143: Chapter 143 Summer Vacation Begins

The July sunlight hung heavy over Wei City, the air so scorching it could roast an egg.

There were no final exams; for all sophomore combat-class students with a Rank greater than fifteen, their summer vacation had begun.

If your Rank did not meet the standard, what awaited you might be mandatory summer remedial classes, or more likely, a conversation regarding streaming.

This news did not cause much of a stir in the classroom.

For Awakeners, summer vacation was both the same and different compared to usual.

There were no designated dungeons assigned by the Education Bureau, no rigid rules limiting entry to seventy-two hours within seven days, and certainly no restrictions requiring teams to consist only of peers.

More flexible dungeons were truly what their holiday arrangements were about.

After school, the three people and one Dire Wolf gathered in Hu Jinsi's living room as usual.

Lin Rui sat cross-legged on the floor, and his terminal projected a map of Daibei City densely marked with various dungeon entrances and professional leveling hotspots.

Su Wan leaned against the sofa armrest, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the top of the Dire Wolf's head.

"Plan unchanged."

Lin Rui zoomed in on one of the red markers.

"On July fifth, in Daibei City, Dark Martial Arts Tournament at one hundred and fifty percent, and then I need the [Spirit Sword], Su Wan can see if she can scout out a suitable flight skill, and Jinsi needs the subsequent skills for the [Spirit Gun]."

"I've been craving that flight ability for two months."

Su Wan chimed in unusually, "By then, Lin Rui will have a weapon that can transform freely, and if I can get another flight method, our squad's mobility will be completely finalized."

Hu Jinsi didn't speak; he rescued the Dire Wolf from Su Wan's demonic claws and lowered his head to smooth down the fur that Su Wan had messed up.

The cub's ears twitched, and its tail swept a small sector-shaped trace of dust on the floor.

When it stood up now, it reached Hu Jinsi's ribs.

Calling it a cub was no longer entirely appropriate, but at least in terms of behavior, it was still very well-behaved, lacking the craftiness and cruelty of wild Dire Wolves.

...

The plan was set in stone, yet none of the three expected changes to come so quickly.

Two days before departure, Su Wan's terminal rang late at night.

She glanced at the caller ID, and her expression changed instantly.

On the screen was a message sent by her mother, containing only a single sentence: Grandma had a sudden acute illness and has already been hospitalized.

In the era when Su Wan's grandmother was born, not everyone could awaken back then.

An ordinary person's Physique appeared exceptionally fragile in this dungeon era; illnesses had plagued her for most of her life, clinging to her like a shadow.

After collapsing this time, the hospital's test results made Su Wan fall silent on the phone for a very long time.

"Sorry."

The next day in the living room, Su Wan's voice was two tones lower than usual.

She wasn't wearing makeup, and there were faint dark circles under her eyes.

"I have to go back to accompany Grandma. The date of return... is undecided."

Lin Rui opened his mouth, but in the end, he only retracted the map projection on his terminal.

"Group activities canceled."

Hu Jinsi patted the Dire Wolf's head.

The cub sensed that the atmosphere was wrong and drooped its ears.

"Everyone go your separate ways."

The three of them discussed for less than ten minutes.

Lin Rui decided to go to Daibei City, where there were summer leveling squads specifically targeted at the Soldier profession, with a reasonable Rank structure and stable returns.

He planned to pull his Rank up a notch during the vacation, and incidentally, once Hu Jinsi went to Daibei City in two weeks, he would exchange for the [Spirit Sword] or a few urgently needed pieces of equipment.

Hu Jinsi had his own plans.

He first went to the Poké Ball rental shop and rented an Advanced Ball once again.

The clerk was still the same one from last time, freezing for a moment when he saw Hu Jinsi, his gaze lingering for several seconds on the Dire Wolf by his feet that had already grown to one meter thirty.

"It's grown up."

The clerk handed the ball over.

"If it grows any longer, the Advanced Ball might not be enough anymore."

"It's enough."

