037 Another Way to Obtain Plot Points
After escaping from The Upside Down, Richard felt his tensed nerves suddenly snap like a guitar string. His consciousness vanished instantly, and he fell into a deep sleep.
In a haze, when his consciousness cleared again, Richard found himself surrounded by 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 meets daily requirements for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. You can accurately articulate complex thoughts; be glad those years of high school English classes weren't a complete waste.
Programming (B Rank) - Top-tier expert. At least in this current era, your abilities are unmatched.
All-around Housework (C Rank) - An essential skill for someone without parents. If the appliances break, I'll fix them; if the house gets messy, I'll clean it. As long as it saves money, everything at home relies on these industrious hands. You're only one thing away from being the ideal partner for most people: money.
Culinary Arts (A Rank) - Damn! Food so good it's almost supernatural!
Misfortune (E Rank) - An innate talent. Please take two seconds to briefly recall your life.
Shooting (D Rank) - Hey, not bad. You actually managed to improve to this level in a short time without relying on tricks.
[Derived Skills: Hyper-digestion] - Your body's energy absorption rate from food is greatly increased. You can quickly replenish energy and restore your physical condition through food intake.
Weak Point Exploitation - To take off your arm, I only need one strike! Like a butcher processing a hog or a chef carving a turkey, your extensive 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 the hell did I get so many plot points?"
He hurriedly scrolled 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 even know... Wait, this Henry guy showed up again, and he's a core character providing a ton 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-background-character relationship with him unilaterally, the 'relationship' was considered established.
Richard was wondering what Henry's deal was, for him to be recognized by the skill panel as an existence with as much importance as Eleven.
If this Henry were a protagonist like Eleven, then he wouldn't find it strange even if these plot points came from Mike or Steve. But it happened to be a Henry that Richard had never heard of.
"Could he be the hidden big bad 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 villain's side must also have a 'protagonist' as their core, like two sides of the same coin.
The more Richard thought about it, the more sense it made. After all, the name 'Henry' was first heard by Eleven from Dr. Brenner.
He vaguely remembered Eleven repeating Dr. Brenner's words: "Henry, is that you in there?" It seemed that long before Eleven accidentally opened the difficult-to-close gateway to The Upside Down on November 6th, Dr. Brenner already knew of the existence of another world and knew that someone he recognized might be in that world.
The implications became somewhat massive. Richard even suspected now that Dr. Brenner's insistence on Eleven performing a specific type of remote viewing experiment was for the purpose of opening the gateway to The Upside Down to confirm that the other world really existed. In this way, the opening of the gate by Hawkins Lab wasn't an accident, but a deliberate, premeditated act by Dr. Brenner.
This thought wasn't baseless speculation. Richard carefully recalled the original timeline; after Eleven broke away from Dr. Brenner, she performed remote viewing many times but never opened a portal to The Upside Down again.
The answer was obvious: simply triggering normal remote viewing wouldn't link the two worlds. It was Dr. Brenner who used special experimental conditions to force Eleven to trigger a specific kind of remote viewing, allowing her to sense The Upside Down and forcing her to use her power to forcibly tear open the portal.
"Looks like that old bastard deserves what's coming to him even more," Richard thought, his brow furrowed.
It seemed that the giant spider shadow from the original timeline, the non-physical monster called the Mind Flayer, wasn't the ultimate villain of the whole show—this guy named Henry was.
Regardless of what special powers Henry possessed, he was definitely a dangerous individual.
Richard continued scrolling 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 mental gears suddenly clicked, and he had an epiphany. "Holy crap! The second way to farm plot points from characters is to 'break their character arc'!"
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 twisted 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 superpowered hero, Nancy would become the monster hunter, and Steve would become the reluctant 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 obvious case was Troy. This little schoolyard punk from the original timeline had now taken everything in Will's place. After this incident, he'd probably turn into a complete mess. The status of the primary victim, which belonged to Will in the original timeline, might now fall on his head. Troy's character importance might have multiplied several times because of this, instantly jumping from an eighteenth-tier extra to a first-tier character. This was a kind of 'character arc collapse'.
Wait, thinking about it this way, Troy should actually thank him? Richard smirked.
From this moment on, Richard established his future strategy for gaming the system. He finally understood how to work the skill panel!
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