game usually enforces time limits. More content and playtime are opened up as you accumulate total hours. A new player just entering Oasis might only be able to play for two or three hours a day."

"So, Yuzu," Chi Chuchun sighed, "your plan to grind for twenty-three hours is a bust."

Xu Xiaoyou nodded thoughtfully. "Then the problem is indeed a bit serious."

This disrupted her plans.

The eleventh season of Oasis had already been open for five or six months. Most combat players had reached levels around grade 3 or 4. Many star players in professional teams had even broken through to grade 5 and were heading toward prism grade.

Even if she had secret methods and the ability to win against higher-level opponents, she still needed to unlock her mimicry ability, the thousand-faced die, and obtain her weapon, the Hundred-Bone Whip. More importantly...

She needed money.

A massive amount of capital.

Right now, a single fight using a few limited-grade skill cards could cost her the lifetime savings of a lower-level hive city resident. In reality, her assets were immeasurable and constantly expanding, so she could afford such costs. But in an online game where the top-up system was disabled, starting from nothing was a problem.

She heard that Oasis was very strict about private transactions. The only fate for black market gold dealers was to face several thousand years of consciousness imprisonment the moment they logged in.

Was she...

...going to have to gamble?

That wouldn't be very good, would it?

Xu Xiaoyou thought, a smile playing on her lips.

Oasis did have the Probability Space Station, a gambling hall larger than a planet, where she could try her luck.

Many strategies flashed through her mind.

The weight in Xu Xiaoyou's heart had not yet lifted.

Calculated this way, reaching a sufficient level before the league began was impossible. Xu Xiaoyou couldn't imagine the price of failing two favorability plots.

Even the most insane gambler would confirm the probability of winning before betting everything. If the probability of winning was zero from the start, she would never step up to the table.

That was the secret to why Lady Luck had always favored her.

Every gambler longed for Lady Luck to kiss their eyelashes, but gamblers who blindly took risks to bet, call, or raise would only be loathed by her. The glory of going all-in was indeed dazzling, but beneath that glory lay the bones of countless gamblers.

Xu Xiaoyou rested her head on her hand, contemplating as she toyed with a coin-like chip. Chi Chuchun watched blankly as the chip flipped nimbly between the blonde girl's fingertips. The bronze-colored chip rolled from the thumb to the long index and middle fingers, then to the delicate ring finger, before flipping back in sequence.

She suddenly realized that Yuzu wasn't as gentle and approachable as she had appeared in the past. The other side of the girl—the one behind the mask—surfaced once again before her eyes.

"You have an account, right, Meijiu?"

At that moment, Xu Xiaoyou's words pulled Chi Chuchun back from her thoughts. She realized the girl was looking straight at her.