Hu Jinsi shoved the Poké Ball into the Void Realm backpack and headed straight for the Wei City long-distance bus station with the Dire Wolf.

His goal was very clear.

First go to the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon and exchange for the remaining few skills from last time.

In addition, the incense burner he had taken a fancy to before—no matter what this time, he had to farm enough points to exchange for it.

Even if he couldn't use it now, when the [Transcendental Meditation] (Incomplete) was completed in the future, it could still be used as firewood fuel.

Besides these, he also had another thought in mind.

The Dire Wolf was almost an adult and would reach the average adult height of one meter fifty by the end of July.

Hu Jinsi wanted to take this opportunity to get a suitable class Awakening stone for it inside a dungeon.

He couldn't let it follow him around jobless and careerless after reaching adulthood. Although they had previously discussed the route of random Awakening, having an extra safety net was always good.

In addition, what surprised Hu Jinsi even more was that the Dire Wolf had recently started making some scattered syllables.

Not wolf howls, but vague tones resembling human speech.

When it lay on the floor, a few unformed syllables would roll out of its throat, practicing vocalization repeatedly.

Hu Jinsi estimated that once its throat fully developed at the end of the month, this guy would probably be able to speak and communicate.

Thinking of the scene where a one-meter-fifty-tall Dire Wolf opened its mouth to speak, Hu Jinsi's mood was somewhat complicated.

He didn't know whether he should be gratified or have a headache.

...

When he came to Haigang City during the Qingming Festival holiday last time, Hu Jinsi had barely squeezed out of the dungeon right on time and rushed back to the long-distance bus station on time, not even seeing the city's outline clearly.

This time, with plenty of time, the first thing he did upon leaving the long-distance bus station wasn't heading straight for a dungeon, but finding a roadside stall to sit down, order a portion of local seafood fried noodles, and simultaneously open his terminal to access Haigang City's Awakener forum.

The forum interface was largely similar to Wei City's, but the dungeon list was noticeably richer.

Hu Jinsi scrolled across the screen, and as expected, there were a few familiar faces inside.

The most eye-catching one was [Battle of Bowangpo].

[Battle of Bowangpo (Part I)]

[Access Rank: Level Five to Ten]

[Suggested Number of People: One to Three]

---

[Battle of Bowangpo (Part II)]

[Access Rank: Level Eight to Fourteen]

[Suggested Number of People: One to Three]

---

Looking at the screenshots posted by other players, Hu Jinsi almost choked on the fried noodles in his mouth.

A muscular hunk, a fat guy using bombs, and Li Dian who used pole vaulting.

Everything was identical to a certain arcade game in his memories from his past life.

"Such childhood memories..."

He muttered softly, his thumb hovering over the screen for half a second before swiping past it anyway.

It was a pity his Rank had long since passed the access line.

Entering a dungeon above the level not only gave no experience, but drop rates would also be slashed to a miserable degree.

Going in just to trigger a wave of nostalgia?

The losses outweighed the gains.

Scrolling further down, Hu Jinsi's gaze stopped at another dungeon: [Melee Chaos].

Just looking at the name, one would think this was another derivative dungeon of Dynasty Warriors. Clicking inside and glancing at the screenshot, he realized this was the map of the second stage of Knights of the Round.

He had been curious before why only the first stage, [Burning Village], was seen in Wei City, while the subsequent stages seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Now he understood; they were scattered all over the country, and even around the world.

But besides these, Hu Jinsi was basically completely in the dark about the remaining dungeons.

[Grim Cemetery], [Wild Elf Forest], [Steam Canyon]... Looking at the guides and screenshots gave no clue; they were neither games he had played in his past life nor cultural products he was familiar with.

They were presumably dungeon sources he didn't understand.

Permission restrictions were also a problem.

Hu Jinsi's current Rank could only view dungeon information below Level 20, and anything above Level 20 was completely grayed out and locked.

He tried clicking on a Level 21 dungeon link, and the terminal popped up a prompt: Insufficient permissions, please raise your Awakener Rank first.

