**Chapter 3: You're Completely Hopeless**
Soon, amidst screams, the actors playing the robbers all lay motionless on the ground, one by one.
Among them, only Blitz, after taking a few punches, still struggled to crawl up from the ground. Queen Maeve, seeing this, looked in surprise at the hidden camera in the corner. Seeing that the director hadn't called cut, she could only slightly increase her force.
*Pfft!* Blitz was sent flying by a punch, landing heavily at Xia Shang's feet.
"We're all just working, why risk your life?" Looking at the silly grin of Blitz, Xia Shang moved his foot away in disgust. This guy was truly hopeless.
At this moment inside the carriage, the only one standing was Xia Shang.
"Brother! I will definitely avenge you!" Xia Shang instantly became possessed by the drama bug, drawing the dagger from his waist, stepping on Blitz's right hand with one foot, and charging towards Maeve with a frantic look in his eyes, just like a desperate outlaw with nowhere left to run.
In front of the camera, the blonde director saw this scene, nodded in satisfaction, took a puff of his cigarette, and pointed at Xia Shang on the screen, praising, "This young man's acting is good. Add an extra steak for him later."
Facing Xia Shang's attack, Queen Maeve stood her ground, showing no intention of dodging.
Xia Shang used all his strength, but the dagger in his hand couldn't even scratch Maeve's skin. It felt like trying to cut steel.
As he looked up, his eyes met Queen Maeve's brown ones. The next second, he was grabbed by the neck and thrown aside.
[Analyze conditions unlocked. Fuse Sword Talent?]
To be safe, Xia Shang didn't choose to Fuse immediately. Instead, he honestly lay on the ground and played dead.
Three minutes later, with a command from the director, today's filming officially ended.
Inside the carriage, the "dead bodies" who had been motionless just moments ago began to grimace and crawl up, rubbing their injured spots while chatting idly.
"How was it? My acting was pretty good, right?"
Hank raised his short, thick eyebrows at a few people and said smugly.
"Getting knocked out by your own buddy? You're definitely a mole among the robbers," Frie, who had landed on Hank, said irritably.
"Speaking of acting, look at Blitz. That painful expression he put on could win him an Oscar."
"Shit, that bastard Xia stepped on me."
Blitz rubbed his red hand, wincing in pain.
"I really don't know if he did it on purpose or by accident."
Nearby, Xia Shang had an innocent look on his face. He raised his hands and chuckled, "Actually, I was intentionally careless."
It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Xia Shang clocked out right on time, as this was a good quality for a working man. He returned to his room with dinner and opened the Panel again.
This time, he made a new discovery. It turned out there was a golden staircase icon in the upper left corner of the Panel.
When he tapped the icon with his mind, a line of small text appeared before his eyes.
[Consume 100 Fantasy Value to travel to a One-Star Fantasy World?]
"Is there a big difference between One-Star and Two-Star?" Xia Shang looked at the second glowing step of the staircase. Currently, the staircase seemed to have a total of six steps, but only the first two were glowing; the rest were displayed as locked. He guessed this restriction was related to the Main World.
So he clicked the plus sign next to The Boys, and a notification quickly popped up.
[Detected Player Fantasy Value is less than 10000 points. Cannot upgrade to a higher-level world.]
After some research, Xia Shang found that Fantasy Value only had these two functions and could only be obtained through the Main World. However, with his current strength, it was basically difficult to influence the course of events. After all, he wasn't the protagonist of this show, capable of fighting Superheroes as an ordinary human.
Especially after experiencing Queen Maeve's abnormal strength.
This made Xia Shang even more convinced that before gaining a certain level of strength, he absolutely could not actively approach Superheroes. After all, this was a world where you could get run over and killed by A-Train just by walking on the street.
After seriously finishing his dinner, Xia Shang wiped the steak sauce from the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. After careful observation, he confirmed that there were no cameras installed in the room. After all, no one would be bored enough to observe the daily life of a male security guard.
"Confirm Fuse Sword Talent."
The Fusion process wasn't painful. Xia Shang only felt a slight itchiness all over his body, and his arms constantly had the urge to swing.
[Sword Talent is Fusing. Current progress: 10% (Cannot perform the next Analyze until the Player has fully Fused.)] What Xia Shang didn't expect was that Fusion wasn't a simple copy-paste; it required time to adapt to the changes in his body. Of course, he guessed that some training could speed up the Fusion process until his swordsmanship reached Maeve's level.
After adapting to the changes in his body.
Xia Shang took out his phone and decisively ordered three steel swords of different weights on Amazon. This single expense instantly wiped out his meager savings. Fortunately, his current job provided food and lodging; otherwise, he would truly be living on the streets.
In the following period.
Life was quite uneventful. As for the Superheroes, he had already seen most of them, including Homelander, who always maintained a smile in front of the media and fans. If he hadn't read the original work, Xia Shang would have definitely thought he was a rather perfect Superhero.
"F*ck you, are you playing a Superhero card collecting game or something? You actually used up the 1200 dollars I lent you a while ago? That money was my fund for picking up girls!" Facing Xia Shang, who was asking to borrow money again, Blitz grumbled as he took out his phone and transferred two thousand to Xia Shang.
The main reason was that Xia Shang hadn't expected hiring a Sword Mastery instructor to be so expensive. One lesson cost 300 US dollars, and it wasn't even one-on-one.
One could only say this was a crazy world where people overly admired those with strength.
"Stop bullshitting, you damn rich second generation, you evil capitalist! I'll pay you back when I get my salary." Ever since Blitz invited Xia Shang to his room for a party, he finally understood how terrifying a fanboy otaku could be. There were no less than twenty Queen Maeve statues displayed in the room alone, not to mention countless posters.
The most exaggerated thing was that one of the limited edition statues was priced as high as 120,000 US dollars online.
"If you ask me, you should just stop being a security guard. Go back to being a rich young master, and maybe you could actually hook up with Queen Maeve."
Xia Shang joked.
"You don't understand the happiness of being a security guard near Queen Maeve, especially when I stop her fans and watch them unable to get close to Her Majesty. There's a truly indescribable pleasure in that," Blitz said with a creepy grin.
"Brother, you're completely hopeless." Xia Shang shook his head and left the Building.
After a month of training, the progress on the Panel had now reached 97%. At the previous rate, after finishing the last lesson, he should be able to fully Fuse Sword Mastery.
(End of Chapter)