“After all, I remember that in real history, Samuel Turner only succeeded in the assassination by the narrowest of margins...”

This is when the advantage of knowing a bit of history becomes apparent.

Although William Carter didn’t know the details of Samuel Turner’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he was still clear on the general process.

Before the audience, the armored guards would search him several times; it was absolutely impossible to hide a weapon on his body.

So, Samuel Turner came under the pretense of “presenting an auspicious omen.”

The so-called auspicious omen was a large piece of black jade that Samuel Turner had come across by chance. He asked a close friend, who was also a skilled craftsman, to carve it into a black jade qilin, and then hid a treasured sword inside.

Of course, calling it a sword was a bit of an exaggeration—it was actually even shorter than a typical dagger.

Abraham Lincoln was arrogant and superstitious; upon hearing of the auspicious omen, he was overjoyed and allowed Samuel Turner to enter the hall and present the treasure.

After entering the hall, Samuel Turner was still quite a distance from Abraham Lincoln, so he pretended that the black jade had a small, barely noticeable flaw and said he needed to approach and point it out to Abraham Lincoln personally.

Once he got close enough to Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Turner suddenly drew the sword from the black jade qilin and attempted the assassination. However, Abraham Lincoln was no pushover—he had practiced martial arts since childhood, and his close-combat skills were on par with most generals.

So the first strike failed.

Chaos erupted in the hall. The officials and red-armored guards rushed forward to protect the emperor. Samuel Turner, worthy of being the top swordsman of his time, fought his way left and right, killing several people. Finally, seizing a critical moment, he threw the sword and struck Abraham Lincoln in the throat.

So William Carter thought for a moment: if he wanted to perfectly reenact Samuel Turner’s story, then mastery of swordsmanship was absolutely essential.

Even a swordsman as formidable as Samuel Turner nearly failed back then—how could a weakling like himself expect to succeed in the assassination without picking up the skill?

With this in mind, William Carter made up his mind and lightly tapped the blue card labeled “Swordsmanship Mastery.”

This time, the sensation was clearly different from “Overbearing.”

William Carter felt as if some mysterious power was flowing into him, inexplicably granting him a wealth of muscle memory. How to grip a sword, how to strike, how to dodge and evade... all these sword techniques flooded into his mind.

It was as if he had truly become a sword master, completely different from his previous weak self.

Of course, he hadn’t exactly been weak before—at this moment, he was playing the role of Samuel Turner, so his physical condition matched that of Samuel Turner at the time.

But having physical ability alone is useless if you can’t make full use of it.

It’s like in action games, where both newbies and pros use characters with the same stats, but the newbie gets instantly killed by monsters, while the pro can defeat monsters without taking a hit.

Now, with swordsmanship mastery, it was like adding wings to a tiger.

What shocked Samuel Turner even more wasn’t the boost in his in-game combat power, but this wondrous sensation akin to “direct transmission”!

He had played many other virtual reality games before—even the most advanced neural-link VR games could only achieve about 50% realism, allowing for highly precise movements like in real life.

He already found that amazing, but in this game, he could actually gain muscle memory directly through the game mechanics?!

Isn’t that invincible?

William Carter didn’t have time to worry about what kind of black technology this was—he could check the forums after leaving the game.

The urgent task now was to clear the instance.

William Carter’s confidence soared as he once again followed Little Abraham into the hall.

“Your humble subject pays respects to Your Majesty!”

Just like before, William Carter knelt in the grand hall, holding the wooden box high with both hands.

All around was still silent, with no response, but this time William Carter had learned his lesson and didn’t dare to look up no matter what.

After a moment, he heard a deep voice from far ahead: “Rise.”

The wait was actually very short, but under such immense psychological pressure, William Carter felt as if every second dragged on for years.

However, just as he stood up, Abraham Lincoln suddenly shouted angrily without warning: “Why are you trembling and shaking? Is there something on your mind—are you plotting something?!

“Speak!”

The voice was like thunder, echoing throughout the hall.

William Carter felt as if ten thousand alpacas were stampeding through his mind.

He knew that the historical records described Abraham Lincoln as eccentric and moody, often having ministers executed for the most inexplicable reasons—but that was just words on a page.

Seeing it firsthand, he finally understood what those eight characters really meant.

Seeing that he was about to die for no reason again, William Carter had a sudden flash of inspiration and quickly knelt down with a thud: “Your Majesty, please calm your anger!

“This humble subject... this humble subject is a coarse countryman, awed by Your Majesty’s divine presence, and so I tremble in fear and panic.”

Sweat dripped from his forehead as William Carter knelt on the ground, not daring to look up, feeling as if he was only a hair’s breadth away from sudden death.

Another short but excruciatingly tense silence followed.

Abraham Lincoln seemed to accept this explanation and glanced at Little Abraham beside him: “Go, bring the auspicious omen in his hands to me.”

William Carter was stunned.

Huh? That’s not right, this isn’t how the script goes!

If you don’t let me approach to present the treasure, how am I supposed to assassinate you?

Seeing Little Abraham walking over quickly, William Carter hurriedly said, “Wait!”