However, as for that [Grim Cemetery], Hu Jinsi was genuinely a bit interested.

The guides on the forum mentioned that the enemies inside were not all ordinary undead; there were also a large number of abominations pieced together from the flesh and blood of the dead.

Unnatural formations, twisted creations, products of collapsed order.

The first person he thought of was Su Wan.

The Bard's Requiem Sacred Song had a natural suppression against the undead; as long as her throat could hold out, she would practically be the version's God of War in that dungeon.

Unfortunately, Su Wan was currently at her grandmother's house, so this thought could only be temporarily shelved.

In addition, Hu Jinsi himself was also somewhat tempted.

Abominations belonged to unnatural existences.

For a Monk, purifying and balancing such twisted creations was itself an action of practicing their class philosophy, which could yield quite a bit of experience.

Once Su Wan returned to the team, this dungeon could be listed among the squad's priority raiding targets.

The Dire Wolf lay by the table, its nose twitching as it sniffed the scent of the fried noodles.

Hu Jinsi picked up a piece of squid tentacle and threw it to it.

The cub lowered its head and chewed twice, its ears standing up and its tail beginning to wag.

Passersby cast sideways glances, but they weren't too surprised.

In Awakener cities, people walking around with pets or even Demonic Beasts were not uncommon.

"Your food is better than mine."

Hu Jinsi looked at the Dire Wolf and picked out the shrimp from the fried noodles as well.

"Once we enter the dungeon, you can hunt for your own food."

These thoughts spun around in Hu Jinsi's head and were eventually pushed down to the bottom of the priority queue.

He had a clear goal in coming to Haigang City: first exchange the skills on the list, farm the incense burner into his hands, and then consider other dungeons.

Thinking too much about things outside the main storyline was just a waste of computing power.

...

He wanted to know if there were any changes to the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon during this period, and also wanted to see the guide routes summarized by other players.

Let's talk about the changes first.

In the forum's pinned posts, several new screenshots made Hu Jinsi raise an eyebrow.

The dungeon had begun to burst out with a large number of steampunk-style elements: retro robots, cyborg-modified creatures, and gear-driven devices emitting black smoke.

A screenshot in a certain post even showed that the funerary objects of an Ancient Tomb had changed from goldware to brass pipelines and steam valves.

Hu Jinsi stared at that image for ten seconds.

If he hadn't been certain this was the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon of Water Blue Star, he would have almost thought he had strayed into some world visited year after year by chosen children.

But fortunately, he didn't see any vocabulary related to Fools, Visionaries, or bugs.

Ordinary steam technology—he felt he could still handle it.

As for the guides, after reading the combat strategy summaries on the forum, Hu Jinsi realized that his previous strategy had been too conservative.

Doing only the main storyline, not touching altars, and not scavenging Ancient Tombs—this style of play was categorized by the forum as the "Buddhist Conservative Style".

Advantages: highest clearance rate, probability of overturning was almost zero.

Disadvantages: earnings at the bottom, point generation efficiency shockingly miserable.

The intermediate option was called the "Mild Exploration Style": do half the main storyline, open a few altars along the way, casually touch one or two pieces when seeing an Ancient Tomb, and hunt beasts encountered on the road casually.

Risk and return were both moderate, making it the most recommended route in the forum.

Moving further up was the "Pure Hunting Style": abandon the main storyline, chase high-value beasts across the entire map, and exchange dropped Materials and fur for points.

Suitable for single players with good equipment and fast movement speed, but average in efficiency for Hu Jinsi.

The most extreme one was called the "Full-Map Looting and Tomb-Robbing Style": completely ignore the main storyline, focus on scavenging funerary objects in temples and Ancient Tombs, and take them directly to the ship to exchange for points.

This was the forum's acknowledged highest-point-per-run strategy, but also the riskiest.

Every time a piece of funerary goods was moved, it could trigger chained disasters such as ground subsidence, volcanic eruptions, and toxic gas gushes.

Most players only discussed it in posts; very few people actually dared to play like that.

