How to Cope When You Can’t Beat the Cat Downstairs

[Updated daily at 12:00]

If the world looks like one huge game to you,

and you can level up through battle,

you choose the stray cat downstairs as your first opponent.

Unfortunately...

You failed...

You failed...

How did you fail again?!

Get up! Lv1 ordinary human, take on this Lv6 kitty!

-

Lin Fuque binds herself to an “Interstellar Mecha Combat System.” Thanks to a translation error, she thinks she’s bound to a game.

Desperate to pilot a mecha, she works hard to become a... master mechanic?

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

The System tells her that understanding mechas is perfectly normal if she wants to pilot one.

So she invents all kinds of weapons, sells civilian technology to fund her research, skips grades year after year and joins the Defense Armaments Department early, then leads all of humanity in building spaceships, leveling her “master mechanic” game class all the way up.

Years later, Lin Fuque wipes the sweat from her forehead and opens her stats panel:

Mechanic (Lv99)

Military Medic (Lv99)

Commander-in-Chief (Lv99)

Mecha Warrior (Lv1)

I hate you, System.

Question: After all these years, I still can’t beat the cat downstairs. How do I fix this? (╥﹏╥)

Notes:

1. Third-person narration. Not your typical overachiever story.

2. Modern slice-of-life with a touch of fantasy. The protagonist is a twelve-year-old prodigy from the start.

3. The inventions in this story aren’t scientifically accurate, and a lot of things are made up. At heart, this is a lighthearted, feel-good power fantasy.

---*0o0*---

Please add my upcoming story to your reading list QAQ: "[Full Dive] Wasn’t the Game Supposed to Descend on the Real World?", a Western fantasy MMO

The full-dive Western fantasy MMO Fantasyland has descended upon the real world!

Players can seamlessly inherit their in-game classes and gain powerful abilities and weapons. Non-players get nothing, and can only meet a miserable end in a world where the rules have changed.

Given a second chance, Jing Qi, who never played games in her previous life, decides to enter Fantasyland the moment the servers open, seize the initiative, become a top player, and prepare for the apocalypse coming in 360 days!

Then she dies 160 times in the starting village.

How on earth are you supposed to fight this monster... This is so hard...

-

When Fantasyland launched, plenty of players noticed a particularly chuuni livestream channel.

What do you mean, “The game will become reality one day,” “We have to preserve the last embers of humanity,” and “Everyone needs to learn to play hard”?

Then, after following this streamer without even realizing it for 360 days, they watched her go from the starting village to becoming the leader of the biggest guild on the server, the top player on the PVP ladder, and a guide for new players. And she still refused to drop her persona. Everyone couldn’t help but marvel:

So this is what an immersive player is like! Is the secret to getting this strong playing as if you’re part of the story?

Jing Qi: ...No!

Jing Qi: That’s not it!

Why didn’t the apocalypse come at all?

So why did she play so seriously? Um, for the ten-million-yuan prize for being the first player to reach max level, the house the game company gave away as a promotion, and the chance to become unbeatable across the continent!?

That’s not who she is!

#A chuuni to outsiders, a woman who practices what she preaches in her own eyes

#The apocalypse never came, not once

Theme: What matters more is having a heart of gold