Xiaomao gazed at the portrait of the character.

The catopus was a half-cat half-octopus creature. It had the head and a tail of a cat, but there was no torso or body. Instead, octopus tentacles extended below the cat's head as its legs. The character looked like something from the Pokemon or Digimon Series rather than a proper game character.

The size was a problem. Its head was almost as big as a human’s head. The short and chubby tentacles were too small to maintain the balance of the head. No matter how one looked at it, the cat was not an ideal character for a combat class.

However, before the regression, the catopus race was one of the major powerhouses in the late game. And when the game’s storyline reached a critical point, a thousand catopuses appeared in real life and invaded Earth! Within a day, 50% of the superhuman population were either slaughtered or enslaved. A week later, they forced an unfair treaty with human nations before they withdrew, leaving several European countries in ruins.

Seeing a dangerous entity here surprised Xiaomao. He inspected the unique skills and abilities of the NFT character right away.

Cathulhu Foreknowledge All descendants of Cathulhu were born with a natural gift of foresight and knowledge of their ancestors. Every time a fate-changing event occurs, they can foresee the outcomes and consequences of every decision by instinct. Restriction: Catopus or Cathulhu Race Only Skill Type: Passive Effect: Reveal hidden hints or secrets in quest descriptions, key item descriptions, and NPC descriptions. Can be upgraded.

Fish Gourmet Fish is one of the primary sources of protein, and fish is the favorite food of all young catopuses. Not only every tentacle cat can extract and utilize protein from fish, but they can also evolve faster than any race because of their constitution. Restriction: Catopus or Cathulhu Race Only Skill Type: Passive Effect: Permanently increase a random status attribute by one point for each consumed fish. Cannot increase more than five per day. Can be upgraded.

The racial perks seemed attractive as Fish Gourmet could infinitely increase his permanent attributes. Even though it could only increase five status points per day, the stats would stack over time. Giving it a year or two, the character’s stats would be stronger than other characters at the same rarity.

‘If I give this character a year, will its stats break through the roof? 365 x 5 = how many?’

Xiaomao gulped and broke a sweat. He had the urge to pick this character as his main avatar right away.

‘No, no. I should check the other characters first. Maybe I can get something better even if they are URs or SRs.’

Xiaomao skimmed through the other NFTs he got from the gacha.

The super rare and ultra-rare NFTs looked interesting as well. High-elf, high-human, angel, demon, sea serpent, spiderling, dragonewt, dwarf, and many races showed up. Each came with unique classes, such as a dual cultivator, stripper, maid, man-eater, and ant slayer.

Everything would have been fine had the class and race combination synergized well.

‘A demon with a man-eater class is understandable, but why in the blue world does a sea serpent have a housemaid class?! What do you excel at, doing chores?! And what the heck is ant slayer?! Is killing ants all you can do?’

The super rare ones came out as a high-elf archer, but it was a female character. The angel’s class was an ant slayer while the male high-human was a stripper. Even the impressive-looking dragonewt came out as a dual-cultivator that relied on sexual intercourse to get stronger.

Although their stats might be impressive, the randomness of the gacha ruined these characters.

‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll sell these useless SR and UR characters for cash. The dragonewt one should fetch about 3,000 to 4,000$ since it’s a sex-related class. Horny gamers might like it. Come to think of it, I haven’t explored the market yet. Is there anything good there?’

.

10 minutes later, Xiaomao closed the game screens, leaving only his NFT inventory menu open.

No useful legendary NFT was available in the market. Most of them were female characters, and the male ones had weird classes, such as anti-vax alchemist, weed magician, or ballet blacksmith.

‘I can’t gain a good superpower from these stupid classes! Where are all the good ones?’

Xiaomao grumbled and turned to his NFT inventory menu. He gazed at the avatar of the catopus.

He bit his lower lips and scratched his head.

‘Tsk. I don’t want to spend any more tokens for another gacha draw, but I have no choice. I need 3,000 tickets to buy that skill.’

Xiaomao held his breath and pressed the 1,150 roll button again!

RUMBLE

A new legendary NFT came out. However, no SR or UR characters came out. As for the rest, they were not within Xiaomao’s standard.

NFT Type: Character Rarity: Legendary Gender: Female Race: High-Human Class: Dual Cultivator Racial Talent: Five Spiritual Roots Eloquence Class Specialties: Love Making Art Qi Plundering Art Life Stealing Art Brainwashing Art Divine Charisma Add-On Skill Sockets: 3 Growth Rate: Fast Retainer Cost: 50

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Xiaomao sighed. Another useless legendary NFT appeared. Although it seemed useful and attractive for sexual-depraved gamers, he couldn’t use it.

Fortunately, dual cultivators were popular in this game. Many gamers opted for this job, and its market price reflected the demand.

Xiaomao opened a market menu and searched the sale history for a similar NFT. An SR dual cultivator was sold for 5,000 USDT yesterday. Moreover, in the preorder market, a hundred gamers had bid 8,000 USDT for a UR dual cultivator and 20,000 USDT for a legend.

‘Ha! I’ll just sell it and get my money back.’

Spending 4,500$ to get 20,000$ in return was not a bad investment. Xiaomao immediately put the NFT on the auction market and set the starting bid price to 20,000$.