There was a player named "Tomb Raider Old Wang" on the forum who had posted a detailed battle report.

This person had consecutively opened seventeen Ancient Tombs within a seventy-two-hour dungeon cycle, and when the final points were settled, they were more than four times higher than the Buddha-style play.

But the price was also tragic: two people in the team had their equipment swallowed by magma, one lost half their life in the toxic fog, and in the end, they relied on a Return Ship Talisman to salvage their lives.

Old Wang concluded at the end of the post: "The yield is indeed high, but ordinary people are not recommended to try it. Those without means of walking on water or flying are just walking to their deaths if they go in."

There were hundreds of replies below, with some complaining about him showing off, some asking to team up, and others seriously analyzing which type of burial goods had the lowest probability of triggering a disaster.

Hu Jinsi flipped through two pages and recorded the key data in his terminal memo.

But after reading this plan, Hu Jinsi's first reaction was: "Isn't this tailor-made for me?"

Did the ground subsidence cause the terrain to turn into an ocean?

He had [Unarmored Movement], walking on the water surface as if on flat ground.

Did the ground suddenly bulge into a sheer plateaued cliff?

He had [Parkour] and [lickers leg bind], so vertical terrain made no difference to him compared to a flat road.

The most dangerous toxic fog?

He had [Transcendental Meditation] (Damaged), and could now maintain twelve hours of internal respiration, so the toxic fog couldn't enter his lungs at all.

The only trouble was the Dire Wolf.

This cub was already quite heavy, and carrying it across the water or climbing sheer cliffs was unrealistic.

When that moment really arrived, he could only stuff it back into the Advanced Ball and release it once it was safe.

But Hu Jinsi still had a concern.

Would crazily grave-robbing and looting affect his class's alignment skew?

Monks had implicit requirements for order. In case he unscrupulously destroyed Ancient Tombs in the dungeon, causing his order value to drop or his chaos value to rise, the losses would outweigh the gains.

He had also understood the dungeon rules.

Many dungeons explicitly prohibited arson or the use of explosives, but [Wonderful Adventure] had no such hard restrictions.

The real problem was the world consciousness's backend bookkeeping.

His actions in this dungeon would be recorded, and when entering other dungeons, the world consciousness would adjust its treatment based on his behavioral history.

People who killed, burned, and looted in Ancient Tombs might find that the environment was no longer friendly when entering the next dungeon, and even drop rates would have attenuation.

However, Hu Jinsi's worries already had an answer on the forum.

He was not the only one with the same concerns; the Druid community's reaction was even more intense than his.

This class required a neutral alignment and was more sensitive to acts of destroying nature and desecrating the undead.

But the Druid's advantage was that their numbers far exceeded those of monks. Within the realm, there were dozens of legendary-level druids alone: Legendary Druid Yuan of the Harvested Fields, titled Thousand-Crop Watcher; Legendary Druid Ding of the Wild Rice Spirit-Guiding, titled Cereal-Vein Tracer; Legendary Druid Zhang of the Leyline Spirit-Awakening, titled Fertile-Soil Resurrector, and so on.

The number of legends in the Druid lineage always ranked in the top three within the realm. Driven by racial talents or cultural traditions, they had a heavy say on this issue.

Through extensive practical testing by players and direct consultation with the world consciousness, the conclusion was clear: actions in the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon, whether grave-robbing or hunting, essentially belonged to the consumption of dungeon energy.

The world consciousness of Water Blue Star was happy to see energy consumed rapidly, because only by clearing out old energy could it absorb more new dungeon fragments to fill in.

Coupled with the fact that the fragments exiled into this dungeon were not kind and harmonious things to begin with, all actions here would not affect personal alignment skew and order-chaos values.

After reading this conclusion, Hu Jinsi locked his terminal screen and patted the Dire Wolf's head.

"Alright, nothing to worry about."

He stood up, threw the fried noodle bowl into the roadside recycling bin, "Let's go, to the dungeon square. This time we're going to play big."

