After escaping from The Upside Down, Richard felt his tensed nerves suddenly snap like a kite string. His consciousness vanished instantly, and he fell into a deep sleep.
In a daze, when his consciousness cleared again, Richard found himself in the midst of darkness. There was nothing around him except for the skill panel in front of him, which was still glowing faintly.
[Agent: Richard]
[Skills: English (C Rank) - Your level has met the daily requirements for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. You can accurately translate and express your Chinese thoughts; be glad your College English Test Level 6 wasn't just a fluke.
Programming (B Rank) - A top-tier expert. At least in this current era, your abilities are unrivaled.
All-around Housework (C Rank) - An essential skill for someone without parents. If the appliances are broken, I'll fix them; if the house is dirty, I'll sweep it. As long as it saves money, everything at home relies on my industrious hands. You're only one word away from being the ideal type for most women: money.
Culinary Arts (A Rank) - Wow! Dishes that glow!
Misfortune (E Rank) - An innate talent. Please take two seconds to briefly recall your life.
Shooting (D Rank) - Oh, not bad. You actually managed to improve to this level in a short time without relying on cheats.]
[Derived Skills: Hyper-digestion - Your body's energy absorption rate from food substances is greatly increased. You can quickly replenish energy and restore your life status through food intake.
Weak Point Exploitation - To take off your arm, I only need one strike! Like Hu Fu slaughtering a pig or Pao Ding carving an ox, your rich slaughtering experience allows you to see through the weaknesses of all things.]
[plot points: 734]
Seeing his plot points, Richard suddenly couldn't keep his cool and said in shock, "Where did I get so many plot points?"
He hurriedly looked back through the system messages and discovered that while he was completely unconscious, he had unintentionally received numerous plot point rewards.
[Established a relationship with plot character [Murray], plot points +6]
[Established a relationship with plot character [Owens], plot points +5]
[Established a relationship with plot character [Jackson], plot points +7]
[Established a relationship with plot character [Sullivan], plot points +3]
...[Established a relationship with core character [Henry Creel], plot points +20]
"So many people I don't know... Wait, this Henry appeared again, and he's a core character providing a large number of points just like Eleven?" Richard's scrolling through the message bar paused, his eyes fixed on the name. He now understood that 'establishing a relationship' didn't require him to personally build it; as long as the other character had the intention to form a non-passerby relationship with him unilaterally, the 'relationship' was considered established.
Richard was wondering what Henry's background was, for him to be recognized by the skill panel as an existence with as much 'screen time' as Eleven.
If this Henry were a protagonist like Eleven, then he wouldn't find it strange even if these plot points came from Michael or Steve. But it happened to be a Henry that Richard had never heard of.
"Could he be the hidden big boss of the show?" Richard's heart skipped a beat. After thinking it over, he felt this was the only possibility.
After all, the two cores of a story are nothing more than the faction led by the protagonist and the villainous faction that opposes them. If the protagonist is the core of their faction, then the villainous faction must also have a 'protagonist' as their core, much like the Taiji diagram.
The more Richard thought about it, the more likely it seemed. After all, the name 'Henry' was first heard by Eleven from Dr. Brennan.
He roughly remembered Eleven's repetition of Dr. Brennan's words: "Henry, is that you in there?" It seemed that long before Eleven accidentally opened the difficult-to-close gate to The Upside Down on November 6th, Dr. Brennan already knew of the existence of another world and knew that someone he recognized might be in that world.
The amount of information within this became somewhat massive. Richard even felt now that Dr. Brennan's insistence on Eleven performing a special type of extrasensory perception experiment was for the purpose of opening the gate to The Upside Down to confirm that the other world really existed. In this way, the opening of the gate by Hawkins Lab was not an accident, but a deliberate, premeditated act by Dr. Brennan.
This thought wasn't baseless speculation. Richard carefully recalled the original work; after Eleven broke away from Dr. Brennan, she performed extrasensory perception many times but never opened a portal to The Upside Down again. The answer was obvious: simply triggering normal extrasensory perception wouldn't link the two worlds. It was Dr. Brennan who used special experimental conditions to force Eleven to trigger a special kind of extrasensory perception, allowing her to sense The Upside Down and forcing her to use her power to forcibly open the portal.
"It seems that old bastard deserves to die even more," Richard thought, his brow furrowed.
It seemed that the giant spider shadow from the original work, the non-physical monster called the Mind Flayer, wasn't the ultimate boss of the whole show—this guy named Henry was.
Regardless of what special powers Henry had, he was definitely a dangerous fellow.
Richard continued to flip through his system messages, as his acquisition of plot points was far from over.
[Relationship target [Jonathan Byers]'s character attributes have changed, plot points +40]
[Relationship target [Troy]'s character attributes have changed, plot points +90]
[Relationship target [Will Byers]'s character attributes have changed, plot points +90]
[Relationship target [Eleven]'s character attributes have changed, plot points +160]
..."Character attributes have changed..." Richard was utterly stunned. His strange mental gears suddenly clicked, and he had an epiphany. "So that's it! The second way to fleece plot points from characters is to 'break their persona'!"
Yes, suppose a person is destined to become a hero; no matter how they become one, the label of hero is always their character's ultimate attribute. No matter how many possible directions the plot takes, they all lead to the same destination.
This was why even though Richard had intervened in the original plot multiple times—to the point where the plot was now so complex that he was part of it and couldn't see the whole picture—he still couldn't gain any plot points from it. Because even excluding himself, Eleven would still eventually become the supernatural supergirl, Nancy would become the supernatural warrior, and Steve would become the supernatural babysitter... Everyone would still become those kinds of people; only their growth experiences would differ.
But Richard's intervention this time seemed to have forcibly twisted some things. For example, the most typical case was Troy. This little campus brat from the original work had now taken everything in Will's place. I'm afraid after this incident, he'll turn into a complete coward. The status of the number one victim, which belonged to Will in the original work, might now fall on his head. Troy's character status might have multiplied several times because of this, instantly jumping from an 18th-tier extra to a first-tier lead. This was a kind of 'persona collapse'.
Wait, thinking about it this way, Troy should actually thank him? Richard grinned.
From this moment on, Richard established his future strategy for fleecing the system. He finally understood how to play with the skill panel!