Done with the item arrangement, Xiaomao tried his luck again.

RUMBLE

Another batch of 1,150 balls came out, but Xiaomao got only one red ball, and it was not even a character.

NFT Type: Add-On Skill Rarity: Legendary Requirement: Carnivorous or Omnivorous Monster Only Required Add-On Slot: 1 Skill: Vampiric Chomp Mana: 500 Cooldown: 300 seconds Skill Effect: Bite and crush your enemy with your strong jaws and fangs. Deal 110% physical damage and recover your HP and MP by the amount of the damage dealt.

Xiaomao raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. The add-on skill was not bad as it was ideal for monster characters.

Add-ons were a feature of the game. Each NFT character came with add-on skill slots, and these skills could be equipped to the NFT to increase its power.

For example, the catopus NFT came with three add-on slots. Therefore, Xiaomao could add this skill and two others to the character to make it stronger.

The number of free sockets was also random. The Oni Samurai only had one available skill slot while the catopus and the dual cultivator had three. Because of the randomness, some ultra-rare NFTs with more than 5 skill slots were stronger than the legendary characters with zero or one socket slot.

In the market, many expensive characters that nobody had purchased yet had no skill slots. The highest record was five, but most characters with three slots or higher were all sold out.

Xiaomao looked at his remaining 143,000 tokens and pondered. He had rolled a total of 3,450 items and he gained enough pity coins to purchase another add-on skill in the gacha market of the game company.

Pity Coins were another type of currency in this game. By rolling a gacha one time, a player could gain one coin. These coins could be exchanged for characters or add-on skill NFTs that the game company had put on promotion.

Miaomiao had enough of gacha for now. He turned his attention to the pity coin market.

On top of the list, the limited expensive add-on skill was on sale for 2,500 coins. Xiaomao checked its detail.

NFT Type: Add-On Skill Rarity: Ultra-Rare Requirement: Any Required Add-On Slot: 1 Skill: Mass Teleportation Mana: 1,000 Cooldown: 24 Hours Skill Effect: Teleport everything in a radius of 10 meters to a designated location.

The skill seemed lackluster. However, in Pangu Online 2, the world's background was set in a fantasy medieval era and people either traveled on carriages or horses. Nobody could acquire teleport or related skills in-game. Thus, this shop was the only way to gain this skill.

A skill that could teleport items and other people, including caravans, was more precious than gold. Before the regression, many merchant class players became rich in real life because of this skill.

Because of the high demand, this add-on skill was put here as a limited skill. Once sold out, it would be gone forever. At the moment in the market, the preorder price of this add-on skill was still 5,000$ as the pity shop hadn’t removed it yet. But next year, this add-on NFT could be sold for millions.

Since this skill was necessary for his game character, Xiaomao purchased it with pity tokens. Now, he had 950 coins left.

Xiaomao scanned through the exchangeable items, but nothing seemed useful. He decided to wait for another month’s promotion and kept the coins.

‘That should be enough. I’ll stick with a catopus as my character and my new superpower. Maybe I can trigger racial events or a different scenario quest with the character.’

Xiaomao returned to the character selection menu and chose the catopus as his game character.

Now was the fun part for fashion lovers. Xiaomao took his time, customizing the catopus to have the same fur outline as Mu-Nyang. He made the head round and chubby like a poring slime, and the eyes and mouth became anime-ish.

An hour later, Xiaomao finished customizing his character. He saved the setting and pressed the confirm button.

“Yes.”

As soon as Xiaomao confirmed, the void turned white. His consciousness entered the catopus avatar in front of him.

When Xiaomao opened his eyes again, he was already controlling the tentacle cat’s body.

His vision became less colorful. At first, his perception could only see everything in a blurry gray shade. Xiaomao blinked several times, and the color changed to normal like how he saw the world with human eyes.

The game allowed Xiaomao to move his character. He wiggled his eight tentacles, tail, and ears, practicing his movements.

Playing VRMMO was different from playing a PC game. All five senses of Xiaomao were linked to the game character, and he needed to operate the game avatar like his real body.

Managing one tail and eight tentacles was difficult. It reminded Xiaomao of his childhood when his parents forced him to learn to play various musical instruments. He separated his senses to move his new arms and legs like how he played piano.

Ten minutes later, Xiaomao got the hang of it, but his movement was sluggish and robotic. For now, he used four back tentacles as legs and four fronts as his arms.

Ding

The game was kind enough to offer a tutorial for a monster character player. A platform appeared, showing a path for Xiaomao to practice moving and traveling with his little tentacles.

The eight tentacles struggled to move forward. Xiaomao moved like a ragdoll, tumbling and rolling on the ground.

.

Three hours later after the tutorial, Xiaomao’s tentacles wiggled as if they had their mind and consciousness. The new legs and arms were also strong enough to stabilize his cat head. He also didn’t need to crawl on land like octopuses.

‘Whew. That was quite a cardio. I’m exhausted.’

Ding

Another tutorial was initiated. This time, the white void changed into a small hilly landscape. The light green road led to the steep hill.

Xiaomao gazed at the arrow symbol in the sky, pointing at the top of the hill. He broke a sweat.

‘This is going to be all night.’