Having taken a reassurance pill, Hu Jinsi quickly took action.

...

In the first week of summer vacation, he entered the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon twice in a row.

Each dungeon cycle was seventy-two hours, and he spent almost all his time outside of sleep on looting and plundering.

The point numbers rose rapidly, but what Hu Jinsi cared about even more than the points was that the Dire Wolf had finally achieved its first blood in this dungeon.

Hu Jinsi didn't choose any bizarre opponents for it.

The weird races in the dungeon like Lizardmen, Peafowl Men, Mole Monsters, and White-faced Men—he himself wasn't willing to touch them, let alone let the Dire Wolf bite them.

God knows what pathogens these creatures carried; if it got sick after biting them, he would have to cure it himself.

He specially picked a resurrected skeleton.

The skeleton was loose-framed, slow in movement, and had almost no threat other than the rusty short blade in its hand.

More importantly, canines had an almost instinctive suppression of bone creatures; this was a bottom-layer logic written in their genes, unrelated to Acquired training.

Facts proved that Hu Jinsi's judgment was correct.

Although the Dire Wolf usually ate lamb chops, hamburgers, and high-calorie pet food, when facing a moving skeleton frame, it didn't need any guidance at all. The position of its bite was extremely precise, as if it naturally knew where to bite.

With one bite on the cervical vertebra connection, half of the skeleton scattered on the spot.

The skeleton tried to counterattack with its short blade, but the Dire Wolf sidestepped to avoid it, and its second bite directly crushed the soul fire core in the skull.

The whole process took less than ten seconds.

The Dire Wolf stood in the middle of the scattered skeleton, shook the bone dregs from its mouth, and wagged its tail happily.

It looked up at Hu Jinsi, its amber eyes flashing with a pride of "I did it," and rolled a few out-of-tune syllables in its throat, obviously asking for credit.

"Alright, alright, I know you're awesome."

Hu Jinsi squatted down and rubbed its ears, "But that's the only one, there are no more after this."

The Dire Wolf was obviously unsatisfied with this answer.

It trotted all the way behind Hu Jinsi, occasionally nudging his calves with its nose, making that sound between a whine and coquettishness.

It wanted another one, or even ten more.

But Hu Jinsi couldn't be bothered to play this game with it.

These skeletons were completely different from those silly skeletons in the [Cold Plains]; the resurrected skeletons in [Wonderful Adventure] could use muskets, cast curses, and some even carried combat skills.

The one just now was left for the Dire Wolf to practice on only after Hu Jinsi had beaten a group of skeletons down to the last one, knocked away its main weapon, and reduced it to a sliver of health.

If he really let it deal with a fully-conditioned skeleton wielding a gun by itself, Hu Jinsi wouldn't dare to gamble.

This guy had wanted to break its zero-kill record since last month, but never dared to actually bite.

Now the Dire Wolf could already make intermittent syllables, and pestering him was even more difficult to deal with than before.

Hu Jinsi was so annoyed by it that he found such a practice target for it in the dungeon.

But after practicing this round, Hu Jinsi became even more worried.

He found that this Dire Wolf had most likely been spoiled useless by the three-person squad.

A Dire Wolf that found biting enemies with its teeth dirty and insisted on picking the weakest and cleanest opponents before being willing to bite had essentially lost one of its main weapons.

Wolves surviving in the wild bit anything—bones, internal organs, carrion, accepting all comers.

Now this guy was good; used to eating cooked food, it even started being picky about the flesh and blood of enemies.

Hu Jinsi thought of the joke about the internet-famous wolf in Hoh Xil he had heard in his past life.

A wild wolf gradually lost its hunting ability because tourists fed it ham sausages, and finally begged for food by wagging its tail at the roadside.

At that time, he listened to it as a joke, but now that it happened around him, he couldn't laugh at all, and it was even a bit pathetic.

The route of a hard-attacking fighter was probably unviable.

Hu Jinsi sat on the deck of the dungeon's exchange large ship, watching the Dire Wolf lying aside gnawing on a piece of raw jerky, calculating the later cultivation direction in his heart.

