Reborn: The Rookie Detective Chapter 125 125: 125-Encounter

Joshua Tree National Park has a place called 'Hidden Valley,' a place filled with over a dozen rocky cliffs of varying heights and difficulties, a paradise for rock climbers, and hailed as one of the top ten holy sites for rock climbing.

Jack parked his car at a nearby campsite, slung his backpack full of climbing ropes, pitons, and other equipnt over his shoulder, and climbed up one of the cliffs, which was over ten ters high, from the side.

Jack wasn't a rock climber; he was there to conduct an experint. After the system update, the entire skill panel had changed drastically, and the three skill trees had truly beco densely packed tree-like structures.

Under the original professional skill trees, a bunch of large icons had been added. For example, for vehicle driving, clicking on it revealed a bunch of smaller icons: ground vehicles, water vehicles, and air vehicles.

Clicking on ground vehicles revealed two even smaller icons: small vehicles and large vehicles. His original driving skill (Master) had now beco Small Vehicles (Master), while the Large Vehicle icon only showed (Beginner).

Clicking on water vehicles reveals only small boats (Beginner), while the icons for large boats are simply grayed out. It's unclear whether aircraft carriers are considered large boats in the system.

Air vehicles are even more absurd, simply divided into fixed-wing and rotary-wing types. Although both are grayed out, and Jack genuinely can't fly them, does that an if you can fly a propeller-driven aircraft, you can fly a jet plane? Aren't both fixed-wing?

Thankfully, the system doesn't have separate branches for fields like forensic dicine and psychology. Otherwise, just thinking about the dozens of sub-categories under forensic dicine, such as trace evidence analysis, footprint analysis, and fingerprint identification, and the myriad sub-categories under psychology, such as micro-expression analysis, psychological assessnt, and behavioral analysis, would make Jack faint on the spot.

However, this upgrade isn't without its benefits. For example, skills that were previously undisplayed are now indicated by grayed-out icons, and a small progress bar appears under each skill icon.

For instance, Jack's rifle shooting skills, which hadn't been active since upgrading to "proficient," are now all categorized under "combat skills" within the professional skills category.

Combat skills are divided into three categories: shooting, lee, and special skills. In the shooting branch, Jack currently has proficiency in pistols (Master), rifles (Skilled), and crossbows (Beginner). Interestingly, the progress bar for his rifle skill is already full.

Jack started rock climbing because he found a bunch of grayed-out skills under special skills, including climbing.

He read several professional books on rock climbing and rope climbing last night, and although his climbing skill is still grayed out, the progress bar is full.

By observing the progress bars of different skill icons, he had so guesses in his mind, and today he was going to verify them.

Jack hamred three pitons into the rock cliff at the top, then tried to recall the figure-eight knot he had learned from the books, tied himself with a safety rope, and first rappelled down to the bottom, hamring in two more pitons along the way.

Then he began to try free climbing, which was incredibly easy. When a person can easily lift themselves up with just one or two fingers, all that's left is enough patience and caution.

When Jack returned to the cliff top, his climbing skill in the system had indeed leveled up to beginner level, and his experience bar remained full. He turned his gaze to another cliff about 30 ters high not far away.

This cliff was large, and a climbing team of five people — three n and two won — was preparing at the top. Seeing Jack approaching from one side, two beautiful, athletic blonde won in the team imdiately gave him flirty looks.

In May, the dayti temperature in the Mojave Desert can approach 40 degrees Celsius, so Jack was only wearing a pair of close-fitting, knee-length hiking pants, his bare upper body showing off his impressive muscle definition.

Politely returning the smile, Jack passed by the team and chose an area where the cliff face jutted outwards — this was probably the most difficult part.

The process was the sa as before: driving in spikes and attaching safety ropes. However, Jack carried extra tools like rock bolts, chanical bolts, and rock hooks.

After successfully descending to the bottom of the cliff, Jack began his second climb. This ti, the difficulty was much higher, especially on the protruding sections of the rock face. His skills were still developing, and he was unfamiliar with the tools, but he ultimately completed the entire climb through sheer brute force.

Just as Jack was struggling to climb onto the rock face, a slightly calloused hand reached out to him. He looked up and saw the slightly older of the two blonde won standing before him.

"Thank you," Jack said, shaking her hand and using the leverage to stand up.

"My na is Natasha. I'm an international student at the University of California, from Moscow," the blonde woman said, her accent slightly thick, with a slight trill.

"My na is Jack Tavelor, just call Jack."

The language tree in the system's skill tree had also been updated. There were probably too many languages to list them all, but there were still over 60, mostly grayed out. Jack had recently mastered Italian and Latin and was currently working on Russian, just reaching the beginner level.

Itching to learn, Jack greeted her directly in Russian: "Zdravstvuyte (Hello)."

Natasha smiled with delight, then rattled off a long string of Russian. This is where the system's awesoness shone through; although only at the beginner level, he could understand most of it, though his replies were a bit hesitant, like a beginner, and his imitation of the rolled "r" wasn't very good.

After so conversation, Jack learned that the younger woman was Natasha's sister, Talia, from a wealthy family, a good student, and currently studying at UC Los Angeles. Both were rock climbing enthusiasts, quite professionally.

Knowing that Jack was a police officer and was on vacation for a solo road trip, Natasha's eyes showed undisguised envy.

Jack didn't think much of it. The system notification indicated that his climbing skill had leveled up again, now it was proficient. However, this ti the experience bar wasn't full anymore, only half full.

Taking advantage of the conversation, he asked Natasha for so more climbing tips, and then found that the experience bar had indeed increased slightly, basically confirming his guess.

System skill upgrades have hidden conditions. Climbing skills, for example, seem to be divided into theory and practice. From now on, simply reading books and learning theoretical knowledge won't be enough to get started; sufficient practice is needed to ultimately level up.