Scout route?

A wolf standing one and a half meters tall going to be a scout—just thinking about the picture was a bit comical.

But among orcs, there were those who chose rogues; race and body size were never absolute restrictions, it all depended on how they were trained.

Forget it, let's not think about this first.

At least before the end of this month, the Dire Wolf still lacked a little bit of development time.

...

Speaking of the living experience in the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon, the accommodation conditions were indeed unsatisfactory.

Most of the time, they could only lay down pallets on the deck of the large ship, or camp directly in the wild.

But the food was surprisingly rich, a level that could Rank in the top three of all dungeons Hu Jinsi had experienced.

The large ship for exchanging supplies supplied fresh fruit year-round, and during wild exploration, one could also casually gather berries, mangoes, starfruit, lemons, and peaches.

When clearing out indigenous camps, one could also capture all kinds of weird rations: canned goods, cereal bars, chocolate, hard cheese, zongzi, glutinous rice cakes, mooncakes.

Hu Jinsi once suspected whether this dungeon had absorbed too many bizarre fragments, so that it stuffed everything edible in.

He did not waste the raw meat dropped when clearing beasts. In the past, he definitely would have picked it back up to roast and eat, especially since he now had the [Mr. Huo's Convenient Sachet], with seasonings completely complete.

But considering that the prototypes of these beasts really didn't look like normal ingredients, Hu Jinsi still threw all the raw meat to the Dire Wolf.

The drops at least guaranteed not to kill it from eating, and could also cultivate its wildness along the way—killing two birds with one stone.

...

As for the full-map grave-robbing playstyle on the forum, Hu Jinsi's evaluation was: Indeed effective, but absolutely not recommended.

Even his attribute configuration of twenty agility and twenty perception almost flipped over under extreme grave-robbing conditions. Other than using the Return Ship Talisman to run away the moment they were discovered, everyone else had almost no fault tolerance space.

That kind of thrill was hard to describe in words.

Hu Jinsi still remembered the most thrilling time to this day: he had just picked up the golden mask on the central altar of the Ancient Tomb, when a muffled thunder-like vibration came from the ground beneath his feet.

The next second, scalding magma spewed out from the cracks in the walls of the tomb, and the fiery red liquid rapidly flooded the surface, shattering the stone bricks wherever it passed.

Hu Jinsi bolted, activating [Parkour] to its limit, stepping on the vertical tomb wall several times in a row, and drilling out from a ventilation duct about to be swallowed by magma.

He managed to escape, but the pair of [Hot Boot Spike] that had accompanied him for more than half a year did not escape unscathed.

The magma splashed onto the boot surface, the enchanted leather instantly charred and curled, and the flame amplification runes on the soles were melted into scrap iron by the high temperature.

Hu Jinsi sat on a rock in the safe zone, took off his boots to inspect them.

In the equipment slot on the attribute panel, the icon of [Hot Boot Spike] had turned gray, and its durability had dropped to zero.

The attributes of these boots had actually fallen behind him for a long time.

But it had an irreplaceable value: free additional fire damage.

No consumption required, no skill cooperation required, every kick came with its own fire attribute bonus.

This was the only piece of equipment among the three-person squad that could add elemental damage at zero cost.

The biggest headache for the [Jack-of-All-Trades Squad] in the early days was the lack of elemental damage methods, and these boots had once helped them solve countless troubles.

If not for this accident, holding out for another two months, Hu Jinsi had originally planned to sell it to a junior.

Adding fire resistance and extra fire damage, for novices under level ten, this piece of equipment could almost be considered a minor Divine Artifact.

A second-hand one could also sell for nearly ten thousand credit points.

Now it was all gone.

What the magma took away was not just a pair of boots, but also an anticipated income.

Hu Jinsi stuffed the scrapped boots into his backpack, stood up, and patted the dust off his pants.

"Fine, another requirement was added for the dungeon: the points farmed this time must at least earn back the money for these boots."